I did a Web search yesterday morning trying to find decent quality photos of all the military charter aircraft I’ve flown in over the years.  Not military aircraft, mind you, but civilian aircraft chartered by the Air Force to fly military members and their families to destinations all over the world.  With a little bit of perseverance, I’ve managed to find all of the aircraft types I can remember in the colors of the airlines I flew on at the time.

Some of them were a little tough to find.  But then I discovered Airliners.net, and my problem was basically solved.  (With the exception of the Trans Caribbean Airways DC-8 that I flew to England in in the early ’70s.  But I managed to find a picture of that baby, too, so….)

First of all, here are the emblems of the various incarnations of what I call the Military Airlift Command (that’s what it was for virtually the entire time I was in the Air Force).  From what I’ve read, the Military Air Transport Service was instituted in 1948, and has been serving in one incarnation or the other ever since.  As you can see, the heart of the emblem remains unchanged.

Okay.  Here are the different aircraft I’ve flown in.  (The ones that I remember, at least.)

The first is a CL-44 in the colors of the Flying Tiger Line.  That bird, manufactured in Canada of all places, almost killed my entire family.  We put down in Anchorage, Alaska to refuel, and sometime after we departed one of the engines failed (it apparently caught on fire).  The pilot tried to reach Shemya on the Aleutian Island chain for an emergency landing, but the crosswinds were too high, so he had to turn back for Anchorage—low on fuel.  My Dad says he feathered another engine to conserve fuel and we barely made it back to Anchorage on fumes.  This all happened in the middle of the night, and Dad says we were flying so low that he could see the whitecaps on the ocean below.

So here’s the Flying Tiger deathtrap:

This next one is a Flying Tigers DC-8.  I flew on similar aircraft several times, but none of these DC-8s had any problems.

And here’s a Boeing 747 in Flying Tigers colors.  I flew in one of those at least once between the West Coast and Osan AB, Korea.

Next is a World Airways Boeing 707.  We flew from Yokota Air Base, Japan to Travis AFB, California on a bird like that in the late 1960s.

And here’s a Pan Am 707 like the one we flew on from Frankfurt, Germany to McGuire AFB, New Jersey in the mid ‘70s.

And here’s another Boeing 707, this one in Northwest Orient colors, that’s similar to the one I flew to Osan AB, Korea in April of 1978.

And speaking of Northwest Airlines, here’s one of their Boeing 747s.

This is a Transamerica Airlines DC-8 the likes of which flew the California to Osan route for a period of years.

And a Transamerica Boeing 747:

This is a Federal Express Boeing 747.

 Take a closer look at the side of this baby.  What do you see?

That’s right.  This photo was taken just after Fedex bought out Flying Tigers.  You can see where Fedex painted over the Flying Tigers logo and slapped on a decal, instead.  I flew one just like it from Oakland International to Osan once.  Perhaps it was the very same aircraft.  I don’t think Federal Express had very many passenger-configured B-747s at the time. 

And last but not least is a rare one.  It’s a Trans Caribbean Airways DC-8.  We flew on one between McGuire AFB and England in the early 1970s.  The Web says that the airline was flagged in the Netherlands Antilles, so there’s no telling why the Air Force chartered that one.

She’s kind of a pretty one, isn’t she?

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