How One Pilot's 'IMPOSSIBLE' Glide Landed 50 Planes With Zero Fuel Left

How One Pilot's 'IMPOSSIBLE' Glide Landed 50 Planes With Zero Fuel Left

On the afternoon of July twenty-third, nineteen forty-four, Captain Charles Sweeney sat in the cockpit of a C-47 transport aircraft thirty-five miles southwest of Myitkyina, Burma, staring at fuel gauges that read empty. Behind him in the cargo bay sat forty-two wounded soldiers who needed immediate medical evacuation. Around him in the sky circled forty-nine other C-47s, all carrying wounded men, all running on fumes, all watching to see what Sweeney would do. The nearest airfield capable of handling mass casualties was Henderson Field, fifty-eight miles away across mountainous jungle terrain. His engines should have quit five minutes ago.
Sweeney was twenty-eight years old, from Worcester, Massachusetts. He'd learned to fly in nineteen thirty-seven at a small airport outside Boston, paying for lessons by working as a mechanic. Flying had been expensive back then, ten dollars an hour for instruction, and Sweeney had needed every hour he could afford. He'd worked nights at a textile mill, saved his money, and showed up at the airport every Saturday morning until he'd accumulated enough hours for his commercial license. When the war started, he'd enlisted in the Army Air Forces, completed military pilot training at Randolph Field in Texas, and been assigned to transport duty. By July nineteen forty-four, he'd been flying cargo and personnel in the China Burma India theater for fourteen months.
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