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.

As 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.