February 25, 2020 Operation Haylift

The Liberty Gazette

February 25, 2020

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

The small town of Ely, Nevada has a newspaper called The Ely Times. Occasionally, we read it, just for fun. Last week, writer Dennis Cassinelli retold a story. significant to his audience, of a situation that occurred over seven decades ago: a snowstorm of unrelenting and historical proportions. A snowstorm to end all snowstorms—except that obviously it didn’t. But it is still on record as one of the worst they’ve had.

Here, we deal with floods and droughts, gale–force winds, and extreme heat and humidity. The little bit of snow we get the winters after hurricanes doesn’t qualify as blizzard experience. Not to someone from Ely, Nevada. But it brings thoughts of the time of Harvey, when citizens pulled together to save Liberty from becoming part of an enlarged Trinity River Bottom. This story from back in January and February of 1949 is kind of like that.

Livestock were stranded, scattered throughout remote areas of Ely and Elko. And they were getting hungry. Ranchers and government officials made a plan. The U.S. Air Force had C-82 “Packet” cargo planes they could fly from their base in Tacoma, Washington, down to Sacramento to pick up hay bales and deliver hay by air.

The first day’s work succeeded, with several C-82s making multiple trips, dropping a total of 75 tons of hay to hungry cattle and sheep.

Local ranchers familiar with the area rode along to help find stranded animals. In the back of the airplanes, harnessed crew members stood near the open bay door and tossed out bales. And boy did those cows and bulls and sheep devour the food before the airplanes came back around for a second swoop.

Just as the Liberty Municipal Airport has been a critical part of saving lives and property during Harvey and other natural disasters, the Ely Airport became the base of rescue operations locally. It was their own local airport where ranchers climbed in with Air Force crew members and directed them to cold and starving animals. It was their own local airport where the airplanes fueled up to make dozens of flights over rough terrain in sub-zero temperatures, when there was no other way to feed livestock.

And in an emergency, who pays for these things to happen? During that arctic freeze, the Ely National Bank funded the operation without even asking if ranchers could pay them back for it. One of the bank executives, Gordon Lathrop, is quoted as having said, “The ranchers will pay us back when they can, if not this year, perhaps next year. I know them all.”

In the end, pilots of “Operation Haylift” flew 28 aircraft 270,000 miles, dropping 2,000 tons of hay to over 300,000 head of livestock in Ely and surrounding areas.

And that’s the goodness you find in small towns. Like James Poitevent at the dam, looking like Mel Gibson in the middle of the firefight in “We Were Soldiers,” raising up a mighty army to face down Harvey’s attack.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

February 18, 2020 Willa and Bessie

The Liberty Gazette

February 18, 2020

Ely Air Lines

By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Linda: I was interviewed last week by Texas Monthly for an article about Bessie Coleman. We had written about Bessie in this column during Black History month in 2008. The first black woman in the world to earn a pilot certificate, Bessie had to first learn French, and then move to Paris (France, not Texas), to find someone who would teach her to fly. To this day, Bessie is an incredibly huge inspiration to many people. She was smart and she was unstoppable.

She had become an air show pilot and used her fame to speak out against segregation and the many injustices prevalent that held back women and anyone of color from opportunity. She spoke at churches and schools and everywhere she was welcome. Her grand plan was to open a flight school for blacks because there was nowhere in the U.S. they could go to learn to fly.

But Bessie died tragically in an aircraft accident before she could live out her dream. It would be another 12 years before this country would award a pilot certificate to the first black woman who learned to fly in the United States.

Willa Brown had a few more things in common with Bessie Coleman. She felt strongly about those same injustices, and she and her husband, Cornelius Coffey, wanted to make sure there would be a place people of color could learn to fly. Cornelius was also a pilot – in fact, he was her flight instructor – and a mechanic. Together, they founded the Cornelius Coffey School of Aeronautics, the first private flight training academy in the country which was owned and operated by black Americans. Willa herself trained hundreds of pilots, many of whom became Tuskegee Airmen.

She also lobbied the government for integration of black pilots in the U.S. Army Air Corp (predecessor to the U.S. Air Force) and in the Civilian Pilot Training Program (which provided a pool of civilian pilots during national emergencies). Like Bessie, she fought to see these opportunities open to all Americans.

These are the kind of people who inspire me. They probably had doors slammed in their faces more times than we could count. But they didn’t give up or give in to the ignorance. Instead, they set an example of what it means to be American. To work hard, to earn your way, and to innovate.

From picking cotton to being the star of the air shows, “Queen Bess” demonstrated how it’s done. A stellar life ended too soon, I think of how much more she would have accomplished. Her impact isn’t limited to opportunities for women and those with darker skin tones. She raised the mentality of an entire industry. And when the torch was passed to Willa Brown to continue Bessie’s dream, not just an entire industry has benefited, but the whole world.

Here’s to those who have faced adversity and didn’t back down. May your extraordinary lives always shine a light for us all.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

February 11, 2020 SkyBilly

The Liberty Gazette

February 11, 2020

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Some may claim to be a hillbilly. But only one can be SkyBilly. He was the proverbial “kid at the airport fence.” He loved aerobatics and formed his own airshow company, “Great American Flying Circus.” If you saw the movies, Fandango, or Bodyguard, you saw Bill Warren’s work.

One day skydiver Kirby Mills was in Bill’s DeHavilland Chipmunk with him for an airshow routine. Kirby was to jump out with the American flag unfurling while the national anthem played, and Bill would fly circles around him with “smoke on”—a fairly common and lovely act to watch.

Now, we must mention that the magneto switches on this Chipmunk were located on a panel between the two tandem seats. These must be on for the engine to run.

Bill flew from the rear seat. Kirby sat up front with an old parachute on his back and a reserve chute on his belly.

The Chipmunk has a lever you must squeeze pretty hard to release a detent, allowing the canopy to open all the way. Otherwise it stops only midway, in case you just want fresh air. Bill explained this to Kirby, and that he must wait for the sliding canopy to be opened all the way before jumping.

Off they go. Bill’s concentrating on cues from air show controllers, and Kirby’s eager to make his jump. He asks, “Is it time yet?” Bill answers, “Just wait a second.”

They drone around a bit longer, Bill listening to the air boss through his headset, Kirby double-triple checking everything attached to him. “Is it time yet?”

“Almost. I’ll let you know,” Bill replies.

Bill turns to the direction called “jump run” to set up for the location, speed, and altitude where Kirby will exit the airplane. He says, “Kirby, I’m on jump run. It’ll take about two minutes.” Anxious Kirby is ready. He unbuckles his seat belt. He’s spring-loaded to the ready position. Half a mile from the exit point, Bill reaches, squeezes the lever, and starts pulling the canopy back. Kirby sees it and figures, That’s my cue! I’m outta here! and leaps out of his seat. This so shocks Bill that he lets go of the release, which causes the pin to drop, holding the canopy in place. Now Kirby is wedged halfway in, halfway out and can’t move either way. Practically over their point, Bill’s adrenaline kicks in as he squeezes hard and opens the canopy the rest of the way, which causes Kirby to fall back in Bill’s lap. In the fall, Kirby’s butt bumps those magneto switches, turning the engine off.

Bill has Kirby in his lap, he’s “dead stick” (no engine power), and he’s on jump run. Very coolly, he rolls the Chipmunk inverted, and there goes Kirby. He then rolls the airplane right side up, turns on the mags, starts the engine, and encircles Kirby in smoke. Just like it was planned. And no one on the ground was any the wiser.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com

February 4, 2010 Aerial Search and Rescue

The Liberty Gazette

February 4, 2020

Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely

Mike: The Civil Air Patrol and Texas EquuSearch are well known for their participation in aerial search of missing persons. Often, they use grid patterns to comb an area where it may be especially hard to find a person. Mountainous terrain, forests, and large bodies of water are examples of tough areas to conduct a hunt. The CAP calls their pattern “The Swiss-Army Knife of Search grids.” Their fleet of 560 single-engine airplanes carries pilots and observers trained in aerial search. Their conventional grid system was developed in the early 1960s by CAP members in Washington state, and it was soon adopted nationwide.

A grid is a coordinated system of boxes based on latitude and longitude. The basic premise is to divide the U.S. into 15-minute by 15-minute quadrangle grids. These grids are then numerically labeled sequentially on an aeronautical sectional chart. The order of numbering is from the top left to the top right, down one row, and so on. Each 15-minute grid is approximately 225 square statute miles. When especially difficult terrain is involved, the grid sections can be subdivided into four smaller sections.

These methods hadn’t been thought up yet when, on December 3, 1926, a couple had an argument about the husband’s desire to spend the weekend without his wife. Four months earlier, the man had broken the news to her that he wanted a divorce. And that there was another woman. In December, the distraught wife left their home and wasn’t seen again for eleven days. Her disappearance caused quite a stir. More than 1,000 police officers and 15,000 volunteers are reported to have joined in the search for her. One of them was Dorothy Sayers, author of the Peter Wimsey mystery series. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who created the character Sherlock Holmes, jumped in to help. He was a believer in spiritualists, such as psychic mediums, and gave the missing lady’s glove to a psychic in the hopes it would lead them to her.

Linda: This was also the event that brought out airplanes to be used, reportedly for the first time in the world, for search operations. Several airplanes, in fact. They flew over the British landscape, without a sophisticated search pattern, but earnestly looking for clues.

The missing lady, Agatha Christie, was finally found but claimed to have no memory of those eleven days. Some believe she entered a “fugue state” of mind, a rare psychiatric disorder characterized by reversible amnesia for one’s personal identity. It tends to happen from severe stress.

On the upside, she later met a fine gentleman who treated her much better. That leaves about the only nice thing I can say about Archibald Christie being that his cold, cold heart ended up opening the doors for aircraft to be used in search and rescue. I’m sure that wasn’t his intended result, but thankfully, from that time on, airplanes have been used when the need arises for the special vantage point which only they can bring.

ElyAirLines.blogspot.com