Scram!

by Harry Benson

  The next morning, a bemused Lomas was summoned to fly all the way back down from Scotland to Plymouth on a Heron aircraft for an embarkation meeting with representatives from 3 Commando Brigade Royal Marines and Commodore Amphibious Warfare (COMAW). There Lomas was relieved to see the familiar faces of fellow junglies Simon Thornewill and Lieutenant Commander Tim Stanning, his former Wessex boss, who was now in charge of helicopter tasking for COMAW.

  To Lomas, the meeting seemed a shambles. ‘In essence, we haven’t a clue how we’re going to do this,’ he thought; ‘but let’s get everything onto the ships, do our planning and exercising on the way down there, and sort out all the kit onto the right ships when we get to Ascension.’

  It may have been shambolic. But it was all that was needed.

  * * *

  On Saturday 3 April, Simon Thornewill led the first nine Sea Kings out from Yeovilton heading towards Portsmouth, staggering their departure so as not to arrive all at once on the already-frantic flight deck of the carrier Hermes. The following evening, three of his most experienced pilots were sent off to join Mike Spencer and Lieutenant Pete Rainey at Farnborough to test out the night vision goggles. Each pilot spent forty-five minutes flying around the darkness of Salisbury Plain in the left-hand seat of a specially adapted Puma helicopter under Spencer’s instruction. The Sea King pilots couldn’t believe how good the goggles were. They were all able to make a few landings in complete darkness. The pilots returned to Hermes at three in the morning along with seven sets of goggles and Pete Rainey to teach them how to use them.

  Days later, Pollock and his three Sea Kings embarked for the South Atlantic on the assault ship HMS Fearless at Portland.

  Back at Yeovilton, Mike Booth and Peter Vowles were busy assigning the next three Wessex flights. They were now sleeping on camp beds in the office as calls were coming in throughout day and night, amending embarkation requirements, particularly the armament pack – what guns, missiles or rockets were needed. Six more Wessex were being stripped down ready to be moved to Ascension in the back of the Belfast transport aircraft now parked on the dispersal in front of the squadron offices. In a flurry of activity, the first two Wessex – Yankee Delta and Yankee Sierra – departed Yeovilton on Sunday 4 April. Nick Foster and his team flew in an accompanying RAF Hercules. The next few days saw Mike Tidd and his team, along with the ill-fated Yankee Foxtrot and Yankee Alpha, set off in another Belfast and Hercules, while Roger Warden and his team set off with Yankee Juliett and Yankee Kilo.

  Within a week, thirteen Sea Kings and eight Wessex had been successfully despatched from Yeovilton for the South Atlantic, each of them folded up and squeezed into the back of transport aircraft.

  From the sea, Ascension Island looks a bit like Treasure Island. A huge mountain grows out from its centre. It really ought to be a tropical paradise. Unfortunately, setting foot on the island immediately dispels the illusion. The landscape is mostly dusty and brown. The ground is unforgiving, made of volcanic rock that would happily skin the soles off your feet. Ascension is little more than a giant lump of volcanic rock parked in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean just south of the equator. It was first garrisoned by the British in 1815 as a precaution after Napoleon was imprisoned on St Helena.

  In 1982 Ascension Island was an ideal halfway staging post along the 8,000-mile journey from the UK to the Falklands and therefore the initial target for all ships and aircraft. As a British protectorate, Wideawake airfield and its giant runway was loaned out to the US military and NASA. On 5 April, Nick Foster and his flight were the first Brits to arrive in Ascension. Although made welcome by the American base staff, they had no spare bedding or accommodation and so spent the first couple of nights sleeping under pool tables.

  Wideawake very quickly became a hub of activity. The first Royal Navy warships and their auxiliary supply ships arrived off the island on Tuesday 6 April, diverted from Exercise Spring Train in the Mediterranean. Stores began to arrive on RAF transport aircraft, load-lifted out by the ships’ own helicopters. The sudden build-up of stores and aircraft threatened to descend into chaos. The Wessex crew watched in horror and amazement as an Army Scout helicopter lifted its load off the ground before the groundcrewman attaching the load had time to clear. With his arm stuck through the net, the poor crewman dangled helplessly underneath the Scout as it transitioned away. The pilot finally got the message on the radio from a frantic air traffic control tower and returned back to dispersal, whereupon the load and passenger were dropped unceremoniously.

  The Wessex engineers did a remarkable job of preparing the first two helicopters. Within thirty-six hours of arrival the two aircraft had been unfolded, assembled, ground-tested and made ready to fly. They embarked on the giant 23,000-ton stores ship RFA Fort Austin on 7 April, joining the three Lynx helicopters already embarked. Fort Austin’s first task was to get down to the South Atlantic as quickly as possible to resupply the ‘red plum’, HMS Endurance, the much smaller Antarctic survey ship, which was fast running out of fuel and stores.

  Non-aviators have told me that watching a helicopter hovering steadily adjacent to a ship that is ploughing through the waves seems mystifyingly impressive. How on earth does the helicopter keep moving ahead at exactly the same speed as the ship? They have less to say about the actual landing on a pitching and rolling flight deck. Perhaps having achieved the miraculous by synchronising aircraft and ship movement, the landing looks just like more of the same.

  The reality for the pilot inside the cockpit is pretty much the reverse. Hovering alongside the ship is the easy part. It’s the landing that can get quite exciting. To an experienced Navy pilot, deck landings vary in difficulty depending on wind and sea conditions. However, they are merely part of the remarkable routine of flying at sea.

  Learning the technique that turns this potentially dangerous task into the safely routine is an unnerving experience. I first learnt from Lieutenant Graham Jackson towards the end of my training on 707 Squadron. ‘Jacko’ was great fun to fly with, everybody’s friend and an excellent instructor. He gave the appearance of being slightly wild but, like most Navy pilots, was in fact superb at his job. It was a mystery how he remained so amiable in spite of our best efforts to crash with him.

  He took me out for my first ever deck landing on a sunny but hazy winter’s day off the coast of Portland. I flew the Wessex out across the Dorset coast and on towards the RFA Green Rover, a small fuel tanker with a single gantry at the front and large flight deck on the back. I tried to kid myself that I would be cool and professional as I first sighted the ship and began my descent; my waterproof immersion suit held in all the heat and sweat that revealed my true state of mind. Jacko was relaxed and casual as he talked me down. ‘OK, Harry, line yourself up off the port quarter. Start your descent now. When you get to about half a mile, bring your speed off so that you end up alongside the deck.’ He must have been as nervous as I was but never showed it.

  ‘No probs, sir,’ I lied.

  It’s easier to gauge distance to the ship by approaching from a slight angle rather than directly from the stern. The idea is then to follow an imaginary glide path that ends about twenty feet above and twenty feet to the left of the flight deck. Our aircrewman Steve Larsen in the cabin behind us had gone quiet as I set up the approach. As I got nearer the ship, I gradually increased power to compensate for the slower speed, eventually bringing the big helicopter to an unsteady hover alongside the flight deck. ‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘Do you really want me to do this?’

  Graham Jackson laughed. Ignoring my question, he continued talking me through the approach in a matter-of-fact way.

  Hovering next to a moving ship is not terribly different to hovering next to a stationary building or a tree. In each case the wind is always relative to the helicopter. The difference is that the sea around the ship is moving whereas the land around the building or tree is not.

  It was really hard to keep my eyes on the ship and not be distracted by the rush of water swo
oshing past. Although the sea was fairly calm, Green Rover was also rolling gently from left to right and pitching up and down on the mild swell. I was very aware that my landing site was moving around.

  The rushing water and rolling ship made me want to compensate for every little movement. I started to swing around in the hover just like my first slapstick attempts in the Gazelle nine months earlier.

  ‘Try not to move the controls so much. You’re overcontrolling.’

  I let the cyclic stick in my right hand return to its spring-loaded upright position and my hover immediately stabilised. I could keep steadier if I focused on an imaginary horizon way out in the distance and ignored all of the movement around me. I also had to shut out the thought that this would be my first deck landing.

  ‘Keep your eyes on the base of the hangar and watch the flight-deck officer with your peripheral vision.’

  In fact there wasn’t a hangar on the Green Rover but I knew what he meant. The base of the superstructure at the front of the flight deck was the place nearest to the centre of the ship that therefore moves around the least. I could see the flight-deck officer waving his bats to clear me across to land on his deck. My next temptation was to hold back so that I didn’t drive my blades into the ship’s superstructure.

  ‘You need to come forward a bit so that you can then move across directly above the bum line.’

  A thick white line painted across the deck showed me where my rear end needed to be. So long as I stayed above the line, I wouldn’t drift forward into the superstructure or backward and miss the deck altogether. The superstructure ahead of me looked mighty close to the helicopter’s whirling blades.

  Although requiring accurate flying, it turned out to be the easiest part of the whole deck-landing process. All I had to do was edge the helicopter sideways and drift along the line. As I moved across the deck, I also descended to five feet. There was an uncomfortable shudder through the flying controls as the Wessex moved into the turbulent air behind the ship. With another small movement on the cyclic, I stopped my sideways drift.

  The flight-deck officer now had his arms and bats held outwards to tell me to hold my position. In rougher seas, I came to realise how important it was that the flight-deck officer knew his ship. Even in the roughest seas, all ships stop rolling eventually and stabilise for a short while. At that moment, the flight-deck officer waves the pilot down. As he waved me down, my hover started to wobble again. I needed to land vertically and had to stop the sideways drift. I held the cyclic stick steady for a second or two so that my hover stabilised. I then lowered the collective lever in my left hand.

  ‘Firm and decisive,’ said Jackson.

  We collapsed onto the deck with a wobble from one wheel to the other.

  ‘Keep lowering the lever.’

  The helicopter sunk down heavily on its oleos and the bouncing stopped. We were down.

  The flight-deck officer lowered his bats. A quick thumbs-up sign from me and four groundcrew ran in with nylon strops to lash the helicopter to the deck.

  Jackson turned to look across at me. ‘Well done, Harry. Your first deck landing.’

  It hadn’t been a thing of beauty. But I’d get better at it, much better.

  After a few circuits and landings, Jackson unstrapped and climbed out of the cockpit onto the flight deck, leaving me and Steve Larsen to it. We then did a few circuits and landings on our own before he jumped back in and we flew back to shore.

  The following night we repeated the process, this time in the dark. Night deck landings are far more unnerving. On the approach to the ship, I had to keep flicking my eyes from the flight instruments to the lights on the ship. It’s much harder to judge distance and speed just from a couple of vertical lights on top of the ship and a row of horizontal lights behind the flight-deck officer’s head. But at least there’s no swooshing water to distract you. Instead of watching the ship roll around, I learnt to keep a steady hover whilst watching the row of flight-deck lights rolling around.

  For my first day deck landing I had somehow managed to avoid a nasty effect known as ‘ground resonance’. Wessex were especially prone to this problem. Just because of the slightly lopsided way helicopters hang suspended in the hover, landing almost always involved bouncing from one wheel to the other. Left unchecked this bouncing can degenerate rapidly into ground resonance, an unstable condition that can eventually cause the helicopter to topple over. If the bouncing isn’t too bad, lowering the full weight of the helicopter onto the deck usually solves the problem. On my subsequent deck landings, I went into ground resonance a few times and we had to lift quickly back up into the air to calm things down. Experienced pilots almost never get into ground resonance. Unfortunately both aircrew and groundcrew knew this. So it was embarrassing when it happened.

  Compared to landing, taking off from the little Green Rover, or indeed from any ship’s flight deck, was a piece of cake. It was much the same procedure in reverse. First I gave a thumbs-up sign to the flight-deck officer. The four groundcrew ran in and removed the strops, moved clear of the disk, then turned and held them up clearly for me to confirm. The flight-deck officer signalled I was clear to launch by holding his bats out again. I didn’t want to hang around on a pitching and rolling deck for long after that, pulling in power cleanly and decisively to lift off. As the Wessex continued rising, I cleared to the left and accelerated away from the ship.

  After sleeping on the floor of Ascension for two nights, Nick Foster and his team were hugely impressed with the comfort and splendour of the RFA Fort Austin. It was as big as a medium-sized cruise chip, with cranes and gantries where cabins might otherwise have been, and it had some of the comforts of a cruise ship. As flight commander, Foster had a cabin to himself, complete with double bed, sea view, ensuite bathroom and even shared use of a steward. The maintainers also thought it was great because they were each assigned two-man cabins. The low point of the trip was undoubtedly when the chief steward was forced to apologise. The normal seven-course sit down dinner would be reduced to a mere five courses, since they didn’t know how long they would be away. ‘If you’re going to go to war,’ thought Foster, ‘go to war on an RFA.’ It was luxurious compared to the cramped conditions of a Royal Navy warship.

  On 9 April, after embarking a 120-strong combined group of SAS and SBS special forces, Fort Austin became the first British ship to set off south from Ascension. At first there was a vague notion that Fort Austin, Endurance and its two AS12 air-to-surface missile-equipped Wasp helicopters might comprise a sufficient task group to retake South Georgia. Fortunately, in the absence of a Navy warship to act as escort, this unwise idea was vetoed.

  Three days out from Ascension, Fort Austin met up with Endurance in the rough South Atlantic waters. Lieutenant Kim Slowe took off in Yankee Delta to begin the ‘vertrep’, vertical replenishment, of eagerly awaited fresh food and stores across to Endurance. Unfortunately, part way through the vertrep, a fuel computer malfunction on the Wessex caused one of the engines to run down to idle. Slowe felt the aircraft begin to sink because of the lack of power. To the horror of the hungry Endurance onlookers, he was forced to jettison the load into the sea just to stay airborne, and then coolly flew the Wessex on one engine back to Fort Austin.

  The following night, Nick Foster took off in Yankee Delta to test the repaired aircraft. All seemed as well as it ever does on a night flight over the sea when you can see little or nothing outside and only the dimly lit instruments inside your cockpit. Soon after take-off the computer on the same engine ran down to idle yet again. In the dark night of the South Atlantic, Foster felt the tail of the aircraft start to shake badly. ‘Oh God, I think we’ve got a tail rotor problem,’ he told his crewman. His mind immediately switched to the prospect of ditching into the sea. It only lasted a few seconds before he realised that in fact the adrenalin of the situation was making his knees shake. The movement on the pedals was in turn making the tail shake. Rather less coolly, Foster recovered safely
on one engine to Fort Austin, which was now heading back north to Ascension.

  Meanwhile, in the North Atlantic, Jack Lomas and Oily Knight were heading south with their Wessex gunships on RFA Resource. Having been the first to embark up in Scotland, it soon became apparent that they had departed in haste: for the AS12 missiles to be effective, the M260 missile sight in the left seat of each aircraft needed to be recalibrated. Fortunately, a few days later, Resource was sailing past the Dorset coast: Lomas and Knight returned back to Yeovilton for the necessary adjustments and rejoined the ship on the same day. The two gunships carried out a successful test-firing of four missiles just before arrival in Ascension.

  Like Nick Foster in Fort Austin, Jack Lomas was going to war in style. Resource was essentially an ammunition ship. In other words, a giant bomb. Soon after heading off, the ship’s captain told Lomas about his approach to action stations. ‘There’s two ways we can play this, Jack,’ he said. ‘We can be totally pucker, strip down the wardroom, close the bar, and take it all terribly seriously like Hermes. Or we can be sensible. We are sitting on 27,000 tons of high explosive. If an Exocet missile gets us, the next bang you hear will be your arse going through your head. You won’t need a lifejacket. You’ll need a parachute.’

  The bar stayed open. Throughout the journey south, the Wessex team lived and dined like kings. This provided an irresistible opportunity for one-upmanship to Oily Knight. It was already a depressingly murky day when Knight flew across to the aircraft carrier Hermes in search of spares. After shutting down on the huge deck behind a row of Sea Harriers, he headed towards the little door at the foot of the superstructure and went below decks.