A 19 yr-old mechanic at Naha AB on Okinawa didn’t believe he needed any instruction for his flight in May 1962.

 The airman, as­signed to the 51st Field Mainte­nance Squadron, for reasons only he and his psychiatrist know, de­cided he wanted to fly one of the base’s Gooneys. 

Although he had only seven hours of instruction in a light, single-engine plane, he was apparently convinced that the C-47 was so easy to fly that he could do it alone. 

 When no one was looking on a late afternoon, he boarded a Gooney, started engines, and taxied out without radio contact with the tower. The base was alerted, and when it was established who was aboard, Capt. Dallas H. Pope and Lt. Col. Robert E. Woody took off in another Gooney to try to talk the airman down. As they flew forma­tion and began to talk with him, they found that the cover to the airspeed pitot tube had not been removed, but had been partially torn by the wind. His airspeed reading was about twenty percent less than the actual speed.

 Colonel Woody, flying copilot, began instructing the airman in a calm voice how to reduce the power and prepare for a landing.

 The first pass at the field was too high, apparently because the airman could not bring himself to pull the throttles back. Colonel Woody in­structed him to go around and then set him up for a long, straight-in approach. This time the errant Gooney got down to fifty feet and had to go around again. A report of the incident tells what happened next: 

 “By now the sun had dropped be­low the horizon, and dusk was be­ginning to fall. A thin layer of scud clouds had begun to form at about 800 feet, and concern was mount­ing. Captain Pope decided that he could best judge [the airman’s] ap­proach by positioning the nose of his plane underneath the tail of [the airman’s] craft. Another long, straight-in approach was estab­lished. 

The landing gear and flaps were set for the landing miles from the runway. Colonel Woody estab­lished [the airman’s] approach speed at slightly above landing speed and told him to concentrate on maintaining his wings level for lineup with the runway. He told the airman to disregard his instruments and to look only at the runway and follow precisely his instructions on use of the throttles. 

By this method, [the airman] was talked down to within one foot of the runway sur­face, at which time Colonel Woody instructed him to cut the power and concentrate on keeping the aircraft straight down the runway until it coasted to a stop. When the plane was landed and under control, [the airman] taxied to base operations and shut down the engines.”

https://www.airforcemag.com/article/1285gooney/