Chapter 72

Grace and I didn't want to be dragged into the coming mess and we had our own means of escape. The Minus Q was soon winging it's way to Janesville. Piper was glad of the heater. The kittens had a sandbox so we weren't going to do anything strange and they loved the buffalo sleeping bag ... Grace and I were appreciative of the armor plate between the kittens and the cockpit.

The -Q had a long tapered canopy that looked similar to a T-33 canopy but slightly longer. It's a big aircraft and the nice teardrop canopy of the single seat AD-1 or 2 looks misplaced on such a huge single engined aircraft. The fuselage is so much bigger, there was a torpedo bay on the original craft that was eliminated as unnecessary, that the radial engine that looks huge on the B-29, looks like a toy suspended on the front of something much bigger. The Minus Q with its long canopy looks more in scale and the size of the plane surprises people. Former AD-1, 2, and 3 pilots realize it when they get closer. Otherwise it looks like a Grumman product with a bubble. The Skyraider is almost 39 feet long with a wingspan of 50 feet. At her highest point she stands nearly 16 feet tall and weighs almost six tons.

Big plane.

One of the four aircraft the AD-1, 2, 3 was designed to replace was the SBD the Douglas Scout Bomber; With a length of 33 feet, a span of 41 and a half feet, a height of almost 14 feet, the Slow But Deadly had a maximum weight of a ton less than the Skyraider weighed empty.

Another aircraft that the AD-1 replaced was the Grumman TBF torpedo bomber. The AD was smaller, heavier, carried a bigger payload and a single crewman ... the pilot.

The TBF wasn't agile enough to get out of its own way. Longer, wider, almost as tall ... it was the crew of three that removed it from the carrier deck. The AD-1,2,3 's single pilot meant that there were fewer personnel to find room for on a combat carrier.

The third job the AD-1 took over was medium altitude bomber. And the last was a night fighter. Jet aircraft didn't have the loiter time to stay in the air long enough to do the job.

You might say, we were impressed with our airplane. Fuel costs were not out of our reach and would stay pretty close to twice pump gas for quite awhile. Oil was 23 cents a quart ... still... 38 gallons is a lot of oil.

Rock County Airport ... three good runways and a big tiedown area. Two years ago the area was under consideration as a home for the Air Force Academy. This part of Wisconsin is flat, on the eastern edge of the prairie, treeless and windy.

We landed, called our body man and he brought out the Suburban. It was impossible to tell that it wasn't stock. And it was tastefully pinstriped. Just here and there the very light grey lines looked great. Because the body went straight from the assembly line to the body shop and Chevrolet supplied the paint there hadn't been the fading that happens when a car has been left on a lot or a showroom floor. The 820 mud and snow tires were mounted, Grace crawled around in and liked what she saw. I drove to Milwaukee and took the ferry to Muskegon and she flew home. I missed her.

The winter ferry runs when there is a load ... you might have to wait. Grace was home a long time before I was.