When I last left off - I had just landed in Germany. Got some crazy stories to tell out my time in Doha Qatar as a driver...and the time we got shelled by some weird PLO faction group, a Skud landed half a mile from our compound, and how my signals troop almost got lynched by a drunken mob of victory partying soldiers, but that'll be for another day.
I got back to Canada mid spring 1991 and then got attach posted to CFS Debert to help run the trades school in Nova Scotia. Later that summer, my sister (same one who came over to see me that January) invited me over to a summer BBQ at her house - just a couple hours drive. My brother in law (we will call him Bil), also invited a bunch of his flyboy buddies over - including the actual pilot in command that night - Johnny! Johnny knows my sister as well because he and Bil also when to college together for a few years before both Bil and Johnny joined as pilots in the mid-80's.
Back to the BBQ, later that night after many Molson Canadian beers have been drunk, Johnny tells the story of how the 707 he was flying that they almost lost it and had a really difficult time landing the airplane. I remember how Johnny told the story quite well because I had no real idea how close we became a sad story on the TV show Mayday.
Johnny explained that he picked up the CC-137 (707) from the previous crew in Ottawa and then flew over to CFB Trenton to pick us up. The previous crew had mentioned that the navigation computer and radar were both acting up - they would intermittently loose power/flicker every 10 or 20 minutes. To get ready for the flight over the pond (as they call it) , the new maintenance crew flying with Johnny decided to quickly swapped them before departure. The repair checklist not 100% followed, and due to time constraints, they elected not replace the power cables for both systems at this time but to take the cables with them and complete the work when they got to CFB Lahr in Germany.
Johnny continued - so when they were at flight level 20 minutes after takeoff, the circuit breakers above the engineering station for the nav and radar tripped. The engineer reset them and the copilot re-checked the settings and reengaged the nav with the auto pilot. Johnny had the copilot go through the flight manual troubleshooting checklist - but have nothing for both the nav and radar tripping at the same time. Then he notices small puffs of smoke start to leak out just in-front of the throttle quadrant and he's hearing arching come from the console and now a new problem - other systems start to trip the beakers around the throttle quadrant - and the nav and radar trip again. Now more smoke is coming up and he called for the mechanic to come up. The smoke in the cockpit starts to get worse so he had the crew don their emergency masks
Up front, Johnny declared an in-flight emergency, chopped the throttles, and descended while the co-pilot tried to contact the ATC but now other system circuit breakers trip, including both radios. The mechanic is now in the cockpit and he discussing what to do next as smoke is now steadily coming out from the nav/radar and under the throttle quadrant . He ordered the mechanic to start taking system panels off - the co-pilot gets out of his seat while the mechanic pulled the nav and radar out and then quickly decided to pull out the panels around and behind the throttle as he saw a wire fire there and in the front of the cockpit - and then puts it all out with an extinguisher- what a mess they're now in.
The good news as Johnny explained it, there was no more new smoke- the bad news, the nav, radar, throttle quadrant, and the radio panels behind them are basically all apart, and they have no radar or navigation computers, and the entire airplane is full of smoke. So the mechanic basically patches what he can while Johnny is descending. Since he was the guy who originally replaced the nav and radar, he also had spare cables to complete other repairs when they got to Germany. Mechanic gets the radio back online– and we hear a frantic ATC is calling them – Johnny is diverted to CFB Shearwater completely blind and it's pitch black outside. Also more good news - Johnny had perfectly working throttles and the runway was almost 10'000 feet long - but wasn't sure about reverse thrusters or other function from the throttle area.
Johnny doesn't go into much further detail (or I started to forget what else what was said after having my 9th or 10 Molson), but he and copilot managed landed the 707 on a bed of foam at CFB Shearwater from ATC vectors and let the plane roll out the full length of the runway on a partly foggy night. It also helped that both the pilots were in Air Cadets in the Halifax area and had flown gliders and small single engine aircraft from CFB Shearwater in the late 70's/early 80's -they new the area well.
It was one of the few times Johnny admitted - while flying, he was up there wishing he was down here.
