Director, Jim Davis, suggested the possibility of making an engine carrier out of it. We were making from 90 to as high as 110 engine changes a year overseas. Connies were on the ground sometimes as long as a week, while TWA flew an engine over from the States in one of the C-54 cargo flights, and it was expensive. We checked with Douglas and found they had done the engineering for the Air Corps for a C-47 engine carrier with a special large door, an underfloor tracked winch the length of the cabin and an aluminum girder folding exterior platform from which the engine could be winched in or out of the airplane. It was removed or placed on the platform with a Plan D tower which every TWA station had. Further, Douglas had already built a prototype modification kit when the war ended and the Army dropped the project. I talked John Collings into the idea of a C-47 engine carrier and he bought the prototype parts kit Douglas still had and approved a $30,000 overhaul of the airplane and installation of the special equipment. We flew ETT-12 to Prestwick, Scotland and turned it over to Scottish Aviation, who did a complete airplane overhaul and performed all Douglas ADs on it and painted it silver for corrosion protection. Radio and instrumentation was conformed to Constellation configuration for parts availability in the field and a second reincarnation of the old C-47 was finally ready to begin its fabulous airline career. Over the next six years, ETT-12, flown by myself or one of my successive Staff Directors of Flying Joe Carr, Gordon Granger or Neal Lytle as Captain and Claude Girard or Pete Boe or Engine Change Foreman Lucien Picollier as copilot, covered every engine change in International for TWA and also for Air France. It flew International Red Cross emergency airlifts, flew rescue crews into aircraft accident sites, flew search missions, evacuated critically ill or injured medical patients, carried out the bodies of aircraft accident victims and many other mercy missions. All the original VORS on the TWA route were bought and installed by TWA and were flown into the sites of Elba, Cantanzaro, Crete, Alexandria and Cairo by ETT-12. a spare Connie engine on a special cradle was kept In Paris, loaded at all times, cleared through customs, fueled to Rome distance and on a constant fifteen minute day and a thirty Any time a Connie reported an engine minute night standby. failure in flight and which airport it was proceeding toward, ETT-12 would be airborne within fifteen minutes or less, cleared by customs and ATC direct from the hangar. Our maintenance standard was to put a Connie back in the air within twelve hours of the engine failure anywhere within one thousand miles of Paris. South of Rome and east of Cairo, longer engine delivery times were naturally dictated by the distance to be flown. The ground station where the Connie landed was responTARPA TALES
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