thedrifter
05-11-06, 12:59 PM
DC-3 brings back memories for Farrar
Thursday, May 11, 2006
By Clint Confehr
The restored DC-3 parked at Shelbyville Municipal Airport this week attracted a number of curious visitors even before the scheduled touring time, including a couple of men with memories of their own about these planes that transformed air travel.
They were strong, stable and relatively easy to fly, according to Ike Farrar, 87, of Flat Creek, who's flown 1,000 hours in a DC-3. Many of his flights were in the Pacific Theater during World War II when the airplane was how Farrar saw the darkest and brightest times of the era.
The plane on display here Wednesday, and on exhibit in Tullahoma on May 27-28, is restored to its original use as an airliner, but the DC-3 was America's workhorse in the sky during WW-II.
"We'd take off and land in the rain," Farrar said of the DC-3's power over the elements. "MPs would wake us up at 4 a.m. and we'd have to get our FF (friend or foe) code so we could be identified as a friend. We'd get our mission and fly to transport something. It might have been cannon, men or munitions."
Seated yesterday in a row of passenger seats inside the DC-3, restored to its vintage 1937 condition, Farrar tells the story of a different time with a different war. It had been and is once again the Flagship Detroit, an American Airlines passenger plane. Less than 10 years had passed for that plane parked here when the passengers of Farrar's story climbed aboard another DC-3 for their flight home from the Pacific.
"One thing that struck me was," he said, pausing, "... there were 10 Marines and there was only one man among them with an eye."
As the combat-wounded Marines walked to and boarded the DC-3, "They put one hand on the shoulder of the man in front," Farrar said.
The Marine with one eye led them to the plane Farrar flew that day.
"Just think what that did for the rest of their lives," Farrar said. "I've thought about what it would be like to not be able to have any eye from age 20 on."
The restored passenger seats on the Flagship Detroit provided an easy chair from which an old pilot could tell his story and bring it home today.
"If our politicians were more experienced in actual combat, they wouldn't be as quick to send us into harm's way," Farrar volunteers as his 60-plus year-old story continues.
"I'm talking about now," he said. "That Iraq situation is something."
He recalls a different time and a different war.
"I was on my way to Pelieu Island when the radio man came and said the war was over," Farrar recalled of a bright day he flew a DC-3 with cargo for the war.
When he landed there was a problem.
"They were so drunk on the island that I couldn't get the plane unloaded and had to stay the night."
That night he sang Grand Ole Opry songs and played a guitar.
"I was to be busted for fraternizing with enlisted men, but that was overlooked. Everything was forgotten when the war was over."
Farrar didn't always fly DC-3s over the Pacific Ocean. He knew what show that theater was playing, and he didn't care for that ticket.
At first he flew to train machine gunners and bombardiers over three states in the southwest.
"So, we knew how to use the bomb sight and had an option to fly transport between New York and San Francisco, or go into combat and fly B-29 bombers in the South Pacific."
Farrar decided to fly across the United States, but that lasted six months and then he was sent to the South Pacific anyway. His landing strips were in New Guinea, Leyta Island, Pelieu and Australia, among others for those flights for cannon, men and munitions, food and fodder for what are now old war stories with a timeless lesson.
"We were the taxi service for the islands, supporting the people who were doing the fighting. We saw some terrible things with jungle rot and soldiers' skin coming off their arms."
DC-3s like the one Farrar was seated in yesterday were flown in and out of Shelbyville back in the days when Frank Clement was governor, when Bob Bomar ran the field, and his brother, James Bomar, was a senator and, for a while, lieutenant governor of Tennessee.
Southwest Airlines had scheduled flights here to Memphis and the Tri-Cities airport in northeast Tennessee, but the service couldn't be sustained.
Leroy Verble, 73, of Donelson came to Shelbyville's airport yesterday for other business, but he stopped to see the DC-3 and spoke with Farrar and others about the old plane. Verble was a ticket agent for American Airlines during 1952-65, but then he started flying as one of the pilots for the National Life and Accident Insurance Co. The Flagship Detroit was a sight to behold, he said.
Marvin Moore of Chapel Hill toured the DC-3 like a true tourist, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. The retired builder came to the airport to pay his hangar rent and found an additional bonus.
Before climbing from the passenger seat -- which has more legroom than current airliners -- Farrar recalled, "We flew a million miles without a crash." That was the record he states for the Military Air Transport.
Those flights in that kind of airplane gave Farrar a remarkable view of the world and people. Times and airplanes have changed.
Ellie
Thursday, May 11, 2006
By Clint Confehr
The restored DC-3 parked at Shelbyville Municipal Airport this week attracted a number of curious visitors even before the scheduled touring time, including a couple of men with memories of their own about these planes that transformed air travel.
They were strong, stable and relatively easy to fly, according to Ike Farrar, 87, of Flat Creek, who's flown 1,000 hours in a DC-3. Many of his flights were in the Pacific Theater during World War II when the airplane was how Farrar saw the darkest and brightest times of the era.
The plane on display here Wednesday, and on exhibit in Tullahoma on May 27-28, is restored to its original use as an airliner, but the DC-3 was America's workhorse in the sky during WW-II.
"We'd take off and land in the rain," Farrar said of the DC-3's power over the elements. "MPs would wake us up at 4 a.m. and we'd have to get our FF (friend or foe) code so we could be identified as a friend. We'd get our mission and fly to transport something. It might have been cannon, men or munitions."
Seated yesterday in a row of passenger seats inside the DC-3, restored to its vintage 1937 condition, Farrar tells the story of a different time with a different war. It had been and is once again the Flagship Detroit, an American Airlines passenger plane. Less than 10 years had passed for that plane parked here when the passengers of Farrar's story climbed aboard another DC-3 for their flight home from the Pacific.
"One thing that struck me was," he said, pausing, "... there were 10 Marines and there was only one man among them with an eye."
As the combat-wounded Marines walked to and boarded the DC-3, "They put one hand on the shoulder of the man in front," Farrar said.
The Marine with one eye led them to the plane Farrar flew that day.
"Just think what that did for the rest of their lives," Farrar said. "I've thought about what it would be like to not be able to have any eye from age 20 on."
The restored passenger seats on the Flagship Detroit provided an easy chair from which an old pilot could tell his story and bring it home today.
"If our politicians were more experienced in actual combat, they wouldn't be as quick to send us into harm's way," Farrar volunteers as his 60-plus year-old story continues.
"I'm talking about now," he said. "That Iraq situation is something."
He recalls a different time and a different war.
"I was on my way to Pelieu Island when the radio man came and said the war was over," Farrar recalled of a bright day he flew a DC-3 with cargo for the war.
When he landed there was a problem.
"They were so drunk on the island that I couldn't get the plane unloaded and had to stay the night."
That night he sang Grand Ole Opry songs and played a guitar.
"I was to be busted for fraternizing with enlisted men, but that was overlooked. Everything was forgotten when the war was over."
Farrar didn't always fly DC-3s over the Pacific Ocean. He knew what show that theater was playing, and he didn't care for that ticket.
At first he flew to train machine gunners and bombardiers over three states in the southwest.
"So, we knew how to use the bomb sight and had an option to fly transport between New York and San Francisco, or go into combat and fly B-29 bombers in the South Pacific."
Farrar decided to fly across the United States, but that lasted six months and then he was sent to the South Pacific anyway. His landing strips were in New Guinea, Leyta Island, Pelieu and Australia, among others for those flights for cannon, men and munitions, food and fodder for what are now old war stories with a timeless lesson.
"We were the taxi service for the islands, supporting the people who were doing the fighting. We saw some terrible things with jungle rot and soldiers' skin coming off their arms."
DC-3s like the one Farrar was seated in yesterday were flown in and out of Shelbyville back in the days when Frank Clement was governor, when Bob Bomar ran the field, and his brother, James Bomar, was a senator and, for a while, lieutenant governor of Tennessee.
Southwest Airlines had scheduled flights here to Memphis and the Tri-Cities airport in northeast Tennessee, but the service couldn't be sustained.
Leroy Verble, 73, of Donelson came to Shelbyville's airport yesterday for other business, but he stopped to see the DC-3 and spoke with Farrar and others about the old plane. Verble was a ticket agent for American Airlines during 1952-65, but then he started flying as one of the pilots for the National Life and Accident Insurance Co. The Flagship Detroit was a sight to behold, he said.
Marvin Moore of Chapel Hill toured the DC-3 like a true tourist, wearing a Hawaiian shirt and shorts. The retired builder came to the airport to pay his hangar rent and found an additional bonus.
Before climbing from the passenger seat -- which has more legroom than current airliners -- Farrar recalled, "We flew a million miles without a crash." That was the record he states for the Military Air Transport.
Those flights in that kind of airplane gave Farrar a remarkable view of the world and people. Times and airplanes have changed.
Ellie