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.

From 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.

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.