This particular job I was sent on my own and had with me my two "Boi's" Sukarno and Jacob as my assistants.

This is an article from the aviation Digest, and outlines the pilots plight. He told me his biggest problem was stopping the passengers from jumping out of the aircraft. As below quoted.

"Concerned as we inevitably are with human error and judgement, it is often difficult to avoid presenting a rather negative view of air safety in the review of accidents and incidents published in the Digest. For this reason it is a welcome change when we can feature the positive side of accident prevention with an instance in which pilot skill and initiative have averted an almost certain catastrophe. The story that follows is one such case.

Many airstrips in the highlands of Papua New Guinea are notorious for their difficulty, and the one at Usarumpia, in Eastern New Guinea, is no exception. This one-way strip lies in rugged mountainous terrain at an elevation of 5700 feet. It is only 450 metres long, with a gradient of 1:10, and the lower end of the strip drops sharply into a mountain stream. Once having begun a take-off, there is little opportunity to abandon it without being involved in a disaster.

It was from this strip one morning that a private pilot planned to fly three passengers to the village of Marawaka 11 kilometres away. Immediately before take-off the pilot checked the controls of his Cessna 206 for full and free movement, then, satisfied they felt normal and were functioning correctly, lined up on the strip and opened the throttle. But about half way down the strip, as he eased back the control wheel to lift off, it moved freely in his hand and there was no response from the elevator. The question of abandoning the take-off flashed through the pilot's mind but he immediately thought better of it as an accident would have been inevitable.

Rotating of its own accord, the aircraft became airborne with the nose continuing to rise quite sharply. The pilot reduced power a little and the nose dropped back to a more normal climbing attitude. The airspeed fluctuated, but never rose above about 70 knots, and the pilot then found that as the aileron and rudder controls were still functioning, he could control the aircraft's attitude by varying the engine power. In an effort to gain a greater measure of control, the pilot tried different flap settings, but found the best result with the 15 degree flap setting he had used for take-off. He also experimented with the eleva­tor trim but as the aircraft was slow to respond, he decided that he was better off controlling the attitude with power.

Ahead of the aircraft now lay the twisting valley leading through the mountains to Marawaka, the aircraft's destination. With such limited attitude control, the pilot decided not to attempt to climb above the high terrain hemming the aircraft in on either side. As the one-way strip at Marawaka has the same elevation as Usarum­pia and is aligned with the valley, the pilot saw that his best hope was to continue up the valley to Marawaka and attempt a landing there.

Reporting his problem and his intentions to Lae Flight Service, the pilot followed the tortuous route through the valley. Though he was able to steer with ailerons and rudder, the pilot found that turbulence and the need for frequent power changes made it impossible to maintain anything like a constant attitude. But at last the strip at Marawaka hove into sight and the pilot reported he would be making a straight-in approach. Crossing the threshold at about 10 feet, the pilot reduced power slightly to descend, then increased it again to try and flare the aircraft. But the aircraft did not respond quickly enough and struck the ground heavily in a nose­down attitude, breaking off the nose leg. The aircraft bounced, struck the ground again and skidded off the strip to the right where, now at low speed, it ran down an embankment and somersaulted quite gently over on to its back. None of the four occupants were injured.

When the damaged aircraft was examined later, the bolt connecting the elevator push rod to the elevator torque tube horn was found to be missing, together with its lock nut. As a result the elevators had become disconnected, depriv­ing the pilot of longitudinal control.

Major repairs had been carried out to the rear fuselage of the aircraft a few weeks before the accident, during which the elevator controls had been disconnected. The bolt had been refitted on completion of the work, but apparently its retain­ing nut had been either not properly tightened or left off altogether. Though the bolt must have been at least partially in place while the pilot was carrying out his take-off check, it obviously fell out soon afterwards as the aircraft was taking off.

Serious as this omission was however, it is not our purpose to dwell on this aspect of the story, but rather to commend the pilot for his calm, resourcefulness and skill in the face of an ugly situation. In the ten minutes that he was airborne he schooled himself to control the aircraft with power, experimented with various flap settings to improve controllability, tried the elevator trim as a means of control, told one of his passengers to refasten his seat belt and made two calls to Lae Flight Service to advise them of his predicament - all the while guiding the aircraft at low level through the difficult winding valley to Marawaka.

Altogether it was an outstanding performance - a view with which the pilot's three passengers are certain to agree!"

This was a missionary aircraft, but the company I worked for brought the wreck and sent me in.