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)

Iwas 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 …