A STEEP LEARNING CURVE
This is a story of one of the more
important decisions I ever made although at the time it just seemed like a good
idea. In 1978, I was awarded my Royal
Naval pilot’s wings and went on to train on the Sea King Mark One
anti-submarine helicopter. After
conversion, I was offered the option to go to 824 Squadron and fly off the old
Ark Royal on her last commission or 814 Squadron off HMS Hermes. I chose 814, not the least because I knew they
had an American deployment scheduled for the following year. Had I gone to 824, I would have been able to
see the Phantoms and Buccaneers strut their stuff for the last time but 814
gave me something else.
We were the first squadron to be
equipped with the Jezebel passive sonar system that used sonobouys, as well as
having an active dipping sonar. So the
first major exercise I was involved in that summer was - a Commando assault
exercise at Lulworth cove. The Sea King
was the only aircraft then capable of lifting a 105 MM howitzer although on
more than one occasion I wondered who was flying who, especially when the gun
started to sway. In August when
transiting the Bristol Channel we received an audio warning of a problem along
with the gauge readings, as our main gearbox dumped oil all over the poor
Observer in the back. We had all the
ship’s mail with us but managed to keep it dry as we paddled away in our
dinghies. That summer I was also lucky
enough to do some mountain flying in Scotland before flying home via Loch Ness,
where we used the sonar to try to find Nessie with no success unfortunately. On top of this I flew the full suite of
normal operations, day and night; deck landings, ship approaches, winching, ASW
passive and active, Helicopter In Flight Refuelling (HIFR), cross deck with
other ships. But then things got really
interesting.
Sea Kings float! |
That autumn, 814 were due to do another
Commando exercise in the Arctic off Norway but a plea had come in from Culdrose
for three crews to volunteer for Search and Rescue cover at home over Christmas
and the New Year. The deal was, we took early
leave and then had to be on duty over the whole Christmas and New Year
period. As I lived at Culdrose with my
wife, this seemed a good deal; early leave and then flying over Christmas where
I was going to be anyway.
The period started off as a complete
anti-climax. We briefed and did some
training flights and waited for the calls to come in. They didn’t. Christmas came and went and we were all
getting a little frustrated.
With three crews, we had one day on
duty, one on standby and one day off. So
it was with some relief, I went to bed at midnight on the night of the 31st
December 1978 as the non-duty crew. The
weather was bloody awful, blowing a gale and starting to snow. I distinctly remember lying in bed listening
to the wind blasting against the bedroom windows and being thankful we wouldn’t
be needed. That was just before my
recall bleeper went off. I rushed to the
phone and rang the air station to be told to get my ass into the squadron, because
we were needed.
The duty crew had been called out on a
shout towards Lands End and on the way back all power to the Air Station had
failed and the approach radar stopped working.
Seeing a gap in the clouds the aircraft managed a landing in a cabbage
patch near Marizion. The standby crew
had also got stranded somewhere else, for the life of me I can’t remember why,
but that just left us. It didn’t end
there. The Sea King fleet was undergoing
an upgrade to Mark Two status which was being done in stages. The only serviceable aircraft left was a
‘Mark One and Half’. It had some of the
Mark Two modifications but not the important one of heated anti-icing mats in
front of the engine intakes and by now it was snowing really hard.
Tony Hogg the First pilot briefed me to
go out and start up the aircraft while he and the aircraft captain, our Observer,
Mike Norman, got the brief. Engaging
rotors was interesting to say the least
as the wind was well over forty knots by then.
Tony and Mike plus our aircrewman, Chris Folland and a medic from Sick
bay were soon on board and we waited for the go ahead. While we were waiting Tony explained the
situation. A trawler, called the Ben
Asdale, was on the rocks near the village of Maenporth and the Coast Guard
needed help. We later got the whole story.
She was discharging her catch into a Russian Factory ship in Falmouth
bay and had got a rope round her rudder as she tried to disengage. Before she could re-secure, her remaining
rope parted and she was adrift with no steering. The appalling weather was being caused by a
small low pressure system travelling fast up a cold front in the channel and
apart from the strong winds, now gusting to Force Ten and snow, the wind had gone
round to the east. Falmouth bay offered
no shelter at all in these conditions. The
captain tried to drop an anchor but it didn’t hold and the ship crashed into
the rocks at Newporth Head by the little town of Maenporth. Three crew immediately abandoned her and were
fished out of the surf by brave locals but just as the Coast Guard attached a Breeches
Buoy to her, she lurched onto her side, trapping all the rescue gear.
All we knew at the time was that the
control tower suddenly gave us authorisation to go. Apparently the Commanding Officer of Culdrose
was loath to let us launch but once the Coast Guard said there was nothing more
they could do, he knew he had no choice.
Because of our lack of anti-icing systems we had to fly the wrong way to
the nearest coast to the west and then fly low level over the sea, south around
the Lizard, before being able to turn north towards Maenporth. With the wind blowing over forty knots onto
the cliffs, there was no way we could approach from seaward. We flew downwind low over the cliffs, saw the
lights of the Coast Guard and turned hard into wind before we lost sight of
them. With no other choice we flew past
the cliffs and went into the hover over the sea using a technique called
‘manual dipping’ normally reserved for anti-submarine operations but which got
us down quickly. When established safely
in the hover, we took stock. The cliffs
and the ship were behind us somewhere but we couldn’t see them. At this point the Coast Guard came on the
radio and by using their guidance we were slowly able to fly backwards towards
the cliffs. The Sea King has a Doppler low
ground speed indicator and without this we wouldn’t have been able to control
the aircraft but slowly we inched backwards until the Observer could see the
wreck and give a more accurate con into position. The thing he couldn’t see, because they were
on the other side of the aircraft were the cliffs but I could and they weren’t
far away at all. The wreck was almost
continually being covered in breaking waves and it was quickly assessed as too
dangerous to put someone down on the winch, so we lowered the horse collar and luckily
the casualties were able to get into it one by one. Mike Norman conned the aircraft and he and
Chris Folland operated the winch and brought the casualties on board where our
medic looked after them. My job was
simpler, keep an eye on all the gauges and those cliffs. In fact I could barely see the wreck as I was
in the left hand seat and it was directly below us. One of the Coast Guards
later told me that he was sure we had cut some grass at one stage and our tail
rotor nearly parted their hair. The
problem was that to be at a height to safely operate the winch we were at the
same height as the top of the cliffs. On
more than one occasion I shouted ‘Right Right’ in what was probably a concerned
tone to say the least. Bloody good
flying by Tony though. But nothing is
ever that simple and on lift five the winch wire went slack for a second and
then caught around a fibre glass cover just to the rear of the cabin door which
protected some the torpedo mounting equipment.
Suddenly we had a man on the wire, a jammed winch and no way of getting
him up. With no other choice, we had to
fly forward with the survivor dangling below us and hover over open sea. We
then descended and dunked him in, to take the weight off the wire and free it
before he could be safely brought up. We
saw him in Sick Bay later and apologised.
So there we were, back at square one and
for the second time that evening, having to fly backwards into the cliffs. By now the snow was incredibly thick. Tony was effectively on instruments and
relying on the con from the Coast Guard, Mike and me. We made it into position and safely got the
last three guys up. With sighs of relief we transitioned forwards. Time to go home but there was blizzard blowing,
low cloud and no approach radar from the air station. Mike could use the aircraft’s radar and
Doppler navigation system to a degree to help us find home but at this point
his intercom failed having been given a sound drenching for the last hour and
half. He was forced to write directions
down on bits of paper and get them handed forward to us. So at low level we literally crept towards
where we hoped RNAS Culdrose was.
Suddenly, we caught a glimpse of lights below us and Tony threw the
aircraft down towards them. It was
another brilliant bit of flying and we landed on the taxiway near the squadron
and taxied in.
The first thing Mike Norman said as we
made it out of the weather into the calm and warm of the squadron line shack
was ‘Well that wasn’t much of a
rescue.’ I think we were all embarrassed
by the winch jamming and still high on adrenalin. It was only later that we all realised what
we had achieved. Only three people died,
two crew of the trawler and one of the engineers who had come over from the
Russian ship. Three had been pulled out
of the sea and we got the other eight.
My job had been relatively simple but Tony’s flying skills had been
amazing, as had been the work of the rear seat guys. In the end Tony and Mike were awarded Air
Force Crosses and the rest of us were given Queen’s Commendations. We even made a centre page spread in the
Sunday Express and other papers but that was much later. It took us two hours just to get the aircraft
into the safety of the hangar. We then
went to sick bay to check on the survivors. Later the next day, when we were actually the
duty crew, we went off to recover the other aircraft from its cabbage
patch.
Poor old Ben Asdale two days after the accident and the first time I actually got to see her. |
The team Christmas 78. Me front left, Mike Norman front right, Tony Hogg and Chris Folland rear right. |
It wasn’t long before we were called out
again and in another severe gale, to look for the crew of a capsized ore
carrier in the middle of the Channel. When we launched it had a fifteen degree list,
by the time we arrived on scene it had sunk.
In some ways this was worse than the Ben Asdale, partly because the
weather was even worse if that was possible but more importantly because only
one survivor was recovered by the other aircraft that went with us. Seventeen
people died that night. My log books
shows we were airborne for almost eight solid hours, I certainly remember the
numb bum when I got out! We also winched
up four survivors from a yacht that
had sunk and been recovered by a merchantman and finally we went to southern
Ireland where a tanker had blown up alongside in Bantry Bay. In that tragic case there was little we could
do except ferry some of the bodies to the hospital in Cork before heading home.
What had started out almost too quiet had become almost too busy.
I left 814 in July 1980 to convert to
the Lynx. I did actually managed two deployments to the States in HMS Hermes
and then HMS Bulwark which were as much fun as I had hoped but as far as the
flying went, it was never as exciting as those first six months.
We've watched Ben Asdale slowly disappear over the years but did not know the details of the rescue. Thanks for that great account.
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