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Answer by John Chesire, four decades of aviation experience:*
Compared with today’s passenger aircraft, they were much more difficult to fly. The instrumentation was minimal, and the control pressures were like driving a heavy dump truck.
While I was in the Navy and had a couple thousand hours flying fighter aircraft. I had the chance once to fly a Convair C-131 Samaritan.
It was the military version of the civilian Convair CV-240 family of airliners. I was very surprised at how difficult it was to fly compared with the F-4 and A-4 I was used to flying.
When I flew it as a co-pilot from Philadelphia to northern Minnesota, I had a few impressions. First, the controls were extremely stiff. It flew like a truck! The instrumentation was also minimal and spartan.
The main attitude indicator was the smallest I had ever seen, with the exception perhaps of the little T-34B. It made it difficult to fly in instrument conditions.
Flying cross-country in it, I found that it did not fly very high and could not get above the weather. Even worse, we encountered heavy icing over Lake Michigan and could not maintain altitude. Fortunately we got rid of the ice before we went into the water.
It was noisy and uncomfortable, and it was fatiguing to fly a long distance. And it was slow.
I enjoyed the opportunity and the experience; however, after that trip I was most happy to be flying fighters again.
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