Unfinished Flight

Early in the fall of 1940, a small dual engine aircraft was winging its way east from a flight origin in New Guinea. All had gone well and the flight was according to schedule during the first leg…maybe too well.

Rosie apprehensively gazed ahead into the increasingly darkening skies. She could feel some slight turbulence now tugging at the controls of her Lockheed Electra L-10E twin engine prop plane. She glanced over at her napping husband, Chris, sitting in the co-pilot’s seat and then nudged him with her elbow.

“Better wake up honey. Looks like some bad weather ahead.”

He opened his eyes and sat up straight “Holy mackerel where did that come from?” he said with some anxiety in his voice.

“I don’t know. It just seemed to come from nowhere and it looks like its still growing. Those black clouds look fierce.” She answered.

Suddenly the bottom seemed to drop out from under them and the plane hit heavy turbulence with a teeth rattling collision. They plunged downward in a sickening side slipping free fall. Rosie was fighting the controls.

“Help me Chris. I can’t get control. We’re going to go into a spin.”

Chris grabbed the controls in front of him and the two of them struggled against going into a dreaded spin. But they were overcome by the force of the storm and started into that sickening spiral. They whirled downward and only after some very anxious moments, they finally pulled out of it and regained some control. The plane leveled off at about 500 feet below their cruising altitude and they settled on a course fraught with massive turbulence. They were bouncing like a bucking bronco but at least they were in an uncomfortable control.

“Decrease power Chris or we’ll shake the rivets right out of the wings. They’re almost flapping now.”

With decreased power, the Electra took the storm a little better but they still surged violently up, down and sideways with sickening lurches.

“I swear honey I would have taken us around this if I would have had some warning that it was ahead of us.” said Chris.

“Not your fault. It seemed to form out of no where. Nothing we can do now except try to get through it. We’ll be okay if it doesn’t get any worse….Whoa…whoa...whoa… it’s a bad one” yelled Rosie, as the plane hit another air pocket that felt like they hit a brick wall and she struggled to right the plane’s attitude. She fought off the increasing vertigo brought on by the twisting and turning of the gyrating Electra.

“I’ll help you all I can Rosie.” yelled Chris above the shrieking wind.

The clouds seemed to close in on them and it got even darker. It was a virtual monsoon and made visibility non existent. They strained to see beyond the nose cone.

“I’m going to climb higher. I don’t think we can get high enough to get out of this but just maybe the air won’t be quite as rough in the upper part of the storm.” she called out in a quavering voice.

She pulled back on the wheel and said “give me a little more power Chris. I need both hands on the wheel in this mess.”

The Electra nosed up and bounced along like a rubber ball but slowly climbed up through the turmoil. Suddenly they seemed to hang up and almost stop. Rosie yelled “POWER – POWER -- MORE POWER OR WE’LL STALL.”

Chris gave it all the acceleration he had in both engines. The plane surged ahead and quickly regained headway.

“Wow that was close, okay ease off a bit, we’re using too much fuel and we still have 300 or so miles to go before we get to Howland Island. We have none to spare and that gauge seems to be going down awfully fast. I’ll level off at this altitude, it seems to be a little less rough.”

They bumped along for 30 minutes or so and Rosie maintained a good course. She heaved a sigh of relief and smiled at her spouse, relaxing a little.

“Speaking of fuel, Rosie, I swear that I’m getting an odor that smells like gas. I hope we didn’t spring a leak in all that turbulence. We put some pretty good stress and strain on this baby.”

“What’s the gauge say?” she asked.

“Oh boy. Not Good.” he answered.

“Of all the damn luck! At least the storm seems to be diminishing. I see some breaks in the clouds up ahead and not near as much lightening now. I’m going to go back down and see if we can get a visual on where we are. With any kind of luck we might spot an island. We should be pretty close to the Phoenix Islands.”

“I don’t know Rosie. That wind pushed us all over the place. I’m not even sure I can find Howland now…seems like we should be west of the Phoenix Islands. The way that fuel gauge is dropping I don’t think we’ll have enough to make it much further.”

“Okay. I think you’re right. We better look for a place to set her down. See if you can raise anyone on the radio and let them know our situation. Send a mayday, maybe someone is close enough to help if we have to ditch.”

Chris grabbed the radio speaker and started transmitting a mayday. He gave the coordinates as closely as he knew them. They suddenly broke through the cloud layer. It was still raining but there was some visibility and they both scanned the horizon for a likely spot to set her down.

The starboard engine suddenly coughed, sputtered and stopped running. Then it started back up for an instant before it quit running altogether. The port engine kept running but they knew it wouldn’t be long before it too would give up the ghost.

Finally it did and the Electra went into a glide. The relative quiet was eerie and the two passengers also were very quiet, both staring off into the now clearing skies looking hopefully for something other than that vast expanse of ocean.