Happy Landings

MY ENFORCED STAY in Churchill came to an end during the last week in May. For three days there had been a howling blizzard; then, during the third day, with visibility reduced to zero by blinding snow squalls, an aircraft came over the hotel at nought feet and with an expiring stutter flopped down on the ice of a nearby pond. The wind nearly blew it away again and would have done so had not several of us rushed out of the beer parlor and caught hold of its wings.

This plane was an outrageously decrepit bi-motor built in 1938 as a military training aircraft. It had been discarded after long years of service, only to be resuscitated by a lanky, hollow-eyed ex-R. A. F. pilot who had delusions about starting his own airline in the Canadian North. He descended from the creaky machine as we struggled to keep it on the ground and, having untwined a yard-long cerise silk scarf from around his face, introduced himself. He had come, he said, from Yellowknife, some seven hundred miles to the northwest, and his destination was The Pas….. “was this The Pas?” Gently we informed him that The Pas lay some four hundred miles to the southwest. This news did not seem to dismay him. “Ah, well, any old port in a storm,” he said gaily, and having been joined by his sluggish mechanic he accompanied us back to the beer parlor.

Here, somewhat later in the day, I found myself confessing my difficulty to him.

“No problem,” he said after he had heard me out in attentive silence. “Gas up the old kite tomorrow and take you anywhere. Fly northwest—best course for us. Can’t trust compass on any other course. Fly nice and low. Find lots of wolves; then put you down, and Happy Landings!”

He was almost as good as his word, although the next three days proved inauspicious for the flight—first because of a cloud cover at ground level, and secondly because the ski-equipped plane had developed a severe limp as a result of the collapse of one of the hydraulic cylinders of the landing gear. There was nothing we could do about the weather, but the plane’s engineer discovered it was possible to restore the hydraulic cylinder to duty by filling it with seal-oil. It still leaked, but the plane would remain upright for as long as twenty minutes at a time before keeling over on its side again like a dying duck.

On the morning of the fourth day we prepared to depart. Because the plane could carry only a small load, I was forced to jettison some of my “desiderata,” including the useless canoe-cum-bathtub. I was able, however, to trade a gallon of alcohol for a seventeen-foot canvas-covered canoe in fair condition, and this—so the pilot assured me—we could carry with us lashed under the belly of the aircraft.

At this point I played a somewhat underhanded trick on this obliging fellow. My Moose Brand had been amongst the gear set aside as nonessential; but one evening, by flashlight, I discovered that the whole fifteen cases would fit nicely into the canoe which, when tied tightly up against the plane’s belly, betrayed nothing of the vital cargo which it carried.

It was a beautiful day when we departed. The wind had sunk to about forty miles an hour from the east, and there was no snow falling as we took off through a black sea fog, promptly lost sight of Churchill, and circled into the northwest.

Actually it was not quite that easy. A brief thaw the previous day had allowed the plane’s skis to sink into an inch or two of slush, where they had frozen solid to the underlying ice. Our first attempt at a takeoff was anticlimatic, for even with both engines bellowing in an agonized manner the plane refused to budge. This recalcitrant behavior seemed to mystify pilot and engineer alike, and it was not until some of the gentlemen from the beer parlor ran out, and stood shouting soundlessly against the roar and pointing at our skis, that we began to comprehend the nature of our dilemma. Helped by these willing fellows we eventually managed to rock the plane loose, but not before the weak cylinder had collapsed again, thereby occasioning a further delay while another shot of seal-oil was administered.

Free at last to begin our takeoff run, the aircraft confounded its pilot by resolutely refusing to become airborne. We went skittering down the small lake with throttles wide open, but remained ice-bound. At the last minute the pilot shoved the rudder hard over and we skidded around sending up a great gout of snow, very nearly capsizing us before we could return in some embarrassment to our starting point.

“Bloody strange,” said the pilot. “She ought to take off, you know, really ought. Ah well, better unload these drums of reserve petrol and give her a bit more lift.”

The “reserve” drums had been taken aboard for his return trip to Churchill and I thought it rather reckless of him to jettison them, but since he was in command I let him have his way.

Without the surplus gas we managed on our next attempt (and after once again pumping up that cylinder) to get the aircraft into her own element. She did not seem particularly happy to be there. She steadfastly refused to climb above three hundred feet, and the revolution indicators for both engines remained fixed at about three quarters of their proper readings.

“No need to go high anyway,” the pilot bellowed cheerfully in my ear. “Wouldn’t see the wolves. Keep your eyes skinned now….”

Craning my head to peer out of the cracked and mazed plexiglass window I skinned my eyes as best I could, but with little result. We were flying in the midst of an opaque gray cloud and frequently I was unable even to see the wingtip. I saw no wolves, nor any sign of wolves.

We droned on for nearly three hours, during which we might as well have been submerged in a barrel of molasses for all we could see of the world below. At the end of this time the pilot put the aircraft into a steep dive and at the same time yelled to me:

“Going down now! Only enough petrol to get home. Good wolf country around here, though. Best kind of wolves!”

We emerged under the cloud at an altitude of something over thirty feet, and discovered we were flying up a mile-wide valley between high rocky hills, and over the surface of a frozen lake. Without an instant’s hesitation the pilot landed, and whatever I may have thought of his aeronautical ability previously, I was suitably impressed with this particular maneuver, for he landed on our one good ski. Not until the aircraft had lost almost all speed did he allow her to settle slowly over on her weak starboard leg.

The pilot did not cut the engines.

“This is it, chum,” he said merrily. “Out you go now. Got to be quick. Be dark before we raise Churchill.”

The lethargic mechanic sprang to life and, in mere moments, so it seemed to me, my mountain of supplies was on the ice, the canoe had been cut loose, and the landing-gear cylinder had once again been pumped back to the vertical.

After a glance at the contents of the canoe, the pilot bent a sorrowful look upon me.

“Not quite cricket, eh?” he asked. “Ah well, suppose you’ll need it. Cheery-bob. Come back for you in the fall sometime if the old kite hasn’t pranged. Not to worry, though. Sure to be lots of Eskimos around. They’ll take you back to Churchill any time at all.”

“Thanks,” I said meekly. “But just for my records, do you mind telling me where I am?”

“Sorry about that. Don’t quite know myself. Say about three hundred miles northwest of Churchill? Close enough. No maps of this country anyway…. Toodle-oo.”

The cabin door slammed shut. The engines did their best to roar in the prescribed manner, and the plane went bumping across the pressure ridges, lifted unwillingly, and vanished into the overcast.

I had arrived safely at my base.