Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (27 page)

An hour later we were back onboard the
Nassau
.

FLYING LIFE FOUR

THE BRITISH ROYAL NAVY

1983–1985

The Sea King Mk IV “Commando” is a British-built version of the Sikorsky H-3. The Royal Navy uses the aircraft as their primary utility/medium lift aircraft to support the Royal Marines. The Brits often fly them single pilot, unlike US military helicopters which almost always have two pilots. The Royal Navy helicopter squadrons that support the Royal Marines are known as the “Junglies,” a nickname given them by the British Army in the early 1960’s. The locals in Borneo were in insurrection and the Navy flew their Westland Whirlwind helicopters (British-built version of the Sikorsky H-19) in support, giving the British infantry the mobility they needed to defeat them. A ten-minute helicopter flight took the soldiers farther than they could march through the jungle in an entire day—in other words, the same thing the US did on a much more massive scale in Vietnam a few years later. But in addition to jungle work, the “Junglies” must be prepared to fight anywhere, including the Arctic and the desert.

24

SAND

EAST OF ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT ■ NOVEMBER 1983

A
s soon as the Mark IV Sea King was turned up, engines running fine and blades spinning at full RPM, the wind through the small window had begun cooling off its interior. Even though it was January, the sun heated up the Egyptian air quickly in the morning. The gritty sand blew in both sides of the aircraft. My helmet visor and my squinting to keep it out of my eyes did not stop the overall dirty feeling I had from the last two days of sleeping in a tent beside a desert road, just below where the squadron’s aircraft were parked, about ten miles west of Alexandria. The day before, we had flown in from the HMS
Hermes
after she had anchored in Alexandria Harbor.

This morning’s mission was simple, to give a familiarization flight, a “dollar ride,” to the two companies of Egyptian commandos that waited on the other side of our small camp. We would take them up one squad at a time for a quick flight around the area of the camp so they could get the feel of helicopter flying. After their morning familiarization flight, our five-helo assault flight would take them across 25 kilometers of desert to a landing zone for an exercise assault on a hypothetical enemy in the early afternoon.

Earlier, with the help of an interpreter, they had been trained in how to approach the aircraft, how to board and strap in, and how to exit ready for combat. Watching the training and observing how they handled their weapons made me glad they did not have live ammo. In American assault helicopters, the combat troops always point their rifle down toward the floor so that if there is an accidental discharge, the bullet will go through the aircraft floor and not up into the transmission or rotors. It doesn’t help to point them at the floor of a Sea King MK IV because that’s where the fuel tanks are, so at a minimum, should someone shoot down through floor, you will lose fuel. Worst case, you’ll burn.

As I finished up my run-up checklist, I noticed the first commando platoon to ride was standing just outside the rotor disk waiting for the signal from the crew to board the aircraft. Satisfied that all was ready, the aircrewman waved them over, and led by their lieutenant, they ran in single file to the aircraft. Because they were unfamiliar with helicopters they were slow to settle down, strap in, and be ready to go. By the look on their faces I would guess that this would be their first helicopter flight.

The crewman finally tapped me on the shoulder and gave thumbs up.

“How many,” I asked my Royal Marine corporal aircrewman.

“Eighteen, light marching gear,” was the reply.

“All set?” I continued.

“Ready in the back,” he replied.

Two marines, one American and one British, flying egyptian Army Commandos in a Navy helicopter, it was normal, just normal missions.

Eighteen lightly loaded troopers was well within the load limits of the Commando Sea King, given the fuel load, the early November temperature in the Egyptian desert, and all the other factors the pilot must consider. A final scan of the instruments showed all systems within normal limits. As I pulled up the collective, the sand started to blow around the rotor disk and pour through the window, so I lowered the collective, grabbed the stick with my left hand, shifted my right hand to the window and pulled it closed in nearly one continuous motion. Shifting my hands back, I reversed the process and began the lift off again, this time without the irritant of sand in the face.

As the helo rose into a ten-foot hover, the sand cloud continued to build. Bad, but not unanticipated, the sand began to obscure the surrounding world normally visible through the cockpit windows. My hover check, a look at the power it was taking to get the aircraft this high, was shorter than normal and as the power continued to come in, the bird began to move forward, out of the dust and into clean air. At about 20 knots airspeed the Sea King came out of the cloud, holding the 20 feet of altitude and gaining speed. As the aircraft passed through transitional lift, it shuddered as normal and then began to climb. I immediately opened the window to get some breeze through the cockpit. Ahead was a small sand hill and I turned right to avoid it.

As I turned, I heard over the normal helicopter noise a rhythmic shout in Arabic from the back of the aircraft. The shout was answered by three short yells, and a loud three bangs. Glancing left over my shoulder, I could see the Egyptian lieutenant grinning ear to ear and repeating the shout. His troops were fired up and again gave the correct response, again with the same stamping in unison on the cabin floor, all their faces alight.

I grinned to myself, and as the aircraft gained altitude, I banked to the left, a little harder than necessary this time. Again from the back came the shouts and stamping. I circled the camp twice, once in each direction so that every one of them had a view, and then came back for an approach to the spot I lifted from. Before I began the final approach I pulled the window closed to avoid the blowing sand. I made the approach straight to the ground so that I did not have to hover in the dust and make the landing any more difficult than necessary. As the lieutenant led his troops from the aircraft out the cabin door, he turned and gave a smiling wave to the cockpit. His troops looked happy and confident as they cleared the disk and headed toward their camp.

As soon as the first bunch of troops was clear, the crewman signaled for the next squad.

“Same numbers as the last lot, ready to lift,” he called.

“Lifting,” I relied.

This trip was a repeat of the first. I made the same small turn and the officer would shout and the troops would answer with three shouts and a stamping on the cabin floor. Because I understood what they wanted now, I moved the aircraft more crisply than before and with each turn or pitch of the helo, again they would shout. Grins and waves as they debarked.

The third and final load climbed aboard and strapped in, and I began by making a more abrupt takeoff than the first two and turning immediately to avoid the hill. this time there was no shouting from the back. Looking over my shoulder at the officer, I saw the lieutenant’s face express pure fear, not the joy of the first two officers. The fear in their officer was immediately passed to the troops and they, too, were afraid. I immediately leveled the aircraft and kept the rest of the flight as smooth as possible. No point in scaring people any more than absolutely necessary.

After the final group de-planed, I made the short flight back to our Operations area, shut the bird down, and walked over to the group of aircrews standing with their ground officer counterparts near one of the tents. The senior officer, a lieutenant commander, “Two and a half” as the Brits call them because of the two broad and one narrow gold strips that they wear to delineate rank, was standing over a map spread on a field table waiting for me to get there so he could start the mission briefing.

As usual with the Brits, the brief was more or less, “Right, chaps! We are here. We are going there. Any questions at all? Anyone?” There were none and we walked back to our individual aircraft and started them up. Our aircraft parking area was more hard surface than loose sand, so we did a normal formation takeoff instead of a “no hover,” like I was using with the familiarization rides. Aircraft back in the formation always lift off before the aircraft in front of them so that they do not get the rotor wash from the aircraft in front. The lead does not hover around but adds power and goes straight from the ground so that everyone gets airborne as soon as possible.

We picked up our Egyptian troops at about the same spot where I had done the familiarization lifts and headed across the desert to the LZ. After picking them up and taking off again, we flew a tactical cruise, meaning that instead of holding a constant position relative to the aircraft in front, we weaved about, changing from the right side of the aircraft in front to the left and back again, so that gunners on the ground would have a more difficult targeting solution.

That’s the theory anyway …

Tactical cruise does make it more difficult for an attacking fighter to shoot down more than one aircraft at a time. During the Weapons tactics Instructor Course a few years before, the Marines told us that the Egyptians themselves learned this the hard way in October 1973, when Israeli F-4s killed five of six Egyptian MI-8 helicopters flying in a tight formation, instead of a loose, shifting one like tactical cruise. But then tactical cruise probably would not have done any good today because we were still slow, large helicopters, flying over open desert and visible for miles from above or below, but the theory made us feel better.

As we flew across the desert, the flight lead dropped his Sea King down to between 50 and 100 feet above the ground, more low level than contour flight—there are no wires out here and no one to complain about the noise, so “flat hatting” was not a problem. Then, ahead of us, traveling in the same direction as we were going, I saw a car, or rather I first saw the dust rising from behind it. Lead saw it at the same time because he went down even lower and turned to put himself directly behind the car. The next two helicopters closed in tighter to lead so that seconds after lead flew directly over the car, not more than ten feet above its roof, they flashed by it on both sides. I could see the driver swerve, startled by helicopters that appeared from nowhere. No danger of him losing control and hitting something. There was no road, only empty sand, and nothing to hit.

After about 15 minutes, lead climbed to around 200 feet and decided the patch of desert directly in front of us, looking no different from any other patch of local desert, was the LZ and started down to land. We closed up to a tighter formation so that the troops would be closer to each other when they exited the aircraft. As we started to land, it became apparent that the surface of the landing zone was pure soft sand, finer than that at our departure point, when it started to billow up in a worse than usual blinding brown cloud.

If you know when a whiteout in snow, or brownout in dust, is coming as you are landing, you don’t even try to hover your helicopter. You must keep it moving forward and go directly to the ground, lest the cloud envelop you and remove all visibility and with it any idea which way is up or down. Ideally, if you think whiteout or brownout is going to happen, you pick out an object, a rock, a tree, or worst case, a person, as a visual reference. You land with the object at your 2 o’clock position just outside your rotor disk so that you have some reference to know if you are level. In this case, there was nothing to pick for a reference, no trees, no rocks, no people, only sand and more sand.

One of the aircraft in front of me apparently came to a hover because the sand cloud blocked all visibility. I could not see and so could not land. I immediately pulled all the power the Sea King had, lowered the nose to gain airspeed, and while sucking the seat cushion into my rear end, I waited for the mid-air collision with one of the other four helicopters that were quite probably doing the exact same thing I was doing.

Even though we were all flying blind, the mid-air didn’t happen and suddenly I was clear of the dust cloud. I watched as the other four Sea Kings all headed out in somewhat of an air burst away from each other, like they do at air shows. Somehow we had all missed each other. We joined back up and went in for a second approach to the same area. This time we all did it right. The aircraft in the back landed sooner than the ones in front of them and everyone continued straight to the ground instead of stopping in a hover. The Egyptian infantry leaped out of the cabin of the helicopter into the sand and we took off again, sand swirling around us, and headed back to our base. We waited there on the ground before we took off to pick up the troops and bring them back. Total flight time for the day was one hour.

We did it again the next day, two hours in the air that time. It must have been a perfect flight that second time, because I do not remember it.

Cheated death again. Luck and superstition, that’s all it is …

25

INTRODUCING THE ARCTIC TO CAPTAIN CURTIS

NORWAY ■ JANUARY 1984

Norway, in winter, is an incredibly beautiful place. Not as cold as you think it will be either, usually only around–15 degrees centigrade in the valleys by the fjords, not bad for 200 or so miles north of the Arctic Circle. The Canadians, working with the Brits in the annual exercises, usually whine about how they brought their cold weather gear to this “warm” place. To me though, it was more than cold enough.

A
s a US marine captain on exchange duty with the Royal Navy, flying in support of the Royal Marines, I did whatever they did, and what they did in winter was go to Norway to provide the UK’s portion of the NATO defense of the Northern Flank. The Brit’s did not take Norway lightly. too many cold winters, and sometimes bitter experience in the north of their own cold island, not to mention their World War II battles around Narvick, had taught them to take the cold very seriously indeed.

The first event for any first-timer in Norway is Clockwork, the Royal Navy Arctic Flying Course. I was scheduled for the first class of the New Year and was to fly a Sea King over from Scotland on the 4th of January to begin training the next week. Because it was the first class of the winter season, another pilot and I were to fly two of the aircraft to be used in the entire winter’s training from our base in Somerset to Bardufoss, the main base for British helicopter operations in Norway. Bardufoss is over 1,200 miles north from Oslo. So we had to fly first from the mildness of the Somerset winter to colder Scotland, then 340 miles across the North Sea to colder still Bergen, and finally up the Norwegian coast to our base roughly 200 miles above the Arctic Circle. Never mind the winter cold, I had never done an over-water flight that long so it would all be an adventure, starting with the leg between Scotland and Norway.

We figured our fuel carefully for the leg of the trip across the North Sea. Even though the Sea King can carry enough fuel for about a 500-mile no-wind trip and this one was only 350 or so, you cannot take excess chances crossing the North Sea in winter. A light head wind can make it tricky and a strong head wind can make it impossible. The flight is even more of a challenge when it is dark and January, and in Scotland it is dark a lot: 20 hours or more a day at that latitude.

For the ferry flight east across the North Sea and then on to our training area 200 or so miles north of the Arctic Circle, a Royal Navy lieutenant from my squadron would fly one Sea King and I would fly the other. The Brit’s fly their aircraft single pilot, something I had not done since I was flying OH-58s in the National Guard seven years before, but we would each have another pilot in the left seat. Two of the Clockwork instructor pilots needed a ride to Bardufoss and we were the quickest way there outside of expensive SAS commercial flights. We thought it was a good idea because neither the other pilot nor I had done Arctic flying, and we would certainly encounter the Norwegian winter on our way north. The instructors worked with us planning the flight. If the weather was good, we could make it in two days, about twelve hours flying time.

The flight from Yeovilton, England, to Scotland was routine, even scenic at some points. Although I was a little tense, the entire trip from Scotland to Bergen, Norway, was uneventful, too—“good hop, no problems” as the saying goes. Completely loaded with fuel, passengers, and cargo we did rolling takeoffs on the RAF runway instead of hovering to minimize the stress on the aircraft. We were either over maximum allowable gross weight or very near to it, so hovering, and almost certainly single engine flight, was out of the question.

Our flight began just before sunrise on 2 January and 5.8 flight hours later, we landed in Bergen just before it became completely dark. The sea had been relatively flat and the winds slightly on our tail, as routine as the trip up from Yeovilton had been. The only sights to be seen on the flight were the occasional fishing boats and oil rigs scattered here and there, gas flares burning in the sky.

After parking the helicopters at Bergen’s airport, we took a bus to a downtown hotel. As we rode in from the airfield in the dark, I could see that there was some snow on the ground, but not enough to comment on. Passing through residential areas on our way to the hotel, my impression was that most people still had their Christmas lights up; not unreasonable since it was not yet “little Christmas” (6 January). Later I found out that what I saw were not Christmas lights—Norwegians just like numerous small lights in their houses instead of the bright lights Brit’s and American’s usually have. Also, as I found out to my pleasure, the hotel had heated floors in the bathroom, something I filed away for future use.

Early the next morning we started north to Bardufoss with another rolling take-off, since we were just as heavy as we had been when we started the flight across the North Sea. As it always is that far north in January, it was semi-dark when we took off and headed up the coast along the fjords. Our Sea Kings were equipped to handle some heavy winter weather, something I had never experienced in my mostly southern US, Mediterranean, and Southeast Asia flying career. Although I had flown many different types of helicopters, none had been equipped to handle icing.

My most recent aircraft, the CH-46e, could not take any ice at all. The wire mesh screens over the engines were intended to prevent foreign objects like rocks from being sucked into the intake, but in icing conditions the screens quickly, in seconds actually, completely iced over, shutting off the air into the engine. Within moments the engines would stop and you would have an opportunity to find out if all your training in autorotations had been worthwhile. Having had two engine failures in single engine helicopters early in my flying, and successfully landing the aircraft without damage, I did not want to have a third try in the much, much larger Sea King. The Sea King did not have a screen over the intakes but instead had a shield in front of them and anti-icing fluid that the pilot could activate to prevent the ice from forming.

Mostly though, in January, in Norway, anti-icing equipment is moot because it is too cold for icing. The moisture is snow and falling snow is mostly harmless to an aircraft. If it falls hard enough it can and does reduce visibility to nothing, a very serious situation when you are flying below the mountaintops, but it will not shut your engines down.

On my second day in Norway, as we flew north from Bergen, the snow became too much for me. We had been fighting our way through heavy snowstorms with their attendant greatly reduced visibility in unfamiliar terrain, with high mountains and unknown power lines, until we arrived at Bodo to refuel and check the weather before proceeding north. Adding to the non-existent visibility, it was now dark, very dark with clouds and snow obscuring everything. After landing on the runway at Bodo’s airfield, the mere taxi from the runway to the parking ramp in front of the Operations building had been a white knuckle exercise, with intermittent whiteout in blowing snow on the taxi way. I was the AC, but my copilot was one of the Clockwork instructors and he was very keen to make it to Bardufoss in only two days after leaving Somerset, sort of like the ocean liners racing across the Atlantic to take the Blue Riband—the instructors wanted it to be the shortest time it had ever been done in a helicopter. Both the instructor copilots left their aircraft leaping out to check weather while the two ACs stayed with their aircraft during refueling.

As soon as they left, I called the other AC on the fox mike and told him, “I’m done. Shutting down now.” He agreed without further comment and also shut his aircraft down too. together we walked into the Operations building to be greeted by incredulous looks from our copilots, the Clockwork instructors. I learned very early that taking excessive chances, particularly with bad weather, was often fatal—five friends and their 29 passengers died when they flew a Chinook directly into a mountain in bad weather in Vietnam 12 years before. They didn’t even find the wreckage for two weeks. I was not going to join them if I could help it, particularly for a mythical Blue Riband.

“Why are you in here?” the Clockwork instructors/copilots asked. “You should be back in the aircraft ready to takeoff just as soon as we get the latest weather at Bardufoss.”

I told them that since I had signed for the aircraft, it was my decision, not theirs, as to what we do or do not do, and that I was through flying for the day. tomorrow, in what little daylight Norway had in January, we would complete the flight north; or not, if the weather was still terrible. They were not happy, not happy at all, but whether or not they objected, their input was moot. The aircraft was mine, not theirs, and so was the final decision. We made the RON call to our squadron back at Yeovilton and went to another hotel. Love those heated bathroom floors.

The next day dawned clear and without falling snow from the blue sky. The Norwegian snowplows had done their work on the runway and the taxi out to takeoff position was not a repeat of the previous evening’s white out. Our flight into Bardufoss was a routine 2.0 hours in the air, beautiful as we flew up the fjords, with no high-tension moments at all. I enjoyed seeing the mountains and the snow-covered landscape as we flew north and east, instead of wondering if I was about to fly into something in the dark. even though the snow showers, like those of the day before, are often a problem that far north, none bothered us that day as we flew in the postcard perfect sky.

Flying up one of the fjords, I saw a house on the edge of a small beach beneath a towering cliff. What a lovely summer place, I thought, only to see a light on the front porch and a person run out the door to wave as we flew past. The sound of helicopters coming up from the south must have been a real change from the silence of the fjord in winter. How lovely it was there. How lonely it must have been there.

Day and night arctic flying training was completed in due course and I took my turn flying the assigned missions. A month or so after completing training I was flying a mission, its purpose long since forgotten, when snow started coming down too hard to continue flying safely. Spotting an open area near some Norwegian houses, I plopped my Sea King down in the snow and settled in to wait for the weather to clear. After shutting the aircraft down I noticed my aircrewman was missing. Following the footprints, I saw him knocking on the door of one of the houses and overheard him say (in his best Russian accent), “Dis Norway? You see cruise missile?” the Norwegian householders froze and then slammed the door as I yelled, “It’s a joke! It’s joke! We’re British! We’re British!” which of course I wasn’t, but never mind. Shortly thereafter a five-or six-year-old boy came running bright-eyed through snow to see the helicopter. I hauled him up inside and let him into the cockpit.

We had all learned a few phrases in Norwegian, but the most popular was, “min flyr båten er full av ål,” or, roughly, “My flying boat is full of eels.” We tried it on the little boy and he immediately began looking under all the seats. When he didn’t find any he turned to me indignantly, and said “NO.” When the snow storm cleared and it came time for us to start the aircraft he said good-bye and then stood in the door of the helicopter before falling out backwards into the four feet of snow on the ground. Sinking down while making a snow angel, he wished us safely on our way.

Like I said, I don’t remember what the mission was that day or anything else about that flight, but I remember that little boy.