PA507 Stanley Morgenstern

I may have been the first B–26 pilot to have made a wheels-down landing with out the nosewheel. On the assumption that your readers may be interested in knowing how this was done, permit me to recap the procedure that led to a safe landing with no other damage to the airplane.

When the flight engineer told me that the nose wheel tire had taken a piece of flak and it was absolutely flat, I informed the crew that we would not bail out nor attempt a belly-landing. Instead, I would land the plane on the main gear only. As we approached Deccimomanu, I called the tower to notify them that I was going to make an emergency landing and requested that a flat -bed truck be waiting for us at the end of the runway. As I turned into the landing pattern, the bombardier, turret gunner, waist gunner, . and tail gunner went to their assigned positions as far back in the tail as they could possibly go. And to stay there until told to do otherwise. Upon touchdowns I kept the nosewheel up while keeping the tailskid from touching the ground. When tee plane had rolled to a stop, still in its nose high attitude, I had the tower instruct the truck-driver to back the truck up to the plane as far as he could. I then called the crew and told them to walk forward, one at a time, slowly. as they were called, until the last one started forward and the nose began to settle into the bed of the truck. The truck then pulled the plane off the runway and into the repair area. As I recall the Asst. Ops. Officer was Bob Wienberg; as soon as the tower notified Sqdn. Ops. of the emergency landing, he took a jeep and met us at the repair station. I explained to him why and how we brought the plane down safely.

How did I know that this would be a perfectly safe landing and that I was not exposing my crew to a life-threatening situation? It goes back to our 9 landing at the French airforce field at Rabat following our flight via the Southern route to North Africa. The jeep that met us at end of the runway led us to a parking spot where we sat while the pilot went into the Ops. • office for further instructions. From the co-pilots seat, I found myself facing a repair hangar with a 826 sitting outside the hangar waiting to be towed in. The doors had been rolled to the far side, but the tail of the 826, was much too high to clear the bar that the doors rolled on. There was a ore) tractor with a tow-bar attached to the front wheel, but it was not moving. Suddenly I saw some G.I.s climbing all over the plane; coming through the pilot's window, through the waist-gunners window, until there four of them G.I.s jumped off, one-at a time, the tail starting to come up slowly as the last man jumped off.

Now for the rest of the story: The next day Bob Weinberg came into my tent with "Morgenstern, thank God you made that landing yesterday! ! The same thing happened to me today... a flat nosewheel tire, so I did exactly what you told me you did yesterday and it worked perfectly! Otherwise I would have * had the crew bail out then pointed the plane toward the ocean and bailed out myself.

Do I believe in guardian angels? Three other incidents during the war have me wondering if there is some power outside of ourselves that direct our - 1ivés.

Stanley Morgenstern.

Original Source	PIMA ID	Donor ID	Category
Stanley Morgenstern	NA	PA.507-OCR	G-DA-OCR