Low-flying Catalina

[sapper740]

Originally posted by Alex Blair
The C-119 was nicknamed the "Dollar 19" in reference to its price and numerical code. The high twin-boom tail characterized the Aircraft. Originally utilized to transport the Canadian Airborne, many troops regarded the Aircraft as an extremely noisy mode of transport.

Alex, you and I need to get together sometime. I missed the piston era of ATC and I'd love to hear more of your stories. I've complained in the past about long, slow and noisy flights in Hercs, but at least they were pressurized so they could fly above most of the turbulence and were air conditioned to boot. Bumping along at speeds that cars can now now match through the chop of the lower atmosphere must have made any flight in a C-119 seem an eternity. They used to fly those darn things to C.F.S. Alert for heaven's sake! However, there is one thing that the Flying Boxcar has over the Herc...a better safety record! No Canadian personnel were ever killed in a C-119.
Did you ever get to ride in a North Star? I understand we flew them until 1965. Now there was a noisy aircraft! Four screaming Merlins would beat any traveller into submission in very short order! A very amusing anecdote of a trans-Atlantic flight aboard one was written by one Danny Turner and printed in the Centralia Coronet in Dec. 1956, titled: "North Star: I Had to Get Home for Christmas!" He talks of just being able to grin stupidly at each other for several hours as the noise made any kind of verbal communication impossible. My one overseas flight in CF aircraft was on board a Polaris (the one thing I'm grateful to Lyin' Brian for)...cold drinks, warm meals, in-flight movies, soft pillows and reclining seats...even the female stewards were pretty! We even dropped into Brise-Norton for a quick pint! Stark contrast to what you experienced eh?



P.S. Great shots of ATC C-119's ...the first is by W.H. Meaden and the second is of a resupply drop from the belly hatch during an Army exercise near Quebec City on Feb. 4, 1955

CHIMO!