Jack Shannon had begged me to do the run. I was the only pilot Shannon had who was dumb enough to go up with thunderstorm warnings in effect.
Most of our navigation over water was visual but thunderstorms could take the durable singe engine Beaver way off course in their powerful updrafts.
An eighteen-year-old native girl required immediate medical attention at the hospital in Port-au-Prince. She had a respiratory problem so breathing was extremely difficult for her. The nurse in her community of Jeremie had requisitioned Medi-vac a.s.a.p. Jeremie was about a hundred miles west of Port-au-Prince on the gulf coast.
Shannon Charters with their fleet of half-a-dozen tired Beavers and one newer twin Otter where under contract with the government to do Medi-vac missions when required.
The sky had that yellow hue as the nose of the Beaver lifted into the tropical sky. Thunderstorms were common ear the equator and they could be violent.
The trip to Jeremie was uneventful and touching down on the sandy beach my passenger Joujoue was waiting with the nurse. Joujoue was an attractive young girl bare breasted as was the custom of her people. I couldn't take my eyes off her perfect conical breasts with their puffy chocolate color nipples. She wore a small red loin cloth which displayed her lustrous black bush as she climbed into the cockpit, she obviously was wearing littler else.
It was a quick turnaround as I wanted to get back in the air and try to outrun the approaching low front and its unstable weather.
The Beaver quickly climbed to three thousand as I pointed her nose eastward.
We hit the first air pocket unsuspected and the usually stable dropped almost a hundred feet without warning.
I could see the fear on Joujoue's face, "It's just an air pocket." I comforted her.
I was getting a bit worried, the storm front was overtaking us. I throttled up and pulled the yoke back taking the Beaver up to three thousand feet. It was a futile effort to get above the weather, some of these thunderstorms rose thirty thousand feet into the sky.
The rain began hitting the windscreen like bullets and the sun's bright light diminished, we were in the grip of the storm.
The Beaver labored nobly on as the storm chewed on its tail. Suddenly a blinding bolt of lightening cracked just off our right wing. The aircraft bucked and went into a side slip loosing altitude at an alarming five hundred feet per minute.
At this rate we would slam into the sea below before the wings could recover their lift. My foot jammed down right full rudder and I fought pulling the yoke back into my chest.
The nose of the Beaver reared-up and once again the plane began to fly.
We had lost over two thousand feet and the water was zooming by just below out feet.
"Are we going to crash?" the horrified young girl cried.
Joujoue was tightly strapped into her seat and had turned very pale, her swarthy copper complexion now almost as pale as mine.
I knew I was not going to keep the plane in the air and my eyes quickly scanned the horizon for a spot to put down.
There was a stretch of white sand on the beach ahead that looked long enough to land. The Beaver only required a couple of hundred feet of roll out when she touched down
I throttled back and set the Beaver on a course for our emergency landing strip.
