Mostly though, in January, in Norway, anti-icing equipment is moot because it is too cold for icing. The moisture is snow and falling snow is mostly harmless to an aircraft. If it falls hard enough it can and does reduce visibility to nothing, a very serious situation when you are flying below the mountaintops, but it will not shut your engines down.
On my second day in Norway, as we flew north from Bergen, the snow became too much for me. We had been fighting our way through heavy snowstorms with their attendant greatly reduced visibility in unfamiliar terrain, with high mountains and unknown power lines, until we arrived at Bodo to refuel and check the weather before proceeding north. Adding to the non-existent visibility, it was now dark, very dark with clouds and snow obscuring everything. After landing on the runway at Bodo’s airfield, the mere taxi from the runway to the parking ramp in front of the Operations building had been a white knuckle exercise, with intermittent whiteout in blowing snow on the taxi way. I was the AC, but my copilot was one of the Clockwork instructors and he was very keen to make it to Bardufoss in only two days after leaving Somerset, sort of like the ocean liners racing across the Atlantic to take the Blue Riband—the instructors wanted it to be the shortest time it had ever been done in a helicopter. Both the instructor copilots left their aircraft leaping out to check weather while the two ACs stayed with their aircraft during refueling.
As soon as they left, I called the other AC on the fox mike and told him, “I’m done. Shutting down now.” He agreed without further comment and also shut his aircraft down too. together we walked into the Operations building to be greeted by incredulous looks from our copilots, the Clockwork instructors. I learned very early that taking excessive chances, particularly with bad weather, was often fatal—five friends and their 29 passengers died when they flew a Chinook directly into a mountain in bad weather in Vietnam 12 years before. They didn’t even find the wreckage for two weeks. I was not going to join them if I could help it, particularly for a mythical Blue Riband.
“Why are you in here?” the Clockwork instructors/copilots asked. “You should be back in the aircraft ready to takeoff just as soon as we get the latest weather at Bardufoss.”
I told them that since I had signed for the aircraft, it was my decision, not theirs, as to what we do or do not do, and that I was through flying for the day. tomorrow, in what little daylight Norway had in January, we would complete the flight north; or not, if the weather was still terrible. They were not happy, not happy at all, but whether or not they objected, their input was moot. The aircraft was mine, not theirs, and so was the final decision. We made the RON call to our squadron back at Yeovilton and went to another hotel. Love those heated bathroom floors.
The next day dawned clear and without falling snow from the blue sky. The Norwegian snowplows had done their work on the runway and the taxi out to takeoff position was not a repeat of the previous evening’s white out. Our flight into Bardufoss was a routine 2.0 hours in the air, beautiful as we flew up the fjords, with no high-tension moments at all. I enjoyed seeing the mountains and the snow-covered landscape as we flew north and east, instead of wondering if I was about to fly into something in the dark. even though the snow showers, like those of the day before, are often a problem that far north, none bothered us that day as we flew in the postcard perfect sky.
Flying up one of the fjords, I saw a house on the edge of a small beach beneath a towering cliff. What a lovely summer place, I thought, only to see a light on the front porch and a person run out the door to wave as we flew past. The sound of helicopters coming up from the south must have been a real change from the silence of the fjord in winter. How lovely it was there. How lonely it must have been there.
Day and night arctic flying training was completed in due course and I took my turn flying the assigned missions. A month or so after completing training I was flying a mission, its purpose long since forgotten, when snow started coming down too hard to continue flying safely. Spotting an open area near some Norwegian houses, I plopped my Sea King down in the snow and settled in to wait for the weather to clear. After shutting the aircraft down I noticed my aircrewman was missing. Following the footprints, I saw him knocking on the door of one of the houses and overheard him say (in his best Russian accent), “Dis Norway? You see cruise missile?” the Norwegian householders froze and then slammed the door as I yelled, “It’s a joke! It’s joke! We’re British! We’re British!” which of course I wasn’t, but never mind. Shortly thereafter a five-or six-year-old boy came running bright-eyed through snow to see the helicopter. I hauled him up inside and let him into the cockpit.
We had all learned a few phrases in Norwegian, but the most popular was, “min flyr båten er full av ål,” or, roughly, “My flying boat is full of eels.” We tried it on the little boy and he immediately began looking under all the seats. When he didn’t find any he turned to me indignantly, and said “NO.” When the snow storm cleared and it came time for us to start the aircraft he said good-bye and then stood in the door of the helicopter before falling out backwards into the four feet of snow on the ground. Sinking down while making a snow angel, he wished us safely on our way.
Like I said, I don’t remember what the mission was that day or anything else about that flight, but I remember that little boy.
26
ROYAL NAVY NIGHT FLIGHT—THE DIFFICULT VALLEY
NEAR BARDUFOSS, NORWAY ■ JANUARY 1984
Flying in Norway in winter presents constant challenges; night flying in mountains and the occasional heavy snow are two of the obvious ones. Because night in northern Norway lasts a really long time, all “day” in fact, in winter the pilot must learn to deal with it and be able to always operate normally. One of the skills to do so requires that he know “difficult valley” flying techniques. Like the early days of NVG flying, night difficult valley flying is particularly difficult, in some ways even more so than the night flight described in earlier chapters.
The “difficult valley” Clockwork uses for training is aptly named. The first difficulty in all flying is finding where you are supposed to go, but in this case that was not the difficult part since finding this particular valley at night is easy enough. Fly down a fjord northeast of Bardufoss until the fjord turns east and look for a tall, lighted smoke stack along the shore. Turn east to climb up the hillside to the north of the stack. If you can’t see it from a distance, start looking in earnest for the valley entrance as you clear the tree line. At that point it’s not hard to find because the valley itself is a glaciated “U” that is located above the tree line, at about two thousand feet where you enter and climbs to about 3,000 feet above sea level at the highest point of the valley floor.
As the altitude increases, the valley narrows until you can’t do a coordinated turn at 90 knots out of it. It envds in a “T” with another glaciated “U” valley that runs north to south. This valley has sheer rock walls on both sides reaching up about 1,000 feet higher than the floor, high enough that you cannot “cyclic climb” out of it, meaning trading airspeed for altitude by bringing the helicopter’s nose up. Helicopters just don’t have that much energy to trade; if you try it you will shortly find yourself out of air speed, altitude, and ideas all at the same time. Once you are above the tree line, there is really nothing to look at except the rock wall and featureless snow, particularly featureless in the dark Norwegian night.
Syllabus flight or no, I would never have gone into that valley on a moonless night except that my instructor, fresh from the Falkland’s War, was acting bored and said, “Oh, if you think it’s too hard we can go around it,” which got my Irish (American?) up to the point where we were going up it even if it meant becoming a greasy black spot on the valley wall.
As I was expecting, once we cleared the tree line there was nothing left to see, with the sky, valley floor, and walls a more or less uniform black. Out to the starboard side of the aircraft, my side, parts of the blackness were blacker than other parts—rocks sticking out the si
de of the cliff, I think, but all was just black on all sides with a black rock wall in front of us.
After we cleared the tree line and were into the valley proper, my aircrewman, who had navigated us blind to this point, began counting down, “Three, two, one, turn right to 180 degrees NOW.”
Looking to the right to where I was to turn, all I saw was just more blackness. Turn early into a rock wall or turn late and fly straight ahead into another one? I trusted my aircrewman and his work was perfect, as you have probably surmised since I’m writing this many years after the fact. About 30 seconds after I steadied on the new heading he had given me, we started to see lights of a village down on the fjord. It took half an hour to get that seat cushion out of my rear end when we finally landed.
Talking to my fellow “students” over beer a few days later I found out I had been the only one that night to fly through the “difficult valley.” All the rest had flown around it and were of the considered opinion that I was insane. In retrospect, I agree.
Luck and superstition indeed …
27
TROOP LIFTING, WITH NIGHT AND HEAVY SNOW SHOWERS
NORTHERN NORWAY ■ MARCH 1985
Me: “Fearless Tower, Victor Hotel. Three miles east for landing.” After a pause—HMS Fearless: “Victor Hotel, why do you wish to land three miles to the east?” After a pause—Me: “Fearless Tower, Victor Hotel. I do not wish to land three miles east. I wish to land onboard your ship.” HMS Fearless: “Ah, you wish to join.” Me: “No, I have already joined some years ago. Now I just wish to land.” (A typical example of American to English translation difficulties)
Iwas dash two of a two Sea King mission to insert troops behind the “enemy” for a surprise attack. We would launch off HMS Fearless, a Royal Navy LSD (Landing Ship Dock—which meant it had two nice big helicopter landing spots aft and the capacity to carry a company or two of Royal marines). The mission was straightforward—takeoff from Fearless at a certain time, drop the Marines in the selected landing zone at the appointed time and return to the ship—nothing fancy, like NVG flying or dodging missiles, real or simulated here, just out and back and done for the day. Or more accurately, for the night, since most missions in northern Norway in March were at night.
The flight out to Fearless from Bardufoss was routine, as was the landing onboard and final pre-mission briefing. Fearless was steaming slowly, keeping pretty much to the center of the fjord. My aircraft was an “all colonial” crew, as the Brits were fond of saying, with an American aircraft commander, an Australian copilot, and a Kenyan crewman. For this mission, I was dash two aircraft, the wingman, so all I had to do was keep up with lead and land somewhere behind his aircraft so as not to interfere with his landing. The Royal Marines would rapidly disembark and proceed to their attack point, and we would depart the area as soon as they cleared the aircraft. We did not have to come back and pick them up after the assault. As was usual with my squadron, radios were not to be used except in the case of an emergency.
The weather was forecast to be about perfect, a little moon and clear except for scattered snow showers, as nights normally are. When my Australian copilot and I went to strap into our aircraft, the scattered snow showers arrived, really, seriously arrived. Visibility went from clear—with both sides of the fjord that Fearless was cruising within sight—to not being able to see the rail of the ship about 20 feet away from the cockpit. Figuring the snow would pass since it was just a shower, we continued with the runup in preparation for takeoff at the appointed time.
The problem arose when the appointed time arrived and the snow had not stopped—it just got worse or remained bad enough that visibility was near zero. I assumed that lead would hold the flight on deck until the visibility improved, and signaled the LSE to remove the chocks and chains so we would be ready when the shower passed. The deck crew pulled them off and LSE showed them to us so that we knew they were all removed. Then suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, or launch signal from the LSE, lead took off. He did not appear to do a hover check, but instead lifted directly into forward flight. The Sea King vanished from sight as soon as he cleared the flight deck rail.
My copilot and I looked at each other in dropped-chin amazement. You could see absolutely nothing beyond 20 feet from the cockpit, yet lead had departed into the snow shower. While the fjord that Fearless was sailing through had low lands for a short distance on each bank, the terrain soon rose steeply into cliffs, a real problem if you did not know where to look for them.
I knew that if I took off immediately, the risk of a mid-air collision was very real; we would be unable to see him and he us. Had I known he was going, I could have taken off nearly simultaneously and kept him in sight by staying very close, a high tension but normal procedure. Had he done a hover check, I would have known he was going and would have been airborne right after him. But he didn’t do a hover check and that moment was gone, so I held on the deck, still waiting for the shower to pass. It did not pass. Fearing the worst, i.e., that he crashed into the water or into the ground just on-shore, I told my copilot that we were going too. I lifted to a hover for final checks and pushing the nose forward, we were off.
After we cleared the deck of the ship, I did not climb to a cruise altitude. Instead, I leveled off at about 100 feet on the radar altimeter and kept my airspeed slow, around 60 knots, enough to move forward and keep the helicopter out of danger but slow enough to stop or turn should an obstacle appear before us. My idea was to get over land, get oriented in where exactly we were, and then proceed. After a couple of minutes (but probably actually only 30 seconds), I could tell that we’d crossed the shoreline because I could see trees directly below us. I tried turning on the landing light for a better view, but the snow just blinded us, so I turned it back off.
“This is stupid,” I said over the ICS, “I’m landing in the first clear area we see and waiting out this shower.” Returning to the ship was impossible because trying to find it while flying blind might well result in us hitting it instead of landing on it.
My copilot agreed that it was stupid and as I started down the last 100 feet to land in an open field, we came out of the snow shower into a beautiful, clear Norwegian night. There in the middle of the fjord was Fearless. Nothing of the other helicopter could be seen.
For a moment, I debated in my head returning the troops to ship and then beginning a search for the other aircraft but decided that it would be quicker to just drop them in the LZ and then start a search. Besides, if we came across wreckage and they were still onboard, they could help with security and the recovery. I turned the Sea King to the east and flew toward the landing zone. As I crossed the shoreline, another Sea King flew by on my port side. It had to be flight lead since no one else was flying that night, so I joined up on them and we proceeded as a flight of two to the LZ, dropped the troops and then returned to Fearless.
After I shut the aircraft down and it was secured, we joined the other crew in Fearless’ ready room for the debrief. Both pilots from the lead aircraft were pale and somewhat shaky. Me? I was just mad at their stupidity, but I didn’t say a word as the flight leader began his tale. He did not explain his sudden takeoff into the near zero-visibility shower but instead launched into what happened next after he cleared the ship’s rail and headed for land.
The fjord we were in runs east and west from the location where we took off. Fearless was headed east, and since we were headed across the deck from the two helicopter landing spots, we were to takeoff to the south, fly straight ahead until we intercepted the southern shore, then turn left to the east and proceed up the fjord until we reached the checkpoint for the final turn and our run into the LZ. It couldn’t have been easier.
That was the theory anyway …
When lead came off the deck, he immediately became disoriented and did a 180-degree turn, somehow blindly missing Fearless’ superstructure, and now unknowingly, was headed north, not south. In a few seconds he intercepted the northern shore, and turn
ing left as briefed, headed out west in exactly the wrong direction. Unfortunately for them, the snow squall was also headed that direction and their visibility remained near zero. taking the helicopter as low as they could, they went slowly down the fjord nearly blind until, at last, it dawned on them that they had been going west. Instead of going south they had followed the shore of the fjord as it turned north.
The arm of the fjord they were following had narrowed considerably and they were able to reverse course while staying low and in sight of the surface, all the while engulfed in the heavy snow shower. They finally recognized a manmade object that allowed them to determine their exact position—old abandoned Nazi-built submarine pens left over from World War II. Continuing on, they finally flew out of the snow squall and saw my Sea King’s lights up ahead of them. Putting on a burst of speed they passed us and took the lead on into the LZ and completed the mission.
The reasons they were still pale and a bit shaky were quite simple. First, they came within a hair of crashing into the water following their takeoff into the snow shower, and were subsequently disoriented with its 180-degree turn around the ship. Second, they could well have flown directly into Fearless since the snow would have prevented them from seeing her until the last possible second. Third, and probably the most serious, was that just north of the old sub pens there was a set of large power lines that came within 150 feet of the surface of the fjord. In the course of their mistaken route, they had flown underneath these power lines twice—once going north and again coming back south after they realized they were headed the wrong direction. They could not have missed the wires by more than 100 feet. They never saw them.
Surprised at Being Alive: An Accidental Helicopter Pilot in Vietnam and Beyond Page 28