AOP
In Remembrance 2023
This from an L-4 instructor at Post Field Fort Sill during WWII on the subject of how they landed in high winds sometimes.
On a Fall day at Post Field (I was on the Alert Crew at the time-mid-1944) we had about 12 of our Student Pilots on routine training flights into/out of, one of our peripheral fields (practicing short-field take-offs and landings). Suddenly our Control Tower announced that outlying aircraft were a couple of miles out and wanted landing instructions. They had been bucking 30 35 MPH head winds! as they got close to Post Field. It was also picking up quickly Post Field. Our Alert Crew Chief scrambled all 6 members for a quick conference. He explained the above and asked for ideas about getting our aircraft down safely. Cut to the chase....The tower put a call through to request assembly of all personnel in immediate vicinity. As they came on the run (including some M.P.s in Jeeps, he set up two lines of personnel in pairs, about one wingspan apart. Each Pilot was advised to begin an orderly landing pattern, aiming for spacing between aircraft at enough throttle to maintain slight headway . Final approach was to be dead into the wind and between the pairs of ground personnel, landing at just enough forward speed to literally fly the plane onto the ground. Each pair of personnel (myself included) grabbed the outer struts, while running with the approaching L-4. As quickly as each landing aircraft was grabbed, we steered it off the landing path and towards the tie-down area, with the throttle cut and Switch Off. We dragged each to a tie down. We also had additional personnel along the tie-down area so that nothing else got blown away, until we got the wheels into shallow wells that were waiting for regular tie-down and ALL LANDED SAFELY. The following morning, all outgoing pilots and crew members were advised to stay tied down at their auxiliary fields until the Tower advised that landing conditions at our Field was below a certain level. This message went out regularly after this incident.
