Aviation Mishap Story Time 5
Ask Not For Whom the Bell Tolls...
[Ed. note: These AMST stories have been written to be at least partly dependent on each other, so here are the prior posts to save you the clicking around if you want the full context - AMST Intro, AMST 1, AMST 2, AMST 3, and AMST 4.]
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley, 1818
August 11, 1994, at Camp Wilson Expeditionary Airfield (EAF) dawned hot as two rats f***ing in a wool sock. Actually - that’s not a very good simile… I take that back. That phrase inspires thoughts that include the possibility of moisture - of sweaty rats engaged in coitus - and there was zero sweat or moisture in the high desert that morning. Think more like Arrakis from the recent “Dune” movies.1 On the walk out to our aircraft, I caught a few of our mechs standing off to the side watching an egg cook on the metal panels (“matting” they call it) with some bets on how long it would take to fully cook, which I guess is dependent upon how runny you like your eggs.2
I checked the OAT - the Outside Air Temperature gauge - on our bird, aircraft “06”, BUNO. 160815. The gauge read a little shy of 60 degrees… Celsius. I did the Fahrenheit conversion in my head and double-checked: it was an absurd 137 degrees. I was staring at it in disbelief when Bill “Schlep” Dunn, one of HML/A-269’s Weapons and Tactics Instructors (WTI) came up with his gear to help me pre-flight. When I told him the temperature, he raised his eyes.
“Oooh! Well, You know what that means…?” I wrinkled my face in response. “We’ll have to prime the engines because of fuel vaporization in the lines. Don’t get to do that very often.”
A seemingly unimportant “Note” in the AH-1W NATOPS manual popped into my head: over 135º F can possibly result in fuel vaporization in the lines, so we would have to use a slightly different pre-start and start procedure.3 We pre-flighted with our gloves on because almost everything was hot to the touch. Strapping in required careful placement of the shoulder straps because of the metal buckles; it was common to see pilots walking around with burn marks and scabs on their necks from inattention to this detail.
This flight was a graded “X” for both me and a friend, Mike “Hairball” Harris, who was flying with a pilot who wasn’t a member of our squadron, but was there for a few weeks to help as an instructor. I only remember his call-sign: Psycho.4 Because it was a live shoot, we would fly from the EAF together to a separate arming area, arm up, then pre-cock the helicopters and sit on “strip alert.” This was to simulate real combat where we would wait for a radio call for air support and then pick up the mission and go. Mike and I would also each be calling in live artillery rounds on static targets in a place called Quackenbush Lake. Note - there is no water there; it’s a dry lake bed in between two mountain ranges.
The start went fine, with Schlep taking a moment to mock our Huey brethren on the flightline next to us who did not, unfortunately for them, have air-conditioning. They turned-up with the doors open, sweating before they could even get the rotors moving to generate some wind, while we luxuriated in ice-chunk spitting A/C once we got the blades spinning. Taxi, take-off, over to the arming area, loading the aircraft up rack-to-rack, all went by the numbers. We sat around, sweated, and had a soda pop while we waited for the air support call to come in over the radios.
The call came in, we hopped into our birds, spun-up, and the ordies pulled the pins on our rocket pods and flipped the levers on the flare buckets. We were armed and airborne within 5 minutes after the call came in. The next hour was one of utter tedium as we struggled to get communications with the artillery battery. For this exercise, we were using genuine crypto-fills in our radios, meaning everything was being done via encrypted comms, which can be a bit tedious if everyone doesn’t have their shit together. Which is to say, there is almost never a time when everyone and their gear are all properly configured, using the right fill from the Air Tasking Order (ATO), at the right time, etc. Right at the moment Schlep was about to call it quits, the radios finally came to life with the artillery battery for whom we’re supposed to be calling and adjusting fire. YAY!
The artillery tubes are pointed into Quackenbush Lake from somewhere south of the area. We take up a position in “hover holds” where the circle with the X is. Because we have to be able to “peekaboo” over the ridgeline to look down into Quackenbush Lake to spot the artillery rounds as they land and then call in adjustments, we’re hovering at about 150’. (More on that in a bit).
Hairball goes first to adjust artillery onto some tank hulks in the distance. Using the Cobra’s 23X telescopic sight unit (TSU), he’ll zoom in to see the impacts, then pull his head back up, look at his map, then make the necessary call to the arty battery to adjust their fire onto the targets. A spotting round that hits the target on the first shot is a wonderful stroke of luck. A single call adjustment onto target is impressive - for both the arty and the person calling in the adjustments. Three rounds is what professionals should aim for, then it’s “fire for effect” and rain holy hell down on the poor bastards on the business end of it.
It’s training, so we’re helping both the artillery and us get used to our calls and adjustments. After a couple of calls, it’s clear that Mike is about to “shack” the targets, so Schlep - who is flying from the back seat - tells me to get my own call for fire ready. I acknowledge with two quick taps of my right toe on the footswitch on the floor. This is there to allow us to talk without me having to put my hands on the ICS switch on the cyclic, so I don’t interfere with Schlep flying and I can keep my hands on the TSU.
Bogie and Bacall May Have Paris, But We’ll Always Have “the Crash” and Camp Wilson, Schlep
A second later Schlep gives me a standard status report of the aircraft.
“Gauges look good, temps are in the green, 1000 pounds of gas left.” I key the switch again…
“ROTOR RPM! ROTOR RPM! ROTOR RPM!” Bitching Betty, the female voice that only comes on in one of five instances - if something really bad is happening - is telling us that our rotor RPM has dropped to 96%.
We’re “drooping turns” and as I look over the TSU to see the triple-tach gauge, I see that our #1 and #2 engine needles have “split” apart. We’ve lost an engine and I can feel us start to sink.
“We’ve lost #1.” Bill says - with urgency, but no panic in his voice. It’s hot, we’re heavy with full rocket pods and flare buckets, but one Cobra engine can - under good conditions - hover a fully-loaded aircraft out of Ground Effect. Bitching betty continues to tell us “Rotor RPM! Rotor RPM!”
I key the footswitch and say something to the effect of “I got it” and while I’m watching, the #2 engine needle starts chasing the #1. We are now out of engines, out of ideas, and rapidly running out of altitude.
We drop like a greased safe toward the ground below.
I sit up straight, feel the ground rushing up to grab us, and I brace for impact. As we pass through 50 feet, Tom “Q” Stone pops into my head and a prayer emerges unbidden: “Please, God, don’t let me be paralyzed.” The front seat of the Cobra is hard mounted, steel-on-steel, to the frame of the aircraft; the backseat is on rails and can “stroke” down to dissipate energy. I’m going to get the ground right up my ass. I sit back into the seat, my spine straight, head back and eyes forward.
Bill is flying, but my hands go to the controls. I wait until the last possible moment as we’re about to hit and I grab the collective and pull up at the same rate that we’re falling and hope we have enough turns left to cushion the impact. The aircraft bucks as the blades go to full-pitch, every last bit of lift bleeding out of the rotor-head… there is an instant right before impact when I realize OhmyGodwedonthaveenough
WHAM!
My head snaps forward and hits the TSU, right where the night vision goggle mount is on my helmet. My head comes up and out of the corner of my eye I see the blades flex down impossibly far, and then spring back up! And the aircraft gets picked up by the weight and pivots and holy shit we’re about to roll!
“GET OUT! GET OUT, BARNEY!” Bill yells from the back seat. I pop my harness with my right hand and open the canopy with my left, throwing myself out the door as the aircraft slides down the hill. We’ve impacted on the side of a slope and the upslope skid has snapped off. I am kneeling eye-to-eye with Schlep, but his door open to right and on the downslope side. He’s trapped as the aircraft slides. I grab my doorframe and dig my heels in, trying to stop the aircraft. It is a stupid and pointless act because my 175 pounds is not going to stop the 6 tons of aircraft. I drag along with it holding on, kicking up gritty sand and rock and then… miraculously, the aircraft stops.
Total time from first engine coughing until impact: 6 seconds.
The blades are barely turning, and coast to a stop. I’m looking at Bill’s eyes over the top of his visor, which has slid down from the impact. His seat has bottomed out and we’re eye-to-eye.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He shakes his head up and down and his visor wiggles over his face comically. I look right and realize that I am staring at a loaded 7-shot rocket pod filled with live, 2.75” HE rockets. I look back at Bill, my eyes wide:
“Well…Get the fuck out!” I yell, as I scamper and roll down the hill and out from the direct line of the rocket pods and 20mm chain gun. I hear Bill trying to climb out of the cockpit, his kneeboard catching on the cyclic, and then I hear him hit the ground on the other side of the aircraft.
We meet up on another hillock, slightly to the front and side of the aircraft and we start hugging.
“We did it! We’re alive!” Bill yells. I start cackling maniacally. I can’t believe it either. I become aware of the sound of our wingman, Hairball and Psycho, orbiting overhead. We start jumping up and down and waving to them and we get a slight wing waggle in response. Good. Help’s coming.
Bill decides that we should probably safe up the aircraft as best we can. We put the pins back in the rocket pods and safe the flare buckets. We do a walk-around of the aircraft and it’s clear why the aircraft didn’t go down the hill. We’ve impacted so hard that in addition to the upslope (left) skid breaking completely off, and the right bending, and then catching on a small rock outcropping, the tail stinger is buried into the rocky dirt completely up to the tail boom, which has also bent away from the center axis of the aircraft.
“You still have that disposable camera you got at the PX?” Bill turns to me. “No one’s ever gonna believe we saved this fuckin thing, Barn.” I reach into my flight suit’s right leg pocket and produce a cheap plastic, disposable camera that I’ve been trotting around to take pictures of all of the newness of my first ever CAX.
Within 10 minutes we hear the sounds of Huey rotor blades and shortly after an aircraft comes ripping around the rock outcropping on the right in the above picture. There’s nowhere close to us to land, so it finally settles on top of a small hill about 100 yards away. We see someone jump out of the back and he starts yelling and waving his arms.
“Is that Doc Thompson?” I ask Schlep. LT Thompson, U.S. Navy, is our squadron flight surgeon, whom we all love.
“What’s he saying?” Schlep asks. I shrug.
“I think he wants us to come over there to them,” I speculate. So we grab all of our gear and start the up-and-down the hill trot, over the jagged and rocky slopes to get to the Huey. When we’re finally within earshot, Doc Thompson shouts: “I was telling you to stay where you are in case you’re hurt, but I guess, fuck it. C’mon, hop in. Lemme take a look at ya.”
We start laughing again and we’re all smiles as the Huey aircraft commander, Rick Lyman, throttles up and the Huey launches into the air. Suddenly, the shock begins to wear off and I’m terrified. Being in the air now feels insane. I’m shaking and want to cry, so I hide it by lying on my back. We’re ripping along at 300 feet over the desert floor on our way to the Naval hospital at Mainside and I’m doing everything I can not to piss myself from fear.
How is this thing flying? Will it give out at any moment and we’ll be one of the worst tragedies ever?
After the longest 10 minute flight in human history, we land at the hospital helipad. Bill and I thank our squadronmates while the Doc tells us that we’re likely still running on adrenaline and could be injured, so let’s just wait for the ambulance to come get us. We’re standing there waiting, and waiting, and because of where the hospital is situated on the side of a mountain, the ambulance has to come from the other side of the hospital, drive down the hill to the main road at the bottom, and then along the road, and then labor back up the twisting road to the helipad.
“Oh, fuck this, c’mon, Barn.” Bill and I grab our gear and scamper over some rock the 30-40 yards down to the Emergency Room entrance with Doc Thompson shaking his head behind us. Doc ushers right into some beds after a brief word with the intake staff. We act like rockstars because we feel that way.
Perhaps 30 minutes later, we’re lying in our beds when the squadron CO, LtCol Richard E. St. Pierre - “Saint” - comes in. I start to jump to attention, but he waves both Bill and I back to our beds. Doc Thompson stands by nervously.
“You want me to go, CO?” Doc asks.
“Nah.” Saint is, as always, chewing on a small piece of gum. “I’ve been out to the crash site-” I see Bill stiffen. This is the moment he’s been dreading; he’s signed for the aircraft. I’m just a First Lieutenant and have given exactly zero moments of thought to the fact that one of the CO’s $15 million dollar Cobras is lying busted up on a hill near Quackenbush Lake. That reality comes rushing in at me instantly. Uh-oh.
“-I just wanted to come here personally and tell you I’m proud of you both.” He sticks out his hand and shakes Bill’s, then mine. I’m not sure what to say or do. “You’re lucky to be alive, but that’s a damn good job of flying.” He turns to Doc Thompson. “I want them up and flying as soon as you can clear them, Doc.” He nods his head and he’s gone through the curtains.
We both let out a sigh of relief. In 2 days we’re back on the schedule, despite the fact that we are now both facing an Aircraft Mishap Board/Investigation and a JAG Manual investigation.
For what it’s worth, the movie was filmed in Wadi Rum, Jordan, as a stand-in for the deserts of Arrakis.
This is not a hyperbolic turn of phrase. The troops sometimes got bored and betting on how long it would take an egg to cook on a particular panel of matting helps pass the time evidently.
I don’t recall the exact number anymore from the NATOPS manual, and I can’t find it after too much searching online, so I’m using 135º F as a stand-in for whatever the actual number is. Maybe a reader can chime in.
Ed. note: one day, well after I originally wrote this, unbidden, his name came back to me: Larry “Psycho” Belanger, of HMLA-167, the “Warriors,” IIRC.
Nicely done!
Any landing you walk away from is a good landing.
.. ‘stuck the landing ! 🦎🏴☠️🎬