When Harold Welborn realized he was going to have to make an emergency landing of his two-seater plane on Highway 20 on Tuesday, the 81-year-old was far from panicked.

Compared with the 35 missions he flew in B-24 bombers during World War II as a navigator and gunman, the level of danger seemed pretty low.

Welborn said he was flying above the Cascade Mountain Range in his Pulsar XP airplane at about 3:30 Tuesday afternoon, when the engine began to sputter. He has been flying experimental aircraft for about 10 years, and built the plane by himself from a kit. He decided to switch to the left fuel tank, figuring the right tank must have been low.

”I was up at about 15,000 feet and was sucking on oxygen, because you need it up there,” he said. ”When I leveled out at about seven or eight thousand feet, it started sputtering on the left and I looked around and saw Highway 20 coming out of Bend.”

Welborn said the plane was headed down and, when he spotted an RV on the road, he realized where he would be landing. ”I saw a straightaway and it was all clear so I made my approach at about 75 miles per hour and landed at about 65,” said Welborn. ”I put on the brakes immediately and saw the lane was clear. I had the whole road at this point and there were no other cars. Then I started up a hill and saw a semi coming at me.”

Welborn slowed the plane and watched as the truck, continuing toward him, began to pull over.

”The truck slowed down, but before I got to him I made it to a turnout and stopped the plane there,” said Welborn.

According to an Oregon State Police report, troopers were summoned to the scene at about 4 p.m. After he made repairs to a fuel line, the highway was blocked and Welborn flew away, the report said.

”A highway patrolman came out and we found a fuel line had been cut and we took care of it,” said Welborn. ”They blocked the road for about 2,000 feet in front and behind me. It was a downhill so I took off and flew back to Prineville airport at about 7:30.”

Welborn, a navigator in the Air Force during World War II, is well versed in keeping a cool head when things get dicey during a flight.

He was drafted into the military at 19 and decided to go to navigation school rather than become a pilot – a position for which he qualified at the time.

He remembered a training flight in a B-24 bomber out of Westover, Mass. in January of 1944 when his navigation skills may have saved an entire crew.

”We were scheduled to go on a one thousand-mile trip out over the ocean and there I was navigating with a sextant,” said Welborn. A sextant is a navigational instrument used for measuring the altitudes of celestial bodies to determine latitude and longitude, according to Webster’s dictionary.

”We knew that there were going to be tailwinds of up to 100 miles an hour and it only took us 51 minutes to get from Long Island to an altitude of 21,000 feet,” he said. ”At 59 minutes I called the captain and told him to turn around because we had gone over 500 miles that quickly because of the wind. Boy, he fought me like hell on that one and I told him to turn it around and he could fight with me all he wanted on the way back.”

Welborn said the return flight to Westover took over four hours. Another B-24 sent out on the same training flight did not turn back in time, and the aircraft and its crew were lost, he said.

”The worst part of it was they knew they weren’t going to make it because they contacted shore, and shore told them they wouldn’t make it back,” Welborn said, welling up with tears. ”They didn’t have a navigator because he was sick that day.”

Welborn choked up every time he told a story about his fallen brothers.

”I lost a lot of friends,” he said, as his voice broke. ”It’s just been the last couple of years I’ve been able to talk about this. My family doesn’t even know what I did over there.”

Welborn said that, during a mission in early 1944, he was in the ”nose turret,” operating a .50-caliber machine gun when the plastic dome protecting him was shot off.

”So there you are out in the breeze at 21,000 feet and my oxygen line had been cut and I just kept on shooting,” said Welborn. ”I started to fall forward and the lead bombardier reached up and put an oxygen mask on me and saved my life.”

He is building yet another plane in his garage that he says will have twice the horsepower of his Pulsar.

”I know I’m lucky,” Welborn said. ”Right there, right where I stopped the plane by the highway, I found a penny and I picked it right up.”