Jungle Jim
I took off from Sprigs Payne airport in Monrovia, Liberia West Africa. I was flying a Piper Tripacer with a 160 HP engine and a cruise speed 125 mph. I was on my way to pick up a passenger in a place called Cape Mount. It was a village at the base of a 900-foot mountain. The runway was all beach sand but, laid out on the sand was a steel mat runway left over from World War II. The length which was 900 feet long [it might have been longer at one time but much of it sank into the sand over the years and all that was left was the 900 feet. Of course, that was 40 years ago when I was there … I would like to add that the same area is where Pan American Airlines use to land their flying boats even longer ago than that.
Cape mount is located 80 miles from my home base airfield of Sprigs Payne. As I took off, and because I was alone, I flew at a low level of 50 feet above the beach. Half way to Cape Mount, I noticed the sky getting dark to my right (the ocean was on my left). Due to the increasingly ugly sky, I was about to turn around when I noticed that the line squall was in a horse shoe coming and curving towards me both in the front of and coming in behind me. I was at the point of no return and I had to make a decision.
I figured I could out-run it. To do that I had to reach the village airfield before the heavy rain and high winds got there. If the storm beat me, I would have to go IFR into the clouds. This was not good as I had to remain VFR so as not to hit the mountain.
I almost beat the line squall but I didn’t. It beat me to the mountain. I then made a 90 degree turn to my left heading out over the ocean figuring that I would turn back and land on the beach. I could then turn the Tripacer into the wind with the engine running before I was fully engulfed in the heavy wind and rain and hope for the best. I was about to to this when I saw another aeroplane, a Cessna 170, below me. I’m sorry I can’t remember the other pilots name. I realized that it would be to dangerous to do what he was going to do (ride it out on the beach), because we could hit each other.
I decided to fly back over the ocean and hit the line squall head on, slowing the Tripacer down to 65 mph with the nose up and the power on. Just before doing that, I realized that this was a bad idea because if my aeroplane was ripped apart I would be food for the sharks and my buddies would never find me. I decided to fight it out with the line squall over land so I would be found if the battle didn’t go my way. I recall from my book studies that, when flying from a high pressure area to a low pressure area, look out below because the altimeter with read high, hence I chose 2,000 feet for the fight.
Well, I pull on my seat belt real tight, climbed to 2,000 feet and looked the wall of rain straight in the face (not really sure of my altitude because of the air pressure change). When it hit me, I got the hell knocked out of me. Everything was black. The windshield looked like someone was hosing me down with a fire hose. The ship was trembling and bucking to beat the band. It’s odd what we think of at such times. While fighting for my life in this machine, I was making mental notes as to where all the water leaks were inside my aeroplane. I was getting hit hard and wondered if the wing struts would keep my wings on and would the bracing wires keep my tail section together. These were the things I was thinking of plus working very hard to keep from being turned on to my back. I got knocked every which way. This went on for 15 minutes. I thank God for my IFR training. I did not have an IFR rating as it was not required in Liberia, but I sure appreciated the IFR training I had received. It came in handy the day I took on a line squall. Advice from an old-timer: Never intentionally take on Mother Nature if you can help it.
Finally, when I got on the other side of the line squall, the sun was shining and I could see the Cessna 170 riding it out on the beach. It was a wise decision not to try to land, as I could have crashed into the Cessna 170. I had to fly around for another 15 minutes for the winds to calm down enough for me to land on the steel-matted runway. Needless to say it was good to land and I said “Thank you God!” Was I scared? …dam right I was, but we pilots know that it is not a kind of scariness that makes you forget what to do. I later estimated that the line squall was moving at 50 or more mph.
Another time I will tell you a story about a lesson I learn about spiraling down out of bad weather and assuming I was going in the correct direction away from the bad monsoon rain but was not!
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