Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond (29 page)

Mine was not the last aircraft back. The final wandering helicopter came straggling in about an hour later. Each of us had our own story to tell, mine was not the strangest by any means. One of our aircraft took the real scenic route from Scotland to Somerset. He flew all the way around the western coast of Britain, at least until he got to Wales where the weather improved enough to fly inland and take the shorter route. He did what we called the “weather too bad for Visual Flight Rules or Instrument Flight Rules” flight plan.

But everyone was safe on the ground. Even with the drama and less than perfect planning, luck and superstition got us through—again.

29

SEA FOG

OFF THE SOUTH COAST OF
ENGLAND ■ OCTOBER 1984

The Royal Navy does not feel the same way the US Navy feels about flying out to sea. The RN sees it as no big deal if you fly far out to sea with no wingman, while the USN limited us to 25 miles to sea if you are a single aircraft. The RN fully expects a pilot to do everything possible to get aboard, even if he could wait ashore for the weather to improve.

T
he mission was to fly onboard HMS
Illustrious
for a two-week deployment. The ship was headed to Portugal for a NATO exercise that was ship maneuvers only. The aircrew would not be hauling Royal Marines on assaults but instead be an administrative aircraft to do passenger transfers, pick up mail, look for submarines (visual only since the aircraft had no Anti-Submarine Warfare gear), etc.—what we called Ash and Trash in Vietnam—between the ship and shore bases in Lisbon and Gibraltar.
Illustrious
was steaming off the south coast, near Plymouth. I, as aircraft commander, would fly the aircraft, call sign Victor Hotel, from HMS
Heron
to join the ship at sea. My copilot was already onboard, having gone down before the ship sailed to act as liaison. The eight maintainers who would keep my Sea King flying were there too, all waiting for what promised to be a less-than-stressful deployment. The flight down was easy and smooth on a beautiful, clear day, but upon arrival at the coast, there was a wall of sea fog, solid as a mountain wall, right off shore. Somewhere in the sea fog was
Illustrious.

The sea fog off southern England was something I had often heard about, but had never seen. My squadron mates used to describe the sea fog down the coast to the west in Cornwall as being so thick that you could not see across the road, even though the wind was blowing 40 knots. I wrote it off as pilot exaggeration but here it was: sea fog, solid, gray, and not moving. Perhaps the ship was in the clear and the fog was only right there on the coast? My first call to the ship dispelled that idea. The ship reported they were in near zero visibility.

“Tower, Victor Hotel, feet wet, two souls onboard, two point zero to splash (two hours fuel onboard the aircraft),” I called over UHF.

“Victor Hotel, tower. Switch Center and they will give you a vector to us.”

“Roger, tower. Victor Hotel switching center.”

After switching radio frequencies, I transmitted, “Center, Victor Hotel.

Crossing the coastline five miles east of Plymouth, at angels one (1000 feet).”

“Victor Hotel, squawk ident”—meaning, activate the radar transponder that would highlight my aircraft on their scope. Moments later, “Victor Hotel, Center, we have you. Turn to 170 degrees and descend to 500 feet.

You are five miles out. Report ship in sight.”

At 500 feet I could see nothing but gray fog slightly below us, the tops of the fog ragged with small tuffs sticking up here and there.

“Center, Victor Hotel. Ship not in sight.

“Victor Hotel, Center, standby for vectors to CCA (Carrier Controlled Approach—radar control in both course and altitude. CCA will bring you down to around 125 feet lined up directly for landing). Turn heading oneseven-zero degrees. Climb to 1000 feet. Switch to Approach Control.”

I turned the Sea King as directed, and prepared for the approach.

Doing a CCA when you know that you are only a few miles off shore and that the weather is fine over the land, removes the worry of missed approaches and low fuel and the possibility of ditching before you run out of fuel. Miss the approach, try another, go ashore and wait for better weather. What could be easier?

At 1000 feet Victor Hotel was well above the fog bank, but when Approach turned the aircraft onto final approach course and started it down, things changed rapidly.

“Victor Hotel, you are on course, you are on glide path. Going slightly above glide path now, increase rate of descent. On glide path, come right to zero-one-two degrees. On course, on glide path. Approaching decision height, report ship in sight.”

Decision height is just that, the altitude where you either have your landing spot—the ship’s deck or the runway—and you decide to continue to the landing, or you execute a missed approach and take the aircraft around for another try. To go lower without the touchdown spot in sight is to risk flying into something, like the control tower or the ship’s masts/ superstructure.

Fog is difficult to understand. Once, flying back from a ship off the same south coast as part of a flight of five aircraft, I came to understand fog better. Taking off, the ship was all clear, but once over land, we saw a thin layer of fog over the ground. It was so thin that looking down through it you could see every detail on the ground; houses, roads, farm fields, and up through it came radio towers and hilltops. When we called Yeovilton tower and were told the field was closed with zero visibility, we didn’t believe it because we could see the ground so clearly from above.

In Britain, “closed” doesn’t mean you can’t land on the airfield, it just means you are on your own, so we decided to land without the tower’s approval. I was number three in the flight, flying in a long, loose trail formation behind the first two Sea Kings. We rolled on final and one by one, I watched the first two disappear into the fog at 200 feet over the runway. Then it was my turn, and as soon as I entered the fog, visibility went from five plus miles to zero. Years before, I read about three Army CH-34s crashing one after the other when they hit ground fog at night in Germany. They could see the ground just fine from above but everything disappeared when they got down to 100 feet. At the time, I wondered how that could happen. Now I understood, understood completely.

I held the aircraft steady as I slowed down and touched down in the center of the runway with hardly a bump. I could hear the first two aircraft calling on the radio that they could not taxi off the runway because of no visibility at all. My crewman had jumped out to act as a ground guide but I could not see him beyond the rotor disk so I joined the other aircraft in shutting down right there on the runway. Tractors would tow us in when the visibility improved enough for the ground crews to find the taxiways.

But now, I was over the sea and there was no runway, only the deck of a ship. At 125 feet, decision height, I looked up—nothing but gray fog, no ship in sight. Since I was now below the altitude of the ship’s masts, I immediately applied power and began a rapid climb before I hit them.

“Approach Control, Victor Hotel, ship not in sight, executing missed approach,” I called.

“Victor Hotel, Control, Would you like to try another CCA?”

“Control, Victor Hotel, negative. The fog is solid. I am now VMC (Visual Meteorological Conditions, i.e. clear of clouds/fog) above it again. Switching back to Center,” the aircraft commander called. The aircrewman, trained as a navigator and communicator, had come up to the cockpit and at my signal, switched the radio frequencies back to Center so that I could concentrate on flying.

“Center, Victor Hotel, fog is solid, did not break out on CCA. I am going ashore to await your call when you are clear of the sea fog.”

“Victor Hotel, Center, do not go ashore. We will attempt an ELVA (Emergency Low Visibility Approach).”

What do you do when you are far out to sea and you have done approach after approach in the fog and cannot see the deck? You are over the ship but it is invisible below you. What do you do when your fuel is running out and you don’t have enough range left to make it to land? The last, the very last resort is an ELVA.

The difference between a CCA and an ELVA is that CCA uses aviation radar, much the same as is used at any good-sized airport. An ELVA, on the other hand, does not use aviation radar at all. Instead it uses the antiaircraft radar that controls the ship’s defensive weapons. The ship’s defense system tracks you all the way down and since, when it is tracking you, it cannot track incoming threats, it is only used as a last resort. Too, a CCA is a smooth approach, with constant course corrections being supplied and altitude instructions given to keep you on a smooth glide path down.

In an ELVA, the ship holds a steady course directly into the wind. The anti-aircraft controllers just give you course directions and distance from the stern. Instead of smoothly descending at a constant rate as you slow your airspeed in a CCA, you start at 300 feet and 90 knots. then, in steps as you get closer to the ship, you slow to 80 knots as you level off at 250 feet, then 70 knots at 200 feet, then 60 knots at 150 feet. In the final portion of the ELVA you are in a hover at 50 feet, directly off the stern. At that point you should be able to pick up the ship’s wake visually and follow it to the flight deck. To help you along in finding the wake, the ship’s deck crew throws floating fares overboard at certain intervals. You find the wake, follow the flares, and land aboard.

That’s the theory anyway …

I had never done an ELVA, neither in a simulator, nor in a helicopter. Helo pilots all consider ELVAs one of those esoteric, arcane things that one quizzes copilots on, like back course ILS (Instrument Landing System) approaches and FM homing, not something that is actually done any more. No worries, though, since the weather above the fog is clear, the land is just a few miles away, and my aircraft has a couple hours worth of fuel left. I have plenty of time to try new things.

I turn the aircraft to follow the course directions provided and descend to 300 feet and 90 knots when directed. Shortly, I was once again in the fog and visibility was once again zero. The ship’s wake is not visible, nor is a flare pot. I slow to 80 knots, then 70, then 60, as I descend in steps. Shortly I am in a near hover with barely any forward speed at 50 feet on the radar altimeter above the sea. I look up—only fog, gray and featureless. As I am about to call waving off, I see something move just below and in front of the aircraft’s nose, and suddenly something bright orange flew down into the water. Continuing to hover slowly forward, I realize that what I saw was one of the deck crew actually throwing the flare pot into the water. Then the darker gray of the ship’s stern is there, and then I hover aboard and follow the directions of the LSE’s lit wands, vague through the fog.

Over the landing spot, I lower the collective and the deck crew runs under the rotor to chain the aircraft down. Victor Hotel and crew are safely aboard
Illustrious
.

My own deck crew, who had boarded the ship before she sailed, climb aboard as I shut the helicopter down.

“Sir, we are very surprised to see you,” the Chief, the senior enlisted man, says.

Looking at the aircraft from side to side, I realize that I cannot see either ship’s rail, meaning that visibility is less than 50 feet.

“You are not half as surprised as I am,” I reply.

The mission was to get the helicopter aboard the ship and I have. The mission is complete. Luck and superstition?

30

DAY AND NIGHT PASSENGERS

GIBRALTAR ■ OCTOBER 1984

As noted in an earlier chapter, the US Navy and Marine Corps are very fussy about how far out to sea you can fly single aircraft. If you are a section of two, you are not as limited, but they still get concerned if it is much more than 25 miles. The Royal Navy
,
on the other hand, has no such rules. They consider you competent enough to decide if it is too risky, after one of the five senior officers, the “Authorizers” in the squadron, sign off your flight plan. You present your plan to the Authorizer, tell him what the weather is in your mission area and that you are qualified to do the mission. Of course, if you are one of those five officers, you can sign off your own flight without reference to anyone else. As a flight commander, I was one of those five officers.

DAY

A
fter a busy period onboard HMS
Illustrious,
the command decided that since they would be doing only ship drills for two days, my aircraft would not be needed, so I could take my maintainers and fly ashore to HMS
Rooke,
the Navy Base in Gibraltar, for some rest. “Liberty Call, now Liberty Call,” is always welcome news to men deployed onboard ships.

After two days ashore and several non-flying adventures, we went back to work with a mission to fly to a British submarine 40 miles out in the Mediterranean and hoist a Royal Navy admiral and his aide onboard the helicopter for a ride back to Gibraltar (Gib). It was a calm day, sunny with light winds, easy. I had never done a lift off a submarine, nor had my copilot, but how hard could it be? After all, it’s just holding a stable hover while the aircrewman pulls him up from the deck.

We had flown this admiral once before. His VIP helicopter, a Lynx, had developed a fault and he needed to get from Illustrious to another ship that was about 20 miles away. We were available and were tasked with flying the admiral over to the other ship, never mind that our Commando Sea King was in no way a VIP aircraft. It was, of course, night, but for once, the weather was not bad. It should take about 45 minutes, tops, to complete this mission.

After the admiral was settled into his red troop seat, my aircrewman helped him put on a headset and adjusted the volume for him. On all Royal Navy aircraft, the ICS uses VOX (voice) instead of a transmit switch, so all anyone with a helmet or headset has to do if they want to speak over the ICS, is to start talking instead of having to push a switch. My aircrewman then said to the admiral, “Sir, I am very sorry but due to defense budget cuts the in-flight movie has been canceled. However, to make up for it the crew will play you a concert,” whereupon he pulled a kazoo out of his flight suit pocket. At the same time, my copilot turned around in the left seat with a penny whistle in his hand. They both began to play for the admiral while I lifted the helicopter into a hover and took off into the night. The admiral did not say a word, but I’m told his eyes were very wide. Just under an hour later, we were back on the deck of the
Illustrious
, mission complete. No official comments were made on the concert.

Now after the adventure with the night flight, we were to fly the same admiral again, as noted earlier, this time from a submarine back to Gib. We arrived over the sub on time to find a small group of people assembled on the sub’s sail (the vertical portion of the sub that stands above its main deck)—the admiral, his aid, and several of the boat’s company to assist in the transfer. The admiral would come up first, followed by the aid. As I came into a hover, my crewman prepared the hoist for the lift. He attached a “horse collar” to the hoist’s hook and prepared to let it down. The idea is that the crewman lets out enough slack line so that the person being lifted is easily able to put it on without inadvertently being lifted up into the air. As he let the cable down, I tried to maintain a steady hover.

Trying to maintain a steady hover over a submarine’s sail turned out to be a difficult task for a Commando Sea King. Typically, helicopters doing lifts off submarines would have an operational Doppler hover capability with radar that automatically allows the helicopter to maintain a constant hover position and altitude over water. Doppler measures the difference between radar points to provide a reference to the autopilot so that it can keep a constant position over the water, because a pilot cannot. Water looks like water and does not provide the visual clues a pilot needs to determine whether or not he is moving laterally or climbing or descending. While Commando Sea Kings do have the equipment installed, it is not maintained or tested since it is not part of the Commando’s mission. The controls are “blanked out,” that is, a plastic plate installed over them so that the pilot cannot activate the system. Since there is no Doppler, the pilot must see the submarine itself to get references he needs. If you are hovering above the sail there is very little submarine visible and minimal reference. Still, I can hover, so I’ll just have to concentrate.

Another difficulty factor is that submarines, like all ships, roll in the waves. On a large ship, like a carrier, it is usually not a problem, but on a sub, the top of the sail moves back and forth quite a bit, even in calm seas. The problem for the man working the hoist is to time the start of raising the passenger just right, ideally when the sail is moving toward the helicopter so that the acceleration is not so great that it jerks the passenger off the sail instead of raising him smoothly.

That’s the theory anyway …

Just as my crewman started the hoist up, the submarine’s sail reversed direction and the admiral came off the deck so fast it nearly dislocated his shoulders. As my crewman swung him into the aircraft cabin, I could see he was not happy, not happy at all. The lift of his aid went without incident, no reversal this time, and in short order we were headed back to Gibraltar.

I had been briefed that the admiral was an old helo pilot and I could see him calm down as we headed back to Gibraltar at 500 feet. He knew exactly the difficulties of hoist off ships and did not hold a grudge at now being two inches taller than he had been before the sudden yank off the sail and into the air. His aid came up to the cockpit and asked if it would be alright if the admiral came into the cockpit and flew part of the way back. I replied of course it would be alright, since we routinely flew single pilot. The copilot climbed out of the seat and gave the admiral his flight helmet.

After the admiral was strapped into the copilot’s seat, I introduced myself and gave him the flight controls. As an old instructor pilot, I kept my hands close to the controls but he settled right in and did a creditable job of flying. His frown was now a smile at being a pilot again instead of sitting behind a desk. In 15 minutes we were on final into Gibraltar’s single runway. I offered to let him do a couple of touch and goes, but he declined and gave me back the controls for touchdown. After clearance from tower, we left the runway and began to taxi to our parking area.

At this point we must digress. When we came into Gib for our two days of liberty, the seven men in my ground crew had been working for a straight week onboard
Illustrious
without a chance to do their laundry and were completely out of clean clothes, both uniforms and underwear. As soon as they had the aircraft put to bed, the Chief inquired at the base laundry if it would be possible to get one-day service on washing their clothes. Informed it would, they all left their uniforms at the laundry, changed into civies, and proceeded with Liberty Call. The next day, their clothes were not back from the laundry, some problem with the washing machines. Day two and their uniforms were still not back; whether or not they had their uniforms, they had to go back to work and could not work in civilian clothes. The Chief, being a resourceful man, managed to arrange to borrow coveralls for them to work in, but alas, the coveralls were not of the right sizes, nor were they even vaguely the same color, with some half covered in paint of various colors. On several of the lads, the coveralls were far too short, stopping half way up their calves. Never mind, they would do until the proper uniforms were returned, tomorrow for sure.

Back to our flight with the admiral—the lads saw us land, and being in a good mood after a night of liberty in a port advertising 365 bars, they decided to give us a “proper” welcome. So, in their mismatched coveralls, they lined up, all eight of them, and as we taxied by, heading to our parking spot, they all gave a salute by putting their hands to their ears and waggling them at us while sticking out their tongues. About two seconds into this “salute” they began to realize that it was not the Royal Navy lieutenant copilot in the left seat, but someone much older. About one second after that they began the process of trying to sink into the payment.

The thought that went through my head was that the worst they could do to me was to send me home. The lads, well, I was pretty sure flogging was no longer allowed …

The admiral did a double take and to his everlasting credit, returned the “salute” in the same spirit by putting his hand to his nose and waggling it at the lads while sticking his tongue out back at them. Just before he climbed out of the seat, he clapped me on the shoulder and with a laugh told me what a pleasure it was to fly again and see that morale in the Fleet Air Arm remained as high as ever. Not a word did he say about being two inches taller after his inadvertent launch from the sub’s sail.

When I looked over to where the lads had been lined up, there was not a soul to see.

NIGHT

The mission was simple: depart Gibraltar at 2000 hours, well after dark, and deliver a single passenger, a Royal Navy captain, to a fleet auxiliary ship, a supply ship with a single helicopter landing spot on the stern. The interesting part of the mission was that the ship was over 100 miles out to sea in the Atlantic and had no navigation aids, such as a radio beacon, onboard to help us find her. to add a little difficulty factor, there was a solid overcast, meaning it would be a very dark night over the water, and visibility was only about a mile over the entire area between the ship’s location and Gibraltar. On the odd chance that we could not find the ship, we were given diplomatic clearance to divert to either Portugal or Morocco, if we did not think we would have enough fuel to make it back to Gibraltar. Spain was out of the question because Spain and the UK, NATO Allies or not, were feuding over Gibraltar’s status again, or more properly, feuding still. Since I was the AC, I decided on morocco, with the hearty concurrence of my copilot and crewman. For added insurance, I had the aircraft fully fueled so that we could remain airborne for over five hours, if necessary, plenty of time to reach either alternative.

In the Royal Navy Commando Sea King squadrons, aircrewmen are not mechanics. If you are away and your helicopter needs oil, the pilot had better know where to put it. The aircrewmen are instead trained radio operators, photographers, loadmasters, and navigators. My aircrewman had done all the calculations on wind drift, magnetic variation, etc., and would be giving me constant course directions as were flew. We knew that if the ship was where it was supposed to be, our aircrewman would navigate us to it in short order. We also knew that if it wasn’t, we would get a night in tangier.

After we started up the aircraft, our passenger came onboard. Our aircrewman fitted him with a floatation vest and a helmet and we were set to go. I taxied the Sea King to Gibraltar’s single runway for a takeoff to the east, and after tower clearance, we departed. As soon as we cleared the runway, Tower directed us to change radio frequencies to departure control. Departure directed me to turn right to a course that would take us out through the middle of the Strait, keeping us clear of Spanish and Moroccan airspace. As I cleared the Rock of Gibraltar, the lights on shore disappeared; it was another black night over the sea, nothing to look at except when we passed directly over a ship headed in or out of the Straits. We could see its lights below us for a few seconds as we passed overhead.

I had the altitude hold set to 500 feet so that we would stay out of the clouds somewhere above us, not that it made any difference. Looking forward, it was only black. The air was smooth and the stability system was working fine, so I just had my hands resting lightly on the controls as the aircraft flew itself through the night. My copilot had his penny whistle out again and was practicing some Scottish tune. My aircrewman had the red cabin lights on and his maps and charts spread out on the cabin deck. Every now and then he muttered things like, “I wonder where we are?” while pouring over the charts. This was strictly for our passenger’s benefit, since my navigator knew exactly where we were, but he never missed a chance to mildly mind-mess senior officers. Every few minutes he would give me a minor course correction and an estimated time of arrival at our target ship.

The captain passenger unstrapped from his seat and came up to stand between the pilot’s seats. He wasn’t nervous, exactly, when we started the flight, but was less than fully comfortable. Now, seeing us so calm as we flew through the darkness, he relaxed too. He introduced himself and told us he was a submariner by trade, but had finished his command and now had nothing to look forward to but desks and paperwork. I laughed, knowing full well that if you are an RLO (Real-Live Officer, as opposed to a technician like a warrant officer) and stay in long enough, it happens to everyone, no matter what your job was, pilot, submariner, or commando.

The night seemed to clear a little. The overcast and blackness was still there but we were seeing ship’s lights at greater distances. When my crewman told me we were 20 minutes out, I gave the ship a call and got a prompt reply. They were ready for us and would have favorable wind across the deck when we arrived. In another ten minutes, I could see a ship’s light directly on the helicopter’s nose. My crewman had called it exactly right and the ship was exactly where they said they would be.