Curtiss C-46 Commando

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In the 1950s and 60s, Interior Airways in Fairbanks, Alaska had two C-46s. One was an original from WWII (N60V) and the other one had been updated. The original C-46s did not have a fireproof dishpan as it was called but better known as a firewall, so if an exhaust stack failed, you ended up with a fire that would take off the wing among other things. Also the first C-46s had Curtis Electric props that were very tempermental and subject to runaways.

The FAA would not allow Interior to fly N60V with passengers, only outsized cargo that would not fit in other available aircraft. At the time Interior was servicing the North Slope during the initial search for crude oil. This was exciting times for us young guys. On one trip we hauled a disassembled D-4 Cat in the C-46 and landed on a gravel bar 23 miles south of what is now Prudhoe Bay. They reassembled the Cat and built a real gravel runway on the river bar and called it Sag #1 Airstrip. A few months later in May 1965, the first oil samples for Atlantic Richfield (now ARCO) were flown out in the other C-46, and the North Slope oil boom commenced. Interior Airways also had another relic--a C-82 Packet with an old gas burning jet mounted on the top of the fuselage. Sorry no pictures as cell phones had been invented then.
Dick Welsh
 
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