Dread! the mere use of that word by us humans usually means you either suspect or sense something bad might happen.
For instance, going into Mexico City about 3AM one morning with a brand new co-pilot, had about 20 hours total in the 3 and no type as yet, carrying a gross load of aluminum ingots for some plant I guess. About 1 hour out, I had to shut down #2, as the oil temp was getting in the red and decided to save it for landing, but as I feathered the prop, it came to an abrupt stop and I knew that one of the cylinders had come un-glued and locked up the engine, so that option was no longer mine to use. Having to advance power settings on #1 just to hold altitude and a whopping 120 knots IAS, all I needed was one more thing to go wrong and we would become a home sick rock! When that engine locked down, my dread factor when up! But lady luck was with me, shot about a 1 mile visibility approach and had to have a tug tow us in.
When I was 16 years old, I was flying with an old gentleman in an Ercoupe. He had just failed a physical due to a bad heart and so he always took someone with him when he flew. On this day, we had been flying about 30 minutes and suddenly he leaned over to the left side and his hand dropped away from the yoke and I looked at him and the "dread" set in, as his face was turning a dark color and he wouldn't respond to me, so I pulled him back up and leaned his head back and headed for the airport, landed and he and I where the only two people there that day, so I fished his car keys out of his pants, raced to a local groc store and called for help. But it was to late, he was gone! That was my first really serious feeling of "dread"!
I was going to haul a load of baby chickens from Marietta, Ga one day in a DC3 and had a new co-pilot, one that we later called "Foxy Knoxie", whom I have spoke of before. I walked him through the preflight, explaining everything as we went, got on the airplane and I handed him a broom stick which had been cut off to a 4 foot length. I explained to him that we had 20,000 baby chicks on this bus and this thing wouldn't take off but with 10,000 chicks on board, so his job, on takeoff, was to run up and down the aisle, beating on the cages with the stick to get 1/2 of them chicks flying so we could take off. Well, I'll be darned if I didn't pull out on the runway, lock the tail wheel, and started to push the throttles up and "Foxie" started to get up out of his seat and I said, where are you going? I am going to take the stick and do my job!!! The "dread" of training this nut wasn't going to be easy!
I took off one day in a B model Baron on a charter trip to Memphis from Atlanta, and after takeoff, as the gear was retracting, I heard a loud "Pop" from the front of the aircraft. Flew all the way to Memphis, with IAS about 5 knots slower than usual, but still didn't recognize that something was seriously wrong! There was a Piedmont F-27 sitting #1 by the runway I was landing on, waiting for takeoff and he suddenly said, Baron on final, your nose gear is not down! The "dread" set in! I immediately executed a abort landing, when around and flew by the tower, let them have a look and sure enough, the nose wheel was 1/2 way down. I had a man and 2 women on board and I explained what I was going to try to do to try to get the landing gear all the way down, must have done a poor job of reassuring my passengers as one of the ladies started crying and saying we are all going to die! The man wanted to know what he could do to help and I told him to try to calm her down, that I wasn't going to die that day and neither was she. But, the 'dread' increased just a bit more. I first tried jerking the elevator up and down in hopes of jarring it loose and that didn't work, so next option was a hard touch down on runway with a quick pull up to see if that would work, but nothing ole "tater" would do would work, so out came all the red trucks. After carefully wiping all the sweat away from my eyes and forehead I set my approach, made a nice landing and held the nose up as long as I could, then the nose came down and we sled for about 50 feet on the nose and mains. Opened the door and let my passengers out first
and I be darned if the lady who had started crying, ran up to me and gave me a big "lip lock"!
One night in mid 65, I think it was, I was flying co-pilot on a DC=6B, hauling blue jeans from Geer, S.C. to San Juan, where they were then sewed and later returned for sale in stores. We tooling along at 15,000 feet, pressurization would only hold about a 10,000 foot cabin pressure because of so many leaks in the fuselage, and because of #4 surging in power out put, we had to shut it down. No problem we still had 3 good engines and I had two experienced people with me in the fight engineer and capt, both WW2 vets.
(something wrong with my PC, don't know if this will post or not, but will finish it later)
