short time later, sits and plugs back in.
“Well?” I ask hearing the click of his connection coming live on the intercom.
“I can’t tell for sure but it looks like there might be smoke trailing behind,” he answers.
I nod and pull the throttle back a little further, the lever approaching the inflight idle position. The outboard engine is at full throttle but not compensating fully for the loss of thrust on the inboard engine. Luckily it is the inboard engine malfunctioning or the loss of thrust would be felt more. I have to crab the aircraft a little to compensate for the loss of thrust and subsequent loss of lift on our right side, lowering the left wing a touch in order to keep a straight line of flight. I also pull the throttles back slightly on the left side as another measure to compensate.
My last retardation of the throttle reaches the inflight idle position. Any further action if the inlet temperature climbs to the overheat condition will be to shut the engine down. Right now the engine is not providing any thrust but it is not increasing our drag either. It has become a neutral party to our flight. If I can keep it running in this manner, I will still have use of it in case we need to go around on a bad landing setup or for anything else that may arise.
I watch the needle slowly climb upward while continuing to keep an eye on the other instrumentation. If number four started acting up or the needles for the two engines on that side started going haywire, we would have a completely different emergency. I am concerned with our weight and once again thankful for our decreased fuel weight. I do not want to descend any further if I can at all avoid it as we still have the Cascade Mountain Range to cross. They are not as high as the Rockies by any stretch but there are some tall peaks around.
The needle hits the upper limit of the engine and crosses over it. A blinking red light startles me and begs for attention. I look up to see the number three engine fire handle blinking rapidly at me as the master fire light also illuminates on the instrument panel. It has come time to shut the engine down before it can cause any further trouble. We are only about 45 minutes out from McChord. I have been following along on our enroute charts for possible emergency airfields just in case we do need to set it down quickly but we should be able to make it if we do not encounter any further problems.
I rapidly accomplish the quick reaction checklist items for an emergency engine shutdown — called bold face procedures. I pull the engine condition lever back to its detent position bringing the propeller into its feather mode which means that it is perpendicular to our flight path reducing the drag on the aircraft. With the propellers spinning idly on their own without any thrust being applied to them, they become like a giant plate hanging off of our wing. The drag of that alone would be enough to pull the aircraft to the right with very little we could do about it. That is why we have to make sure the propeller is feathered, so the wind doesn’t catch it and allow it to spin freely. I then reach up and pull the T-handle aft, the one with the blinking red light, for the number three engine. This cuts the fuel off to the affected engine effectively shutting it down. All of the gauges for the engines immediately come down to their zero position or are winding quickly downward verifying that the engine is shut down. The red light vanishes from the T-handle. With the red light going out and the temperature gauge winding down, I do not have to discharge the flame retardant into the engine. I punch off the master fire light.
I direct Bri to turn the generator switch and the fuel pump to their off position for the affected engine. I also have her make sure the fuel cross feed switch is in the off position after verifying that the number four engine is drawing fuel off of the tanks on the right side. We continue going through the cleanup checklist items. I put the throttle into its full forward position and close the oil cooler flaps as the final steps in completing the emergency engine shutdown procedure. I also tell Bri to watch the fuel gauges as the tanks on the left side will drain faster as they are supporting two engines as opposed to one. We may have to cross feed if the imbalance gets to be too much.
“How about Olympia? It’s closer,” Robert asks as the situation stabilizes.
“I want to be at McChord. One for the transportation and two to raid the Special Forces and other armories there,” I answer. “We’ll be fine.”
The mountains of the Cascade Range begin to slide under our nose as we limp every closer to McChord and our destination. I ease us down a few thousand feet. Mount Rainier is off to our right, its snowfields on top glowing brightly, reflecting the moonlight from it icy surface. There is not much snow left but enough to radiate its beauty. Our altitude will give us enough clearance to pass over the hills even though the top of Rainier reaches above the horizon. It seems like a long time since we watched it pass by our wing as we started this journey. It is quite a welcoming sight and it seems to welcome us back too.
I think of this as a homecoming and think on how Mom is doing; hoping she is okay. She has not left my thoughts but events have seemed to come in rapid succession so my thoughts did not stay there long. I will try my cell phone and call when we land although I have little hope of it working. If we had all engines running, I would head over and do a flyby to take a look at the place and, if she is still at her house, let her know we have returned. I am anxious and worried about her as I am sure she is about us. I will head over first thing in the morning if my call doesn’t go through.
Mount Rainier passes off our right wing and behind us as I begin a descent into the Puget Sound area. The roads and highways that I know are there should be lit with the lights of cars and trucks transiting through but everything is dark below us. The moonlight reflects off of the waters of Puget Sound presenting a tranquil scene.
I turn north in a descent as the navigation needle centers on the approach I set up into McChord. I would like to do a flyby to verify a clear runway but a go-around is not an ideal procedure on three engines. I will just have to trust that there is not anything large enough on the runway to impede our landing. It would totally suck to go through all that we have been through and come all of this way only to pile it in on our arrival.
Setting up on the approach and finishing the checks, I bring the aircraft down final with the airspeed a touch higher to give us a margin in case we do have to go around for some reason. Our landing lights reach out into the darkness, searching for the runway. There are no visual references with which to judge our approach so I just have to trust the instruments. Robert is in the right seat reading off airspeeds and altitudes, transitioning to the radar altimeter which gives us our height above the ground. I cannot rely on the actual altimeter for accuracy as we do not have a correct atmospheric pressure to set into it. On down the glide slope we continue.
The runway threshold suddenly materializes out of the dark as the landing lights pick it up. We are coming in with a little crab due to our asymmetric thrust which will slowly vanish as I pull the throttles back. The end of the threshold disappears under us. I begin to pull the throttles back bringing the nose up, reducing the crab as the asymmetric thrust vanishes. The centerline stripes rush past the windshield as I continue to gently raise the nose. The main wheels thump on the runway and the aircraft settles. I lower the nose and let the aircraft slow on its own, not wanting to use reverse thrust as that will create a tremendous amount of reverse thrust differential due to our lost engine and possibly veer us off the runway. I could use just the outboard engines to reverse thrust with but we have a long runway and will be able to slow down without using them. Although the C-130 will do well as an off-road vehicle, I do not really want to experiment with that right now. The airspeed slows and I apply the brakes to slow us further.
We taxi in to the ramp where we started this whole trek across the world, our mission a success. Our landing lights pick up the lunch area outside of the base operations building where we began planning this crazy trip. The table still sits where we left it with a couple of the chairs knocked over on their sides. It all seems very surreal and eerie as if we experienced the flight planning just a few days ago in another life or dream. We have arrived a lot wiser to our situation but the expenditure of energy and lives has been high in acquiring that knowledge and getting Lynn. Too many close calls. Hopefully the west coast night runners are a little more laid back than the east coast ones as the ones out east really did not seem to like our presence. Well, come to think of it, the ones here did not especially seem to appreciate us either.
The drone and vibration of the our three remaining engines decreases as we shut the fuel off to them and the giant propellers begin to wind down in the night air. I turn off the taxi lights plunging the night outside into darkness. The moon is high overhead casting its light on the ramp outside and illuminates the cockpit, which has been our home for the past few days, in a silvery glow. This will be the final resting place for this aircraft which has experienced our journey with us and seen us through safely. I pat the dash lightly and tell it thank you.
I unbuckle and rise with a tired sigh, feeling a touch of melancholy now about having to leave the aircraft here but feeling an anxiety and nervousness about our new journey that will begin with the rising of the sun. I reach into my flight suit pocket and pull out my phone. Flipping it open, I press the start button powering it up. The screen lights up, illuminating my face with its glow. The main screen shows and, there on the top, four bars show.
