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Roger Wyckoff Sends This Radio Operator's Story

Roger Wyckoff Sends This Radio Operator's Story

On Nov. 4th. 1958, while stationed at Iwakuni, Japan something unusual happened. I was an Airborne Radio Operator in VMR-253. Two R4Q-1s, BuNo 128730 and BuNo 128733, were to fly from Iwakuni to Kadena, Okinawa and stay for a few days to air drop supplies to Marines in the field on maneuvers. I was the radio operator on 128733. We had five crew members and eight Marine Air Delivery Men who would make the drops for both planes.

Everything was fine until we reached the coast at Kanoya and were going to start over water to Okinawa. Tokyo ARTC (Air Route Traffic Control) had not answered any of my attempts to establish HF (High Frequency) radio contact for over water flight.

Anyone who has ever flown on a R4Q-1, equipped with those 4360 engines, knows how much racket they make. Suddenly, the sound changed. There was a high-pitched scream from the port engine and we started flying a little cock eyed. Although I had never experienced that before, I immediately thought, "Hey, I'll bet that's a Runaway Prop, of Overspeed to any USAF readers. Before anyone could react, only a couple seconds, the starboard engine done the same thing and the plane started flying straight again. The Navigator, Jimmy Garn handed me a piece of paper with "Ov Kanoya" on it. The co-pilot came to me and said, "Tell Tokyo we've lost all prop control." I declared an Emergency and Tokyo decided to answer. The operator told me that I was now Net Control. This meant that I, not Tokyo was in charge of the Network. All other aircraft were told to switch to another frequency for the duration of the emergency.

Tokyo requested the nature of our emergency, our position and the number of Souls aboard. I didn't care much for the way the last part was phrased. Number of Persons would have sounded a lot better to me.

In the meantime, the crew chief brought our chest pack parachutes to each crew members station. The Air Delivery crewmen always brought their own backpack parachutes with them and always wore them when making the air drops.

Meanwhile I'm going over in my mind what I will need to do if we're going to jump. You never ditch a Boxcar, if you can avoid it. They don't float like an R5D, or so I would imagine.

1. Unreel the Trailing Wire Antenna about 120 turns.

2. I'm to be the next to last person to jump.

3. Before I leave, screw down the C.W. Telegraph Key so they'll know when the plane hits the water.

It didn't seem that the pilots lost control, other than the first couple of seconds. I'm thinking to myself, this has got to be really serious. Obviously all the crew had duties to perform and this wasn't the time to be distracting them.

I wasn't aware that Kanoya had an airstrip and was not monitoring the UHF VHF radios. I noticed that one of the pilots was talking to someone and then I flipped on the UHF VHF switches at the radio compartment. In the R4Qs the radio operator rode backwards, except for takeoffs and landings. I had to turn around to see what the pilots were doing. I found out that the pilot was talking to the Kanoya control tower operator, or possibly a ground control operator. The operator stated, "Marine 8733, take a waveoff and come in on the Duty Runway." The pilot simply replied, "8733 we're unable to comply." and we made a perfect landing.

The pilots called Iwakuni and a replacement R4Q was dispatched for us to take to Okinawa for the para drops.

We spent a few days making the drops and returned to Iwakuni. On my second day back, I was awakened early and told I needed to get ready to go to Formosa, now known as Taiwan, to provide services to a Marine Air Group that had been sent there because of hostilities between Formosa and China. I ended up spending about a month there. When I got back to Iwakuni, the only thing I was told was that the problem had something to do with synchronization. I guessed that maybe it had something to do with the Auto Pilot that would synchronize the props and that when the first runaway occurred the Auto Pilot caused the second in trying to synchronize it with the first.

Chuck Lunsford, an ex Air Force C119 radio operator turned author sent the problem to Ruud Leeuw, who has a huge Aviation and Photography website in the Netherlands. Ruud put the problem on his Questions and Answers page and received the following reply from a Les Bradford. It sounds pretty logical to me.

"It might have been a C model with the Hamilton Standard Props and some of those at least had an automatic prop synchronization capability. In the G, with the Aero Props we had to put one prop as closely as the eye could see on the RPM gauge to a desired climb or cruise RPM. As I recall, 2100 was a popular cruise number. Then the copilot would bring the other prop to match by ear. When it was one steady hummmmm between the two props the crew and passengers were treated to the best sound available from the old girl. But when they were out of synch it was murder. Oorow, orow, orow, wow wow,etc.

But in the C model all one had to do was push a little button on the center console and like magic: the steady hum of perfectly synched props would begin...

Maybe the auto synch feature caused the problem and they, a well trained and quick thinking crew, pulled that circuit breaker and landed ASAP with full manual control of the props, like a G model."

Roger Wyckoff Send's This Story for BuNo - 128733

Another 128733 incident.

R4Q-1 128733 had a history, with me at least, of only being mechanically ready to fly about 50 percent of the time. Combine that with an arrogant pilot on one flight led to this incident. We had 25 passengers and one full grown German shepherd dog.

We taxied to takeoff position. The above noted pilot, a major, was the plane commander. The co pilot was a Lt. and was in the left seat, which meant he was flying the plane on the takeoff. At Iwakuni, if you were taking off in one direction, you were going directly over water. The opposite direction wound have you over land but heading toward a factory with two high chimneys fairly close together. It's nice to have a little altitude when heading that way.

As the 4360s were revved up, the brakes were released and we started our takeoff roll. At some point, the co pilot aborted the takeoff. There was some discussion between the two pilots. I was not able to hear any of this discussion. I was in the jump seat, as the radio operator always switched seats with the crew chief on landings and takeoffs in an R4Q. The crew chief would then turn the R.O.s chair to face the front and slide it forward to assist the pilots. I later learned that the discussion about the lack of torque on one of the engines.

As we taxied into takeoff position, I heard the major tell the Lt., "I'll call it this time."

Then we tried again. The Lt. was still in the left seat and flying the plane. As we picked up speed, the major said nothing. We kept going faster and were eating up a lot of runway. All of a sudden, the Lt. said, F--- this." He then stood on the brakes and hit full reverse pitch on the props. There was a whole bunch of noises, squealing of tires, roaring of reversed pitch propellers and 4360 engines. Of course, the fact that we were sliding at an awkward angle added to this. We ended up, still on the runway, with a flat tire and burnt out brakes.

I talked to other R4Q crew chiefs and was told that it was SOP (Standard Operating Procedure) that "If you didn't have the torque, you would abort the takeoff. They also said we would have probably have lost the engine on takeoff. Not a good thing to happen on takeoff.

The major had recently came to VMR-253 from flying R5Ds which, I was told, do not have torque gauges Although I had flown in R5Ds, I have no knowledge if they do, or not. The major did not believe in torque gauges.

We then had to take off all of or gear and passengers to be transported to another R4Q to continue our assignment. To transport any luggage, ground personnel sent a tractor pulling one one of those heavy metal, flat, trailers that had no springs and no sides. They bounced like crazy. Several gallon coffee and water jugs and box lunches went on this trailer with any luggage. Did I mention that the radio operator was responsible for obtaining the coffee, water and box lunches?

When everything arrived at the replacement plane, one thing was missing, one box lunch. Also, someone had written the crew members names on the box lunches. I never wrote anybody's names on box lunches. I due not remember anyone ever doing that on any flight I was on. Of course, it was the major's. It probably just bounced off a vehicle not very well suited for the job. He became indignant and said he'd had no breakfast. I offered him the one with my name on it. He stated haughtily, "I don't want your lunch, I just want people to do their job." (I made a point of tossing it unopened into the trash can at the end of the flight.)
He also chewed out the crew chief, claiming he found a bird's nest in the control surfaces.

This was from a pilot who landed on the wrong airstrip and ordered the crew not to tell anyone. Thankfully the navigator on the flight immediately spread the word of the incident. The incident occurred at Ping Tung, Formosa. There is a Ping Tung North and a Ping Tung South there. I'm not sure if they were separate airfields, or not. I believe they might have been and possibly had a taxiway joining them. I did spend about a month at Ping Tung but always flew off the same strip.

I'm sure the the co pilot heard some choice words from the major. I, for one, sure was glad the Lt. was in the left seat that day.

Surprisingly, all of the passengers got on the replacement R4