Salty
Elite Veteran
Location: Jville Fl...Ahhhh getting better
| I had beens for lunch and I want to go to the feild to fly......
ORM interpretation.....
wheres the porta potty in case I have a hind end overpress light come on during flight ops.
This is long but funny ....and has to do with ORM....so read and enjoy mini rotor jockeys (and technically I'm not hijacking this thread cause it does have to do with ORM.)
If you want to check out more sea stories here's the link
http://www.users.cts.com/sd/b/bwickes/bookends.html
As all great stories in naval aviation begin with the “there I was, and this is no Sh@#!”, I feel this story would be a gross understatement to that kind of beginning.
So, there we were, the first LAMPS detachment to deploy with night vision goggles, winding up our highly successful tour in the Arabian gulf. It was 10 days before Christmas and our last flight before pulling into Bahrain and conducting a turnover with the incoming LAMPS det and then heading to Thailand for a long overdue liberty call on New Years eve.
We had been flying together as a crew for almost a year. We were a very cohesive and tight crew. The brief and preflight were uneventful, even cheerful at times due to our imminent departure from the gulf. We discussed during the brief the lighting conditions for the night hop and it was correct, “starlight” only tonight. No moonlight and just enough ambient light from the stars to provide a visible horizon using the NVGs. Prior to takeoff we donned our goggles, went through the last minute adjustments to them and off into the moon less night we went. It was DARK . Period. After a quick surface search with our radar, it was apparent that it was very quiet for shipping traffic that night. Sounds like a great time to breakout the Christmas cookies!
The HAC (aircraft commander) was sitting in the right seat and broke out the cookies his sister had sent him. “Chief!, you want some cookies too”? As I was sitting in the Center seat, the HAC just tossed them back to me in the glad bag they came in. We were now fat, dumb and truly happy, even if it was the darkest night of the cruise.
Things were progressing smoothly during the flight as we ate cookies and discussed our upcoming liberty port and the occasional comment “geez, it may be dark tonight, but it's nice to have the goggles to see the horizon” Then all of a sudden, the HAC yelled back to me “Chief!, toss that bag of cookies up here”!! I have to take a SH#! ....NOW!!!!” for a couple of seconds I was confused as to what he REALLY meant. As I tossed the cookies back to him, I said “Geez., if you wanted the cookies that bad, just say so and I’ll give ‘em to you. Well, as soon as he caught the bag of cookies, the HAC IMMEDIATELY threw them back at me and screamed “NOT WITH THE COOKIES IN THEM!” All of a sudden we realized that he REALLY had to go in a bad way. His “Bowel Hi Pres caution light” was on and continuous, with intermittent secondary indications!
I crawled up towards the cockpit, leaning on the center console just to actually verify it was happening, and it was. The PAC (pilot at the controls) in the left seat was laughing hysterically and I soon joined him. For just a second, I had this flash that this is going to be one of the all time great sea stories or an Approach article explaining why this seasoned SH-60B Seahawk crew flew it into the water. Between the hysterical gut wrenching laughter, the ACT started to work in as well. I briefly tapped the PAC and told him, “whatever you do, don’t crash us and gimme 500’, RADALT hold on ok?”
The HAC was scrambling for ANY loose article in the cockpit that would relieve his “Bowel Hi Pres” caution light. The little glad bag didn’t work, coke can....too small. AH! A coffee cup!
Here we are: It’s night, we are in the gulf, wearing NVGs, the HAC is in immediate danger of the “Bowel Hi Pres” caution light exploding and we are laughing uncontrollably. With T-minus 15 seconds before the weapon released, the HAC took his SV-2 off and in the heat of battle it got caught on the collective for just a second. The PAC could feel the weight on the flight controls and at the same moment I quickly reached up and yanked the SV-2 off the collective and kept it out of the line of fire and yelled “you’re clear!” By now, he had his flight suit down around the knees, helmet on with NVGs, squatting on the seat getting ready for the big weapon release point into the coffee cup. It looked like a perverted scene out of some low budget sci-fi movie.. Unfortunately, the HAC didn’t account for the drift, and the weapon was off target by 50%.
All this time, I’m looking over at the PAC (left seat) backing him up on the altitude/ airspeed and making SURE the RAD ALT (Radar Altimeter) hold was on. Well, after several loud sighs of relief from the HAC and SEVERAL loud hoots of laughter from us, it was over. We all cleaned ourselves up, some more than others, then pulled into a hover and gave Davey Jones a nice present in the form of a coffee cup. Total time from ops normal to Weapons Release? 3 minutes.
As we got back up to altitude, and between the diminishing chuckles and occasional burst of laughter we asked if he was all right and wanted to go back to the ship, but most importantly, “What brought THAT on”? Well, after completing Naval Aviation’s largest bottom blow in history, the HAC said he felt fine, matter of fact he felt MUCH better. We decided to continue on with the flight. Every few minutes we would ask him again...”Are you SURE you’re OK”? Replies such as “I’m fine”, “I feel alot better now” and “Gee, that was weird wasn’t it” were the remarks from the HAC. As the laughter diminished and we settled back into the routine ......it happened again! This time the “Bowel Hi Pres” caution light came on, AND STAYED ON WITH SECONDARY INDICATIONS!! His pressure gage was pegged in the red and was going to stay there. This time we weren’t laughing, well, sort of.
We had already used up the last of the loose articles and I was frantically scrambling for something else to give him. The ACT lessons learned from the last episode became automatic for us. The PAC (left seat) automatically verbalized “ ok Chief, I’m wings level climbing to 500 ft, Rad Alt hold is on, airspeed is good.” we both double checked that the RAD ALT hold was on, and he stayed on the gages...most of the time.
This time he went from Ops normal to Weapons Release in less than a minute. The HAC once again had the vest off, Helmet on with NVGs, flight suit down and was screaming for me to get him something. As a last ditch effort, I took off my vest AND helmet, peeled my flight suit down and ripped my T-shirt from my chest and threw it up to the HAC. Is that dedication or what? At that point I had this vision of the accident board trying to figure out why a Seahawk Crew crashed into the water, and the HAC and Senso were half naked! The PAC saw me crawl up towards the cockpit half naked throwing the T-shirt at the HAC and burst into laughter again.
Here we are again: The HAC has got the Bowel Hi Pres light going on, I’m half naked and the PAC is laughing uncontrollably while I’m yelling at him to stay on the gages and fly the plane. Bottom blow completed, and another addition to Davey Jones locker, we call it quits and head back to homeplate. Unbelievable.
As we headed back to the ship, the general consensus was that the HAC was out of the picture and not going to touch the controls at all. We discussed what might have caused the problem, was it the cookies that we ALL ate? Was it the water or even our gourmet gulf box lunches? Could this happen to us too? If it happened on approach to the ship what were we going to do? The pucker factor increased just a bit for us. As a last attempt to bail himself out of this embarrassing situation the HAC commented that he could have used that pucker factor a few minutes ago.
I helped out with the landing checklist as well as the altitude/airspeed calls on approach and we made an uneventful landing to the Rast Trap on the FFG. We swapped pilots , cleaned up as best we could and then flew the rest of the hop out.
Some interesting points were brought up about the hop. Should we have RTB after the first bottom blow? Definitely. Something like that warrants the attention of the doc.
The PAC did a great job of maintaining safety of the aircraft during extremis. He climbed in altitude, told everyone what he was doing, verbalized several times “ok we are wings level, airspeed and altitude are good, rad alt hold is on”. I was backing him up the whole time ensuring that we were doing what were supposed to be doing. We experienced several different types of flight regimes that night, under unusual circumstances and wearing NVGs, which was a definite plus for the safety factor. We had the luxury of seeing at night, the horizon, water, stars and well you know.....everything! |
