field hospital. He’d fly them to a regular hospital where they could get better treatment. On his own. Nobody ever said anything as far as I know. That was Bill. The true Northwest tradition.” Chernich recalls, “I remember one long and very exhausting day when we made five trips to Seoul with wounded troops. Bill would probably made five more trips if there had been lights on the potato patch we came from.”8

            UN-99 was really Bill Dean’s baby, all agree. “He was a sailor too,” says Chernich. “He had a little sailboat we tooled around in Tokyo Bay. One day we becalmed and were towed in by a Japanese fishing boat. So he picked up a horsepower and half motor in Manila. One Sunday we were sailing down the Bay and Bill started worrying about saltwater corrosion. So we took the motor into the Tokyo Staff House in Shibuya – it had those deep bathtubs on the second floor. Varrrooommm! The ambience of a quite Sunday morning was shattered. We thought it was neat, but it didn’t make much of an impression with Staff House management. Bill, motor and I were quite unceremoniously escorted out.”

            “Bill Dean was an unusual man and a close personal friend. It was a privilege to have known him,” recalls retired Northwest pilot and History Centre volunteer Bob Mielke. “Bill lived to fly. He was always flying. He’d talk to you about flying all night if you would listen.”

            Did UN-99 ever run into any of the bad guys? “No,” says Wilkinson, “we avoided the hot combat zones but we had to keep our wits about us. Even with our own military controlling the air space. We had to sneak around now and then. One time we requested 7,000 feet to Tokyo and were told ‘Sorry, maybe you can sandwich yourself in-between’, or ‘Careful around Kimpo, we’re cross-hatch bombing today!” Once Jim looked down and saw an aircraft carrier, then looked up at their fighters flying cover. “They ignored us. We were just a little cork bobbing along. We weren’t going to hurt their little boat. At least it looked like a little boat from where we were.”

            Schwartz: “We didn’t wear our uniforms. Didn’t want to. If we got into trouble I’m sure the bad guys wouldn’t know the difference between an airline uniform and a military one.” Crews did carry a couple of modest firearms, though.

            As with Casey Jones’ fabled locomotive, faithful old UN-99 also met an ignominious fate. Taking off from Seoul City Airport, a dirt strip, John Denman and Wally Ristau lost an engine, both went at the same time, possibly because of contaminated gas, reports differ. Anyway UN-99 flopped down on a sandbar in the Han River, where sadly, it became an orphan. The United Nations, Northwest and the military all turned away from the wounded, bleeding old plane. At any rate UN-99 ended its days there. And so, too, ended this particular United Nations activity.

            You know, that was more than half-century ago,” says Wilkinson. “Memories fade, but I don’t remember anything too unpleasant. It was interesting, It was fun. I’m glad I was part of it.”