🚀 go-pugleaf

Somebody wrote:
> 

> PS - since this post relates to Jim Jones and since it was also posted
> to alt.military (and I don't have a clue why the OP did so), here is
> a tidbit of interesting info that is not exactly commonly known. Does
> anybody out there realize that Jim Jones and his followers actually
> managed to cause a military cargo aircraft to become haunted?
> It is true... according to USAF flight crew members back in the
> early1980s, C-141 tail number 50220 is the plane that carried
> all the dead bodies out of Guiana after Jim Jones' death party.
> Before that time this aircraft, based at Charleston AFB, SC was
> a smooth running plane, but afterwards it began to break down
> so frequently that it almost became legendary. I was a witness to
> this fact because at the time I worked on Ascension Island, South
> Atlantic some 6000 odd miles from Charleston where most of our
> supply aircraft runs originated. The guys at Charleston would work
> on the plane until they thought they had it fixed, then send it out
> on the long flight down to Ascension to test it out. More than half
> of the time, this plane would end up breaking down on Ascension
> or along the way and would have to go back to Charleston for yet
> another round of repairs. Most of the time, all of the other 141's
> ran smoothly and only occasionally had breakdowns, but not this
> plane. Anytime that one of us was due to go on vacation and saw
> that plane sitting on the tarmac, somebody would end up saying,
> "Oh no... your plane is '220... you will never get there on time"!!!

You are aware that no one in the Air Force ever uses the
term "tarmac" to indicate any portion of the flightline,
ramp, parking pad, taxiway, runway, or anything else?

Bozo reporters, on the other hand,  evidently love to use the
word, thinking it sounds as though it were airfield-related
jargon.

It is possible that there might have been some military
folks using the term during the early days of World War I.
That's about the time that the (British-invented) "tarmac"
(short for "Tar Maccadam") paving method was eclipsed by
more modern types.  Tarmac was mostly a mixture of tar, coal 
cinders, and ash, providing a very rough-grained but 
reasonably weatherproof surface - more lasting than the
plain gravel roadways it repaved.

Bottom line: this is NOT a first-hand account... though it
is widely known that the Jim Jones mortuary flights made the
aircraft used for purpose STINK for years afterward.

No one who uses the term "tarmac" has ever spent any real time
on a flightline.

DD - former Msgt, USAF