The first leg, Fort Bragg-Fort Lauderdale, was, in comparison to the rest of the trip, about as complicated as driving to a gas station and filling up. From there on, it got complicated.
It was impossible of course, to overfly Cuba. The first fueling stop from Lauderdale would be South Cariocas Island, which was 635 miles from Fort Lauderdale and about 250 miles northeast of the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo, on the eastern tip of Cuba. This would be about a four-hour flight in the L-23, which cruised at about 150 knots. If they left Fort Lauderdale as planned at 0800, they would make South Cariocas about noon.
Landing there posed no problems, because South Cariocas was a British possession, and there was a long-standing bilateral agreement that military aircraft of one nation could land at airfields of the other.
If they took off, as planned, from Cariocas at 1400, it would be a four-hour flight to cover the 600 miles to St. Maarten in the Leeward Islands. The Netherlands and France have shared administration of the island since 1648. To get permission to land there and at Paramaribo, Suriname, in Dutch Guinea, Mary Margaret Dunne had had to go the Netherlands Embassy in Washington. Colonel Felter had brought the documentation with him when he arrived at Bragg in a presidential Lear jet, with General and Mrs. Bellmon aboard, “coincidentally” just in time to witness the Oliver/Wood nuptials.
They would spend the night in St. Maarten, Jack had decided, both because they could probably get a much better dinner in St. Maarten than they could have in Port of Spain, their next stop, and because by then, they would have spent eight hours-plus in the L-23 and be tired.
If they left St. Maarten at 0730, as planned, they could make the 520 miles to Port of Spain, Trinidad, by noon. Trinidad, off the northeast tip of Venezuela, was a British possession and there was no problem landing there.
From Port of Spain to Paramaribo, Suriname, was 560 miles, or another four hours. If they left Port of Spain at 1330, as planned, it would take them four hours—until 1730, or thereabouts—to Belém, on the northern coast of Brazil.
The military attaché of the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, who handled military flight permissions over Brazil, smilingly told Mary Margaret that his friend, the U.S. military attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Brasília, would be green with envy and probably red in the face as well, when he heard that he was going to be asked to provide overnight accommodations for the crew of an L-23 ferrying the aircraft to the U.S. attaché in Buenos Aires. The American attaché in Brasília, he reported, had been trying for years, without success, to get an L-23 to fly between Brasília, in the center of the nation, to Río de Janeiro and Sâo Paulo, the two largest cities in Brazil, both many hundreds of miles from Brasília.
They would spent the night in Belém, before taking off at 0800 on the longest leg—right at 1,000 miles—to Brasília. That meant about seven hours in the air—approaching what Jack called the Bladder Limit Factor of the flight—but there was nothing that could be done about that except to remember to take the two empty quart plastic milk bottles from the baggage department before takeoff, and hope than no one had bowel problems.
They would spend the night in Brasília, and take off at 0800 for Sâo Paulo, on the Brazilian coast south of Río de Janeiro. That was a 550-mile leg—another four hours or so. After a quick fuel stop there, they would take off at 1230 for Pôrte Alegre, on Brazil’s Atlantic Coast, not far from the Uruguayan border, another 500-odd mile, four hour, plus or minus, leg.
It was another 520 miles from Pôrto Alegre to Buenos Aires, or a final four hours in the air, most of it over Uruguay. If they could take off from Pôrto Alegre at 1800, that would put them into Ezeiza, Buenos Aires’s international airfield, at 2200 or thereabouts.
“All of this,” Jack had announced, “presumes that nothing will go wrong. Does anyone wish to offer me odds that nothing will go wrong?”
“You sure you want to spend twelve hours in the air the last day? And the final four hours at night?” Lt. Col. Craig W. Lowell asked. Lowell had flown up from Strike Command at McDill Air Force Base to “check final arrangements,” his trip “coincidentally” permitting him to witness the Wood/Oliver