The late September rain is pounding on the fuselage above me and coursing across the narrow, rectangular windscreen that sits less than a foot in front of my face. The frigid Alaskan ocean lies only 400 feet beneath us, but if we went any higher, we'd be in the clouds-clouds that are obscuring a line of towering glacial peaks that rise from the coastline just off our left wing. We are navigating by breakers. As long as we keep the white, foamy breakers in sight off to our left we'll be over the water, so we won't run into anything, but we'll still be close enough to the shoreline not to get lost.
The two Pratt & Whitney radials on the sturdy, aluminum wings of our DC-3 cargo hauler hum reassuringly despite the downpour, and the heavy, cable controls convey a comforting stability that my Cheetah couldn't even begin to offer. I conclude that if you're going to scud-run along the Alaskan coastline in bad weather, the DC-3 is probably a pretty good plane to do it in. We can lose an engine and still keep going, and if we had to put the plane down somewhere, those massive 45-foot wings would probably clear a landing site as they went.
That's not to say I'm actually comfortable flying like this, of course. The air is rough, the controls require a fair amount of muscle power, and the visibility makes it a challenge to keep even those high-contrast breakers in sight during the frequent rain showers we endure along the way. My left arm and right leg are also soaked from the water that's dripping from the DC-3's ill-sealed windscreen, despite the paper towels I keep stuffing in between the two front panels on my side of the plane. I begin to understand why Douglas manufactured rain capes (complete with official part numbers) to protect pilots from the elements that routinely leaked into the DC-3's less-than-climate-controlled cockpit.
Not even Ernie Gann would choose to fly in these conditions for fun, but we're not on a recreational flight. This is a working airplane, and we're on a working mission: transporting fresh Alaskan salmon from the remote locations where they're caught to fish-packing plants in the coastal towns of Yakutat and Sitka. It's not clean or easy work, and any romantic notions I may have had about being a DC-3 pilot in Alaska disappear quickly after getting a taste of the real thing. The cargo pilots here also act as loadmasters, mechanics and line service personnel, and the day's activities consist of a non-ending cycle of load, fly, unload, load, fly, unload, fuel, load, and fly again, over and over, from early morning until sometime after dark. It would be a long day anywhere. But during the Alaskan summer, which is when the salmon run, it's a really long day.
At the same time, there's a real sense of satisfaction that comes from doing work that's so appreciated by people in the local communities here. This particular DC-3 is based in the tiny town of Yakutat, Alaska, which has a population of about 800. It's almost 200 miles in any direction to the next toehold of human settlement, and there are no roads to most of the southeast Alaskan towns, including the state capital of Juneau. Everything has to be brought in and out by plane or barge, which means that nobody, and I mean nobody, complains about airplane noise. The sound of Alaska Airlines' 737 combi jets or a DC-3's thrumming radial engines approaching low over the town means that supplies are coming in, commerce is getting out, and a link to the outside world still exists.
