Alan Bristow

by Alan Bristow

  I could see the Dutchmen’s eyes sparkling but they left without making a commitment, saying they’d be in touch, and soon it was once again time for Air Whaling Ltd to head back to the Antarctic on behalf of Christian Salvesen. I was to lead the team aboard the Southern Harvester while Alan Green was in charge of those aboard the Southern Venturer. We flew the helicopters aboard at Leith, and on the way south we practised our search procedures. The ships put in to Aruba to take on the relatively cheap fuel there, but three hours before departure one of my crewmen was missing. The Captain of the Southern Harvester was missing three of his own, so a military-style search party was formed. All four men were found in the first place we looked, a vast whorehouse out near the airport.

  On board the factory ship the helicopter pilots and chief engineer enjoyed the same privileges as the senior ships’ officers and dined frequently at the Captain’s table. For me, the highlight of each week was when a barrel of salt beef was opened and served with claret. For the Norwegians – even though these were Scottish whalers they had their contingent of Norwegians on board – the high point was marked by handsome helpings of lutefisk, the appalling salt cod that stank worse than a gangrenous whale.

  The Christian Salvesen operation was fundamentally different from what had gone before. One helicopter was always parked on the turntable while the other enjoyed the security of the hangar. Nothing was left to chance. The rotor blade clamps had been modified for the Whirlwind and gripped each blade about six inches in from the tip. The clamp itself was locked into position on the top of a four-by-two wooden pole, and the clamp and pole were held tight with guy ropes to deck fittings. It was a primitive and labour intensive system but it held the rotor blades secure even in winds in excess of 100 mph, and kept them free from damage.

  Every pilot was a captain, but all took turns as co-pilot. After every flight there was a debriefing as to what they had found, how the aircraft had behaved, and what might be learned from the flight. The sense of extreme isolation was gone now that teams of two were aboard. Each helicopter had an endurance of about six hours, and if whales were found towards the end of a sortie a signal would be sent to the ship to prepare the other helicopter to take over. There was always ample fuel available on board. A coffer dam had been built into the ship’s bilge tanks, and it contained more than enough fuel to keep both helicopters flying all season.

  Alastair lived up to my first estimation of him. To begin with he was nervous, telling me not to go so far away from the ship every time I started a creeping line ahead search for whales. One would be flying this pattern at about seventy knots for three hours and could fly as much as 180 nautical miles from the factory ship, but it soon becomes the norm and the nervousness disappeared.

  Always, there was the range issue. On a calm day when the helicopters had found a lot of whales, Alastair piped up: ‘We’d better get our arses back to base before we run out of fuel.’ It was indeed time – but on the way back a blanket of fog formed in about five minutes. I was forced once again to fly a few feet above the waves to retain a horizon reference, without which we would crash. Both of us were qualified to fly aeroplanes with sole reference to instruments, but at that time helicopters were thought to be so unstable that they could not be flown ‘on the clocks’. The Southern Harvester had a good radio beacon on board, although it tended to become erratic in heavy rain or snow. Within twenty-five miles of the ship we were warned by radio that she was stationary and enveloped in dense fog. I climbed straight ahead up to 200 feet to see if we could fly above the fog and into blue sky. I found patches of blue above 150 feet and decided to climb above the fog. A mile from Southern Harvester the fog lifted momentarily to give us a glimpse of the ship. I let down onto the small helideck, and even before we’d got out of the aircraft the fog had enveloped us again.

  On another occasion, the fog again came down unexpectedly out of a clear blue sky, and I brought the helicopter down to wave-top height while peering out of the starboard window and flying at forty-five or fifty knots. This kind of flying required a great deal of concentration and minimal use of flight controls – too much could lead to over-controlling, and an inability to recover before crashing. After a while, Alastair broke the silence:

  ‘Do you realise you’ve been flying on instruments for twenty minutes?’

  ‘I do,’ I said. ‘I’ve been checking the artificial horizon and airspeed indicator. There’s no reason that they can’t be used in low visibility, just like in an aeroplane.’

  Shortly thereafter the ship loomed up as a dark lump less than 200 yards ahead and I had to climb up through the fog to find out whether or not the flight deck was clear for landing. We proved the hard way that helicopters could be flown on instruments, despite what the ‘experts’ said.

  The strain of flying day in, day out was difficult for some pilots to handle, and one of them cracked up – the same man I’d had to pull out of the brothel in Aruba. At a post-flight debriefing he was barely able to speak, uttering gibberish about flying into the sea. His co-pilot, Bill Loftus, a nice guy who was a particularly good navigator, told me:

  ‘There’s something wrong with this guy – at one stage I had to take the stick off him.’

  Next morning this chap was due to fly with me and had been called at 4 am, but he didn’t turn up. I went down to his cabin to find him stretched out with his eyes wide open, totally unconscious. I’d never seen that before. I woke him up, but he complained that he didn’t feel very well. I pushed him into the aircraft, but he was useless. At the end of the flight I grounded him for the rest of the trip. Christian Salvesen were concerned about losing a pilot, but I told them the alternative was probably losing two pilots and a helicopter. The guy got ‘the twitch’ – as far as I know, he never flew again.

  Towards the end of the season I received a telegram aboard ship from George Fry.

  ‘Vinke wants to buy patent.’

  Telegrams flew back and forth.

  ‘They probably don’t have the money’ – my usual opening gambit. George didn’t agree.

  ‘They’re the national whaling company of Holland,’ he wired back. ‘Of course they’ve got the money.’

  ‘What do you think it’s worth, George?’

  ‘Hard to say. It will revolutionise their industry and make them millions. With all the other stuff they want, a couple of million?’

  ‘I don’t think they’d stand that. What about a million?’

  ‘That’s a nice round figure.’

  ‘Go back and tell him we’ll sell him the patents and ask him what conditions he’s attaching.’

  George came back a short while later. The conditions were not onerous – simply that Air Whaling Ltd ran the operation for them. The deal included four Whirlwinds to be put aboard a new factory ship, the Willem Barendsz II, and an operating contract on them for a year.

  I stipulated that we would have to have a platform and turntable, that we would design the flight deck and the hangar, the fire fighting, the fuel storage and all the peripheral equipment, for which we would charge a fee when we knew exactly the size of the job. Then we got a telegram back from Fry.

  ‘They’ll pay you a million for the package – patents, helicopters, management.’ It was indeed a nice round figure.

  At the end of the season I contrived a transfer to Balaena, which was making for Cape Town, and flew back to England. Contracts were signed and delivered. Some of the money was paid in Switzerland, but a substantial part of it was to be paid in cash. I was given precise instructions on how to collect the money and arrived at the appointed office in Leadenhall Street struggling with two suitcases – large, green, and Navy issue. I went up the stairs to where there was a windowless room containing a counter with a frosted glass partition above it. Into the frosted glass was set a small hatch. At the end of the counter there were two doors, one into the frosted glass, one into the wall. I rang the bell.

  ‘Who is it?’ asked a man’s voice.

  �
��Bristow,’ I said.

  A hand appeared through the hatch. ‘Passport, please.’

  I gave up my passport. There were chairs against the wall and I sat down, but a minute later the hatch opened and my passport slid out. Then the door into the frosted glass half opened.

  ‘May I have a suitcase, please.’

  I pushed the first suitcase through the door, still without seeing the owner of the voice. Again I sat down. After ten minutes the door half-opened again and my suitcase was pushed out.

  ‘Another suitcase, please.’

  When it had disappeared I knelt down and clicked open the first case. It was jam packed with big, white, freshly printed notes. I picked up a bundle and riffled through it, then shut the lid. The second suitcase appeared in due course and the door shut firmly. I thought about waiting for some further instructions, but quickly concluded there were to be none. I manhandled the suitcases to the stairs, but they were so heavy and unwieldy that I opted to push them into the elevator. I made it into the street feeling exposed and self-conscious. I hailed a taxi and drove to my bank in Yeovil. With the cash banked I made my way home, feeling a little light-headed. Years of work had paid off. The patents were duly consigned to the Netherlands Whaling Company and we went to work to convert their Whirlwinds.

  Just a few months later, the world was turned on its head. The International Whaling Commission, meeting in Sandefjord in Norway, voted effectively to outlaw the killing of whales from the air. It was plain that the owner-gunners who controlled the industry had decided to take action against what they perceived to be a threat to their livelihoods. It was a gloomy time at Henstridge. I sat back and waited for the Netherlands Whaling Company to get in touch. But the phone did not ring. Tentatively I sent them a bill for the conversion work on their helicopters; it was paid. But the idea of going back to the whaling grounds under the old system, using helicopters solely for spotting, held no appeal for me, and Jack, Alan and Alastair felt the same way. We had been looking forward to revolutionising the industry, and simply slaughtering whales when there was a more humane alternative seemed untenable. We would give the Netherlands Whaling Company their WS55s, but they’d have to find their own pilots.

  What would Air Whaling Ltd do then? One afternoon I was sitting in the garden with Jean as the babies played on the grass, pondering on the problem. Jean was reading the Daily Express.

  ‘There’s an article here about Group Captain Douglas Bader. He’s the man with no legs who flew as a fighter pilot in the war,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, I know of him,’ I said. Who didn’t?

  ‘It says here he’s in charge of all of Shell Oil’s aviation, all over the world. Why not see if he has anything for you? Swap whale oil for crude oil, so to speak.’

  I didn’t immediately leap out of my chair. ‘He probably has all the help he needs,’ I grumbled. ‘Besides, I don’t know anyone who knows Bader – I wouldn’t even know how to get in touch with him.’

  ‘You could write him a letter,’ said Jean brightly.

  ‘Oh. Yes, I suppose I could.’

  So I did.

  CHAPTER 13

  Breaking into Oil

  My letter to Douglas Bader triggered the chain of events that transformed Bristow Helicopters into a world force in aviation. In it, I introduced Air Whaling Ltd as a company with long experience of helicopter operations in the Antarctic and suggested that Shell would profit from using helicopters to support exploration for oil and the transport of crews to drilling rigs that Shell was working all over the world. By a mystifying coincidence, the letter landed on Bader’s desk at Shell Mex House in the Strand just as he was wondering where on earth he was going to find an operator for two Westland WS55 helicopters he’d just bought, on instructions from his superiors, to service exploration platforms in the Persian Gulf. I was summoned that day by telephone, and drove up to London with my mind full of outlandish possibilities. At Shell Mex House the corporate pecking order determined which floor you were on, and Bader, as worldwide Aviation Superintendent, was two floors off the top. I was taken up in the elevator by his secretary, Pam.

  ‘The Group Captain’s looking forward to meeting you,’ she said. Douglas Bader always preferred to be called ‘the Group Captain’, and Pam never referred to him as anything else.

  She led me into a bright, airy office with a window looking out on London’s smoky skyline, the diffused reflections of riverside buildings playing on the Thames far below. Bader got up and came around his big desk to shake hands, walking carefully on his tin legs. He had in his mouth the short-stemmed pipe that was rarely a stranger to his face.

  ‘Ah, Mr Bristow,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  ‘And I you, of course,’ I ventured.

  He motioned me to take a seat and resumed his own. Bader spoke in short, sharp sentences and was not disposed to idle chat, but he was clearly enthusiastic. ‘I’ve heard about all your work in the Antarctic,’ he said with boyish eagerness. ‘Remarkable. What’s it like flying down there?’

  ‘Well, sometimes it’s very pleasant and sometimes it’s quite dangerous,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ he said. ‘It takes quite some nerve to do what you’ve done.’

  I was flattered to be spoken to in such terms by a man of his mettle. Bader was world-famous as an indefatigable fighter pilot, a man who’d talked his way back into the wartime RAF after losing both legs in a flying accident before the war, who’d shot down twenty-two German aircraft and whose spare legs had been parachuted to him in a unique sortie, by special permission of the Luftwaffe, after he’d been captured in 1943. He had escaped on them that very night, only to be recaptured gamely hobbling towards England, and had ended up incarcerated in Colditz Castle, where only the most incorrigible officers were imprisoned. He was an indomitable sprit, a legend, and a great aviator. And here he was praising me!

  ‘How far did you fly from the factory ship?’ he asked eagerly.

  ‘The furthest we got was 180 miles.’

  ‘That’s a long way. Had any engine failures?’

  ‘Not in the Antarctic, fortunately.’

  ‘Where do you get your pilots from?’

  ‘I train most of them. We’ve picked up good engineers from various companies.’

  ‘How many chaps have you got?’

  ‘Six pilots with a few more coming on, and five engineers at the moment.’

  ‘Do they have S55 time?’

  ‘Yes, all of them.’

  ‘Which mark?’

  ‘The Westland version with the Alvis Leonides 550 hp engine, not the American S55 with the Pratt & Whitney R1340.’

  ‘Good, good. Now I’ve been told by my superiors that we’re going to have a serious exploration in the Gulf based out of Doha.’

  ‘Where’s Doha?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s in Gutter!’

  ‘Never heard of it. Where’s Gutter?

  ‘It’s pronounced Gutter, it’s spelled Qatar. It’s in the Persian Gulf.’

  ‘What sort of operation do you want?’

  ‘You’ve got to carry men and materials from Doha forty miles out to Shell’s first drilling rigs in the Gulf. Seven days a week, and at night.’

  ‘We can do that. It’s just a question, sir, of having the manpower available for night operations. You can’t expect people to fly around the clock.’

  ‘Fine. Just make sure everyone is trained and licensed for night flying.’ He rattled on with barely a pause for breath. ‘I tell you what we’ll do. We’ll give you the helicopters, you give us the manpower and the maintenance, we’ll do it like that. We’ll provide the hangar. Can you go tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, I can go tomorrow.’

  Bader pressed a button on his desk. ‘Snoddy? Pop in please.’

  In came Roy Snodgrass, all of five eight, slightly built, tidy and very well spoken. Snodgrass and an engineering man called Bill Williams were Bader’s right and left hands.

  ‘Snoddy, this f
ellow’s going to run our helicopters for us. Take him to Doha and make sure he gets what he needs. He can go tomorrow.’

  He smiled a close-of-business smile, but we hadn’t done the important job.

  ‘How are we going to get paid for this, sir?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh. Oh yes. You’ll be paid so much a month in arrears for the wages, and you can mark up your expenses by ten per cent.’

  ‘We’ll have to get a stock of spares, sir, and I’ll have to charge you more than ten per cent on the replacement parts.’

  If Bader didn’t realise it then, it would have dawned on him soon afterwards – once we had control of the spares it was very difficult to fire us. It seemed unusual that a great oil company would buy the helicopters and then give the operator the right to provide spare parts. Shell had no idea about the WS55’s spares consumption, but I had a firm handle on it from our Antarctic experiences. It was a reliable helicopter, although pumps, solenoids, fuel and air filters and a handful of small items often had to be replaced before they’d completed their scheduled maintenance flying hours. The Alvis Leonides engine worked very well and rarely failed. But the fact that our relationship with Shell remained unbroken for decades was nothing to do with our monopoly on the supply of replacement parts. We did a fantastic job for them, and the Group Captain knew it.

  I phoned Jean and told her I was off to somewhere nobody had ever heard of and didn’t know when I’d be back. She was used to that sort of thing. The Group Captain’s comment to Snodgrass about ‘our helicopters’ was the first I’d heard of the fact that Shell had already bought the helicopters we would be flying. On the plane to Bahrain Snoddy explained that they were due for delivery later that month. Everything at Shell was done in the shortest possible time, he said. Group Captain Bader had probably had no more than a couple of months to define the specification and negotiate early delivery of the helicopters, hire a contractor and get the operation up and running in Doha. Shell’s first exploration rig was forty miles offshore, but the weather was unpredictable and boats were often prevented from delivering parts and personnel.