Actually, I have to tell you two stories before telling you the main one, because they are all related.
Story #1 (The New HH60J Flight Simulator and Oil Rigs)
When the Coast Guard transitioned from the old, venerable HH-3F to the HH-60J, it purchased a state-of-the-art, full-motion, HH-60J flight simulator which was installed at the Coast Guard Aviation Training Center (ATC) in Mobile, AL. This is where all Coastie aviators went for initial flight training in their specific aircraft and for week-long annual recurrent training. It was intended that this state-of-the-art simulator would play a big part in that training, not only saving money over flight time costs, but also, because of its sophisticated visual capabilities, able to incorporate realistic Search and Rescue (SAR) scenarios into the training.
What made this simulator a step above existing flight simulators of the day was a huge, wrap-around screen that actually sat outside the simulator cockpit and extended all the way past the cockpit windows. This provided an realistic, uninterrupted visual view of whatever scenario the instructor decided to construct, and also very accurate depth perception. Previous simulators had what were basically television screens in all the windows, which worked fine, but were not as realistic as the new simulator, and could not provide the realism to conduct training such as actually hoisting to a boat, conducting rescue swimmer operations, etc. It was really quite amazing. In fact, the training was so realistic that pilots often completely forgot that they were inside a simulator and not on a real mission during the training.
As a side note, some of the instructors got a big kick out of playing a particular practical joke on the pilots the first time they experienced the new flight simulator. Because this wrap-around visual screen was a few feet in front of the cockpit, there was a maintenance ledge that you could walk around in between. The instructors would wait until the student was deep into a scenario—e.g., in the middle of a rescue or an emergency procedure–then would sneak out the back of the simulator module, and crouching down, would sneak past the side cockpit window, then position himself right in front of the pilot’s windscreen, and at the appropriate moment, would jump right up in front of the pilot, yelling Boo! or something similar. I can’t tell you how jarring and upsetting it is be in the middle of rescuing someone, I mean deep into the reality of it so much that you forget that you’re not really 50 miles offshore on a stormy night making an approach to a sinking ship, and suddenly have a person appear, seemingly in mid-air, outside the front of the helicopter! It was hilarious to everyone except the student of course.
Anyway, the first time I went to the new simulator during my HH60J transition, it was still very new, and the instructor pilots were all getting used to it, too. At some point, we had finished all the required training for the week, but still had an hour of simulator time to kill, so the instructor, Joe Sherman, asked my copilot and me if we wanted to experiment a bit and see what some of the capabilities of the sim were. Of course, since we weren’t going to be graded on it, and it sounded fun, we agreed.
So, Joe started opening up different menus on his console at the seat behind us, we played around with a few different things, and then he suddenly announced, “Hey, it says ‘Oil Rig’. Do you want to try to land on an oil rig!?” Of course we both thought that would be cool and said as much, so he said, “Ok, let me see if I can get it set up. I’ll put it in a field a couple of miles to your west.” (At this point, we had been “flying” over land a few miles north of Mobile.)
After a few seconds, he said, “Okay, you should see it now, 2.3 miles at 250 degrees.” We turned the helicopter southwest and sure enough, a couple of miles away we could see a huge oil platform sitting right in the middle of the Alabama countryside. Boy, did that look strange! But that wasn’t the strangest/funniest part. As we got closer, something wasn’t quite right about it. Then we all realized what it was at the same time: It was moving. It was underway! Just like the simulator would allow you to have a boat stationary or underway to conduct hoisting practice, evidently the same options could apply to any object in the simulator. Joe said, “Oh, yeah, I see the default setting is underway at 8 knots. Do you want me to change it to stationary?” I said, “Hell no! I want to land on an oil rig underway in the middle of Alabama! You know, just in case I ever need to do it someday.” lol
As I started making my approach, the whole thing just started getting completely surreal. Trying to marry up what I knew in my head about an oil rig with what I was seeing (it moving across the countryside) was just too funny. Then, when I got to 100 feet of it, it suddenly started moving away from me quickly. I said, “What the hell?” and Joe replied, “I just changed its underway speed to 80 knots.” (He was getting into this.) Okay, now this was going to be fun and challenging! After a few attempts by each of us students we both manage to land on an oil rig moving across the Alabama countryside at almost 100 miles per hour! (Your tax dollars at work.) We were laughing so hard that we could barely fly. Great fun!
But truth is often stranger than fiction. Little did I know that one day I would actually have to land on an oil rig that was underway. And that is Story #3.
But before that, I have to tell you Story #2. Unfortunately, this will give you a glimpse into the darker side of my character, but hey, it happened!
Story #2: Not Getting Ship Qualified.
One difference between the HH-3F and the HH60J was that the latter was theoretically able to land on ships. The Jayhawk was actually not a version of the Army’s Blackhawk, but was a version of the Navy’s Seahawk. The main difference was in the structure of the landing gear. The Blackhawk has the tail wheel located way back on the tail. One of the benefits of this location is that it protects the tail from the ground when landing or flying nap-of-the-earth (very close to the ground), as the Army does. However, the triangle between the two main landing gear at the cockpit and the tail wheel is rather long, requiring a large helipad. This isn’t a problem for the Army since it often just lands helicopters on the grass. But on a ship, this would create a problem since the helipads are very small. So, the Navy version has the tail wheel located much further forward. This, and a much more beefed-up landing gear compared to the H-3 is what allowed the Jayhawk to land aboard ship (certain ships, and with strict limitations).
The other helicopter in the Coast Guard inventory at the time, the H-65 Dolphin, was much smaller and had routinely deployed on Coast Guard cutters for years. But in many ways it was much less capable than the H-60, which was more powerful, had a longer range and endurance, and could carry more people. However, it being larger, there were fewer Coast Guard cutters on which it could fit. In fact, just two: The 270’ and the 378’ cutters. And, the Jayhawk was too large to fit in either of those cutters’ aircraft hangers.
Like the rivalry in the Army between the ground pounders and the aviators, the Coast Guard had a strong rivalry between the “brown shoes” and the “black shoes” (the aviators and the ship guys). Although we sometimes worked together, it was rare; we usually stayed in our own little Coast Guard worlds. There were separate chains of command for each, separate career paths, etc. Really, the only time these two worlds collided was when a helicopter was deployed on a cutter.
We in the H3/H60 community had heard from the Dolphin guys how much it sucked being deployed on a cutter. Just like the grunts in the Army, the shipboard part of the Coast Guard had much stricter discipline, many examples of doing things for seemingly no reason except to make people miserable, getting very little sleep because there were shipwide announcements and bells going off 24/7, and the worst part, if the pilot was deployed more than a certain number of days in a row (I think it was over a month?), the ship captain was required to write an OER on the pilot—even if he weren’t due for one.
So, a slight diversion for a small primer on how the officer promotion system works in the military, including the Coast Guard. Like any organization, the higher up you go in the hierarchy, the fewer positions there are. For example (and I’m making these figure up), there might be allocations for 1,000 ensigns, 750 Lieutenants Junior Grade, 500 Lieutenants, 300 Lieutenant Commanders, 200 Commanders, 150 Captains, 75 Rear Admirals, lower half (1 Star), 40 Rear Admirals (2 stars), 10 Vice Admirals (3 stars) and 5 Admirals (4 stars). So, the competition obviously gets more intense the higher up the ranks one goes.
To make the promotion system as equitable as possible, there is a standard Officer Evaluation Report (OER) which is used to grade each officer’s performance over the previous year in many different areas. This is regardless of whether the officer is a pilot, a ship driver, an Aids to Navigation specialist, a commercial ship inspector, and oil spill expert, or any number of other specialties. Each year, when it is time for promotions, a Promotion Board made up of senior officers meets to winnow out the chaff from the wheat, i.e., to decide which officers get selected for promotion and which ones get “passed over”. Any officers passed over two years in a row are kicked out. Thus, the OER is extremely important as it the main tool the Promotion Board has to decide who gets promoted and who gets released from active duty.
Most of the H65 guys we had talked to who had served extended periods of time aboard cutters had horror stories, not only about how hard it was working for a ship CO who had little understanding of the limitations and capabilities of aviation operations, but who also didn’t give a crap about the career of a pretty-boy pilot, especially when said pilot would be competing for promotion with the CO’s fellow shipboard officers. Thus, the OERs the pilots received from the ship COs were often career-killers. It was a very unfair situation to be put in.
The other bad thing about shipboard ops in an H60 was that the Coast Guard cutters were truly ill-equipped to support them. During initial operational evaluations on the cutters, H60 instructor pilot after instructor pilot would come back reporting how dangerous it was to operate at night on them, especially the 378’ cutter where there was very little clearance from the rotor blades to the hangar. Even the 270’ cutter, which counterintuitively had bigger helipads, was very challenging for the pilots to operate from at night. These cutters had been designed for the much smaller Dolphin and its equally small predecessor, the H-52.
And here’s the silly thing: Putting an H60 on a cutter didn’t improve anything operationally. The H60 had over a 600-mile range, meaning we could cover any area that these cutters were operating in (mostly the Caribbean) from existing shore facilities. It was safer, and it was better for the helicopters which, since they couldn’t fit in the cutters’ hangars, were subjected to damaging salt spray for the duration of the deployment!
In addition, it didn’t take much of a sea state to exceed the pitch or bank landing limitations of the H60, meaning that much of the time the helicopter couldn’t take off or land from the cutter, anyway. It was all very idiotic. But, the ship captains loved the status of having their own helicopter-toy aboard and were a very powerful force in the Coast Guard, so no one had the balls to make the right decision to operate the Jayhawks only from shore.
Regardless, I didn’t want any part of it. Especially since I was getting ready to transfer from Air Station Clearwater (the only H60 base that was doing shipboard landings) in a matter of months. What I didn’t need was a career-killing OER before I left since I was coming up for promotion to Lieutenant Commander in the next year or two.
Thankfully, before a pilot was permitted to land on any ship, he or she had to go through a shipboard landing syllabus given by a ship-qualified instructor pilot. This involved day and night operations, many takeoff and landings, etc. To get all 80 Clearwater helicopter pilots trained was going to take a while because, for logistic and scheduling reasons, we had to wait for an appropriate cutter (and one which had the time to devote to the training) to come fairly close to Clearwater. We would then send out a helo and a pilot and instructor to knock out a qualification. Once a pilot had the training, he or she was then fair game for a shipboard deployment down in the Caribbean.
The pilot schedulers at the Air Station (who were themselves pilots) used a relatively antiquated way to make up the daily, weekly, monthly, duty and training flight schedules for the 110 or so pilots at the air station. (We also had about 30 C130 pilots at Air Station Clearwater.) They had a magnetic white board with columns representing the days of the week and the rows being the training evolutions, deployments, or other missions. All the pilots had small magnets with their names on them that would sit in a pile at the bottom of the white board until a scheduler would place it on the schedule. They used this system because it was very flexible and allowed them to play around more easily with schedules and pilot availability. When it was all finalized, it would be published in paper form and disseminated to the pilots.
So, whenever I heard that a cutter would be in the area and the schedulers would soon be picking pilots to receive the training, I would go into the schedulers office after hours, find my magnet, and throw it on the floor under the desk that sat beneath their magnetic white board. (That way I had plausible deniability: The magnet had just fallen). They never did an inventory of pilot names, but would just plug the pilots into the daily and monthly schedule first, see which magnets were left over at the bottom, determine from those who still needed their ship qualification, then plug them into that training slot. But, since my name was never in the pool, I managed to avoid getting ship qualified for many months. Once I knew they had chosen someone else, I would go back in to the office and put my magnet back in the pool. (Clever? 10. Integrity? 0.)
Until one day when I was ferrying a helicopter all the way from Clearwater to Great Inagua, Bahamas. We always kept two helicopters there for the OPBAT mission, but every once in awhile, one would have to come back to Clearwater for some heavy maintenance. So, two pilots would fly the fresh one down and bring the “old” one back. And that was what my copilot and I were doing. For the life of me, I can’t remember her name, but she was one of our maintenance officers, a good pilot, and (fortunately for me) very career oriented.
When we were about halfway to Great Inagua, we received what to me ended up being a very disturbing phone patch from one of the pilot schedulers at the air station. Evidently, at the last minute, a 270’ cutter had become available to conduct shipboard training in the Windward Passage (just south of Great Inagua). There also happened to be a ship-qualified instructor pilot pulling OPBAT duty at Great Inagua. Since they noticed that I was not yet shipboard qualified, they saw a perfect opportunity for me to use the helicopter we were ferrying to get ship qualified by the instructor pilot at Great Inagua . My copilot would take over his duty in the meantime. Once I was qualified, everything would swap back and we would continue with the ferry mission back to Clearwater.
Dammit! I was foiled! It was last-minute, so I never had the chance to hide my magnet! Fate had finally caught up with me and there was seemingly nothing I could do about it.
Then I heard the sweetest sound I’ve ever heard over the intercom, my copilot saying, “Darn, I wish I could get ship qualified.” Wait, what? I turned to her and asked her to confirm what she had just said–that she was not yet ship qualified. She said that she wasn’t, always just missing the previous opportunities. I asked her if she wanted to take my place for this training and she said that she absolutely would! Yippee! I initiated a quick call back to the schedulers, explained that she wanted to do the ship qual training, and that it might make more sense for her to do it since I would be getting transferred out of Clearwater in a few months, she was slated to become an instructor, etc., etc., (you know, the for-the-good-of-the-service argument), and they agreed!
So, I managed to escape that dreadful fate one last time and successfully left Clearwater having never gotten ship qualified.
But, that didn’t mean that I never landed on a ship. And that is also Story #3.
Story #3: A Surreal Medevac
Years later, I was pulling night OPBAT duty in Great Inagua when we got a medevac request. A commercial vessel 280 nm north of Great Inagua had a badly injured crewman who needed to get to a hospital. We were tasked with hoisting him off the ship and returning him to Great Inagua where a civilian air ambulance would be waiting to fly him to the States.
This was going to be the farthest offshore mission I had ever (or would ever) fly in a helicopter. The Jayhawk was theoretically designed to have enough fuel to fly 300 miles offshore, effect a 45-minute rescue, then return with a legal fuel reserve. This mission would test those capabilities. I requested “max gas” for the helicopter and the maintenance guys went to work installing a third external fuel tank and topping all the fuel tanks off.
When the helicopter was finally ready, we got an updated course and speed of the vessel, and took off on an intercept course. It was a beautiful night, clear, with almost no wind. At least we wouldn’t have to deal with weather issues. We turned on the autopilot, set the heading mode for the intercept point, and sat back to enjoy the two+-hour flight to the ship.
Since we had so much time, we decided to get as many details from the Com Center about the vessel as possible. It was 712 feet long and called the Blue Marlin. Hmmm. The Blue Marlin. That name range a bell for some reason, but I couldn’t place it. I had only hoisted to a few vessels that size, and none of them had been called the Blue Marlin, so I didn’t know the name from having hoisted to it. Ah, well, not important.
It was Coast Guard policy at the time that a helicopter going offshore more than 100 miles would have a Coast Guard fixed-wing escort, if available. This was both for safety and efficiency. The airplane could watch over the helicopter, and if anything bad happened could notify the authorities, drop a liferaft to a crew who had to ditch, etc. But, it could also find out what the wind speeds and directions were at different flight levels (allowing the helicopter to choose the most fuel-efficient altitude), the plane could verify the location of the subject vessel, and could even take care of some of the briefings that needed to be given to the vessel ahead of time so the helicopter could quickly commence the rescue when arriving on scene. In addition, being at a much higher altitude than the helicopter, the fixed-wing could bridge the communication gap, relaying information between the vessel and the helicopter long before the helicopter was able to directly communicate with the ship.
In our case, an Air Station Clearwater C-130 which just happened to be flying a drug interdiction patrol in the vicinity was eventually diverted to escort us. However, they didn’t arrive on scene until right after we did, so weren’t able to assist much with the preliminaries in this case. But, they were able to do what was most important to us helicopter guys: take gyro-stabilized video of us rescuing people! (The fixed-wing guys were good for something!) lol
We had been flying at about 5,000 feet to conserve fuel and extend our communications range and eventually painted a large target on our radar about 70 miles out that matched the position where the Blue Marlin was supposed to be. However, we were unable to reach them by radio until we were about 30 miles out. They then confirmed their position, course, and speed, which we backed up by direction-finding on their transmission, just to make sure. Everything matched. They were underway southeast at 8 knots and reported winds and seas calm at their location.
They also gave us some patient information. We were told that one of the crew had fallen down a ladder and had back injuries. He was being treated by the ship’s medic below deck. Based on that information, we decided that we would first hoist the rescue swimmer (who was also an EMT) to the ship, followed by the Stokes litter with backboard. The swimmer would take them below decks, evaluate the patient, secure him to the backboard and litter, and then he and assisting ship/oil rig crew could carry the patient back up to the deck where we would conduct a trail line hoist of the litter, then a sling recovery of the swimmer. I had the copilot work out what our bingo fuel would be to make it back to Great Inagua with our required reserve, then informed the rescue swimmer that we had about an hour on scene if really necessary, but that he should not tarry.
As we got closer, we started a slow descent, arriving at 1000 feet a few miles from the ship. Using our night vision goggles, we soon picked out a shape, but what a shape! It was like nothing any of us had ever seen! What was it? It did appear about 700 feet long, but it also appeared about 500 feet tall! Or at least it had big pieces of something sticking straight up into the sky! WTF! It wasn’t until we got to within a mile or so that we were able to make out more detail, and I finally asked, “Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing? Is that an oil rig sitting on top of a ship?!” As I began a slow orbit of the vessel to figure out what the heck were seeing, it was evident that indeed, a jackup type of oil rig was riding along on top of the ship!
And then the name Blue Marlin suddenly came back to me! It was one of those semi-submersible boats designed to carry very large objects. It could partially submerge, then have an object floated over top of it, then it would refloat itself. I remembered it because it was the ship that had transported the USS Cole, the U.S. Navy destroyer that had gotten a hole blown in the side of it by terrorists while refueling in Yemen back 2000. It was all over the news. How cool!
Now that we knew what we were dealing with, we got back on the horn with the ship’s captain and, with more questioning, discovered that the injured man was actually one of the crew on the oil rig, and that he had fallen down a ladder in it. (The crew of the oil rig evidently stayed on the oil rig during the journey.) In fact, he was still in the facility on the oil rig. That changed things.
As we continued to orbit, we could see that the oil rig had a very large helicopad built into it. The oil rig platform was jacked down all the way, sitting flat on the boat, and the three, 500-foot-tall legs were what were sticking up in the air. Therefore, the helipad was sitting about 75 feet above the ship itself.
The sea was like a mirror, super calm, and neither the boat nor the oil rig had any apparent motion at all. I decided, to save time and fuel, that we would just land on the oil rig’s helipad but keep the engines running and at full RPM so would could immediately take off if necessary. This would require significantly less fuel than hovering (to hoist) or orbiting (while waiting for the rescue swimmer). We informed the C-130 of our intentions. (They had by now arrived and were orbiting, taking video and keeping the operations center informed of what was happening for us.)
I realized, looking at it from one perspective, what I was doing wasn’t legal. I was, essentially, landing on a ship, yet I was not ship qualified. On the other hand, I felt I could successfully argue that I was not landing on a ship at all, but on an oil rig which just happened to be sitting on a ship. A ship that was moving. True! But, landing on an oil rig didn’t require any special training. And, if it were brought up that, “Yeah, but the oil rig was moving!”, I could reply, with honesty, that I had received formal training in landing to an underway oil rig! Ha!
It was also the obviously most safe and efficient thing to do for all concerned.
So, feeling that my ass was covered one way or the other (because the Commanding Officer would no doubt see the video the C-130 was taking), that’s what we did. The rescue swimmer was able to take his time stabilizing the patient and moving him up 12 flights of very steep stairs/ladders, we saved a bunch of fuel, we didn’t have to expose the patient or the swimmer to the dangers inherent in hoisting, and, most importantly, it was just very cool (and more than a bit surreal).
We had an uneventful trip back to Great Inagua where we landed with plenty of fuel, the patient was successfully transferred to the waiting air ambulance jet, and we had a great story to tell. After getting back to the air station, one of the C-130 crew presented me with a VHS tape of the whole thing, so I have proof! (somewhere in storage)
Definitely the most unusual Search and Rescue flight I experienced in the Coast Guard. I never heard a peep from the powers that be about my decisions, but that’s probably only because nothing went wrong!