Murphy and I took off this morning after turning the Lair over to the Lair-sitter, heading off towards the Northwest. As I have the whole day to make this flight, I planned to hit a few new airports and just sight-see a bit along a route I've plotted but never flown before.
First stop--for gas--Johnstown, PA, at former Congressman John Mutha's "airport to nowhere". I got a fill-up and Murphy stretched his paws a bit then popped into the pilots' lounge and helped a couple of charter jet crews eat their donuts.
Here's the place over our shoulder as we go.
But what's that below?
Blackhawk Heckiflopters! (Second one from the left's parking job suggests that they have at least one blonde pilot there.)
Here's a small dam on the Allegheny River, with a lock for ships on it's far shore.
When I pulled the power back to level off, I heard a funny noise coming from the back of the plane. I looked over mys houlder and saw Murphy here, sound asleep with his head propped up on the rear of the seat.
Continuing on, I hit crap weather. I had low clouds right at my chosen altitude. Trying to climb over them got to be a mess because of the crazy headwinds up on top, so I dropped back down below them and "scud-ran", trying to stay as high above the ground as I could without bumping my head on the clouds. I actually called the airport back and requested "flight following" because the clouds were really limiting my ability to see other aircraft. With flight following, they track you on radar and let you know if you're getting close to other aircraft. I rarely do this but I did today, and it was a good thing, because there were tons of other aircraft doing the same thing; Bonanzas, Shywagons, Archers, Comanches and more--everyone was at or below 4,000 feet trying to stay under the cloud deck, and the air traffic guys sounded busier than a German Shepherd in a car going through a car wash. But half an hour flying time saw me through the worst of it, and by the time I got turned over to Youngstown Approach I was in the clear.
So naturally I had to drop into Youngstown, just because it was there.
Here I am on final. And look what's waiting on me: A C-130 Hercules.
They have a bunch of them there. Looks like all older ones with four-blade propellers instead of the six-blade jobs on the newer models.
Out of Youngstown, I flew on until I was turned over to Cleveland Approach. I intorduced myself to Cleveland then begged their indulgence while I dropped in and shot a touch-and-go at Geauga County Airport in Middlefield, Ohio. Nothing really noteworthy there, but as I was flying out over the downtown, I looked down and saw these: Amish horse and buggies at the Save-a-lot drug store!
Looks like the store even has a hitching rack along it's wall for them all. Cool!
There were other ones on the city streets and even in a local McDonalds parking lot, but I was a mite busy getting back on course to take more pictures.
Cleveland Approach dropped me into my fourth airport of the day--Lost Nations at Willoughby, Ohio. I wanted moore gas, but thhey were self-serve and I didn't feel like pumping my own, so I just took a picture of thhis Amphibian and took off again:
Next stop: Airport #5--Burke Lakefront in Cleveland.
I landed here, got a re-fuel, and took Murphy out again. Everyone at Landmark Aviation enjoyed meeting him, and as I was taxiing back out, even the tower controller asked me if that German Shepherd got a re-fuel as well. I told him "Nope. but he left something."
They turned me onto the taxiway and told me to be alert for a helicopter that was landing.
I found it!
He was right there on the taxiway all along.
Off we went,est along the lakeshore, past USS Cod (blogged previously here) and the museum Steamship William G. Mather. (mentioned in same post.)
And here's the Cleveland skyline from the water. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is just off the bow of the Mather above.
Next stop: Kelley's Island in Lake Erie.
I just dropped in to hit it and git since it was enroute. It's Runway 27 was my sixth landing of the day.
As we turned final and caught a whopper of a quartering headwind, the plane buffeted considerably and Murphy leaned forward over my shoulder and shouted "Airspeed! Airspeed!" as the stall horn sounded. But a jusdicious application of power saved the day and we hit with a thump that shook the island but at least we were feet-dry. Not my best landing, to be sure. But the plane still worked.
Back-taxi and off again, heading for the mouth of the Detroit River.
Here'e a bulk carrier, coming from there.
And behind her, you can make out the trail of mud churned up from the shallow lake bottom in her wake.
Then the rain started. Not a bad rain, but it was enough to make me put the camera away, especially as I had to focus on remaining below Detroit's Class B Airspace. I called up Detroit Approacdh and checked the winds, and they came back with a wind spaad of 13 knots gusting to 22 coming out of 240 degrees. Yikes! My chosen airport at Canton is a single north-south runway and this wind from the direction makes landing there a no-go. Fortunately I planned ahead, figuring this might be the case after my conversations with Flight Services throughout the morning, so I had a back-up plan ready. I dialed up Willow Run Airport to the west of Detroit and got cleared for a landing there on their runway 23--right into the wind. No issues, and I greased it in smooth as silk on my seventh landing of the day. The longest taxi I've ever had took me right up to AVFlight, the FBO, and they graciously parked and secured my plane, unloaded my baggage, and gave Murphy some water. They even waived their overnight fee since I was only in due to the weather. (And a good call it was, too. While I was waiting, the wind gusts topped 25 knots at 250. That's well beyond what my bird could have handled as a crosswind at Canton.
A phone call brought my mother and my nephew, The Spud, down to pick me and Murphy up, and here we are--spending a few days with the kid, and Aaron of The Shekel. More posts, pics and tales will follow this week as it's expected to be an activity-filled one.
Sorry for the scarcity of posts. I've been sick these past few days.
Anyway, here's more of my pics and info on the USS Cod (SS224), the Gato-Class fleet submarine now moored in Lake Erie just east of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in downtown Cleveland.
Our visit begins with a drop down a hatch via a vertical ladder into this room, the forward torpedo room. Cod, like the rest of the Fleet Boats, had ten torpedo tubes, six forward (shown here--the bottom two are hard to see with the decking in place.) and four more in the aft end. She carried 24 torpedoes. A number of the crew also berthed in these compartments among the torpedoes, and they were always happy when some were fired, because it meant that much more room. The torpedoes were either electric or steam-powered and the ones in the tubes had to be withdrawn every few days to have their battery or alcohol levels checked--not an easy task when a torpedo weighed over 3,000 lbs and had to be moved around by block and tackle and muscle power.
Here's a look into one of the torpedo tubes. You're looking at the inside of the outer door twenty-one feet away. When the torpedo is inside, the inner door is closed, the tube is flooded, the outer door is opened, and a blast of compressed air shoots the torpedo forward. as it goes, the torpedo's motor is started and once out of the tube, it's off on it's own, hopefully to run straight and true to the enemy. Sadly this was not always the case, and many torpedoes surfaced prematurely, ran too deep, and in at least two known incidents, ran in a large circle and sank the submarines that launched them. (Tang, SS306, and Tullibee, SS284.)These cozy little bunks in the forward torpedo room were known as the "honeymoon suite" and generally fell to the Stewards--black or asiatic men who took care of the menial kitchen and laundry duties. It was as cramped as any other, but also the hottest and wettest due to condensation from the humid air inside forming on the torpedo-loading hatch above the bunk. Going aft, we entered into "Officer's Country", where the ship's seven or eight officers worked, slept and ate. They had their own small kitchen (shown here) and wardroom and one shower between them, and except for the Captain, they bunked two to a small compartment. Sorry that I have no pictures of this area, but I was trying to keep up with a hyper-excited ten-year old.
I caught the kid in the Control Room, just aft of Officers' Country. this is where the submarine's electrical panel is as well as her targeting computer and the wheels that control her dive planes fore and aft. Also in this compartment are the handles that operate the valves to the ballast tanks that open to dive the boat and the compressed-air valves that fill those tanks with air again to surface the boat.
Shown here are those handles that open the ballast tanks, just below a panel with red and green lights known as the "Christmas Tree". Those lights represent every hatch and intake on the sub and show with red for open (bad for diving)< and green for closed. when the signal to dive is given, everyone throughout the boat has a job to do, and someone is responsible for closing each of those openings before the boat can dive.These are the switches that activate the various horns telling the crew to either prepare to dive or report to General Quarters ("Battle Stations"). The klaxons still work on the Cod, but these days when you activate them, instead of 80 men jumping to various stations, you get one grumpy mechanic from the Engine Room coming forward wanting to know who is fooling with the alarms.
And since it was obvious that those switches still worked, I decided to leave this one alone.
Back in the day, our submarines were considered state-of-the-art secret weapons and highly classified. So in oder to keep them from falling into enemy hands, they came equipped with a "self-destruct" system (shown here) that would scuttle the boat if capture appeared imminent.
It's noteworthy to mention Captain John P. Cromwell, USN here. He was aboard USS Sculpin (SS191) on November 19, 1943, when she was damaged to the point of being forced to surface. Cromwell had been briefed on the upcoming Tarawa invasion and rather than risk having the Japanese find out about it via torture, he elected to go down with the ship after the rest of the crew had abandoned it. For that act of selfless sacrifice, he was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Notable about the Cod is that her conning tower compartment is partially accessible, something not usually seen on these museum subs nowadays due to liability concerns. But here, you're allowed to climb part way up the ladder into the conning tower and see where much of the actual war-fighting was done. Notice the periscope here. This is where the 'scopes were in real World War Two submarines. Most war movies show the captain using the scope down in the Control Room below. But that wasn't the case in reality; the periscopes (there were two--an observation scope for general looking around and a narrower attack scope for combat use) only came down into this small compartment. Kudos to the Cod Association for opening this up to the public.
Aft of the Control Room there was this small radio room. This was the submarine's only way of communicating with the rest of the world. It was high-tech back in the 1940's, but today one could simply mount more powerful and versatile radio gear on a shelf or two somewhere. This was vacuum-tube equipment!
Then it was aft again, through the crew's galley and mess (shown in the previous Cod post here with Spud at the table.) This set-up fed the eighty or so enlisted men of the crew. One thing about sub duty though was that they got the best food of any ship type in the navy. It was a small perk, but an appreciated one. They also got 50% added to their pay for submarine duty, and 20% for sea duty. Of course the basic Seaman Apprentice was only making twenty-one dollars a month at the beginning of the war.
Aft of that was the main crew berthing area, where most of the enlisted crew slept. At least on these boats, most of the crewmembers got their own bunks, but "hot-bunking", a practice where two men shared a bunk--one sleeping while the other worked--was not unheard of when space was short. Again, I have no pictures of this area, thanks to the kid. I also have none of the engine rooms, but that was my fault, because I was talking to the mechanic about the four General Motors diesel-electric motors therein and forgot to take any. Sorry! Now back past the engine rooms (there were two--one for each pair of engines) was the Maneuvering Room. This was where the power was channeled from the four engines either into the batteries (recharging) or to the electric motors that actually turned the propellers, or a combination of both. In these boats, the diesels just turned generators, and that power was used to run the boat. The propellers were coupled to electric motors housed in a compartment below this one and not directly hooked to the diesels. This room and the engine rooms forward of it were the hottest and noisiest, with temperatures as high as 130 degrees not uncommon. There was no air conditioning back then, and hearing loss was inevitable.
Aft of this was the After Torpedo Room, and the hatch leading to the deck above.
These are the propeller guards, installed to protect the prop blades when coming alongside piers or other vessels. The prop arc extended out past the normal curvature of the hull, and without guards like this, damage to--or destruction of--the propellers was virtually inevitable.
And here's the view looking back up her deck. The closest hatch is the one coming out of the Aft Torpedo Room, and ahead of that you can see the hatch coming up off of the crews' mess. The yellow tub on the port side is a rescue buoy that would be released in the event of a sinking to mark the sub's position. During wartime, however, it would be welded in place to prevent it from being jarred loose by enemy action. Also note the four rings in the hull around the aft hatch. Those were used to secure specialized diving bells intended to be used to rescue the crews of sunken submarines (in peacetime). This was done in 1939 when the USS Squalus (SS192) was sunk by flooding due to a catastrophic valve failure during a test. 32 sailors and a civilian contractor were rescued.
Note also the decking. It's perforated steel now, but during the war, it would have been teakwood. Teak was used because it's dense and heavy and would sink if broken off by depth-charging instead of floating to the surface to give the sub's position away. Unfortunately, it's hard to get enough teak these days to replace an entire sub deck. Here's the sub's deck gun, in this case a 5"/25 wet gun. This gun could be submerged under water and still remain functional. It had a five-inch bore, a range of 14,500 feet, and could fire about ten rounds a minute with a well-trained crew. It used two crewmen to aim--one to traverse it right-to-left, and the other one to raise and lower the barrel vertically. This gun was used to attack targets considered too small to waste a torpedo on. Torpedoes cost $10,000 each--a fortune in 1940's money.
And here's the fairweather from the outside. Note the 40MM Bofors gun on the fore and aft decks. These were intended for anti-aircraft use as well as for use against small vessels.
And then there's the scoreboard. During her seven WW-II war patrols Cod fired 122 torpedoes recording 39 hits. Her skippers claimed 10 ships sunk and 5 damaged by torpedo. Cod also chalked-up another five ships, 24 junks and 11 floating mines as "sunk by gun fire".
Note also a martini glass, symbol of a celebration between the crew of the Cod and the Dutch Submarine O-19, which had run aground and was destroyed by Cod after her crew was taken off.
See that video here:
I have to say that Cod is one of the best-preserved museum subs left in the country, and I've seen most of them. It was an honor and a privilege to go aboard this proud veteran and should you find yourself anywhere near Cleveland, I'd recommend that you make the time to see her. And when you do, remember that 52 of these boats went out during the war but never came back. Most were lost with all hands and many still lie in locations known only to God. Over 3,500 servicemen made the ultimate sacrifice in submarines--over 22% of the men who served in them. This was the highest loss rate for any branch of the US Armed Forces in World War Two.
See more of the USS Cod and read more of her story here.
Sorry for the absence--had to head up to Lake Huron for a week-end of wreck diving and shooting with Aaron of The Shekel. I had a good drive up, and we got in plenty of great diving and some shooting. Now I'm back, and I'm blessed (or cursed...I haven't decided yet) with the presence of my ten year old nephew whom I shall call "Spud".
Now this will be the first time that I have had a kid around for a whole week with no other adults around to foist him off on. We'll see how this goes. I have one week to turn him into a man and/or make him into a little "Mini-me", and I'm not really sure how to go about it. I have been looking to R. Lee Ermey for some pointers on how best to motivate him, but I'm not 100% convinced that it's the right way to go about it.
On the way down, we stopped in Cleveland for a few hours.
I took the boy on a tour of the USS Cod, a World War two Gato class fleet submarine. It's moored off E. 9th Street just east of the Science Center, and of all of the surviving museum subs I've seen--and I've seen most of them--this one's probably in about the best shape.
Here's the Spud climbing down the ladder into the forward torpedo room. He was totally in awe of being able to do this. He had to touch and see everything--he was so fascinated. Seeing him have an actual interest in something that's actually real and not a video game was terrific.
And here's the Spud in the crew's mess. He looks like a natural, doesn't he? FOOD!!!
After seeing the whole interior from bow to stern--and seeing what happens when his uncle flips the switch to activate the still-functional "Dive" alarm (a staff member comes forward from the engine room and demands to know who is monkeying with the alarms when you do this, just so you know when you visit.)--we went topside and he got to spin the cranks and traverse and elevate the deck gun.
He loved this submarine and wouldn't stop talking about it and telling me how "cool" it was...at least until we got to the next thing to see...the Great Lakes ore carrier William G. Mather.
This beautiful ship worked the Great Lakes as part of the Cleveland Cliffs fleet from 1925 until 1980, when she was retired. Now moored at the Cleveland Science Center, it's a fantastic example of what shipping on the lakes used to be like.
Here's the Spud, trying his hand as a wheelsman.
And here's a shot of the engine room, showing the massive diesel that the Mather finished her career with. The engine room is larger than a typical house and is four stories tall. And when a volunteer asked the Spud if he had any questions about it all, Spud just pointed to a nearby drinking fountain and asked "Does that still work?"
Kids...
But apparently I tired him out, because he slept much of the way back after that.
And Lagniappe? He was just happy to be rescued--Uh, I mean "retrieved"--from Nicki's house and brought back to the Lair.
So now that I've got a kid for the rest of the week, what am I supposed to do with him? Any ideas?
