60,000 war-relief hatching eggs in Veterans Air DC-4 delayed in Portland
On 2 June 1946, the third <b>Veterans Air</b> flight for the UNRRA to Prague departed from Newark.1
While still over U.S. soil, heavy rain disrupted essential radio communications, forcing Captain William Jakeman to land the DC-4 in Portland, Maine. The Crew and five tons of crated hatching eggs awaited a Veterans Air radio tech to fly in from Newark for repairs. Their holdover period is unknown, but the Crew left in ample time to protect their cargo’s hatching schedule.
This forced landing event was not discovered through VAE research efforts – neither within company records nor press coverage. But in 1946 one of Captain Jakeman’s family members did clip and save an article. And, in 2017, Jake Jakeman, Captain Jakeman’s son, shared the clipping with me.2
See more videos and listen to other audio files here.
Good News. Press Covered Landing and Unique Cargo.
The story was a major surprise. The photo? The photo revealed pure treasure! Until that day, five of the Crew had merely been just names gathered in various research sources, never identified in photos. Now, here they were, all lined up and identified including their current home towns and Crew responsibilities.3
- Gerald Rowland, San Francisco, Navigator
- John Michatowski, Newark, N.J., Radio Operator
- Charles Freeman, Gastoni, N.C., Radio Operator
- William Moroz, Whippaney, N.J., Co-Pilot
- George Cannock, Edgewater, N.J., Flt. Engineer
- Capt. W. C. Jakeman, Boston, Chief Pilot
- Roy M. Lynnes, Chicago, UNRRA representative
- Capt. Joseph Neigel, Patterson, N.J., First Pilot
Challenges worth noting.
This event draws attention to a few of the critical factors embedded in each UNRRA contracted flight:
- Consistent temperature-control for delicate, soon-to-hatch poultry eggs. For airborne, on the ground, and varying flight levels in between, temperature maintenance was to be 55 degrees. 4 Veterans Air technicians developed the heating system to accomplish that before the first UNRRA flight departed in April 1946. The Flight Engineers took over the assignment from there…with the entire Crew on alert.
- Potential delays. Following the flight to Warsaw that he had commanded in May, Captain Jakeman was interviewed by Fred Graham at The New York Times. He described flying in weather as bad as he had ever encountered in his thousands of flight hours.5 But, unlike the forced delay in Portland enroute to Prague, landing to wait-out an unpredictable storm enroute to Warsaw was not an option because, depending upon how long they were forced to wait, the eggs could become unfit for hatching.
- Few-to-no accurate navigation aids. That called upon the Navigators to be map-less Barnstormers.6
- War-torn runway conditions. Before overhead-arrival in both Prague and Warsaw, runway conditions were uncertain – or unknown. Each trip demanded exceptional skills from the Cockpit Crew – and Barnstormer aptitude described by Captain Jakeman. Like determining wind direction for landing by the direction cattle faced on the runway and in near-by fields. “Cattle, any old barnstormer will tell you, always face away from the wind.”7
A few other Posts go into greater details about these subjects. But this seemed like a good opportunity to draw attention to them.