On December 26, 2004, a massive earthquake ruptured the sea floor of the Indian Ocean, triggering a devastating tsunami that struck the shores of India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and countless other islands and atolls. The U.S. Navy responded, arriving on the scene within days to assist with relief efforts for nearly a month. This is one junior officer’s story of flying nearly one hundred hours, delivering thousands of pounds of supplies, witnessing the rescue of hundreds of injured people, and grappling with the destruction of one of the Navy’s aircraft as part of Operation Unified Assistance.
In September 2004, I departed San Diego on board USS Abraham Lincoln on a deployment to the Western Pacific that was scheduled to return to port by January. On Christmas Day, my squadronmates and I found ourselves waiting out the remainder of our deployment in Hong Kong. We all would have rather been home for the holidays, but we tried to make the best of the situation and celebrated together late into the night in our hotel room. The next day, I awoke to the familiar odor of stale tobacco smoke, the sight of my sleeping fellow officers scattered around the room, and the sound of the television someone had left on the night before. The television was turned to an English news channel, which was reporting an earthquake and tsunami in the Indian Ocean. Having grown up in the San Francisco area and experienced the 1989 World Series earthquake, I wondered how bad it could be. At that moment, a more experienced officer muttered, “Shit, so much for going home on time.” When I realized what he was saying, it felt as if a crushing weight had been placed on my shoulders. Would the carrier really be ordered westward? Why would anyone think that the Navy could be of any use in this situation? The United States was a nation at war. Why would we distract ourselves with this additional burden?
Each of these questions would be answered in time, and my conception not only of the Navy’s capabilities but America’s benevolence as well would be forever altered. The tsunami killed nearly 200,000 people throughout the Indian Ocean region from Indonesia to East Africa. My squadron was one of the first American air assets on the scene to render assistance and hope to those still clinging to life on the northern tip of Sumatra. The U.S. Navy occupied the world’s stage for nearly a month as it entered Indonesian waters, and by the end of the mission it had become clear that the efforts of so few would be the salvation of many.
USS Abraham Lincoln and Carrier Strike Group Two (CVW-2) arrived on New Year’s Eve just off the coast of Banda Aceh, the capital of Aceh province on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The seas were calm, the air clear, warm, and humid; from a distance the island looked peaceful and idyllic. There was no indication that a monstrous hundred-foot wave had torn into the unsuspecting population just days earlier. The only hint that something terrible had occurred was the flotsam passing the ship as it meandered to and fro, awaiting the vagaries of diplomacy and politics to be agreed to by military and civilian officials. Aceh province had been in active revolt against the Indonesian central government at the time, and following the earthquake and tsunami, a tense peace had to be brokered. As the hours passed, we began to see and smell the bloated remains of people washed out to sea along with shattered timbers from houses, palm thatching, plastic bottles, clothing, and so many objects we couldn’t begin to identify. As I took in all the destruction, I wondered again what the Navy’s mission would be here.
Indonesia, the fourth largest nation in the world, consists of 17,506 islands, of which Sumatra is one of the biggest. Bounding the Strait of Malacca, Sumatra also has one of the busiest sea routes in the world. Islam is the dominant religion in this vast archipelagic nation with a population of 230 million people who speak three hundred different languages. To say that Indonesia is a diverse nation would be an understatement. With so many languages and peoples separated by seas and volcanic mountain ranges, influenced by Europeans, and joined loosely by Islam, it should come as no surprise that the identity of Indonesia is difficult to comprehend at a glance. The area is truly a crossroads of old, new, European, Islamic, and modernizing forces and traditional, indigenous cultures.
The juxtaposition of recent devastation and nature’s new calm struck us as our two-aircraft section approached terra firma at a cautious three hundred feet and seventy-five knots to survey Aceh’s landscape for the first time. The stark beauty of the verdant province and its coastal turquoise waters were contrasted by the destruction wrought by the tsunami. Lush green jungle abruptly met the denuded western coastline of Sumatra for hundreds of miles. Brown rot and decay replaced vibrant greens, and blue waters were sullied by mud and debris. Concrete pads marked where homes and buildings once stood; almost nothing remained. The singular north-south highway that once linked villages along this coastline was shattered and in some areas had been completely swallowed by the sea.
Banda Aceh’s infrastructure was in ruins; in addition to the problems on land, there was no air traffic control. I was assigned co-pilot in the trail aircraft of a two-aircraft section on the first sortie of the start of operations. Beginning our flight brief at 0430 on January 2, 2005, we decided to locate the airport and ask what help they needed. The flight crew made its way to the flight deck and began preflight checks on the aircraft as the sun began to break the horizon. The Air Boss—the ship’s air traffic control—cleared our section to depart, and within seconds we were clear of the aircraft carrier and on our way to land.
All the flight crews were briefed on the mission, but none of us was given instructions for how it would be accomplished. Aviation training prepared pilots to operate helicopters technically and tactically, but it was anyone’s guess how this would translate during an unorthodox mission. It turned out that the unknown allowed us the freedom of action necessary for a dynamic and constantly changing mission. We learned by doing, and we cataloged and passed down these lessons to the crews that came after us. Mission objectives became clearer with each passing day, and the efficiency of operations took on a rhythm all its own. Operation Unified Assistance was truly a massive team effort; we were simply one part of a larger machine. Every level of the Navy was involved in the operation, from the coordination between regional flag and general officers to the sailors who were ferried from ship to shore to load our helicopters.
We often had to descend into a sea of people who would slowly part to accommodate the heft of our aircraft. As soon as we touched down, we would be mobbed like celebrities. We distributed the food and water in a matter of minutes; the most able-bodied grabbed as much as they could carry and fled the scene. This process improved over time, as Indonesian soldiers began to make their way to villages and set up distribution points. What never changed, however, was the cheerful exuberance of the children, no matter where we went. A helicopter to them was not only a savior appearing from the skies, but also an opportunity to be playful. As we prepared to depart, children would gather under the rotor arc and time a collective jump with our liftoff. The downwash would throw their small frames backward and down to the ground. Their smiles and laughter were reminders that hope and optimism remained very much a part of the individual communities we visited.
Within days, the chaos and confusion we encountered the first few days began to take on order. Fixed-wing aircraft brought massive quantities of supplies to the airport. Their cargo was marshaled, sorted, and then staged to be loaded onto awaiting helicopters at a soccer field that doubled as a landing site. Within a week of the start of operations, the Navy had created a system reminiscent of a factory assembly line. Helicopters would land, be loaded, be given tasking, and take off. All of this occurred in a matter of minutes and continued during daylight hours for the remainder of January.
The pilots of Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Two flew continuously for nearly a month, amassing so many hours that we were required to get waivers to continue flying during January. (A hundred hours a month is typically the maximum allowed.) This took a toll not only on the pilots and mechanics but also on the machines we operated. Our procedures and manuals help us avoid making mistakes, but because humans are fallible, some mistakes are inevitable. For me, one of the most eye-opening mistakes was when one of our helicopters, side number 613, crashed in a rice paddy near the staging area. It was one of the longest days of my Navy career. Due to a combination of luck and pilot skill, all crew and passengers survived, but the aircraft was destroyed. Standard operating procedure mandates stopping flight operations in the event of aircraft loss, but on that day, I logged ten hours. Our mission continued; these were extraordinary times, and we were required to continue flying and deliver aid.
I remember arriving the morning of the crash to a frenzied ready room: the phone was ringing, the computer was flooded with emails and chat messages, people milled about offering speculation to fact, blurring the reality we desperately sought to find. We began our flight around mid-morning and headed straight to the staging area at the airport in Banda Aceh. We cleared the beach, and in a few short minutes we passed over a ground checkpoint in preparation to enter the makeshift helicopter pattern that had been created to regulate entry into the soccer field. The pattern was controlled by Australians operating from a makeshift location on a portable radio. I remember the controllers being competent and humorous, but on this day they were dour.
As we entered the pattern, we were met with a full view of the crash scene: The helicopter was on its side covered in mud and filth; the tail boom was cracked in half and barely attached to the main fuselage; the windscreen and chin bubble were shattered; and the four blades, upon impact, were flung hundreds of yards away from the site. People were perched atop the fuselage, and a great many more were in waist-deep mud surveying the rest of the crash site. I remember thinking that the aircraft, having crashed from more than three hundred feet, looked remarkably intact.
At that moment a number of thoughts were competing for my focus. What would I have done had I been at the controls? Would I have managed to crashland the helicopter as well as the pilots of 613 had? Would we have lived? How was our aircraft going to perform today and would I make any mistakes? My thoughts snapped back to the present—I had a helicopter to land and a mission to complete. We landed on our designated spot in the soccer field and began preparations to load food and water onto our stripped-down aircraft. All tactical gear and unnecessary equipment had been removed in order to carry as much as possible, whether it be people, water, or foodstuffs. We took on about 5,000 pounds of goods and were on our way again.
For the remainder of the day, we made our way up and down the coastline and ventured inland where villages once stood. Makeshift camps supplanted pretsunami communities, most of which had already been cataloged and marked for regular resupply over the coming days. On this particular day, we sought out inland communities and villages that had been spared from inundation but were isolated from assistance because the only road, their sole lifeline, had been consumed by the tsunami’s waves. These communities, in dire straits, desperately needed water and food. Many also needed medical assistance. Our one helicopter could only bring so much, but over the course of the day, we made multiple sorties and found a number of isolated villages in distress. We dropped off our load, marked the locations, and evacuated the injured or sick.
We refueled three times: aboard the carrier, on an amphibious ship, and on a cruiser. The only food we had was Pop Tarts, and I ate three packs. (I could gladly go my whole life without eating another Pop Tart!) We made multiple deliveries to villages along the coast and inland, and we evacuated dozens of people to the triage tent at the airport at Banda Aceh. In many ways, my ten-hour day captured precisely the intent of our leaders for the mission. Over time, the mission took on a clarity all its own with each flight and successful supply drop and evacuation. Our utility as a helicopter squadron was proven consistently over that long day and during the entire month we provided assistance to the people of Sumatra.
The panoramic view of devastation we had seen on our first day began to be built up and added to with every flight. Each village and makeshift camp was marked for continued resupply. As the weeks passed, we got a more comprehensive picture of the post-tsunami landscape, both human and geographic. People migrated to areas near the coastline where food, water, and medical assistance existed. We established ground checkpoints—often named after familiarities or derived from local names, one of the more memorable being PB&J—air routing, and altitude separation for aircraft heading up the coast and those transiting down the coast, and established common operating frequencies. All of this served to lay the foundation for successful flight operations as well as the overall mission.
The men and women of CVW-2, USS Abraham Lincoln, and HS-2 proved they were adaptable and could discharge any duty to which they were assigned. This mission was an unknown to all personnel but would in many ways set the precedent for future humanitarian assistance in disaster relief operations. Amid the ever-evolving landscape of conflict, threat, and natural disaster, the Navy will continue to adapt and bring to bear its assets in support of any mission it is assigned. It was proven in Sumatra, validated in New Orleans, and employed most recently in Japan. It will continue to be an integral component not only for advancing U.S. interests and national security, but also for showcasing the nation’s beneficence.