WILDERNESS SAFARI
PART II
HEFFNER'S most spectacular salvage began in early March, 1943.
A Douglas C-47 of the Air Transport Command,
carrying a load of wounded French soldiers from Tripoli,
was forced down at night on the desert in French Equatorial Africa.
A rescue plane from Fort Lamy discovered her a week later,
and the wounded soldiers and crew members, none of whom had been hurt
in the crash landing, were soon on their way to civilization.
Then a call was put through to Heffner at Accra.
The salvage operation looked pretty hopeless. The plane had been woefully cracked up.
The right wing had struck a tree and was damaged beyond repair.
The left wing had a hole the length of the leading edge and three ribs were irreparably smashed.
The left elevator was torn in two, the left stabilizer was beyond repair,
and thorns had torn all the fabric off the right elevator.
Worst of all, the plane had crashed in the desert some six hours
from the nearest water,
forty miles from the nearest native habitation,
and 300 miles from the nearest Air Transport Command base.
Heffner, however, decided to have a look. Accompanied by Lieutenant Martin, his co-pilot,
and Sergeant Hughes, his right-hand man in salvage operations,
he flew to the closest A. T. C. base, loaded a Jeep aboard,
and continued on to a native village forty miles from the wreck.
Then it took them two and a half hours
to cover those forty miles in the 115-degree heat.
They had to stop every ten or fifteen minutes to let the jeep cool off.
The original rescue-party had left three native soldiers to guard the crashed plane.
"They evidently heard us coming across the desert," Heffner recalls,
"because when we arrived they had on their belts and bandoliers."
"As our jeep pulled to a stop they came to as snappy a present-arms
as was ever given any three-star general.
It was one of the most impressive things I have ever seen.
There we were, two officers and an enlisted man of the United States Air Corps,
unshaved, dirty and dusty from our ride, and these native soldiers were standing
there giving us full military honors in the middle of the African desert."
After looking over the wreck Heffner decided to try to salvage the aircraft itself instead of just the engines
and instruments. The first thing needed was a runway.
A fairly presentable one could be constructed by removing about thirty trees and smoothing out a few rough spots,
so Sergeant Hughes and the three native soldiers remained behind to build it.
They had a five-gallon can of water, and most of the ration dropped by the original rescue party
were still on hand, also some meat from a gazelle killed by the native soldier.
There was one ax from the wrecked plane and Heffner and Martin later dropped another from the salvage ship.
"We should have been bombardiers," Heffner says.
"We attached the ax to the parachute attached to the emergency radio
and threw it out the back door.
It landed only thirty feet from where, Hughes was standing."
Two days later they flew to the scene of the wreck to attempt a landing
but Hughes had marked in the sand in letters four feet high,
"No Land, No Land."
He then wrote,
"Need ax and file."
So Martin wired two axes and two files together and dropped them, an undershirt serving as parachute.
Hughes then wrote,
"Next Day."
The next day, Heffner, Martin, and six enlisted men took off before daylight from their A. T. C. base.
Heffner describes the experience:
"At the scene of the wreck Lieutenant Martin said,
'That's an awfully small field, captain.'
'Sure is,' I said, 'but let's make a pass and try it.'
"So we lowered half flaps, slowing the plane to ninety miles an hour,
and made one circle of the field for a look.
It looked awfully short and narrow,
but we decided to give it a try.
We knew Hughes' water supply must be running low.
With full flaps down and our speed
just above the stalling point,
we went in for the landing. It was a narrow squeeze--
so narrow we took the landing light off the left wing tip
when we scraped a tree on that side,
and we had only about five feet clearance
on the other wing tip.
It was something like trying to fly a plane
with a ninety-foot wing spread
through a tunnel ninety-five foot wide.
We had trouble slowing her down once we were on the ground, too.
"We applied full brakes,
opened the back door
and opened full engine cowl flaps.
We were applying the brakes so hard
the tail kept coming up off the ground.
The enlisted men had to run back
and sit in the tail to keep it down.
When we finally stopped,
a tree was smack up against the prop on the left side.
We had guided the nose directly between the other trees,
like you'd park a horse in a stall,
and there was another tree three feet from the right wing tip.
We had to chop those trees down
before we could turn the airplane around.
It was only then that we discovered Sergeant Hughes
had only been able to stretch the runway 1,100 feet
instead of the proposed 2,000 feet.
We had landed roughly in less than 1,000 feet,
with a heavily loaded airplane
in medium warm air, without a hitch-
-aside from a few grey hairs.
But I wouldn't want to do it again!"
After lengthening the runway the salvage party flew back to Accra
to arrange to truck a new wing to the site of the wreck via Kana and Zinder.
Figuring it would take the truck approximately two weeks to reach the scene,
Heffner and his salvage crew went about other business at Accra,
including some sightseeing.
"One Sunday," Heffner recalls, "a group of us drove in a jeep
to a village whose natives were members of a religious sect.
It looked like any other village and the natives wore just as few clothes.
I was totally unimpressed-until I stepped out of the Jeep smoking a fat cigar.
The local native chief looked at me solemnly for a few seconds,
fetched a Bible from his shack,
and then, in perfect English-British accent-let me have it:
" 'Thou shalt not kindle a fire
on the Sabbath,' he intoned."
(please use Arrows to view the additional story)
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