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
After 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.
I called the ship for landing. We were cleared for a starboard approach, coming in on the right side for a smooth, routine landing. Just before the captain disembarked, he came to the cockpit again to shake my hand. He said, “this may be routine to you, but it’s amazing to me.”
An hour later we were back on the ground in Gibraltar and I thought to myself, the captain was right that it was routine to us and that’s what made it amazing. It was a perfect flight and yet I remember it. Cheated death again …