by This Is Not a Drill- Just Another Glorious Day in the Oilfield (retail) (epub)
‘At least he was on the deck, but how do you stop a seventeen-ton fully armed jet that’s running out of runway?’ asked Mick.
‘You don’t,’ said the Doctor. ‘You get out of the fucking way.’ He was laughing.
‘There’s an emergency braking lever back on the left side of the cockpit,’ said Mick.
Dad nodded sagely and said, ‘Yeah, Bill and I were flying alongside Peter at two hundred feet, we were right next to him as he touched down and hurtled down Gelsenkirchen’s main runway in the dark, heading for Holland. Bill and I knew Peter would be reaching back frantically pulling on the emergency brake lever. In the event, when he pulled the lever the remaining pressure just bled through the leak that happened during the flight when a union failed. So there were Peter and John, they hadn’t slowed down at all, completely out of control doing three hundred knots down the runway with no way of stopping and literally going west.
‘We watched him shoot off the end of the runway at flying speed. Bill said, “I guess the emergency brake didn’t work.” Then Bill broke off and banked hard, executing a remarkable landing on a parallel peri-track.’
Dad and Bill landed without incident, climbed out of their aircraft and ran over to the squadron hanger, only to discover that nobody had realised Peter and John had just started an off-road trip through the German countryside. They had made no further radio calls and the tower personnel didn’t notice that they never taxied past.
‘I called the ops desk to alert fire and ambulance crews and the CO,’ Dad went on. ‘Then Bill and I grabbed a Land Rover and took off after the boys. We soon found a bloody huge hole in the boundary fence, and all the approach lights for runway 9 were smashed to bits.
‘Peter and John would have just sat there in the cockpit as one of Her Majesty’s very expensive brand new aircrafts ran on and on through the German countryside. Peter could not raise the undercarriage as the emergency air system he used to blow down the wheels prevented this, so they went on like that for more than two kilometres.’
Following the Javelin’s path, Dad and Bill drove on in the dark, through several large fields, finding large stone walls demolished and the occasional, surprised, slightly scorched sheep, through an orchard, through someone’s garden. Peter and John had passed through the greenhouse, through the garage, collected the washing and the washing line, then through another wall into the carpark at the rear of a pub. By chance the port wingtip had taken a few bricks out of the corner of the pub, sending the jet into two parked cars and turning it around towards the building across the street where it lurched over a ditch, losing its wheels, and finally came to rest in a wood directly opposite the pub.
Miraculously, no-one was hurt.
I fell back laughing. ‘Go on, then what happened?’ I leaned in.
‘Peter and John didn’t realise it but they were now in Holland,’ Dad continued. ‘Peter, disoriented after his cross-country rampage, jumped out leaving John to stay with the jet, then he took off heading east to get help.
‘All the locals came staggering out of the pub—they had been in there all night drinking and had just heard seventeen tons of aircraft thunder pass, still at some speed. One of them pointed out that his car was missing, then noticed the missing bricks. Of course, they all assumed that John, who was sitting on the ground near the road, was the pilot and had shown great skill in avoiding the pub in the dark. They ran over and the publican gave John a bottle of Dutch gin to steady him and to thank him for his heroism. John knocks off the whole bottle—he doesn’t speak a word of Dutch, he’s just happy to be alive—and lets them pick him up on their shoulders and dance about on the road.’
That’s when Dad and Bill reached the back of the pub, nearly knocking over Peter who was running back down his trail of destruction. Peter got in the car, and when they drove round the corner they saw John enjoying an impromptu street party.
The fire engines, ambulances, and everyone else including the station commander—in full dress uniform—arrived shortly afterwards. ‘The station commander at that time was Group Captain Desmond Hughes DSO DFC AFC,’ Dad explained, ‘a most impressive officer who was generally admired by all under his command. He had been a pilot in the Battle of Britain, his wartime record was superb and he went on to command RAF College at Cranwell.
‘A huge crowd had gathered around John and us. The commander stepped forward. He had seen the downed aircraft in the wood on its belly, obviously a write-off. Even then the loss of our latest warplane would have been considerable to the RAF and the United Kingdom at large.
‘In his deep, powerful voice, the commander asked John, “My boy, what have you done?”
‘Standing there in his flying suit, helmet in one hand, empty bottle of gin in the other, John saluted and said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I’ve drunk the whole bottle.”’
With half the bottle of Macallan gone, we were all laughing loudly, and some of the other men in the club had joined us to listen to Dad’s stories.
The next yarn followed soon after. It was less than a year after Peter Stark’s crash, and all the same guys were still flying at RAF Gelsenkirchen in the same Javelins. There were two marks of aircraft, the Mk 4 and Mk 5, but the main difference was the size of the fuel tanks and therefore the range. As they routinely flew in pairs, the ops desk tried to give each pair the same mark so they flew together for the whole mission, and on those occasions when different marks came up at the same time, the longer range Javelin 5 would go up first, followed ten minutes later by the Javelin 4, which would join up for the main sortie.
One Monday morning in May, Dad and his pilot were briefed to fly with Brian Mason and Bish Siviter. Brian and Bish were among the squadron’s most experienced crews, and they had already completed four night-fighter tours when they joined 11 Squadron. And they were brothers-in-law. Ten years earlier Bish had married Brian’s sister, and they had been flying together ever since. Brian was allocated a Mk 5 Javelin and Dad had the Mk 4. The plan was for Brian to take off first, then Dad would follow and join up ten minutes later. So Dad and his pilot were in the hanger checking the aircraft paperwork with two ground staff when Brian started up his port engine.
Cartridges were used to fire up the engines; a slow burning cordite charge would take about eight seconds to spin a small six-foot turbine up to fifty-five thousand rpm. This was geared down to the main engine rotor, and when that was running at two thousand rpm the fuel injectors would squirt fuel into burn chambers, and electronic igniters would fire the fuel and start the engine.
It had rained over the weekend and everything was really sodden. They heard Brian start his ignition sequence in the background as they poured over their paperwork in a small hut at one end of the hanger, then suddenly a massive bang.
‘The first thing I remember was the sound of really fast-moving metal fragments ricocheting off the ground,’ Dad said, ‘and a moment later that horrible “Woooof” of a fuel fire.’
Trained to react in an emergency, all four men yelled ‘Don’t panic’ and ran into each other. Then they all peered round the open door of the hut, and what they saw was frightening.
The starter turbine had disintegrated at maximum rpm, and the tiny blades had torn the collector fuel tank in half and set it ablaze, dumping burning jet fuel under the aircraft and starting a serious fire in the middle of a row of shiny, new, multimillion-dollar jets. The warrant officer grabbed the phone to call the fire section under the tower a few hundred yards away. The sergeant took a small trolley fire extinguisher and charged across the tarmac to help the ground crew. With great presence of mind Dad’s pilot sprang into the aircraft next to the one on fire, quickly started it and moved it forward to safety, at the same time making room for the fire engines.
Meanwhile, the Javelin Mk 5 was completely covered in flames, and it was fully armed and very dangerous. Apart from the seven tons of fuel it carried, there were eight hundred rounds of 30-mm cannon shells and four live air-to-air missiles.
&
nbsp; Dad ran to the edge of the fire. He could see Brian and Bish inside the cockpit, frantically trying to get out before they either burned alive or just went bang. Ejector seats weren’t an option; they would just send them into the hanger roof at a rate that would have the ground crew hosing them into the nearest drain.
Normally in these situations the navigator would just jump off the back of the aircraft, leaving the pilot sole use of the ladder. But the flames, burning over the wings and all around the back of the jet, made this impossible. The only remaining escape route was forward. Suddenly, Bish the navigator was free of the perspex canopy covering the back cockpit, he shot a glance over his shoulder and saw only flames, so he clambered forward and dove off the nose of the jet. His old pal and brother-in-law Brian had shut down the engine, closed the fuel cocks and switched off the electrics. As the fire engines arrived he was sliding down the ladder to escape the flames.
‘The next thing I remember was the post-mortem in the aircrew room in the hanger,’ Dad said, finishing his whisky. ‘Everybody who was anybody was gathered around the table, the room was packed. The fire had been put out by four fire tenders covering the aircraft in foam. A doctor was bandaging Bish’s ankle, as he had sprained it leaping from the nose of the jet ten feet up.
‘There was Group Captain Hughes again, asking questions. “What did you do after you climbed out of the rear cockpit?” he asked Bish.
‘“Sir,” replied Bish, “I climbed into the fixed combing between the two cockpits and helped my pilot out of his cockpit, then I jumped from the front of the aircraft, Sir.”
‘After a short silence, Brian turned to his navigator and asked, “What was it you did after climbing onto the fixed combing?”
‘Bish looked his pilot and brother-in-law in the eye and said, “I helped you out of your cockpit.”
‘There was another short silence, then Brian lent down to reach under the table to pick up his flying helmet. He placed it in the middle of the table so that everyone in the room could see it. There was a size ten, half-melted rubber boot print right across the top of it.’
Dad was on a roll. I was captivated and happy that I was there to see all the boozing and storytelling, the benefits of a classical education displayed with real panache after drinking so much. It made me wish that I had gone to university, back when it was free. Now I suppose if you wanted to eat two-minute noodles and spend the rest of your life in debt, university could be a good idea. But while some of my friends were at uni, I was happy to work offshore. I was still interested in the life the rigs held up, the random adventure was fine with me.
‘Let’s eat,’ said Mick as he stood up. ‘What do you feel like?’
We all looked at the Doctor as if he would suggest the best place in London to enjoy a sautéed human hand.
We went through the city in a black cab; it was getting dark and people were starting the journey home. The taxi pulled up outside a French restaurant with long wooden tables outside and starched white tablecloths that clipped against the breeze. It was just opening.
‘I love this place. Have the rabbit, it’s the chef’s specialty.’ Dr Lecter looked excited and waited for us to enter through the old wooden doors.
After a while I got my second wind, like drinking yourself sober. ‘What happened after Germany?’ I asked my father.
‘I was posted to Singapore, still on Javelins,’ Dad replied.
Then over dinner I heard all about Gus, a young pilot who had befriended my father years earlier after Dad crashed in a paddock in the Welsh mountains—a paddock that belonged to Gus’s father. Apparently on seeing a jet crash into his field, he went running up and pointed a shotgun at my father in case he was a German; though the war had ended some years prior to this, life in the Welsh mountains moved at a slower pace in the 1950s. Gus was amazed when he saw the downed jet. My father asked to use the phone to call for help, but it was going to take some time, so he sat down in the farmhouse and got talking to Gus and his dad. They stayed good friends from then on. Gus later went off to join the RAF and did very well, becoming a pilot and eventually flying Javelins in the same squadron as Dad.
Tragically, while they were based in Singapore, Gus was killed after ejecting from his aircraft at low level. As the squadron leader, Dad was tasked to fly Gus’s remains back home to the Welsh mountains. Dad was driving down Bukit Timah Road in a Leyland Mini staff car—Gus had been cremated and was in an urn sitting on the back seat—when he hit a wooden cart being pulled by an ox. Dad broke his nose on the steering wheel and the urn slammed into the dashboard, knocking its lid off and turning Gus into one giant grey cloud that filled the Mini and sent my father coughing into the street. Blood pouring from a smashed nose, Dad did his best to scoop his old friend back into the urn, but after the wind had gone through the little car there wasn’t much more than a finger or two left in the urn.
Dad made it to the airport, boarded the flight and chain-smoked a carton of Rothmans, ashing into the urn all the way to London. What ended up sitting on the family’s mantle for years was mainly cigarette ash, most of Gus went down the road. It took Dad years to tell Gus’s father what had happened, and the real reason why he arrived at the remote farmhouse in the middle of the night with blood all over his uniform.
We had dessert, the waiter taking good care of us, and one after another the stories came out.
‘I was flying with your dad in the back seat once,’ the Doctor said. He loosened his red tie and let a smile spread over his face. ‘He had constructed this extendable arm from meccano, and on the end was the hand from a first-aid dummy with a flying glove on it. As a pilot, you’d be bombing along when your dad would stretch this thing out and say, “Excuse me,” and tap you on the shoulder with this thing. It’s impossible to reach that far forward in the cockpit, so when this hand reaches over and taps you on the shoulder mid-flight you fairly shit yourself.’
Meeting Mick and the good Doctor was superb fun. Seeing them bounce off my dad and being there for the resulting hilarity opened up my feelings towards my father and gave me a better idea of the kind of man he is. And after hearing him talk about his father and the way things were at that time in Britain, I had a new understanding. From that moment on I have had regular contact with Dad, even though it is usually just a phone call. That was enough for us to start again at being a son, and a father.
6 THE TENDER TRAP
Shortly after I returned from London, I was in Perth for a month, working in an oilfield workshop. Tasman Oil Tools had the contract to service a new Top Drive running tool that I was very interested in, partly because it’s a new design that actually works and partly because, if it keeps working, it’s going to replace me one day. So I wanted to ‘know thine enemy’, and after a phone call to Ross, the director, I found myself eye to eye with the thing. It was painfully simple, easy to rig up and I even liked the colour. Bad news.
‘Not much to it really,’ said Ross. He had done me a favour by putting me on his workshop crew as I was in need of a pay cheque, and he was happy to have someone on hand who knew their way around drilling tools. Ross is a great guy; he has that rare ability to work alongside his employees. He would pass the workshop, see something that didn’t look right, and before you could say, ‘Ross I can’t get this fucking thing back together’, he would have his shirt sleeves rolled up and be scanning the bench for the right tools.
I enjoyed working there—the crew were great and they got along well with each other. The Russian rig aside, I’m more used to working for your classic, large, eco-friendly oil consortium. The ones who plant a tree for every well they drill and put an overpriced supermarket into every one of their petrol stations. They, along with car manufacturers, dump hundreds of millions of dollars into research towards new energy—hydrogen, nuclear, or mining Australia’s vast uranium reserves—without making too much noise. But underneath all the environmentally friendly wallpaper and glossy corporate brochures, they’re usually just another conglomeration
of ruthless and aggressive bullies, located in a tall, imposing building down town. While I was at Tasman enjoying the workshop life, just such a giant oil consortium phoned, and predictably I said, ‘Sure, I’d love the job,’ and within twenty-four hours I was on hypocrite airlines bound for Japan.
The rig was just outside Iwamizawa, a small town one hour by train from Sapporo on Japan’s northernmost island of Hokkaido. I love working in Japan, it’s so clean and polite. When I arrived, it was the middle of winter. Coming from a Western Australian summer it was cold, really cold, the kind of cold that freezes your snot and makes your balls shrivel up and disappear in desperate search of some warmth. So I spent the first few days wrapped in layer upon layer of clothing, looking a bit like the Michelin man, until I slowly got used to the temperature.
The job started well. We had a new computer system on the drill floor that looked impressive, with just the right amount of lights, bells and whistles to attract every Japanese guy on location with even the slightest interest in computers to the drill floor like sociopaths to the ‘Big Brother’ house. But you can’t trust computers. As if on cue, just as I had an assorted plethora of excited high-level Japanese oil company men in hard-hats and matching thermals crowded around our new computer, chatting, pointing and asking an unbelievable amount of questions, it turned itself off.
Fuck, aw fuck, I was shouting in my head, all the while smiling the idiotic way you do when something stops working at a critical moment and you have no idea how to fix it.
The Japanese consortium said ‘Ohhhh’ in unison and nodded.
