What a bullet hole taught one pilot about the importance of local knowledge

By MACK McKINNEY

Moonshine and flying don’t mix — but not like you think.

I learned that lesson years ago as a student pilot flying in Tennessee.

Tennessee is a wonderful state. The people where we lived were super friendly and the little airport where I learned to fly was something Norman Rockwell should have painted: A few dozen airplanes, a well-kept grass strip, no encroaching houses to force noise-abatement departures or approaches, and plenty of undeveloped land to practice over.

The Great Smoky Mountains are a wonder to behold and the best place to see them is from the air. I recall one cool October Saturday morning when I flew over them, VFR, in my rented Cessna 172, with my noise-canceling headset muffling the engine and wind noises. I remember smiling to myself at the peaceful, slightly foggy Smokies and thinking how blessed I was to fly there.

I also remembered the few key points my excellent flight instructor had given me about local area procedures, mainly just staying clear of the towered military airfield south of our little airstrip and watching for its traffic.

But he also shared:

• As you turn base for Runway 2, you should be overhead the water tower by the school.
• Watch for medical helicopters taking off from the hospital. They take off in all directions and sometimes forget to transmit positions and headings after takeoff.
• Be careful when flying within five miles of that private airstrip. They fly gliders on the weekend and you will see parachutists occasionally, once a month or so, usually on Saturdays. And that activity is not always specifically NOTAM’d.
• Etcetera.

It is the “etcetera” that almost killed me.

Nobody told me about a significant, hidden threat lurking in those mountains.

First, what the problem was not:

• It was not mountain winds: I was warned about the mountain waves that can occur downwind of mountains, with strong downdrafts and unpredictable turbulence.
• It was not flying into IMC conditions: I knew that adiabatic cooling can be dangerous for unwary VFR pilots. When the wind moves against mountain ranges, the mountains “herd” the wind up their windward slopes and pilots are trained to be wary of both the updrafts and the downdrafts. And those same winds can rapidly form clouds.
• It was not rapid formation of fog in valleys. Pilots learn how to avoid fog, caused when the air carries significant moisture and the air temperature drops to within a few degrees of the dewpoint. The moisture can become visible as fog or clouds. The Smoky Mountains got their name from the fog that forms in the valleys and sometimes gets lofted up into smoke-like wisps.

So, what the heck WAS the problem? What almost brought me and the C-172 down that day?

It goes back to those wisps of fog over the Smoky Mountains that day: They were not fog.

I learned that after landing back at the airfield. As I was shutting down the engine, the pilot scheduled to fly the C-172 after me walked up to my window. After some small talk he asked “Was this here before you took off?”

It took a full five seconds for me to realize what he was showing me — his pinky finger had disappeared into the lower skin of the aircraft’s wing! He was showing me a hole remarkably close to my left wing’s internal fuel tank.

Not sure what we were looking at, we walked into the little “Flight Ops” trailer and asked the three old-timers there what that hole could be.

One grizzled guy tilted his head and a wry smile crept across his face as he said, “Let me guess. You were flying below 5,000 AGL and above 3,000 AGL. And you were over the foothills of the Smokies. And in that white Skyhawk out there.”

“Did you see those white wisps spiraling up from the valleys and mountains?” he continued. “That was smoke, not fog. Those are moonshine stills and those boys thought you were a fed (US federal agent of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms), looking to locate moonshiners so ground crews could shut ‘em down.”


Another pilot standing with us at the airplane looked at the top of the wing and sagely explained like Sherlock Holmes or Detective Olivia Benson from Law and Order: “From the looks of that hole, you were shot with a handgun, probably .45 caliber. Any lower than about 3,000 feet and the bullet would have clipped through the top skin too. And any higher than 5,000 feet and they wouldn’t have tried to shoot you with a pistol. The bullet was tumbling when it hit you because the hole isn’t round and it didn’t have enough oomph to also go through that wing’s upper skin.”

“If the old boy had used a rifle, the round would have popped through the upper wing surface too, instead of just causing that up there,” he added as he pointed to a bump in the upper surface above the hole.

We looked for the bullet but it had rolled out, probably through the flap opening.

So while I was practicing turns around a point, someone on the ground was practicing marksmanship on an 80 mph target.

Three things caused this dangerous situation:

1. I knew too much and got complacent: I knew about fog in the Smokies and that led me to conclude that every mountain wisp was fog. The idea of smoke wisps, not fog, scattered in that heavy forest, never occurred to me.
2. I didn’t know enough: I lacked local knowledge about flying over those foothills and the moonshiner danger associated with such flying. Better local area training would have warned me to do those flight maneuvers someplace else.
3. My noise-canceling headset worked too well. It canceled too much sound. I never heard the thwack of the bullet hitting my wing a few feet from my left ear. But maybe it wasn’t audible anyway.

A bullet in a wing tank might not have caused a fire or explosion. But it would have emptied that fuel tank quickly and, had I missed that situation, I would have had only half the fuel I thought I had.

And even if the fuel tank had not been penetrated, an aileron cable or flap actuation control rod, motor, or cable could have been rendered inoperable. The former could have made the aircraft uncontrollable and the latter, at the very least, would have made for an exciting full-flap approach back at the home ‘drome.

This is when the old test pilot adage comes into play “if doing something causes the airplane to misbehave, undo whatever you just did.”

Asymmetric (one side only) flap extensions have killed people when they happened too near the ground for the pilot to regain control.

You may have already thought of another possible damage scenario: The obvious damage that could have been done not to the airplane but to me!

A rifle round slamming into my human bottom could have ruined my day. And even a slower .45 or .357 caliber round that punches through one layer of aluminum and still has enough momentum to deeply dent another layer, could have rearranged key parts of my anatomy. That could have given a whole new meaning to “flying by seat of your pants.”

The incident taught me some invaluable lessons I remember to this day:

• Some things cannot be learned from flight manuals.
• Have a questioning mind: I had seen those smoke trails before and wondered what they were.
• Tell the old-timers at the airport where you plan to fly. Local knowledge is priceless to flying safely, no matter where you are.

When I told the story that evening, my wife Cindy said I should use black tape to put foot-wide letters on the aircraft’s belly saying “NOT A FED.”

Fly safely out there, people.

Mack McKinney is a USAF veteran, pilot, and author of books and aviation safety articles. As a business development expert and motivational speaker, he shares success stories and resilience strategies. He can be reached at [email protected] and MackMcKinney.com.