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

The Night We Blitzed Aberdeen

From the South China Morning Post 
Written by Jo Bowman

April 16, 2000

A RETIRED US air force pilot who flew dozens of raids over wartime Hong Kong believes the bomb found near Queen Mary Hospital last month was one he dropped on a mission 55 years ago.

Former "Flying Tiger" Jack Stettner, now 76, told the Sunday Morning Post he recalled a flight to bomb Kowloon docks that went severely off course in heavy cloud.

Lieutenant Stettner

"It's very possible that it was one of mine," he said of the 127kg bomb found on a building site near the Pokfulam hospital three weeks ago. Police bomb disposal experts who carried out a controlled explosion on the device said that had it gone off, it would have wiped out much of the hospital.

Mr. Stettner said he had heard of the find through a friend in Hong Kong and immediately remembered a raid on August 1, 1944, when he was a 21-year-old flier in the 14th air force.

"We were intending to go to Kowloon but we didn't make it," he said from his home in New Hampshire.

"We had been coming down the Formosa (now Taiwan) Strait and when I asked for a heading into Hong Kong, the flight engineer said three generators were out and my navigator said he couldn't give me a heading.  We went in south of the place we were supposed to turn and that's what led us to Aberdeen." Aberdeen, next to Pokfulam, was a secondary target at the time, and Mr. Stettner was flying his B24 bomber between two "Thunderheads" which were providing cover from anti-aircraft missiles fired by the Japanese occupying forces.

B-24 Flight Crew

"It was cloudy.  The mission report say there was seven-tenths could cover, but we saw lights," Mr. Stettner said. "Our bombardier just went for the lights.  It suggests that the bomb that was discovered could very well have been from that night."

Originally from Brooklyn in New York, Mr. Stettner spent 10 months in charge of a young and frightened 11-man crew flying raids on Hong Kong from bases near Guilin on the mainland.

"We were very fearful of Hong Kong because it was very well defended," he said.  "We heard that if you got within 20 miles, the whole sky would be full of anti-aircraft fire and there would be no chance of getting there. We were all very, very frightened of it, but that wasn't a reason not to do it. We believed it was necessary so we could have peace and stop the killing, and we didn't panic, which was very important. I don't think we realized that at such a young age, that there's nothing wrong with being frightened -- just don't panic.  You think back to it and I'm glad we were able to carry it out as well as we did."

As First-Lieutenant Stettner of the 308th bomb group, he flew 44 missions over Hong Kong.

In China

"Our principal effort was against shipping -- we were trying to cut off Japanese shipping into Indochina (now Vietnam) and further south," he said.

"Of course we were hitting land targets too.  My crew sunk seven ships and had one probable (sinking).  As far as land targets were concerned, we did a lot of damage.

"Thank God for the diversions though," he said.  "One day we went into town, Guilin, with Red Cross bags full of Chinese money.  We spent it all on fireworks.  With arms full of firecrackers and rockets, we ran into a Chinese religious procession with large paper-mache figures and kids urging us to light the firecrackers.  We unloaded and lit everything while the kid jumped and danced.  It was great fun.  It was very good to be young."  His co-pilot, radar operator, nose gunner, flight engineer and navigator are still alive and he is in contact with most of them.

Mr. Stettner left the air force after three years' service and became a civilian pilot for Veterans' Airlines, which flew cargo and passengers around the US and later flew United Nations drops into eastern Europe.

He married wife Dorothy in 1948, and they have three children and three grandchildren.  Mr. Stettner later studied to be an engineer, and his work has brought him back to the Far East many times.  He was last in Hong Kong in 1982.

"I've been back to Hong Kong a number of times, in fact my wife came with me in 1977 and I took her to the Kowloon docks and showed her where we bombed on another mission, but obviously there was no sign of that," Mr. Stettner said.

"The whole thing was quite an adventure."

My Aviation Heritage

B-24 Liberator

It started for me at the age of three with my first "flight".  My uncles bought a big toy airplane, with pedals and large enough for me to sit in.  The "flight" was high up above their heads as they lifted me and the plane.  I decided, right there and then, to learn to fly as soon as my legs were long enough to reach the pedals.

I soon learned to read about flying in the comics and related to my namesake, Smiling Jack.  Growing up in Brooklyn, Floyd Bennett Field became the first for real life experiences, as I had lots of thrills observing both flying model and real life airplanes.  At the age of 13, my best friend and I went by subway train to the opening of LaGuardia.  Wow, what an amazing event with airliners and formations of Army aircraft, directly over our heads, descending to the runway.

Then, in 1939, I saw a great air show at Newark Airport.  The precision, daring and expertise truly found a lasting place in my psyche.  I later tried to duplicate their eight point rolls, octagon loops and other expert maneuvers when  training as an Aviation Cadet.  That's when I truly learned, not how to do it, but to realize how very great those pilots were.

With my sister, Lillian 

A year later, I had my very first real life opportunity to fly.  My brother had just started taking lessons and he asked his instructor to take me up in his biplane.  Well that was it!  Flying was to be my life.  The very first thing that followed was improvement in my schoolwork.  I knew that learning was important.  My family was not wealthy and I could not plan on costly lessons.  So I began to think of the military services.  A college degree was a requisite.  That too looked so difficult.  Well, my brother sponsored the first semester tuition and I started with Aeronautical Engineering at NYU.  But four years was seen as so far into the future and others joined me in actively considering the Canadian Air Force.  But Pearl Harbor changed that.  Seeking to get my parent's approval, I agreed to complete the first full year and then join the U.S. Army Air Corp.

My first book, Memories of the Jing Bao and Beyond, describes my participation in the war years and the airline we created immediately after -- Veterans Airlines.  Needless to say, aviation heritage progressed significantly during those turbulent years.  We had to press every dimension of aviation capability and grow our capabilities around the world to save the world.



Veterans Airlines Globe Trotter

Once again, realizing the need to learn more, I went back to school to earn my engineering degree.  My aviation background, coupled with the new knowledge led me towards concentration in aeronautics and defense.  I joined Minneapolis Honeywell as a Service Engineer, located in the field with assignments in New York City, Long Island and the New York State region.  The title of Service Engineer strongly influenced my actions in that I went out with the primary intent to be of service to the airlines and defense contractors.  Fortunately, I had a reasonably free hand to exercise my own judgment.  Having just completed four months of added training at the company's Aeronautical Division field service school, I became highly familiar with their flight control, fuel gage, air data and other products.  Hence, I was in a good position to be of service.

Since my first love was aviation, I started with the airlines located at Idlewild (now Kennedy) and LaGuardia.  As a direct extension, also with key executives located in the headquarters in Manhattan, a few key things developed.  For example, the Honeywell fuel gage system employed new technology.  The first such systems were on Pan American DC-6B aircraft, replacing the old float gages, which were inaccurate and highly unreliable.  I had little difficulty conducting classes for the Pan Am mechanics at Idlewild and they had virtually no problem keeping them maintained.  But, as it worked out, that in and of itself created a problem.  The mechanics tended to the DC-6B systems so infrequently that they soon forgot most of what I had taught them.  (I called that the Maytag problem.)  So I went back and refreshed their expertise.  When the new technology system was put in their DC 7s, everything went very well and I continued to offer refresher help.

Pan Am Douglas DC-6

Then when Pan Am was planning to buy 707 and DC-8 jet aircraft, my role at the executive level was expanded.  I was in the Chrysler Building (Pan Am's) when John Borger and his assistant asked if I could help them.  They said, "Come with us" and led me to an open area of the building where a few rows of airline seats were positioned.  John asked me to just sit in one of the seats, then another, and asked how they felt beneath the knees, back, etc.  I didn't know what was going on.  But then learned that I was helping them decide on the seating for the new jet age.  Another aviation heritage milestone.  Similar experiences occurred with American Airlines when I helped them decide on new inlet temperature sensor for their Lockheed Electra aircraft.  Also with Eastern Airlines and others.  My expertise was not really that broad but the confidence from my earlier service actions was genuine.

Entering the jet age -- a Boeing 707

Another matter had to do with safety.  American Airlines, among others, became very concerned about the many aircraft in the skies both en route and around the airports, all traveling at increasingly greater speeds.  A Northwest Airlines pilot had designed a new technology system of strobe lights with both high visibility and means to indicate relative direction of flight.  My company licensed the "Atkins" light technology and it was my job to introduce it to the airline management and convince them of its merits verses the older swinging red lights system.  The FAA also had to be convinced, as they couldn't seem to be drawn from the color red and what had been the traditional method.  I worked primarily with Dan beard, VP for safety at American.  He was fully convinced and was more concerned about the possible imminence of a midair collision than was apparent with bureaucracy.

We jointly decided that the best and fastest way to resolve the issue was to view both systems at night from an observer aircraft.  American donated a DC-6 for the occasion and invited key people from the other airlines to join us aboard the observer aircraft.  Grimes and Honeywell agreed to the competitive exercise, each with their own "target" aircraft.  The net result was that American adopted the new, safer system and equipped their entire fleet of aircraft.  United and others stayed with the older type for which they were already equipped.  The FAA proved to remain a problem.  They maintained that red means danger and resisted American's intent to use blue-white flashing strobe lighting.  We showed them actual data to prove how much more visible the strobe lights were and how well their pilots could locate and determine actions which would ensure safe distance and follow up action to avoid possible emergencies in the air.  When we stressed that red lighting was actually used inside the aircraft to reduce distracting pilot observation, the FAA ultimately gave in after American had actually started to equip their aircraft.

Lockheed Constellation


Another milestone of aviation occurred in the mid to late fifties, when the threat of ICBM attack dictated rapid emplacement of DEW line radars across the continent.  A friend, who know of my contact, called and asked if I could help him to locate and buy all kinds of aircraft: C-47s at $125,000/each; C54-Gs at $650,000, Lockheed Constellations at $1.2 million, etc.  He said there was urgent national need for expanded air transport to quickly get the equipment and workers to the many distant locations and money was at hand.  Time was of the essence.  He said we could each take a reasonable finder's fee for each aircraft bought and sold.

Wow, that sounded very exciting and it was so very important.  I told a friend in our office and we both set out (on the office phones) to look around.  This went on intensively, with each of us counting in a great commission and our wives dreaming of furs and all kinds of goodies.  Finally, we did in fact locate an airplane, a Constellation.  The only problem was that the purchase price of $1..35 million was too much.  I decided to reduce my take and finally got the price within $50,000 -- however, still in the wrong direction.  It was thus decided that we would all arrange letter contracts with our contacts and quickly bring the buyer and seller together to agree on an equitable price with provisions for a modest $2,000 finder's fee for each of us.

We subsequently met at my house, started to read each other's letter contract, when one of the guys said:  "Wait a minute.  The phone number on this letterhead is the same as on mine."  Well, it turned out that we had so many middlemen, each looking for a piece of the action and there really was no plane.  Someone put hope into the action and we all bid to reduce the difference.  But in the end, hope was all there was.  But it was great fun.

The end nevertheless was successful.  Aviation transport capacity was rapidly increased to meet the nation's urgent demands.  The ICBMs stayed in their silos.  The DEW line went up.  And hope, in the broader sense, survived.

Old Pilots, New Pilots

My son, Al, with a PT-19 -- my former training plane


More than thirty years after my last mission, I flew in the right seat next to another Stettner pilot.  My son, Al, lad recently gotten his pilot's license and was taking me up in his Pip Cherokee.  Woefully underpowered at only 140 horsepower and carrying the maximum load of two adult men, this was quite a different experience than flying in my B-24 with a full crew and a load of bombs.  With the summer temperature at about 95 degrees, the little Cherokee used the entire length of the 1,800-foot runway just to lift off.  However, getting airborne wasn't enough -- there were trees in our path and climbing with two people on board on such a hot day was a real challenge for the meek 140 horsepower engine.  Full flaps, full power and wishful thinking enabled us to just barely clear the trees.  In fact, I think we took a few leaves with us in the undercarriage.  But we were flying.

Piper Cherokee

It was great being in the air again with my son at the controls.  After about 20 minutes, we reached the plane's maximum altitude.  My son told me: "You've got it" and he let go of the controls.  I grabbed the control yoke and found flying the single engine Piper was a heck of a different experience than flying a big lumbering four-engine bomber.  The little plane responded with the slightest movement of the controls.  After a while my son said:  "Go ahead and take her in.  You fly the approach!"  However, I was doing all I could to just keep it flying straight and level, so I told him he should take it over for the landing. 

"I would be much more comfortable if this plan had three more engines", I told him.  But my genes must have passed on to the next generation because my son flew a beautiful approach and landed right on the numbers.  The next generation of Stettner pilots had arrived.