We turned off at mid-field and the tower told me to taxi to the base of the tower. I told him that if I could taxi to the base of the tower, I wouldn't have landed at Williams. It took a while to convince him that I couldn't just taxi on one engine, especially an outboard. They finally sent out a big fire truck and a few hundred feet of heavy rope and towed the airplane to the ramp. My co-pilot stayed with the airplane to ride the brakes while I went to Base Ops to start making phone calls and filling out paperwork. I filled out paperwork on that little incident for 3 years. Nobody from any agency tried to give me a hard time in any way. I mentioned my plan to land on the auto track to somebody in Base Ops. He said that it's a good thing that I didn't do that.It turns out that it's an auto torture track that's all speed bumps.
Apparently, a Skyraider took off from Williams in the 60's and landed on that track when his engine barked a few times. By the time he stopped,all of the engine mounts had
broken and the engine fell off from running over the speed bumps.
We spent the night at Williams while my boss (Hank Moore) made arrangements with Woody Grantham to bring 750 gals of 100/130 to Williams in his gas truck from Chandler. We fueled up, turned on the boost pumps and had fuel pressure all around. That day was supposed to be our scheduled day off. The Forest Service allowed us to ferry the airplane to Coolidge and still count it as a day off. This was mainly because Williams wanted us out of there asap.
When I got to Coolidge, Gary Packard was there in Evergreen's B-17 Tanker 22. I figured that my dipstick must be faulty, so I compared it to his. There wasn't 1/16 inch difference at any of the markings. My immediate solution to the problem was to carry the same amount of fuel (250 gpe) and flight plan for 45 minutes less than I had been. I also decided to figure that any fuel in the Tokyos was useless for anything except ballast.
Once I got back to Sequioa Field (TBM Inc's maintenance base). I found out a few things. First,there were 3 different manufacturers of B-17 self sealing main tanks and they varied in slightly in capacity. I checked the markings on the tanks in T65 and T68. It turned out that T65 had the largest tanks and T68 had the smallest. It made a difference of 15 gpe. This was in the B-17 Erection and Maintenance Manual, but there's no mention of it in the flight manual. When I spoke with Kenny Stubbs (TBM's Director of Maintenance), I learned the reason for the Tokyo tank fiasco.
T68 had a problem with the Tokyo tanks deteriorating internally and contaminating the fuel (to a very minor degree) with rubber flakes. The Forest Service mainternance inspector had made TBM install gascolators in the fuel supply lines between the Tokyo tanks and the mains. I knew about this because we sumped the gascolators while draining the main fuel sumps. Tanker 65 didn't have gascolators because it didn't have a problem with deterioration. The revalation from Kenny was "Didn't I tell you? You need to have 150 gals in the Tokyo tanks on T68 to get enough head pressure to get past the gascolators when the valve is opened. "That, coincidentally,was exactly the amount that I randomly chose when I tested the Tokyo tanks for flow in Fresno.
As to where the rest of the fuel went from the mains? Your guess is as good as mine. One thing that happened a few years later (1983,I think) was that I happened to see Andy Anderson (who was the leadplane pilot from Wenatchee,WA) in a restaurant at Reno. He'd had a few drinks. I was leaving with Dave Kelly as we'd finished eating. Andy called me over and said that my running out of fuel/single engine landing was the best thing that I ever did because before that nobody knew that I existed and now everybody knew me. I suppose that it's nice to be known for something?!
This story was originally posted on the Warbird Information Exchange and is reprinted here by the kind permission of Larry Kraus. To follow the discussion and to learn more about Mr. Kraus's career as a tanker pilot then visitthe original thread on
WIX
