to serve this role, but it was certainly the best.
After World War II ended, military service continued for the 46, essentially dooming its potential as a passenger aircraft. Its presence was still felt around the globe, though in far more covert ways. The CIA used the plane to support French forces fighting communist insurgencies in French Indochinese countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and in Thailand. The 46 also played a part in clandestine anti-communist campaigns of the late 1940s and early 1950s, such as supplying Chiang Kai-shek’s troops while they battled Mao’s Communists. In 1961, the C-46 operated in the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The planes even served in the early years of the Vietnam War before being officially retired from active combat duty in 1968.
The Curtiss-Wright C-46 Commando played a significant role in the U.S. military’s World War II efforts in Europe and Asia, and the company was quick to inform the public of its successes in these theatres. After the war, the CIA became an avid user of the plane.
Life for the C-46 did not stop there. The aircraft’s rapid climb rate and high service ceiling made it ideal for flying over the Andes in countries such as Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, and Chile. It easily covered vast stretches of South American jungle where roads did not exist. Today, a handful of C-46s are still in use throughout the world, transporting goods to otherwise inaccessible regions from Alaska to Kenya.
Buffalo Joe likes the C-46 because the aluminum alloy aircraft is virtually indestructible and can take off and land on small airstrips, making it the ideal candidate for the valley run. The way Joe sees it, the C-46 must be a great plane if it’s still working regularly around the world. As he says, a lot of planes have come and gone since then. Rod McBryan, director of maintenance at Buffalo and Joe’s eldest son, agrees. As Rod says, given the weather conditions in the north, the 46 is the only logical choice to be running tons of goods up and down the Mackenzie Valley.
Despite its rich history and legendary status in the aviation world, the C-46 is hampered by one significant drawback: it’s a bitch to fly. With its wide fuselage, broad tail, and small rudder, the C-46 is extremely vulnerable to crosswinds and is only rated to land in a twenty-two-kilometre-an-hour (fourteen-mile-per-hour) crosswind. Compounding the issue is the fact that most of the aircraft’s weight is located behind the main wheels, which means the back end can swing around if the plane’s not landed straight. And as Buffalo’s former chief pilot Arnie Schreder says, a C-46 tail that starts to swing on landing will continue to swing on landing. “If you look around the Arctic, there are C-46s strewn all over it,” he says. “And those crashes were always due to wind.”
If the secret to an airline’s success with the C-46 is expert pilots, then Buffalo has nothing to worry about. The 46 may be the toughest plane in the Buffalo fleet to fly, but Joe’s system of separating the wheat from the chaff among his young pilots means that only the brightest, most competent, and hardest-working pilots get to sit at the controls of that massive bird, and only after they’ve paid their dues on smaller, easier-to-fly craft like the DC-3.
The “Dumbo” was an imposing figure in the skies over World War II battlefields. Here the C-46 flies in tandem with the Curtiss p-40 Warhawk, one of the most famous fighter planes used during the war.
That fact holds true for all but one member of the Buffalo team. At six-feet-seven, Scott Blue is simply too big to fit behind the controls of the DC-3. He can squeeze himself in there tightly enough, cross his legs, and cruise. But control the ailerons (the small, hinged “winglets” attached to the trailing edges of the wings) and rudder pedals with his feet and try to bring it down safely in a crosswind? Not happening. So Joe and Scott had no choice: Scott earned his stripes on the C-46.
“I love the 46 because you can never take it for granted,” Blue says. “It’ll kick your ass, no matter how good a pilot you are.” Even captains who have flown the C-46 for thousands of hours will tell you the plane stubbornly refuses to be mastered.
“A.J. [Decoste] is one of the best drivers I know, and even he has some days where a landing doesn’t go as well as he wanted,” Blue says. “And that man knows that plane cold. He is an amazing driver! And even he has days where he just can’t figure it out. It’s an amazing machine in terms of what it can do, but you really have to know what you’re doing to drive it properly. You’ve got to treat it with a whole lot of respect.”
To the novice eye, the cockpits of Buffalo’s vintage aircraft are a dizzying array of knobs, levels, dials, and gauges. Laminated checklists are clipped to the pilot’s and co-pilot’s yokes.
If any member of the Buffalo crew can speak to the challenges—and joys—of flying the C-46, it’s Jeff Schroeder, a senior pilot who’s been flying the plane for more than twenty years. The first time I met Jeff, we were in the Buffalo hangar standing beside the mammoth airplane. You wouldn’t necessarily think that a guy who has sat at the controls of the 46 for more than twenty-four years and twenty thousand hours—likely making him the most experienced C-46 captain in the universe—would find his job exciting. But as he began to talk about the plane, his enthusiasm became palpable. Here’s a guy who literally shakes when he describes what it feels like to sit in the left seat of one of the most exotic planes on the planet.
“People always say if you love something, you’d do it for free,” the Winnipeg resident told me with a huge grin on his face. “Well, it’s pretty close to that for me with the 46. There’s nothing that sounds like it on takeoff. When it rumbles, it makes so much noise you think it’s gonna frickin’ explode... it’s exciting.” No doubt. Just listening to the guy talk gave me goosebumps. He became more and more animated with every word. His hands waved in the air, and his voice took on the distinctive growl of a child making rumbling noises as he pushes a dump truck around a sandbox. “And when the temperature hits thirty below, it cracks and moans. You would swear this thing is just gonna explode. It’s buzzing, the props are buzzing, and it’s shaking and it’s rattling.
“You know,” he brought his arms back to his sides and caught his breath, “it’s been twenty-four years for me, and I still get excited talking about the thing. It’s a thrill ride every time, it really is.”
When Jeff was checked out on the 46 for Air Manitoba, in 1986, he was that company’s last pilot to receive his captaincy on the Dumbo. At the time, few of his colleagues could figure out why someone would want to waste his time on a flying dinosaur.
“I said ‘You know what, I don’t see the 46 ever going out of business, other than a shortage of parts or something like that,” he told me, the grin on his face stubbornly refusing to dissipate. “Let’s face it, what else can haul fourteen thousand pounds as cheaply as the C-46 does? There’s nothing else out there—to this day—that can do it.” As Mikey says, the C-46 is a rarity in the aircraft industry: it can pay itself off in a month.
For Jeff, sticking with a plane that everyone else thought was destined for the scrapheap meant a lot of job security. “I just knew there was a future there, and stuck it out while the other guys went other places. And for the last twenty-four years, I haven’t had to deal with the airlines or layoffs, or work shortages—nothing like that. I guess if you’re good at what you do, there’s always work, eh?”
Jeff doesn’t live in Yellowknife, choosing
