Roger Queen – Where Are You!

 

        It was one of those trips where if it could happen, it did.  I was flying a C-54 out of Tezgaon on a routine flight to China with a cargo of aviation fuel in drums.  Soon after take-off we went on instruments and encountered weather conditions quite typical; that is, severe turbulence, rain, sleet, hail, lightning and icing conditions.  This particular ship did not have de-icer boots and our weather briefing before take-off predicted strong cross winds from the south so we were somewhat prepared for something other than a routine trip.  While we still had radio contact we checked our drift and made appropriate allowances.  Shortly thereafter the radio compass began to swing and became totally unreliable and all radio communication became extremely difficult because of the electrical storms encountered.  And so it became a dead reckoning trip—time and distance.  Our destination was Kunming and about 20 minutes out we tried again and again to make radio contact with no response.  As luck would have it, our radio operator was new and fresh out of radio school, but, bless his heart, he kept trying and trying.  We were now well overdue for “RogerQueen” and with that in mind we did a 180 in an effort to stay in the vicinity.  Soon it became evident that we needed help and so we sent out a “May Day”.  Radio reception was filled with static but we eventually were able to make out a return call from Chabua and they were able to give us a heading back into Kunming but it indicated to us that we had encountered a 180 degree switch in winds and were far south of course—deep into French Indo-China—enemy territory.

            We were now eight hours in flight on what normally should take about four to four and a half hours.  Fuel was beginning to be a problem and our hard working rookie radio operator finally got through to Kunming who gave us a QDM.  We adjusted our course accordingly.  The radio reception worsened and we lost all communication.  Time was running short and fuel running low on all tanks and so we did another 180 with the feeling that we had over flown Kunming.  God was our co-pilot for we soon picked up good old Roger Queen’s signal and after an instrument let down we broke out over the lake and landed with 20 minutes of fuel in the tanks.  My records show 10 hours and 15 minutes to Roger Queen and five hours and 45 minutes for my return to good old Charlie Victor, Tezgaon, India by way of Fox Charlie, Myitkyina, Burma.

            After our safe return and we put all the pieces together we figured that we had encountered 140 mile an hour winds from the north which had blown us way south of course and that the QDM we had been given from Kunming had been 180 degrees off, thus sending us away rather than into their station.  But as they say, any landing is a good landing and I cn assure you we were mighty glad to see Roger Queen after a mighty long night.