rhmc24
Absent Comrade
In April 1962 Pan Am had a 707 landing accident at Manila. Our Manager of Engineering`& I went to Manila to recco repair options via London, Istanbul, Calcutta to Hong Kong & another airline to Manila.
Our airplane landed before the runway pavement at a drop-off of a foot or so. The main landing gear were torn off & skidded down the runway on nose wheels, inboard engines & rear belly. Fire ensued damaging under the right wing & nbr. 3 engine. The airport fire crew was nearby & extinguished the fire quickly. The airplane had been moved and placed on jacks at a ramp area. A Boeing survey team arrived via Honolulu and Guam on Pan Am.
Boeing would do the repair, estimated 6 weeks from start of work. I was assigned site superintendent for Pan Am. The airplane was due for a service & to take advantage of the down time, a Pan Am crew of five mechanics & supervisor came from San Francisco. I also had a QC inspector & an engineer from NY. They & some thirty Boeing people all arrived within a week.
Thirty feet of rear belly to replace, both main landing gears & inboard engines plus lower wing fire repair. Other minor repairs a 5" hole in stabilizer leading edge, etc. Boeing brought a shop kit with all its equipment from experience of many other field repairs, altho none as extensive as this. Former lack of information control. I now made it clear I was in charge & set up a procedure in which messages to and from NY were from and to me alone, my teletype designator; numbered in sequence so the recipient would know if a message was missing or delayed. My procedure was still in field use twenty years later.
The Boeing project chief was liked and respected but message control was lacking. They had a storekeeper who fancied himself to be critic at large, sending info to Boeing HQ & Pan Am. I discussed with the Boeing project chief, he investigated. The next day our critic was on his way back to Seattle.
To promote cooperation & expedite the repair, I had a five gallon container of calamansi lime juice, $3, delivered every afternoon. Some Pan Am people complained, we were the customer and Boeing should be catering to us. I pointed out the dollar value of early completion of the repair & keeping workers comfortable & happy. I played that refrain personally to each of our people.
Everything in the Philippines was cheap by American standards. A peso was worth twenty five cents & would buy a dollars worth, making prices a quarter of back in the states. A restaurant meal might be three or four pesos, a dollar or less, for example.
Coins were late Philippine issue; also a few dating from the days of American possession, early 1900s. Five, ten and twenty five centavos could be found, the same as American but Philippine on one side & U.S. coin on the other. Fifty centavos were scarce but I got a few. One peso coins, like a silver dollar were never seen in circulation since before the war. After the airplane job was complete I went to the Central Bank of the Philippines to see an officer. I explained who I was and wanted some one peso pieces if possible. He brought out a big bag of them, all the coins were all black. He explained they had spent the war in the river because when the Japs invaded, etc., thrown in the river and retrieved years later. I selected only five, the price was only a peso each. So much for positive attitude, assertiveness or something.
I lived in a little hotel the "Mabuhay". A word, something of a general purpose greeting like "Aloha" in Hawaiian. My room, I heard dogs being beaten at three in the morning most nights. I could hear the whack stick and the yelps that followed & went on for quite a while. I learned that dog meat was a staple in the local economy and the beating was done to tenderize the meat before slaughter.
We worked from six to six 24/7. Even so, we took time for pub crawling and amusements. We went in the evenings out to eat & once walked into a bar. Challenged by one of the patrons wanting to know who we were and we told of our airplane activity. Apparently a leader of some sort, talking in Tagalog (local dialect)to the rest of the patrons; we were accorded celebrity status. A newspaper reporter interviewed us. We couldn't
possibly drink all that was offered us. We later learned the bar and part of town was considered a very tough area. I can't describe the hospitality the whole time we were on that job. Sundays people came by the score to our work site. We had the work area roped off by the police.
I thought like most Americans, that Spanish was big in the Philippines. True, a lot of Spanish names survive, as in U.S. border states. Unlike in the U.S. no Spanish is spoken in the Philippines save other than few who would revive the Spanish heritage. English is spoken by many around Manila. The primary local is Tagalog, one of many dialects in the islands.
Public transport in the city, was by taxi or by "jeepney". A jeepney was a Jeep, modified, maybe the chassis lengthened, to accommodate passengers. It was high density to the max. There were dozens of jeepneys to be seen at any one time.
On our job we needed a certain fixture made that would have taken days to send a drawing to Honolulu, have it made & back to Manila. Since our next flight that could take it was two days away I had our engineer make a drawing & took it to the best local machine shop. They had good looking machine tools, apparently U.S. military surplus but the shop had a dirt floor. A big milling machine weighing tons was sitting at maybe a ten degree angle. Even so, the shop foreman said no problem to make our fixture & we had it the next morning.
To power pneumatic tools for the job we rented an air compressor like used street in use running jack hammers. Very old but looked in good condition and ran well. I was the only one available to rent at the time. About the fourth day it quit and put about thirty men out of work. Boeing foremen were wringing their hands. Obviously up to me, found the ignition magneto at fault. It had an impulse coupling to produce a strong spark when starting the engine such as used on light aircraft. Back to aviation school days, I recalled how to set up the magneto and got it running again. Boeing drilled thru the hard parts & we riveted it with airplane rivets. Back in business again after about three hours. New York, complained that we should have rented two compressors in the first place. The next day we found and rented a back-up compressor, a huge thing, six cylinder GM diesel engine. It leaked water and oil but came with a boy whose job was to keep it in water and oil.
I hired a carpenter to make work stands, a good workman. The local wood for expendable items was mahogany, people remarking how much itwould cost back in the states. Our carpenter was under pressure to make it right now or he had time on his hands. I asked if he could make me a chest, explaining that I wanted dovetail corners, etc. His face lit up, making something worthy of his skill. He recommended "Narra" wood, a heavy, hard red wood. We bought the best kiln dried for $10. A thing of beauty. He didn't want any pay but did take ten pesos. We still have the chest, as I said, a thing of beauty.
In my hotel room a booklet on culture and customs described a local delicacy, the "Balut" (which kids tried to sell), a duck egg that was boiled some days before the egg was due to hatch. It went on to say that it was unpopular to bite into a Balut not properly prepared and get a mouth full of pin feathers. Although I generally liked native foods when I traveled, I wasn't influenced to try a Balut.
Our airplane repair job was completed about a week ahead of schedule. The Boeing team and our people all departed on it for Guam, Honolulu, Seattle, etc. I had all the workstands knocked down and the planks laid over the lower belly cargo area, ostensibly to protect all the new interior from the rough tools and equipment being shipped back. Another reason was so the Boeing people could use it for their home workshop projects. It
would have been scrapped if left at the Manila airport. I left a few days later to meet my wife in Tokyo ---->
Our airplane landed before the runway pavement at a drop-off of a foot or so. The main landing gear were torn off & skidded down the runway on nose wheels, inboard engines & rear belly. Fire ensued damaging under the right wing & nbr. 3 engine. The airport fire crew was nearby & extinguished the fire quickly. The airplane had been moved and placed on jacks at a ramp area. A Boeing survey team arrived via Honolulu and Guam on Pan Am.
Boeing would do the repair, estimated 6 weeks from start of work. I was assigned site superintendent for Pan Am. The airplane was due for a service & to take advantage of the down time, a Pan Am crew of five mechanics & supervisor came from San Francisco. I also had a QC inspector & an engineer from NY. They & some thirty Boeing people all arrived within a week.
Thirty feet of rear belly to replace, both main landing gears & inboard engines plus lower wing fire repair. Other minor repairs a 5" hole in stabilizer leading edge, etc. Boeing brought a shop kit with all its equipment from experience of many other field repairs, altho none as extensive as this. Former lack of information control. I now made it clear I was in charge & set up a procedure in which messages to and from NY were from and to me alone, my teletype designator; numbered in sequence so the recipient would know if a message was missing or delayed. My procedure was still in field use twenty years later.
The Boeing project chief was liked and respected but message control was lacking. They had a storekeeper who fancied himself to be critic at large, sending info to Boeing HQ & Pan Am. I discussed with the Boeing project chief, he investigated. The next day our critic was on his way back to Seattle.
To promote cooperation & expedite the repair, I had a five gallon container of calamansi lime juice, $3, delivered every afternoon. Some Pan Am people complained, we were the customer and Boeing should be catering to us. I pointed out the dollar value of early completion of the repair & keeping workers comfortable & happy. I played that refrain personally to each of our people.
Everything in the Philippines was cheap by American standards. A peso was worth twenty five cents & would buy a dollars worth, making prices a quarter of back in the states. A restaurant meal might be three or four pesos, a dollar or less, for example.
Coins were late Philippine issue; also a few dating from the days of American possession, early 1900s. Five, ten and twenty five centavos could be found, the same as American but Philippine on one side & U.S. coin on the other. Fifty centavos were scarce but I got a few. One peso coins, like a silver dollar were never seen in circulation since before the war. After the airplane job was complete I went to the Central Bank of the Philippines to see an officer. I explained who I was and wanted some one peso pieces if possible. He brought out a big bag of them, all the coins were all black. He explained they had spent the war in the river because when the Japs invaded, etc., thrown in the river and retrieved years later. I selected only five, the price was only a peso each. So much for positive attitude, assertiveness or something.
I lived in a little hotel the "Mabuhay". A word, something of a general purpose greeting like "Aloha" in Hawaiian. My room, I heard dogs being beaten at three in the morning most nights. I could hear the whack stick and the yelps that followed & went on for quite a while. I learned that dog meat was a staple in the local economy and the beating was done to tenderize the meat before slaughter.
We worked from six to six 24/7. Even so, we took time for pub crawling and amusements. We went in the evenings out to eat & once walked into a bar. Challenged by one of the patrons wanting to know who we were and we told of our airplane activity. Apparently a leader of some sort, talking in Tagalog (local dialect)to the rest of the patrons; we were accorded celebrity status. A newspaper reporter interviewed us. We couldn't
possibly drink all that was offered us. We later learned the bar and part of town was considered a very tough area. I can't describe the hospitality the whole time we were on that job. Sundays people came by the score to our work site. We had the work area roped off by the police.
I thought like most Americans, that Spanish was big in the Philippines. True, a lot of Spanish names survive, as in U.S. border states. Unlike in the U.S. no Spanish is spoken in the Philippines save other than few who would revive the Spanish heritage. English is spoken by many around Manila. The primary local is Tagalog, one of many dialects in the islands.
Public transport in the city, was by taxi or by "jeepney". A jeepney was a Jeep, modified, maybe the chassis lengthened, to accommodate passengers. It was high density to the max. There were dozens of jeepneys to be seen at any one time.
On our job we needed a certain fixture made that would have taken days to send a drawing to Honolulu, have it made & back to Manila. Since our next flight that could take it was two days away I had our engineer make a drawing & took it to the best local machine shop. They had good looking machine tools, apparently U.S. military surplus but the shop had a dirt floor. A big milling machine weighing tons was sitting at maybe a ten degree angle. Even so, the shop foreman said no problem to make our fixture & we had it the next morning.
To power pneumatic tools for the job we rented an air compressor like used street in use running jack hammers. Very old but looked in good condition and ran well. I was the only one available to rent at the time. About the fourth day it quit and put about thirty men out of work. Boeing foremen were wringing their hands. Obviously up to me, found the ignition magneto at fault. It had an impulse coupling to produce a strong spark when starting the engine such as used on light aircraft. Back to aviation school days, I recalled how to set up the magneto and got it running again. Boeing drilled thru the hard parts & we riveted it with airplane rivets. Back in business again after about three hours. New York, complained that we should have rented two compressors in the first place. The next day we found and rented a back-up compressor, a huge thing, six cylinder GM diesel engine. It leaked water and oil but came with a boy whose job was to keep it in water and oil.
I hired a carpenter to make work stands, a good workman. The local wood for expendable items was mahogany, people remarking how much itwould cost back in the states. Our carpenter was under pressure to make it right now or he had time on his hands. I asked if he could make me a chest, explaining that I wanted dovetail corners, etc. His face lit up, making something worthy of his skill. He recommended "Narra" wood, a heavy, hard red wood. We bought the best kiln dried for $10. A thing of beauty. He didn't want any pay but did take ten pesos. We still have the chest, as I said, a thing of beauty.
In my hotel room a booklet on culture and customs described a local delicacy, the "Balut" (which kids tried to sell), a duck egg that was boiled some days before the egg was due to hatch. It went on to say that it was unpopular to bite into a Balut not properly prepared and get a mouth full of pin feathers. Although I generally liked native foods when I traveled, I wasn't influenced to try a Balut.
Our airplane repair job was completed about a week ahead of schedule. The Boeing team and our people all departed on it for Guam, Honolulu, Seattle, etc. I had all the workstands knocked down and the planks laid over the lower belly cargo area, ostensibly to protect all the new interior from the rough tools and equipment being shipped back. Another reason was so the Boeing people could use it for their home workshop projects. It
would have been scrapped if left at the Manila airport. I left a few days later to meet my wife in Tokyo ---->
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Hope that practice has long since fallen from favor.
