My Friend and Fellow Pilot Charlie Horton

How our friendship came to be

As far as we can remember Charlie Horton and I met about 20 years ago.  At the time he had flown his Super Cub airplane into my hometown, Patten Maine, At the time The Hanger restaurant didn’t exist near the airfield so he was looking for a way to get into town for something to eat. My father happened to be there with his Kawasaki Z1 900 motorcycle and sidecar.  He offered Charlie a ride and a lifelong friendship was born.  

Charlie is definitely one of the reasons I started learning to fly airplanes.  He has regaled me with many stories over the years of his high flying adventures from the Korean War to flying 38 years for TWA.  I decided I wanted to try to get some of those stories on “paper’ and let the world know what an amazing life Charlie has lead.  I am very sure even at 90 years old he has a much better memory than I do so some of these stories may not be completely detailed.  Speaking of Charlies age, I didn’t actually confirm how old he was until last week.  It was a topic of debate for years.  Then last week during my yearly visit just said it in conversation. I visit every year during the Owls Head Transportation Museum air show. It isn’t really the best of air shows but I don’t really care about the show. I go to get one more dose of stories from Charlie.

 

 

 

 

 

Best memory I will have of Charlie

A few years ago I was still in bed on a weekend and the phone rang. It was Charlie. He said I am in Norridgewock at the airport. “Do you want to go flying?”  In my head :Dumb question lol. Of course I want to go flying in a Super Cub.  I said I can be there in an hour and a half. I threw on clean clothes and a hat and was out the door. I arrived at the Norridgewock Maine airport to see that beautiful yellow Super Cub. The single best flying airplane ever made in my opinion.  Charlie comes out to meet me and says “Do you think you can get yourself in there?” In my head: if that plane is leaving the ground I am going to be in it even if I lose a limb trying. I said “Definitely. I can just grab the edge of the door and the strut and lift myself. Which I promptly proceeded to do. It was actually quite easy because the Super Cub is a taildragger so the back seat is fairly low to the ground. I just had to go in backwards and contort my legs around the front seat and I was in and ready to go. Charlie hopped in the front and we were in the air in no time. As we were flying around he was telling stories and pointing out things. He asked ” Do you want to try flying above the clouds?” I said “Sure that would be amazing.” He said “Okay the controls are all yours Cap!” That is what he calls me haha. When he said do you want to fly above the clouds I thought he meant he was going to do it not me. I had never flown stick before and the control was a bit tight to maneuver between the seat and my legs which didn’t seem to want to cooperate and stay out of the way. Eventually i got things sorted out and started toward the clouds in the distance.  The cloud layer was mostly just broken at about 6000 ft so it wasn’t too long before I was looking down onto a few clouds.  I flew around up there for a bit while taking pictures then Charlie instructed  me to get back down below. I didn’t know what he had planned but I soon found out it was going to be fun.  Once I leveled off around 4000 ft he asked if I wanted to put it through its paces and see what it could do. As if I was going to say no.  He said pull all the way back and try to stall it. I did and the plane just kept flying. It fluttered a bit and then dropped the right wing slightly but kept on flying. I am used to flying the Cessna 172. When you yank back on that thing you are going to drop out of the sky every time. The Super Cub on the other hand appeared to never stall. So then it was on. I was into steep turns, climbing turns and anything else I could think of to push the limits. Unfortunately Charlie lives near Rockland so he had to head home at some point. He took over the controls and got us back on solid ground.  I will never forget that day. 

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Tuna and Swordfish Hunting

If you notice in the gallery there is a picture of the tail of Charlies’ plane. It says Hummer Hunter. After Charlie retired from TWA he made a pretty good extra living using his plane to spot fish for boats. He had a 90 gallon belly tank on his plane that allowed him to fly up to 14 hours without stopping.  That is exactly his longest flight ever while looking for tuna.  He used a marine radio to point the boat in the direction of the school of tuna so they could scoop them up. Of course all the other boats had radios too so Charlie had to devise a code to tell only the boat he was working for where the fish were heading. He has never really divulged that code but has told me that it worked really well.  He got an hourly fee for flying but also got 10 percent of the profits.  He told me his biggest day ever was nearly $55,000. Not a bad days pay haha. 

TWA STORIES

As I said Charlie had a 38 year long career flying for TWA which is now part of American Airlines. He flew the L-1011 TriStar wide body jetliner. He told me that the jet used to burn a bit of oil when you first started up and it would put smoke into the cockpit.  That was eventually the reason he decided to retire.  

The Hijacking

This story wasn’t his but one of his fellow pilots was hijacked in the Middle East. The hijacker put a gun to his head and demanded he put the plane on the ground in the middle of the desert. The pilot very calmly said “get that gun away from my head. If you shoot me ill die but so will you.”  Having been ordered to put the plane down in the desert that is what he did and then as usual the hijackers were eventually arrested and no harm came to anyone.  Think about that for a minute. Did you think how did he land a plane in soft sand? That was my thought too but apparently the desert is very hard packed for miles in every direction and can easily take the weight of an airplane. Who knew!

Where is the runway?

Charlie told me about the time he was most scared during his career.  He was flying into Heathrow airport at night and it was completely fogged in right down to almost the ground. He had 300 souls on board and no way to see the runway.  He decided he could make the landing anyway.  As he is on final he still can’t see the runway but is very sure he is good to go.  He nailed the landing but still couldn’t see the runway even when he was safely on the ground.  He took a sigh of relief and not a single passenger was the wiser.  

The China Incident

He used to fly a route that took him all over the world. My favorite line from this story is ” I have flown all around the world and never seen it”. That is because he generally took off at night and landed at night. He would leave Los Angeles and fly to many places around the world all in one trip.  Some of those places included Bombay India, Australia, France, and unfortunately on one trip Beijing China, He landed in Beijing at night as usual but they told him to take the plane out to an open area on the airfield away from the terminal.  He did as instructed and as they are waiting a group of fully armed Chinese military personnel approached the plane. I believe this was the second time Charlie was afraid while flying.  They ordered the whole crew off the plane and left the passengers on board.  They took the crew into the terminal and questioned them. They thought they were smuggling something and after searching the plane finally decided everything was fine. They let them just carry on with their flight after all that.

United States AIr Force Stories

Korean War

Charlie flew the F-80 fighter jet while stationed in Okinawa during the Korean War with the 16th fighter-interceptor squadron. He had 6 weeks left in his training on the jet when he was called into action for the war. When he got the news he told them he still had 6 weeks of training left and was simply told you will learn by fire.  Upon arrival at his air station he found there were only seven planes left. Usually there are around 50 planes per squadron  It was very apparent why they needed more pilots. Unfortunately most of the squadron had been shot down. North Korea had just started using anti aircraft guns and they were taking their toll on the squadron. It was Charlies job to go find these guns and take them out. According to him the F-80 was only rated for about 12000 pounds fully loaded for flight but they were flying at around 19000 pounds with four 1000 pound bombs.  During the course of conversation we mentioned to Charlie about a veterans honor flight that had stopped to fuel up in Millinocket Maine.  He said he would never want to go on one of those flights because there is no wall for all of the friends he lost in a pile of wreckage in Korea who are still there.  That statement really hit home. 

After Korea

When he came home from Korea he was assigned to fly the F-86 Sabre. He says that is the best jet he ever flew.  One mission he flew was to escort a squadron of  Convair B-36 Peacemakers  which were flying out of New York for testing.  They were pretending to shoot at him with the remotely operated tail turret with 2× 20 mm (0.787 in) M24A1 autocannons, There was a little red light that alerted him when he was hit. Luckily they were on his side or it would have been over for him many times. After the mission was completed he remembered he had a friend that lived not too far away.  His friend had a little auto shop where he worked on cars. Well Charlie got the bright idea to see if he could scare this friend haha.  He got the plane thousands of feet in the air and then pointed it straight down at the garage pulling up at the very last minute and blasting the neighborhood. The next day he casually showed up at the garage to visit and the first thing out of his friends mouth ” Was that you that scared the sh** out of me yesterday?” Charlie just laughed, 

700 mph down the runway

Another incident with the F-86 Sabre happened while he was stationed in Africa. He was out flying a routine practice mission and was getting a bit bored.  I am noticing a theme here haha.  He gets into mischief when he is bored.  So he started thinking, I wonder how fast I could get this plane going over the runway.  Once again he takes it to high altitude and points it straight down. He pulls up level just over the runway and hits 700 mph! That time he got in trouble haha.

Closing Thoughts

Charlie is now 90 years old and I know there are hundreds of stories I haven’t heard yet and I may never get the chance.  I wish he had written a book about his flying life so the world could know what an amazing person he is.  I hope I get to preserve more stories with my blog and make sure they are never forgotten.