Grams luftfartsblogg: SAR 38 years ago - A story on professionalism at work

About Rob: He served as the IFALPA Helicopter Commmittee Chairman over several. He used to write policy for IFALPA and then regulations for the UK CAA, the JAA and finally for EASA. All of which was pretty dry stuff, he thinks. So, more recently he thought that he might try his hand at writing something more readable. So, here is his yarn from yester-year. Pictures by Rob McGregor. Enjoy! (Ed.)

Rob`s type of bird at RAF Hendon 2016 - Photo: Per Gram

The Mission

(Flying Officer Rob McGregor on the North Sea - and the race for LT 244)

Here is a little story from my search and rescue days in the RAF. My primary job at that time was to rescue our own pilots if they had to bale out over the sea, but we also did work involving ships, ambulance flights and general rescue tasks involving swimmers and hill-walkers, etc. I have included the names of the people I flew with then as I remember them and details such as the helicopter registration XL 112 because it had been my aircraft during the Aden conflict some years earlier; and the ‘race’ referred to in the subtitle of the piece was, of course, against the night.

I well remember that day in the spring of ‘69. I was then a young flying officer on a helicopter air sea rescue squadron, based at RAF Leconfield in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Late in the afternoon the Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC) at HQ 18 Group, Coastal Command called with a possible job for my crew to undertake. The basic details were that the Coastguard had received a radio message from a trawler out in the North Sea requesting help in evacuating a crewman with what they were describing as fairly severe medical problems. The RCC controller would have taken medical advice as to the likely urgency of his condition, and from my position I could guess that this could well be a serious situation. At any rate, it was serious enough for the trawler skipper to have turned his ship around and to be heading for port (which it would take his ship over ten hours to reach) and for him now to be calling for medical help and assistance in getting his crewman to hospital. The ship was about a hundred miles east of Spurn Point and making for the Humber estuary at her best speed of about ten knots. Our task would be to take a doctor with us, rendezvous with the ship and get the sick man to hospital.

According to our normal procedures at that time (which was before there were oil rigs with radio operators, heli-decks and refuelling available on the North Sea) a long range maritime patrol Shackleton aircraft would be diverted, or otherwise sent, to find the ship and to provide ‘top-cover’ for us (a sort of close safety escort to cover the uncomfortable fact that the Whirlwind Mk 10 helicopter had only a single engine and did not have floatation gear). The complications here were that the ship was at the limit of our range and low cloud, poor visibility and a force eight gale were affecting the area … and there was little more than an hour to go till nightfall. It followed that there would not be enough time to get a Shackleton on station before it got dark and it was doubtful that it would be able to help much anyway because of the poor visibility and the very low cloud. We knew that we needed daylight if we were to find the ship without having either direct radio contact with her, or radar in the helicopter to guide us, and with the Whirlwind Mk 10 helicopter we also needed daylight for us to be able to hover over her and carry out a winch transfer. In effect, just about every aspect of the task was wrong and we had serious misgivings about it right from the start.

It was not an ‘impossible’ task, but it carried risks all of its own and the odds on success were not good as every bit of the flight would have to go ‘just right’ if we were to win through. However, in the chill of that moment, perhaps out of a sense of duty, or maybe just because it was our job, we felt an obligation to take it on - despite the difficulties … ‘to play the hand we had been dealt’, you might say. I remember my navigator, Flight Lieutenant Peter Pascoe, who had taken the phone call, saying to the RCC controller (who probably wasn’t too sure of what he was getting us into) “If we are to go [at all], then we have to go now! [without top-cover]” … and that was it in a nutshell.

While Pete worked out the tracks, timings and fuel to and from the rendezvous point, our ground crew fuelled the helicopter to its maximum overload weight. My winchman, Sergeant Phil Course alerted the station medical centre and loaded the flying kit for the doctor onto the aircraft. At the same time, I put a ‘Flash’ telephone call through to an RAF aerodrome located fifty miles to the south on the Lincolnshire coast, which had a precision approach radar and got air traffic control there to remain open for me as a weather diversion in case we ran into fog. Then, with Phil giving a final check of the winch, I started the helicopter’s turbine engine and engaged rotors, and as Pete clambered up the side of the helicopter and into the cockpit with his charts, our doctor, Flight Lieutenant Mike Bullivant, arrived and leapt on board and we were off; only about six or seven minutes from first receiving the call.

But, as we flew into the teeth of the gale, even before we reached the coast, we ran into cloud that was down on the tops of the trees, and this, certainly, did not bode well for our chances of success. However, once over the sea, although the visibility was down to about half a mile, I found that I was able to fly at between fifty and a hundred feet. One quirky thing about the Whirlwind Mk 10 helicopter was that the theoretical speed for best range was about ten knots faster than Vne i.e. the ‘never exceed airspeed’. So, it didn’t help that in order to reach the ship with enough fuel to accomplish the patient transfer and still be able to get home, I had to fly the aircraft right up on the red line.

At about thirty nautical miles from the coast we out-ran the VHF radio communication with land based radio stations and were left with a rather tenuous radio link to an RAF aeroplane co-opted by the RCC, which was flying above cloud at 10,000 feet and to whom we passed ‘operations normal’ calls and position reports. The Whirlwind Mk 10, as I have said, had only a single engine, so if it failed, we would ditch in less than thirty seconds and because it did not have floatation equipment, the helicopter would sink immediately. So, in the absence of a Shackleton with Lindholme Rescue Gear providing a close safety escort, the RCC needed, at the very least, to have some idea of where it might have to look for us.

So, on we went, pretty much on our own, with Pete plotting our progress on a half-million scale Decca chart and giving me headings to steer. Eventually, after about an hour and a quarter of flying at low level, with night approaching, we arrived at the projected DR position (dead reckoning position) that the ship should have reached, but in the fading light the seas around us were grey, streaked with foam, and empty … . We had, however, a small amount of fuel remaining unused from the outbound leg, which was available for a search pattern. So Pete set up an expanding square search and, as luck would have it, on about the third or fourth beat, the shape of a vessel emerged from the mists ahead of us; and, as I swept over it at low level, we were able to check her name and number … and, it was our ship - LT 244!

I came up alongside and we indicated for her to turn into wind, which I remember she did with the full height of her stem clearing the tops of the swells as the helmsman brought her around into what was quite a stormy sea. Deck winching was something we trained for regularly, but usually onto RAF launches and then in normal sea states. This was a trawler with masts and a cluttered superstructure and she was moving about quite a lot. It was, you will understand, important to avoid getting our winch cable entangled in the rigging, and also to avoid injuring and hence incapacitating our crewmembers on the end of the winch cable; as could happen if they were slammed into obstacles. Ideally, the plan would have been to lower our doctor, ‘Mary Poppins’ style, on to the deck, clutching his bag of medical equipment, but it would have taken too long and have been unacceptably hazardous for him in the stormy conditions, as he had not had much training for this sort of thing. So, it was down to Phil, who, as our specialist in this area, quickly connected himself and a Neil Robertson stretcher to the winch hook. At the same time, Pete moved from the cockpit to the winch operator’s station at the main cabin door to begin the transfer. We ran in and Pete talked me down so that Phil, whom I could not actually see on the end of the winch cable thirty, or forty feet below the helicopter, landed safely on the deck. Phil disconnected himself from the wire in a second and I then held off at endurance speed and we waited … still burning fuel.

Phil said afterwards that the first thing the somewhat incredulous skipper said to him when he arrived on the deck was: “How on earth did you find us?” I guess it must have been quite dramatic for those on the ship. One minute they would have been ploughing along alone through a stormy sea in very poor visibility, with night approaching, and without much hope of a helicopter coming to the aid of their crewman, and the next: suddenly, out of nowhere and without any warning, having us race over them at mast top height.

Anyway, Phil got his patient into the stretcher and with the help of the crew, they carried him up to the deck, and we ran in again to pick them up in a double lift. However, this was easier said than done. When I hovered over the deck, most of my field of view was filled by the ship and when I moved with the masts, the unloaded, empty winch hook swung violently and threatened to become entangled with the rigging. But, if I remained in a stationary hover above the ship, which was pitching and rolling, as well as rising and falling below me, the masts could easily strike the helicopter and anyway with my field of view dominated by the ship, remaining ‘steady’, was like attempting Mark Twain’s challenge of, ‘counting to ten without thinking of the word rhinoceros’. There was, however, a narrow strip of deck on the port quarter outboard of the ship’s rail, which looked promising. So Phil positioned himself and the casualty there, outboard of the rail, with three of the ship’s crew holding on to them. In that position we were able to bring the winch hook in to him sideways and then, after no more than a couple of seconds delay while he connected himself and the stretcher to the hook - as the cable came taught - we snatched them off and clear of the ship. I think that in that moment those watching from the ship probably held their breath. Pete and I were busy concentrating on the immediate task of completing the lift, but as Phil and the patient made the safety of the helicopter, I became aware that the ship’s siren was sounding in a kind of salute and, glancing across at the ship, it seemed to me that the men on the deck were cheering too.

Things were looking up. We had found the ship and got the casualty on board the helicopter where our doctor could look after him. All we needed now was to get home. And so, with a wave of farewell to the ship, we set course in the ever gathering dusk for our home base eighty-five nautical miles to the west.

I flew the return much as I had the outbound leg, just skimming the waves, flat out at Vne, and at never more than a hundred feet … but, long before we made landfall, the night was upon us! To get home now we would need to make a blind approach through cloud in the dark … and there was no air traffic control radar at Leconfield for an instrument approach.

Not many of the helicopter pilots on my squadron ever chose to deliberately fly the Whirlwind Mk 10 on instruments, unless they inadvertently entered cloud and it was momentarily forced upon them. Sure, we practised simulated instrument flying, but there was a world of difference between simulating flight in cloud (by concentrating on the flight instruments and, with a visor clipped to your helmet, trying not to look outside) and actually flying in cloud. You see, without gyroscopic stabilisation of the attitude and a cyclic-stick force-trim datum in pitch and roll, the Whirlwind helicopter was aerodynamically unstable. Flying it in cloud was, to use an analogy, like walking along a high wire without a balancing pole and without a safety net. Simulated instrument flight, by comparison, was more like walking along the touch line of a playing field while wearing a pair of ski goggles. I was perhaps unusual in that I practised flying in cloud for short periods whenever the opportunity presented itself, just so that I would be ready for days like these. So, the plan that Pete and I settled upon was for us to launch deliberately into the cloud and to go for a blind approach at our base using our Decca radio navigation equipment to guide us, and if that were to be unsuccessful, we would have just about enough fuel left to return to the coast, let-down blind over the sea (which had the advantage, of course, of being flat and at sea level) and then try to land in crossed car headlights on the coast, if that could be arranged - hardly ideal, but at least it was a ‘back-stop’.

Pete re-calibrated his Decca one last time and checked our position and then we climbed into the cloud. At this, the fast and furious flight at low level was replaced by a deceptive calm, and in the red glow from the flight instruments, with the whine of the helicopter’s transmission for accompaniment, we climbed to safety altitude. Concentrating on the dials of his Decca receiver and his charts, Pete gave me headings to steer to get us onto the red lane that passed through the centre of the airfield at Leconfield and then with five miles to run, we commenced our descent at three hundred feet per mile. At two miles we would have been overflying a line of large electricity pylons lying to the east of the airfield, but at six hundred feet we were still in cloud. However, at about a mile and a half and passing four hundred and fifty feet, I began to pick up lights on the ground in my peripheral vision. At one mile and three hundred feet, the airfield lights were in sight and we were home!

We landed without delay and our patient was whisked away to hospital in a waiting ambulance… and the mission was over.

Eighteen months later, while I was, myself, serving as an RCC and Operations Controller in the Middle East, my replacement on the squadron lost control of Whirlwind XL112 in cloud and everyone on board was killed. My own career as a maritime helicopter pilot was to last for another thirty years, during which I flew some sixteen thousand flight hours over the sea in helicopters which were, by the end of my career, multi-engined, attitude stabilised and equipped with floatation gear, GPS and radar. But, on that day in 1969, flying a Whirlwind Mk 10 of No. 202 Squadron, Phil Course, Peter Pascoe and I were at the top of our game and with nothing to spare and no margin for error, we were riding on the edge.

Rob McGregor

December 2013

Postscript: In September 1969, Phil, as winchman, Peter, as navigator and I, as pilot and captain of the aircraft, were each awarded the ‘Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service in the Air’ for our actions during the mission.