FIX BAYONETS!

Flying in the Coast Guard was an interesting, sometimes terrifying experience.  The pilots that I flew with were all extremely competent;(including the ones that I didn’t care for) and so were the aircrewmen.  Competence, however, has no bearing on sanity.  These guys all liked to fly; and just boring holes in the sky isn’t really flying, in the minds of a great many.
The differing requirements of missions in the Coast Guard also contributed to the interest level sometimes.  We flew search and rescue, ice reconnaissance, logistics, public relations, training, scientific support……..you name it; someone in the Coast Guard has, or will, fly the mission.

Even routine flights can give the opportunity for ‘flying on the edge’.  Up in Alaska, on my last cruise, we had flown into Kotzebue on some errand that required both helicopters; and were returning to the ship.  The weather was beautiful, clear enough to see forever; and the sun nowhere near the horizon even though it was after seven in the evening.  We were at about five hundred feet altitude, heading Northwest, when the pilots decided that they were bored; and needed to hone their skills.

The radio traffic between the two birds had already warned me of impending playtime; and wishing it wouldn’t happen didn’t have any effect.
“Aft, pilot.” (Hey you in the back, this is me in the front, listen up.)  “Aft.”  (I hear you.)
“Take a look out the left; let me know where his blade tips are; we’re going to tuck it in, here.”  OK, a little formation flying, a little closer than normal.  They want me to watch the tips because of the way a helicopter is laid out.  The center of the rotor disc is behind the pilot.  The pilot can’t see the sides of the disc without turning almost completely around.  But that won’t stop them from ‘tucking it in’.
I turned around in my seat so I could see; and watched the other bird pull in closer to us.  In a few minutes, the rotor discs were overlapping; with ours maybe a foot higher than theirs.  The other bird continued to drift in closer.
“Pilot, aft, his tips are halfway in.”  The blades were about 26 feet long, so at this point there was about fourteen feet of overlap.
“Tips are about ten feet out.”  It would be a good idea to back out now.  Helicopter blades are somewhat flexible, not rigid; and every control input or air bubble causes them to flap around a little bit.  Since they’re rotating at over a thousand RPM; this is not a calm, static system.  It’s extremely dynamic.
“Tips are at six feet.”  If the pilot wants to look at those tips now; he’d have to stick his head out the window and swivel it like an owl.
“Tips are at four feet, three feet from our rotor head, two feet, eighteen inches…”  The inward progression stops.  My eyes are glued to the window; the rest of me is trying to decide if it wouldn’t be cleaner to just jump for it. Could I improvise a parachute on the way down?
“Still at eighteen inches.” Are they quitting?  Are they sane?
“OK, we’re easing off, here.”  Oh, Glory BE!
The two birds slowly slide apart and continue on to the ship; where they complete the flight by making strafing runs on the icebreaker; playing hot dog at 85 knots and six feet off the water.
The entire episode is characterized by calm, professional communication.  The tone in the pilot’s voice never changed, never got excited.  He projects the image of a steely eyed airman that can handle anything.  He’s probably wishing that stupid aircrewman in the back (me) would hurry up and chicken out so he has an honorable way to stop this foolishness.
My voice also remained calm and professional.  My eyes hurt from bugging out, my little hindbrain was screaming at me to jump and my legs refused to carry me to the door.  But I wasn’t going to let anyone know that.  I could play this game with the best of them.  You simply never let on how terrified you are.

Later, back at AVTRACEN Mobile, Alabama; the Coast Guard built its own flight simulator facility for the HH-3F and the HH-52A helicopters.  No other military service flew th -52s, so there were no simulators available.  If you’re going to build for one aircraft; you may as well build for two, right?  So the -3F was included in the planning.
When construction had progressed far enough to begin programming the computers; a slight glitch arose.  Since other services did have simulators for the -3F; there was plenty of data for that aircraft.  Since no one else flew the -52; there was no data at all available for it; in the sense of programming a simulator, anyway.
The simulators consisted of the appropriate cockpit, mounted on hydraulic stilts.  The stilts provided motion appropriate for the control inputs and flight conditions.  The computer used its programming to translate control input into that motion; but you had to know what that motion was going to be; and you had to know exactly; you couldn’t guess.  This provided the basis for some interesting flights.  (All flights had to carry an aircrewman, whether he was needed or not.)
On a routine flight to collect the appropriate data; the pilots would go through a carefully designed series of maneuvers; recording the response to every control movement.  After a couple hours of this, the crewman is bored stiff; possibly having foolish daydreams of excitement.  The pilots, who have been waiting for his attention to wander, start in with “What would happen if we…” and apply control input that was designed by some madman.
Helicopters are not designed to fly upside down.  I won’t claim that we ever WERE upside down; but I will admit to being severely confused about the issue on several occasions.  The anxiety involved also produced severe gluteal spasms, which would turn the nylon troop seat into an unintentional wedgie.
In spite of their best efforts, though; they were never able to catch me with the terror showing through.  Having the sun shield on my flight helmet down some of the time helped; as did the fact that true terror tends to freeze your muscles, anyway.  I couldn’t have changed my expression if my life depended on it.

Getting away from personal experiences; we can advance into apocryphal stories for a short time.
This was a popular story while I was in; no one claimed to know the participants; but I’ve always liked it because it’s just what a Coast Guard pilot would be likely to do; if he really thought he could get away with it.
In the late fifties; a Navy flying boat, type unknown, encountered engine failure while on a training flight over, I think, Mississippi.  The pilot made an emergency landing on a handy, somewhat small,  lake, (there are plenty of them around there) and managed to contact his station for help.
The air station sent out a truck and crew who managed, with great difficulty, to replace the dead engine.  When they turned it back over to the pilot; he gently refused to have anything to do with removing the aircraft from the lake.
Flying boats (seaplanes) need a lot of room to get off the water.  You not only need to have enough speed to fly; you need to have extra lift to break the ‘suction’ (surface tension) exerted by the water.  The old seaplanes were notorious for being underpowered, and always seemed to take forever to break free.  This was a small lake.  The pilot knew how much distance he needed to get off; and it wasn’t there.
One of the observers was a Coast Guard pilot. (Where from, who knows?)  He looked the situation over and declared that he could get the plane out.  He called for RATO (Rocket Assisted Take Off) bottles and a few other items; and laid his plans.  The Navy took the view that he was crazy and was going to end up in a smoking hole, but, what the heck; it was a better chance than having to dismantle the plane and truck it back to an overhaul facility.  If it worked, they got their plane back cheap.  If it didn’t work, they didn’t even lose one of their own pilots; and could blame another service for the loss.
When the RATO bottles arrived; our hero had the maintenance crew install more than the normally approved number; as many, in fact, as they could physically bolt to the fuselage; which amounted to about double what was approved.  He also had them lighten ship; removing everything from the inside of the aircraft that wasn’t needed to fly.
Once these preparations were made; he took a stout line and secured it to the tail tie down point; took the eye of the line around a stout tree and secured the eye to the main line with a bend and a fid. (A fid is a tapered wood or metal tool, used for working line when splicing it.  The taper is not real steep.)  He instructed a young sailor to stand by with a large wooden mallet while he ran up the engines, and then, when the RATO engines cut in; he was to knock the fid out of the line; releasing the plane.  This would allow power to be at the maximum level before the plane could move at all. (RATO bottles are mounted at a slight angle; so hopefully they won’t fry the poor sailor.)
Our Coastie climbed in and started the engines.  He did a careful run up to make sure the old engine was feeling healthy; and to see if the mechanics had remembered to hook everything up on the new engine.  Both engines responded with the hearty roar that only a big radial gives.
The pilot waved out the window that he was ready.  The sailor planted himself firmly and hefted the mallet.  The radials were causing the plane to strain at the end of its manila leash.  The pilot flipped the switch and the RATO units kicked in with a blast; making the line sing with tension.  The sailor nailed the fid with his mallet as hard as he could and….. nothing happened.  There was so much tension on the line that the fid was glued in place.   He tried again; but just as the mallet was descending, the manila hawser gave up its battle with modern power, and broke.  The seaplane shot across the lake like a scalded cat and lifted into the air in a breathtakingly short distance; but not quite short enough.
Fortunately, trees in the deep South are closely related to toothpicks; and he was almost clear of them.  A few minor strikes on the airframe and blades were really irrelevant; he was flying!  He headed back to the Naval Air Station with twenty feet of manila line flapping in the breeze; and I’m sure the Navy paid dearly (in beer) for his success.

Of course, no pilot or group of pilots is successful all the time.  A couple of crews out on training flights; again in the South, decided to have a short landing contest.  They were flying HU-16s, (a medium sized seaplane) which are not noted for their short field capabilities.
They found a small civilian field and set up final approach.  Confident of their abilities; they didn’t even allow very much separation between them.  They planned to make their landings, declare the winner and get in the air again before anyone could notice that anything out of the ordinary was going on.
Number one crossed the airport boundary and settled to the runway with number two not far behind.  As he touched the runway; he applied full reverse thrust with the props and jumped on the brakes.  The brakes on those aircraft heat up really rapidly.  They were designed for long roll outs; and gently slowing the aircraft down.  The sudden braking over stressed the brakes; and the build up of heat blew the right main tire.  The plane slid off the runway to the right.
The next pilot, focused on the amazingly short distance his buddy had managed to stop in; touched down before the first plane had completely stopped and repeated the performance; except that his left main tire blew.
We leave our heros sitting at an unauthorized airport, with no way to get back in the air except to call home and confess their sins.  The story never did say what happened to them.

Pilots have always had fun with animals; usually to the frustration of the animals.  A friend told me of an HH-52 crew that he knew, out on a training flight, that found a large (12+ feet) alligator sunning himself peacefully on a little sandbar back in the swamps.  Deciding to goad him; the pilot approached down the slough; and pulled into a hover right over the ‘gator.  He carefully adjusted the helo’s position, and then, with one sharp movement of the controls, he bounced the right main wheel off of the ‘gator’s head.  The ‘gator hunkered down and tried to be invisible.
The pilot repositioned and whapped him up side of the head again.
Alligators may be primitive; but they’re not completely stupid.  He had figured out where the abuse was coming from.  If you’ve ever seen a ‘gator move; you’ll know they are really fast in the short run.  The tire hit his head; but before it bounced away; the ‘gator retaliated.  He snapped around and (bit is too feeble a word) mangled that wheel; and, of course, the tire blew up in his face.  This undoubtedly gave him a headache; but it also caused him to let go; which allowed the shocked pilot to make his escape.
When the pilot returned to Air Station Mobile; he wrote the damage up as; “Struck submerged object while water taxiing.” but I don’t think he escaped from censure, and he didn’t fool anyone as the story was all over the station within five minutes.  Pilots love nicknames; but I don’t think he really appreciated the variety of nicknames that resulted from this incident.

An AT1 that I knew was on the HH-52 that ‘crashed’ on Mt Erebus in Antarctica.  The icebreaker had finished all of its immediate taskings and some aerial sightseeing had been planned for crew morale.  One of the helicopters was stripped of all the extraneous gear possible so that it could carry the maximum number of people.  (Normally configured, a -52 could carry its crew of three plus perhaps three passengers.)   They took off with seven or eight people aboard and went to see the countryside.  The most imposing nearby site was (and is) Mt Erebus; a 13,000+ foot mountain with three peaks; one of which is still an active volcano.  You can’t pass up an opportunity like this; they headed for the mountain.
After a short tour close aboard the mountain, flying at maximum altitude; conditions apparently changed in an unpleasant way.  Changing temperature and humidity changed the density altitude and our intrepid tourists found themselves suddenly significantly higher than the helicopter could provide lift to match.  The result was that the helicopter came DOWN.  Being unable to glide away from the mountain; they came down on it in a semi controlled landing.  No one was hurt and the damage to the bird was minimal; but enough to ensure that salvage was a non issue.  While the occupants waited for rescue from the Navy at McMurdo Sound; (how demeaning) they occupied themselves with freezing.  It was cold (40’s) even though it was ‘summer’ in Antarctica; and the extra survival gear was one of the items that had been removed to make more room for people.
The AT1, aware that the bird was not going anywhere, entertained himself by playing mumblety peg against the side of the helicopter with his survival knife.
The Navy finally got a UH-1 up to pick up the discommoded adventurers.  When they got back to the States; everyone got the chance to testify at the accident review board.  Since the AT1 had been the only one with his survival vest on; he was questioned about which items had been the most useful to him.  When he responded that the shark repellent had been very effective; he was summarily removed from the hearing.
This was the same lad who got bored on an Antarctic flight and decided to have some fun with the pilot.  A gunner’s belt is a broad safety belt that you wear when you move around the cabin.  A long strap attaches to the back of the gunner’s belt and can be clipped to any tie down point in the cabin or….  Our hero put on both gunner’s belts and attached one strap to a point just inside the door.  Then he reached out and attached the strap of the other belt to a handy point in the framework of struts that supported the right main landing gear.  He retrieved the first strap and climbed out on the landing gear assembly; resecuring the first strap further forward.  Carefully easing forward himself; he suddenly popped up and knocked on the outside of the pilot’s window; nearly giving the man heart failure.  (They were at 500 or 600 feet altitude and 85 knots at the time.)

Well, enough of boring you for now.  I’ll undoubtedly have more on pilots and aircrew later, sometime; but, for now, sleep soundly, your Coast Guard is awake!