We used to have a Fox Photo (anyone remember actual camera film?) processing plant here in town. They contracted a few small planes and pilots.
You'd drop your film off at a Fox Photo location, they'd stuff all the day's orders into in a canvas bag or two, drive it to an airport, and these little planes would fly in, pick up the bags, and hop from town to town all over the midwest. Then they'd end up here in South Bend, IN. The stuff would get developed overnight, and in the morning, the pilots would revers their course.
Anyhow, they were typically young pilots wanting to build hours for their commercial licenses, instruments, and in some cases, twin engine licenses. Well, many of these guys were your typical fly-boys, bomber jackets and Ray Bans, and seemed they'd have a different girl with them every week along for the ride. So, several of theses guys, for whatever reason (keep your mile-high club comments to yourself), would forget to put the landing gear down and skid the planes in on the runway.
I was on call a lot, so I'd get a call from airport security to come in and tow a plane off the runway. I'd drive in, hop on the tug, get my security escort and we'd head out the taxiway. It was kind of comical....
You'd make the turn from the taxiway onto the runway, and as you get closer to all the emergency vehicles, you see a white streak on the runway that quickly faded to silver right up to a plane sitting on its belly....
That was the white paint getting ground off before it turned to aluminum! :laughing:
And the props were always bent back a foot or so.
You'd look around at all the people, and there'd be the guy in the bomber jacket standing there with his hands in his pants pockets looking at the ground, and one time in particular, 5-6 firemen talking to a cute girl in a rabbit fur jacket. :laughing:
So they'd stuff air bags under the wings, lift it with CO2 tanks, install cribbing, lift, cribbing, repeat, until the plane was high enough to deploy the landing gear. Then they'd say "Your turn, flyboy." and the pilot would get in and put the gear down. Then they'd remove the cribbing and bags, and I'd hook up to the nose wheel and tow him in. He had to sit in the plane for the ride of shame back to the ramp.... the girl rode in the firetruck.