Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (28 page)

26

ROYAL NAVY NIGHT FLIGHT—THE DIFFICULT VALLEY

NEAR BARDUFOSS, NORWAY ■ JANUARY 1984

Flying in Norway in winter presents constant challenges; night flying in mountains and the occasional heavy snow are two of the obvious ones. Because night in northern Norway lasts a really long time, all “day” in fact, in winter the pilot must learn to deal with it and be able to always operate normally. One of the skills to do so requires that he know “difficult valley” flying techniques. Like the early days of NVG flying, night difficult valley flying is particularly difficult, in some ways even more so than the night flight described in earlier chapters.

T
he “difficult valley” Clockwork uses for training is aptly named. The first difficulty in all flying is finding where you are supposed to go, but in this case that was not the difficult part since finding this particular valley at night is easy enough. Fly down a fjord northeast of Bardufoss until the fjord turns east and look for a tall, lighted smoke stack along the shore. Turn east to climb up the hillside to the north of the stack. If you can’t see it from a distance, start looking in earnest for the valley entrance as you clear the tree line. At that point it’s not hard to find because the valley itself is a glaciated “U” that is located above the tree line, at about two thousand feet where you enter and climbs to about 3,000 feet above sea level at the highest point of the valley floor.

As the altitude increases, the valley narrows until you can’t do a coordinated turn at 90 knots out of it. It envds in a “T” with another glaciated “U” valley that runs north to south. This valley has sheer rock walls on both sides reaching up about 1,000 feet higher than the floor, high enough that you cannot “cyclic climb” out of it, meaning trading airspeed for altitude by bringing the helicopter’s nose up. Helicopters just don’t have that much energy to trade; if you try it you will shortly find yourself out of air speed, altitude, and ideas all at the same time. Once you are above the tree line, there is really nothing to look at except the rock wall and featureless snow, particularly featureless in the dark Norwegian night.

Syllabus flight or no, I would never have gone into that valley on a moonless night except that my instructor, fresh from the Falkland’s War, was acting bored and said, “Oh, if you think it’s too hard we can go around it,” which got my Irish (American?) up to the point where we were going up it even if it meant becoming a greasy black spot on the valley wall.

As I was expecting, once we cleared the tree line there was nothing left to see, with the sky, valley floor, and walls a more or less uniform black. Out to the starboard side of the aircraft, my side, parts of the blackness were blacker than other parts—rocks sticking out the side of the cliff, I think, but all was just black on all sides with a black rock wall in front of us.

After we cleared the tree line and were into the valley proper, my aircrewman, who had navigated us blind to this point, began counting down, “Three, two, one, turn right to 180 degrees NOW.”

Looking to the right to where I was to turn, all I saw was just more blackness. Turn early into a rock wall or turn late and fly straight ahead into another one? I trusted my aircrewman and his work was perfect, as you have probably surmised since I’m writing this many years after the fact. About 30 seconds after I steadied on the new heading he had given me, we started to see lights of a village down on the fjord. It took half an hour to get that seat cushion out of my rear end when we finally landed.

Talking to my fellow “students” over beer a few days later I found out I had been the only one that night to fly through the “difficult valley.” All the rest had flown around it and were of the considered opinion that I was insane. In retrospect, I agree.

Luck and superstition indeed …

27

TROOP LIFTING, WITH NIGHT AND HEAVY SNOW SHOWERS

NORTHERN NORWAY ■ MARCH 1985

Me: “Fearless Tower, Victor Hotel. Three miles east for landing.” After a pause—HMS Fearless: “Victor Hotel, why do you wish to land three miles to the east?” After a pause—Me: “Fearless Tower, Victor Hotel. I do not wish to land three miles east. I wish to land onboard your ship.” HMS Fearless: “Ah, you wish to join.” Me: “No, I have already joined some years ago. Now I just wish to land.” (A typical example of American to English translation difficulties)

I
was dash two of a two Sea King mission to insert troops behind the “enemy” for a surprise attack. We would launch off HMS
Fearless
, a Royal Navy LSD (Landing Ship Dock—which meant it had two nice big helicopter landing spots aft and the capacity to carry a company or two of Royal marines). The mission was straightforward—takeoff from
Fearless
at a certain time, drop the Marines in the selected landing zone at the appointed time and return to the ship—nothing fancy, like NVG flying or dodging missiles, real or simulated here, just out and back and done for the day. Or more accurately, for the night, since most missions in northern Norway in March were at night.

The flight out to
Fearless
from Bardufoss was routine, as was the landing onboard and final pre-mission briefing.
Fearless
was steaming slowly, keeping pretty much to the center of the fjord. My aircraft was an “all colonial” crew, as the Brits were fond of saying, with an American aircraft commander, an Australian copilot, and a Kenyan crewman. For this mission, I was dash two aircraft, the wingman, so all I had to do was keep up with lead and land somewhere behind his aircraft so as not to interfere with his landing. The Royal Marines would rapidly disembark and proceed to their attack point, and we would depart the area as soon as they cleared the aircraft. We did not have to come back and pick them up after the assault. As was usual with my squadron, radios were not to be used except in the case of an emergency.

The weather was forecast to be about perfect, a little moon and clear except for scattered snow showers, as nights normally are. When my Australian copilot and I went to strap into our aircraft, the scattered snow showers arrived, really, seriously arrived. Visibility went from clear—with both sides of the fjord that
Fearless
was cruising within sight—to not being able to see the rail of the ship about 20 feet away from the cockpit. Figuring the snow would pass since it was just a shower, we continued with the runup in preparation for takeoff at the appointed time.

The problem arose when the appointed time arrived and the snow had not stopped—it just got worse or remained bad enough that visibility was near zero. I assumed that lead would hold the flight on deck until the visibility improved, and signaled the LSE to remove the chocks and chains so we would be ready when the shower passed. The deck crew pulled them off and LSE showed them to us so that we knew they were all removed. Then suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, or launch signal from the LSE, lead took off. He did not appear to do a hover check, but instead lifted directly into forward flight. The Sea King vanished from sight as soon as he cleared the flight deck rail.

My copilot and I looked at each other in dropped-chin amazement. You could see absolutely nothing beyond 20 feet from the cockpit, yet lead had departed into the snow shower. While the fjord that
Fearless
was sailing through had low lands for a short distance on each bank, the terrain soon rose steeply into cliffs, a real problem if you did not know where to look for them.

I knew that if I took off immediately, the risk of a mid-air collision was very real; we would be unable to see him and he us. Had I known he was going, I could have taken off nearly simultaneously and kept him in sight by staying very close, a high tension but normal procedure. Had he done a hover check, I would have known he was going and would have been airborne right after him. But he didn’t do a hover check and that moment was gone, so I held on the deck, still waiting for the shower to pass. It did not pass. Fearing the worst, i.e., that he crashed into the water or into the ground just on-shore, I told my copilot that we were going too. I lifted to a hover for final checks and pushing the nose forward, we were off.

After we cleared the deck of the ship, I did not climb to a cruise altitude. Instead, I leveled off at about 100 feet on the radar altimeter and kept my airspeed slow, around 60 knots, enough to move forward and keep the helicopter out of danger but slow enough to stop or turn should an obstacle appear before us. My idea was to get over land, get oriented in where exactly we were, and then proceed. After a couple of minutes (but probably actually only 30 seconds), I could tell that we’d crossed the shoreline because I could see trees directly below us. I tried turning on the landing light for a better view, but the snow just blinded us, so I turned it back off.

“This is stupid,” I said over the ICS, “I’m landing in the first clear area we see and waiting out this shower.” Returning to the ship was impossible because trying to find it while flying blind might well result in us hitting it instead of landing on it.

My copilot agreed that it was stupid and as I started down the last 100 feet to land in an open field, we came out of the snow shower into a beautiful, clear Norwegian night. There in the middle of the fjord was
Fearless
. Nothing of the other helicopter could be seen.

For a moment, I debated in my head returning the troops to ship and then beginning a search for the other aircraft but decided that it would be quicker to just drop them in the LZ and then start a search. Besides, if we came across wreckage and they were still onboard, they could help with security and the recovery. I turned the Sea King to the east and flew toward the landing zone. As I crossed the shoreline, another Sea King flew by on my port side. It had to be flight lead since no one else was flying that night, so I joined up on them and we proceeded as a flight of two to the LZ, dropped the troops and then returned to
Fearless.

After I shut the aircraft down and it was secured, we joined the other crew in
Fearless’
ready room for the debrief. Both pilots from the lead aircraft were pale and somewhat shaky. Me? I was just mad at their stupidity, but I didn’t say a word as the flight leader began his tale. He did not explain his sudden takeoff into the near zero-visibility shower but instead launched into what happened next after he cleared the ship’s rail and headed for land.

The fjord we were in runs east and west from the location where we took off.
Fearless
was headed east, and since we were headed across the deck from the two helicopter landing spots, we were to takeoff to the south, fly straight ahead until we intercepted the southern shore, then turn left to the east and proceed up the fjord until we reached the checkpoint for the final turn and our run into the LZ. It couldn’t have been easier.

That was the theory anyway …

When lead came off the deck, he immediately became disoriented and did a 180-degree turn, somehow blindly missing
Fearless’
superstructure, and now unknowingly, was headed north, not south. In a few seconds he intercepted the northern shore, and turning left as briefed, headed out west in exactly the wrong direction. Unfortunately for them, the snow squall was also headed that direction and their visibility remained near zero. taking the helicopter as low as they could, they went slowly down the fjord nearly blind until, at last, it dawned on them that they had been going west. Instead of going south they had followed the shore of the fjord as it turned north.

The arm of the fjord they were following had narrowed considerably and they were able to reverse course while staying low and in sight of the surface, all the while engulfed in the heavy snow shower. They finally recognized a manmade object that allowed them to determine their exact position—old abandoned Nazi-built submarine pens left over from World War II. Continuing on, they finally flew out of the snow squall and saw my Sea King’s lights up ahead of them. Putting on a burst of speed they passed us and took the lead on into the LZ and completed the mission.

The reasons they were still pale and a bit shaky were quite simple. First, they came within a hair of crashing into the water following their takeoff into the snow shower, and were subsequently disoriented with its 180-degree turn around the ship. Second, they could well have flown directly into
Fearless
since the snow would have prevented them from seeing her until the last possible second. Third, and probably the most serious, was that just north of the old sub pens there was a set of large power lines that came within 150 feet of the surface of the fjord. In the course of their mistaken route, they had flown underneath these power lines twice—once going north and again coming back south after they realized they were headed the wrong direction. They could not have missed the wires by more than 100 feet. They never saw them.

Luck and superstition yet again …

28

LONG FLIGHT HOME

VOSS, NORWAY TO YEOVILTON, ENGLAND ■ MARCH 1985

There is a condition called “get homeitis” that strikes many aircrews with sometimes fatal results. This condition sets up in the pilot’s mind the thought that no matter what, he must continue on so that he can get back to his home base RIGHT NOW, TODAY, never mind that there is usually no reason to risk life and aircraft if he is not at war. “Get homeitis” nearly always occurs on the way back from a deployment and almost never on the way to a deployment (there are exceptions—see the chapter on flying to Norway). There also comes a moment when you make a decision to live, a decision not to let someone else kill you through their bad decision or “get homeitis” infection. When you make that decision you must stick with it.

F
rom Stavanger, Norway, to Scotland is 340 miles. That’s 340 miles over the North Sea and as described earlier, it is not an easy 340 miles. If the wind is wrong, a head wind instead of a tail wind, if the snow turns to freezing rain, if you lose an engine, if, if, if.

The weather was, at best, marginal. To be safe, we needed a tail wind, and the forecast was for it to be only a few points on the tail. If it shifted a few degrees around to the west and back to a head wind, we would be very low on fuel when we arrived in Scotland. If it shifted to a strong head wind and we had to abort back to Norway, depending on how far out we were, it might be close on fuel. Our navigation system would let us know how we were doing moment by moment, but still …

Before we went out to our aircraft, I went through my helmet bag and threw away all unnecessary things, old maps, expired approach plates, etc. Weight is weight, and I wanted my aircraft as light as possible. This was purely psychological, since the perhaps two pounds I was removing would make virtually no difference, but I went through the exercise anyway. Superstition?

We were a flight of five Sea Kings led by our squadron CO. I was aircraft commander of the third aircraft. Unlike the US Marines, the Royal Navy did not organize the flight into sections of two or more aircraft, with a section lead for each, but instead, just used a single flight. The plan was to fly to Scotland and, weather permitting, refuel and proceed back to our base in Somerset, clear at the bottom of the UK. It would be a long day even if everything went perfectly, probably six hours flight time.

The day was not promising—low clouds, intermittent rain, strong, gusty winds—a typical North Sea day, but the CO was adamant: we were going. As always on these long ferry flights, our aircraft were overloaded with personnel and their baggage, and various bits of maintenance equipment, personal gear, tents, mess gear, etc. So, as always on these ferry flights, we ground-taxied to the end of the runway for a rolling takeoff. By keeping the aircraft on the runway until we reached flying speed, we would avoid over stressing the aircraft by trying to hover it—in other words, a repeat of my first flight across the North Sea. We all lined up one after another on the runway and one after another, added power and began to roll forward. At about 20 knots, I added more power, lifted off and followed number two into the rain.

As we flew over the North Sea, we all knew that an engine failure meant that the aircraft would quite probably go into the water. Oh, we could jettison enough fuel to stay in the air. After all, the Sea King Mk 4 has powered fuel jettison pumps instead of the gravity system used on the CH-46e, so great quantities of fuel can be pumped out of the tanks very quickly. And though we could stay in the air, we would probably not have enough fuel to make land and so would have to ditch anyway.

The sea state was high: huge confused waves crashing about, again a normal North Sea day, so that the odds of keeping the aircraft stable long enough for everyone to get out in a controlled manner after a water landing was problematic. An additional factor was that only the aircrew had dry suits, so if the passengers did get out and inflated their life jackets, they could look forward to freezing to death in short order, around 15 minutes tops. they would be unconscious in ten minutes or less. Once I had a live demonstration of how quickly you deteriorate in cold water when I saw a man fall off the deck of a ship into the North Sea off Norway. A crewman of one of our helicopters in the air also saw him fall. the aircrew was trained for water pickups and immediately flew down to rescue him. He was in the water less than five minutes, but when the helicopter landed on my ship, he was barely conscious and had to be carried below to sick bay in a stretcher.

Because our passengers did not have the dry suits, we aircrew did not wear them either. One might say it was extra incentive for the aircrew not to ditch the aircraft.

As we flew to the west the wind stayed with us, not by much, but enough that it was soon apparent that we would have no difficulty making the flight with fuel to spare. But of course, even though the wind was with us, the overall weather was decidedly not. The air temperature was such that going into the clouds would have instantly resulted in icing, an ice buildup on the rotors and fuselage, and while the Sea King Mk IV can take some ice, it cannot take much. Even with the ability to fly in icing, the added weight would greatly reduce range and might even force the aircraft to a lower altitude. To keep from going into the clouds, we continued to descend closer and closer to the sea the nearer we got to Scotland. By the time we made radio contact with the tower at the RAF base, we were all skimming the waves at 100 feet and not too happy about it. But on the bright side, our navigator’s skill was spot on and when the runway lights finally appeared through the rain, they were exactly on our nose. We all did running landings again to avoid hovering, and one by one taxied to the ramp where we shut down to await customs clearance.

Customs clearance was always required whenever we returned to the UK from any foreign location because the lads, being lads, bought the maximum (and sometimes then some) duty free allowance of booze whenever they could. At the end of each deployment, one or more of them would become my “best friend” because as an American in the UK, I already had a duty free allowance from the US forces that was far bigger than anything I could use, so my British allowance was always available to someone else. The customs officer slogged from aircraft to aircraft through the rain and wind. While we were slightly giddy at having made it across the North Sea in the face of the low clouds, wind, and rain, he was not happy to be here on such a foul day.

“Customs forms, please gentlemen,” he said. He went through them wordlessly until near the last when he stopped and said, “Smith, you’ve made a mistake on this form. You meant to put down you had less than the duty free limit.”

Smith, one of the young lads on is first deployment overseas, quite possibly his first trip ever out of the UK, replied, “Oh no, sir. I put the correct amount down.”

The customs officer now grew quite red in the face and said, “I said,
YOU PUT THE WRONG AMOUNT DOWN. YOU HAVE ONLY THE DUTY FREE ALLOWANCE!”

One of the other lads gave Smith a sharp elbow to indicate that the customs officer was not at all interested in preparing the extra paperwork that would be required to collect the small amount of extra money for one too many bottles. All he wanted to do was to get our paperwork and leave this cold, wet ramp and get back to his home and warm fireplace, or, more likely, the pub. Smith, twigging it at last said, “Oh, yes, sir, my mistake; let me fix it.” Paperwork complete, we were now clear to head into the Operations building and see where we were going to spend the night before flying back to Yeovilton the next day.

When I asked the question: “BOQ or hotel” of the assembled officers, the CO replied, “Oh, no. We won’t be staying here. We’re going to fly on back to Yeovilton as soon as we are refueled.”

I took a look at the weather briefing—rain, sleet, low cloud, filthy weather over the entire UK for the rest of the day. I knew there was no point in arguing, they were going and I was going with them. But I also knew that I was not going to let them kill me by flying into a Scottish mountainside or a set of power lines that I did not see until too late. I still remembered Greece and flying my dead squadron mates and friends back after they found that power line over the river. I was pretty sure that none of the Brits shared that experience. If things got too bad, I would simply land my aircraft and wait out the weather. They could do what they liked. We were not in a war and there was no urgent reason to risk death and killing your passengers just to get back a day earlier.

The CO outlined a route that, in good weather, would have been a pretty flight over the wild countryside. Once again, we fueled the aircraft completely up and loaded all passengers back onboard. Once again, we taxied to the end of the runway for an over-maximum-allowable-gross-weight takeoff. Once again, we in turn bounced down the runway until we got enough speed to lift off into forward flight without hovering. Once airborne, we joined in a loose trail formation, one aircraft following the other, but free to swing from side to side as desired. Like that long ago night flight in the National Guard Hueys, flying the “nuclear formation” with aircraft spread out so far apart that a single atomic weapon would not get them all. We were popping in and out of clouds at 200 feet as we cleared the airfield fence and started south. It took about 30 minutes to get into serious trouble.

Our crewmen were extremely well trained and proficient navigators. Our navigation equipment was excellent. Unfortunately, neither of these made much difference as we dodged in and out of clouds at altitudes below the legal limit for authorized low-level flight, where the aircrewmen could not see to navigate, and the navigation equipment could not receive a signal to tell us where we were. All this came to a head when the CO led the flight of five overloaded helicopters up a blind canyon that narrowed to the point where he could not make a coordinated turn without a risk of hitting dash two. All five Sea Kings slowed to a near hover while deciding what to do next.

I looked at the amount of power it was taking to hold this position and could see that because of the overweight condition of the aircraft, I was about to over-torque the aircraft (risk possible catastrophic damage to the main transmission). I was also squarely in the middle of the “deadman’s curve,” the point where a safe landing cannot be made in the event of an engine failure, because you don’t have enough altitude to trade for airspeed to break your rate of descent before you land. From the first day at Fort Wolters, I had it beat into my head to never, never do either of these things and I wasn’t about to start now.

Being number three, I had two helicopters behind me but also had more turn space without the risk of the narrow valley. I called over the squadron radio frequency, “Victor Hotel turning right and landing in the area to our rear to wait for better weather.”

Instead of a negative comment from the CO, much to my surprise he instead called, “Roger, Victor Hotel. Victor flight, all aircraft return to base on your own.”

As I turned to the left, I could see the two aircraft behind me had already made that decision on their own without waiting for the CO. They were both 180 degrees from the direction we had been heading and were already up to cruising speed. They were also very low, dodging clouds—scud running, it is sometimes called—something I just was not in the mood for right now. Spotting a nice, clear, level field near a farmhouse I set my aircraft up for an approach to land, and in about two minutes we were on the ground.

We were not even fully on the ground when the family from the house came running out to see the Sea King sitting in their field. My aircrewman motioned for them to stay back from the rotors while we shut down. As I climbed out of the aircraft and walked toward them, I could not help but ask, “Excuse me, where are we exactly?” I was only half kidding; I had been far more concerned about not hitting things, wires, antennas, other helicopters, etc., and had not done much navigating, nor had my aircrewman. The other half was that as soon as we could get a clear signal, our navigation system would tell us exactly where we were, but we still had to figure a way out that kept us clear of obstacles until we were out of Scotland and back into more level terrain.

After a few minutes, the clouds cleared enough for us to continue. After loading everyone back onto the helicopter and saying goodbye to the still very excited family, we took off, headed generally south. As we flew, the weather was up and down. At one point I again sat the aircraft down for a few minutes until it cleared, but we were slowly working our way south and back to Yeovilton. We were on the edge of possible icing but had been lucky and stayed just out of the temperature range where icing develops.

Just as I thought it would be, it had been a very long day. We had departed Norway before first light, crossed the North Sea, refueled in Scotland, blundered about in and out of clouds and scud, made a couple more precautionary landings to wait out weather, and consequently it was now getting dark. The good news was that we were getting within radio range of our base. I had not heard from any of the other aircraft since we went our separate ways, and because of the way British airspace is controlled, we had not spoken to any Air traffic Control Facilities on our way south.

As we flew south, the temperature had actually dropped, but the clouds had risen so we were flying at 1,000 feet or so, normal VFR altitudes. When we were in radio range, I called squadron base and they were glad to hear from us. My Sea King and one of the other aircraft were the last to return, the other three having straggled in over the last hour. Finally, ten hours after we started from Norway, I shut the aircraft down on our own flight line.

One of the pilots was yelling something to me from outside the rotor disk, and I stuck my head out the window to hear him better, only to get de-icing fluid from the rotor shield dumped on my helmet. Somehow I had accidently activated the switch and the fluid was being pumped out, as advertised—to no effect since it was not snowing, but still it is always good when a system works as advertised. He yelled only to tell me that the deicing system was on. What a perfect ending to a very long and draining day.