Place: Hengyang, China. Year: 1944
The 14th Air Force base at Hengyang had
an airfield on a mountain plateau. Landing
there always presented the view of numerous wrecked aircraft scattered
along the sloping banks at the perimeter of the runway; a very
discouraging sight
to say the least.
Taking off from there one day, my plane
(I was Crew Chief of C-47 #897) had just
lifted off and the pilot was starting a climbing turn for a heading to
Kunming, China. At that moment, the left engine
quit just as though someone had shut off the ignition switch, and just
as I had turned to say something to the radio operator.
I turned back and dove for the crossfeed valve, to send fuel to that
engine from a different tank. It "did the trick" putting the
engine back to a power mode, but in that
second or two we had not been able to climb as intended. I looked over
the pilot's
shoulder and out the side window of the cockpit to see our left wingtip
miss the roof of an ammunition shed by about 30
feet.
During the flight back to Kunming, I experimented several times to see
if the left engine would take fuel from the tank I had switched from
during takeoff. Each time the engine would cut out completely.
Other attempts to diagnose the problem
convinced me that the trouble was in the crossfeed valve itself.
The return flight was uneventful except for the tests we performed. To
gain access to
the crossfeed valve required removal of a sheet metal inspection cover.
We then
removed the valve and carefully disassembled it. One port was completely
blocked by a white material, and when we
dislodged it we found that it was paper;
when unfolded it was a sheet 8in x 12in
in size. The design of the valve was such
that no fuel could be accessed from that one tank, but fortunately, the
C-47 has 4
fuel tanks.
Apparently, one of the Chinese fuel crew,
not sympathetic to our cause, had put that
paper in the tank knowing it would cause a problem. If the blockage had
occured a few seconds earlier we might have been "goners". I often
wondered if some of those wrecked aircraft we saw every trip to Hengyang
had that happen to cause
the crash.
"Friendly" Sabotage?????
Copyright 1999 H. Thomas Flanagan
