Rotor tip-to-tip with a seaknight: I have been retired now for five years. This event occurred on April 4, 2003, while I was detached aboard USS Camden (AOE-2). This incident has caused me a great deal of latent anxiety, and it has taken several years for me to talk about it in an open forum.
We stand at attention as the commanding officer enters for tonight's operations-intelligence brief. I am the detachment operations officer, attending with the detachment OinC, for what seems like the 1,000th briefing.We have been deployed onboard the USS Camden (AOE-2) for 271 days, and the tempo set in these early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) is intense. This brief is particularly lengthy. Tomorrow, we will rendezvous with USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) and the hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) in the North Arabian Sea AOR for a connected replenishment (conrep). Immediately, my ops planning kicks in and I am concerned that the medevac of casualties to USNS Comfort will prove difficult to simultaneously conduct with vertical-replenishment (vertrep) operations. My concern is validated later; the whole operation will last 28 hours, resulting in nearly continuous flight operations.
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The brief concludes, and I confer with the OinC on what he would like to do. He insists that we should use both aircraft. I counter that there will be intense helo activity from the Army medevac units. Having that second aircraft could add to what is already a congested and confined airspace.
We would typically use both detachment aircraft during this stage of flight operations. When feasible, one aircraft acts as a sea surface surveillance and control (SSSC) on point, in front of, and surrounding the replenishment group. Once released from SSSC duty, they join the other aircraft to conduct vertreps. We share these duties with the HS squadron when replenishing the CV units.
The OinC and I discuss how to use the aircraft for the mission. I insist on one aircraft, mostly because we have been briefed on the known medevac traffic. Also, the flight deck on Comfort is situated well forward on the ship, making the vertrep more difficult than having the typical crossdeck configuration. He reluctantly agrees, and the plan is to launch one aircraft.
Camden will steam to the southern AOR, meet with USNS supply ships at night, and transfer stores via conrep and vertrep to our ship. Then Camden will steam north to meet with the carrier or amphibious battle groups and continue conrep-vertrep operations. The crew rotation is based on four-hour missions, then crew rest for four hours. My crew is first in the rotation and will end with the late night hop. We will begin with Comfort and several ancillary ships and end with the USNS supply ship later that night.
The detachment is deployed aboard Camden, which is a large ship, more than 53,000 long tons (when full) and 796 feet in length. Comfort is a much larger ship. At more than 69,000 long tons and 894 feet, it makes Camden seem small. Once Comfort comes alongside the starboard side of Camden, there seems to be a huge white wall of steel next to us. Our flight deck sits well below the weather deck of Comfort. This makes the drop approach for the vertrep particularly challenging. You have to approach from the starboard side of Comfort then swing the tail around (180-degree button hook) and make the drop with the nose of the aircraft pointed outboard to the starboard side. Drop, lift, and depart to starboard, and then fly around the stern of Comfort and approach Camden up the stern. This is a very time-consuming and lengthy pickup-and-drop sequence.
The vertrep progresses slowly. Every third or fourth drop, we have to stop because of incoming medevac aircraft. There is no way to conduct multiple aircraft vertrep operations while alongside Camden in conrep. One half of Comfort's deck is clobbered with the vertrep stores we have just dropped. We keep the forward half of the flight deck open to receive the medevac aircraft and fuel for our aircraft. During one of these breaks in the vertrep, the flight-deck crew of Comfort is able to clear the aft section of the flight deck. This provides a good time to take on badly needed fuel, allow Camden flight deck to stage more goods, and still allow the Army medevac aircraft to drop the wounded.
We sit on the aft section of the flight deck and top off. At the same time, a medevac aircraft makes a drop and departes. I am sitting right seat, the copilot has the controls and will make the take off. Gas, gauges, warning/caution advisory panel are checked, and with the green deck, we lift straight up.
Just as we rotate forward to depart, filling our windscreen rotor paths, tip-to-tip, is Sideflare 50 (SF 50)--our other detachment aircraft. We are nose to nose and closing within 20 or 25 feet.
I GRAB THE CONTROLS in an act of self-preservation, pull the collective to my armpit, and wrench the cyclic left (toward Comfort's tower-superstructure). Seconds seem an eternity. My aircraft, Sideflare 63 (SF 63), responds with what I swear is a groan and sigh, sensing its own demise and ours. Nr droops, the aircraft lifts and tilts left. Everything slows down. I see through my chin bubble what seems to be each turn of the other aircraft's rotor pass down under and to my right. I brace for impact; it seems imminent.
Miraculously, we didn't hit the other aircraft. As my senses focus more forward and outside, my copilot shouts, "Look out left. Look out left!"
The life-saving climbing left turn is putting us right into the path of the ship's forward superstructure. With the collective still high into my armpit, I jam the cyclic forward and slightly to the right, I have no idea of the location of Sideflare 50. Our aircraft responds with a forward pitching jolt, and we are clear over the open ocean.
Fear and adrenaline turn to fury. The OinC had launched the second detachment aircraft, had not notified me, and apparently surprised Comfort's LSO as well. The ensuing radio communications between SF 50 and SF 63 probably are tantamount to insubordination. I let loose with a flurry of disparaging remarks to the OinC, who was the HAC in SF 50. Apparently, he had taken advantage of a staging break on Camden and rolled out SF 50 in an effort to speed up the vertrep process. We apparently had been talking with the Army aircraft on a separate frequency and had missed the traffic call from Camden's tower.
Over the open ocean, I check in with my crew. Everyone is severely rattled. The crewchief had been seated in the forward seat looking out the starboard hatch of the aircraft. He says he was counting rotor blades as we passed up and over SF 50. He believed, as I did, that impact was imminent. The second crewman was on the port side of the aircraft, having his own anxiety fit about the impending hit with the tower superstructure. Apparently, both were on ICS warning of the impending collisions. I cannot recollect hearing these warnings on the ICS.
My copilot stares straight ahead. I think he's contemplating what had just happened. He says he is OK but is equally upset over the incident. We discuss how I forcefully took controls from him, and that he hadn't resisted. He felt as though he was a "Deer in the headlights," not knowing what the corrective action was going to be. We are spent, but the op tempo and the fact that the other crews are scheduled to fly another replenishment mission later, means that we can't discontinue the replenishment of Comfort. We have to jump back into the mix.
In spite of the near miss, things go from bad to worse. The OinC remains airborne; the Army medevac aircraft are constant. It looks from a distance as if both ships were hives and the bees are just swarming around them. When the Army aircraft clears, both Sideflare aircraft try to conduct the vertrep. However, this plan was awkward and both aircraft are in a one-legged dance competition. At one point, the OinC flies straight into the flight deck from starboard to port, dropping the load, then lifting straight up and over the superstructure of Camden.
More than once, one aircraft perches on the starboard side with a load waiting for the other aircraft to drop and go. More fury ensues between the OinC and myself. The time has lapsed enough to get the other crew into SF 63 and not upset the remaining schedule. We continue the one-legged dance, waiting for Camden's deck to clear to let my crew hot seat. My crew and I log almost eight hours.
In an after-action debrief with the OinC, it was clear that the apparent communication breakdown had occurred between SF 50 and Comfort's tower. Sideflare 50 had launched from Camden's flight deck, flown around the stern of Comfort and approached from the starboard side, close aboard. They heard the greendeck call, which was intended for SF 63, and continued inbound. From the vantage point in the cockpit of SF 63, looking aft on the flight deck, it was difficult to see down the starboard side of the ship even though the nose of our aircraft was pointing outboard to starboard. The coincident green-deck clearence understood by both aircraft created this dreadful meeting over Comfort's flight deck. '
MR. KNOWLES IS A LINE CAPTAIN FOR A HELICOPTER EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICE IN SAN DIEGO, CALIF.
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| Author: | Knowles, Matt |
|---|---|
| Publication: | Approach |
| Geographic Code: | 1CANA |
| Date: | Sep 1, 2012 |
| Words: | 1554 |
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