Contrails: An Errant Airman

By Steve Weaver

This shot of the Beechcraft Twin Bonanza was taken at the Aurora, IL airport in 1987. (Glenn E. Chatfield)In my early days in aviation, many of the errant airmen that I happened upon were WWII vets and sometimes ex Army Air Corps flyers; as a young pilot, their age and experience seemed to me to afford them a certain license to be… well, different.

One of those types that come readily to mind would be Richard. Richard B. was the owner of a Beechcraft Twin Bonanza and he and the airplane were memorable to me, since they were the only twin/pilot combo that dared to frequent our 1,600-foot sod strip. He was from Elkins, just a few miles to the east of us and he flew the mighty Twin Bo in pursuit of his business as a lumber broker. He also flew it in pursuit of a covert heart’s interest that happened to reside in our town, hence the frequent visits by the big twin.

Each time the Twin Bo grumbled its way up our taxi strip, swung around with a burst of power and shut down with a rattle of gear boxes, there waiting for him would be a comely and fair-haired lassie, young enough to be his daughter, but who wasn’t. She would be driving a new pony car that was rumored to have been a gift from him and his explanation of her presence to us was a vaguely mumbled, “my secretary.”

The snarl of the T Bone’s exhaust augmenters would announce his arrival over Lewis Field and the office would empty out to see if this was the day that Richard put the Beech through the fence. He’d been a B-29 pilot during the war though, and he still owned the same sure touch that brought him and his crew back to their base in England from each mission. I guess it was that ability plus a dose of luck that enabled him to operate the airplane in and out of a field it was never designed to fly from.

I remember someone asking Richard for a ride in the Twin one day and he took not only him, but four of the airport bums too. The Beech came out of the tiny airport and cleared the fence almost as it did with only him aboard, and yes, I was one of the bums that day and mightily impressed I was too, with Richard and the Twin Bonanza. I might add that this was long before I knew what VMC was, and looking back I suspect that if an engine had sneezed, we would have made a very loud and very large hole in the runway.

At any rate Richard remained undaunted by Lewis Field and continued to fly in and out for many years. The only incident I can recall him having there occurred during a landing early one dewy morning when he found that braking was not to be had on the slick grass and he was forced to use reverse thrust. Well, technically it wasn’t actually reverse thrust, but somehow he turned the airplane 180 degrees while sliding on the slick sod, and then firewalled the throttles while going backwards, stopping less than a hundred feet from the fence.  I guess you could call it Hillbilly Reverse Thrust.