Bill was one of those feast or famine guys who had scraped together just enough to buy his airplane. He didn’t fit the profile of an aviator; a washed up semi-pro bull rider back West with a slow drawl. I had admired his Stinson 108-3 for a few months and had been after him for a ride for a while.
It was a hot mid-August morning and I was just a few days shy of my 21st birthday. I wandered out to the hangar and found Bill getting ready to fly. I asked Bill if he needed some extra weight and he said, “Absolutely!”
He hadn’t gotten around to installing an intercom into the airplane. I didn’t like idea of flying without an intercom but, hey, it was still flying! So we jumped in and took off. Bill flew south and practiced some slow flight. I thought it was somewhat strange but didn’t think he was going to get into any trouble with it. Then he asked me to show him where my parent’s airstrip was located.
The airstrip was situated on three acres adjacent to their house. Friends owned STOL capable Helio Couriers and used the strip to train bush pilots. Built on a hill that crowned in the middle, the strip was 900 feet long with trees at the southern end and a 5-15% down slope with departure through a 150 foot slot between tall trees.
Surrounded by forest on one side, the strip had a larger, longer, unprepared field next to it that was usually sown with soy beans in the spring. It had recently been plowed and soy beans were growing in the soft earth. A good rain had soaked the ground the night before. I had told him under no circumstances was he to land on the strip. He agreed and said he would only buzz the airstrip.
We circled the airstrip and Bill started his approach. As we got close to the slot in the trees I noticed that he wasn’t lined up, that he was off to the right. I tried to point to him where the airstrip was but he couldn’t hear me. It looked like we were going straight for the trees. I started yelling at him to pull up but he just kept descending.
The next thing I knew I saw weeds and soybeans hitting the windshield of the plane and rolling out on the bumpy soggy field. We came to a stop finally and I said, “Bill what the heck did you do?! The airstrip’s over there,” I pointed to the windsock. “Oh,” he said, “Well let’s go over there.” He applied some power but the airplane wouldn’t go anywhere, he firewalled the throttle, but still the Stinson wouldn’t move! He shut down the engine and I jumped out.
The Stinson’s tires were sunk halfway in the mud. My father had seen what had happened and was walking across the field, laughing. Dad suggested that we use the tractor to pull the airplane onto the airstrip. So we chained the tail wheel to the hoist and pulled the Stinson onto the airstrip.
It had been a few months since our buddies had brought a Helio into the airstrip so the grass was at least 6 inches high. He announced, “I think we can get out of here!” The weather gods were not in Bill’s favor, it was hot, humid, with a tailwind blowing directly toward the slot the trees.
Bill asked, “Nathan do you want to go?” I thought it might an adventure, for about five seconds. “You’ve got everything going against you Bill, I’m not going. You need to wait and fly this thing out in the morning when the weather’s right.” By now Bill was in full panic mode. Dad asked Bill if he wanted him to mow the airstrip and Bill said he didn’t have time, he had to be somewhere.
Bill finally decided to go, first he made a fast taxi into the wind and the 3 foot trees at the end, then realizing he would never make it; he turned around and took off with the tailwind and down hill through the slot in the trees.
He disappeared below the hill and then appeared in an extreme nose high attitude and also veering sharply to the left. The plane looked like the tail was waving back and forth; put into aviation terms it sounds like he was on the very edge of a stall. Dad said he looked he took the top of a tree out too.
We went down and looked at the slot in the trees. What Bill didn’t know was that the slot in the trees still had stumps and weeds and felled trees because we just needed the approach to be cleared. We never dreamed anyone would actually try flying through that mess! We could clearly see where the Stinson’s tires had ran through the weeds and where the prop had sliced through about 30 feet of 6-inch stumps.
About six feet from where Bill must have pulled back on the yoke at the last possible moment he saved his life. He had no idea there was an uprooted tree that was covered with dirt. If he had hit that I believe that he would have sheared his landing gear off and who knows what would have happened after that. About 75 feet away lay the top of an oak tree that. Bill’s prop had knocked out the top 4 feet of it.
Some guys who happened to have flown out of the airstrip before in a Helio were over the next day and went to look at the aftermath. They concluded quite correctly that only divine intervention could have saved Bill because it made no sense how he didn’t hit the stumps or trees.
I talked to Bill only once after the incident. He talked about wanting to fly air tours out on the South Carolina coast. Last time I heard about him, he had flown the Stinson out to the coast and was doing just that. Did I learn a lesson from that flight? Bill would say, “Absolutely!” Never fly with people you don’t know their skill level and experience. It just might save your life!
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Editor’s note: Bill is not the pilot’s real name. However this was an actual event.
About Nathan Mackey
