The Nip Nipper

an excerpt from Memories of the Jing Bao and Beyond
by Jack Z. Stettner

COULD YOU EVER imagine a relationship with machinery so close that you could actually visualize a unique personality?  Well I don't know whether the combat atmosphere had anything to do with it, but it happened to me. Initially when my own aircraft..."was trying to communicate with me." That was nothing compared to another airplane, named the NIP NIPPER. And I was not alone in sensing some weird things about aircraft #038.

Aircraft #38

NIP NIPPER seemed to have a mind of its own.  Its response to flight commands was sluggish.  If you turned the control wheel, seeking to initiate a turn, the airplane seemed to say: "Wait a minute.  I'm not so sure I want to do that." And then it would respond.  Most pilots felt very uneasy and avoided being assigned to the the NIP NIPPER.

At first, I felt that it was my imagination.  But then other things happened.  With the auto pilot off, the airplane nevertheless tried to take over control.  Believe me.  It's true.  I could feel it in the controls.  It was scary.  If I removed my hands from the control wheel or my feet from the rudder pedals, I could see the movement and feel the tugs.

But then you'll never believe it, while on the ground, taxiing out of the revetment and along the taxi strip, a wing tip struck a mud building, causing it to collapse and destroy two adjoining buildings in a cloud of dust and rubble. Chinese soldiers scrambled from the remains with thumbs pointed skyward, shouting: "Ding Hoa, Ding Hoa!" (meaning "OK, OK!").  The wing tip, I felt, actually reached out in an act of vengeance because the airplane just didn't want to go on the mission.

I visualized a stubborn airplane and continued to think I was imagining everything until years later while at the Honeywell Field Service School in 1952.  The NIP NIPPER had a Honeywell C-1 auto pilot.  The servo motors used to actuate auto pilot control ran continuously even when the auto pilot was off. Cork clutches in the servos were used by the auto pilot to control the aircraft action.  On rare occasion the cork would get wet and expand, causing the rotating servo motors to partially pass the affect and feel of auto pilot commands, even when the auto pilot was off.

So I found eight years later, that it wasn't my imagination. I also learned that the hesitant response of the airplane was due to loose rigging of the aircraft control cables.  It was not a personality characteristic.  It was a series of mechanical flaws.

Fortunately, in China, I had learned to deal with the problems in spite of the fact that I didn't understand them. I did not learn, however, how the wing tip actually stretched out to destroy those three Chinese houses.

Author Jack Stettner & the Nip Nipper