JOhnH
Touchdown! Greaser!
Not sure who the author is, and I can't even vouch for it's authenticity, but I read it to the end. Thought some of you might enjoy this. Some of you may have even been there or done that!
Sweat Factor Ten.
SEA STORY……..BUT TRUE
I'm a Navy C-9 [ military DC-9 ] pilot, a 20-year commander in the Navy Reserve, who, the other half of his time flies as a Captain for an airline.
We were tasked to fly from Atsugi, Japan to Thailand, stay over night, fly another leg to pick up
a SEAL platoon, bring them back to Thailand, spend another night, and then return them to their forward deployed home base in Guam.
This was an unusual [ but not unheard of ] long-range mission for the military version of the DC-9.
The entire mission went fine, with the SEALS on board, all the way back to Thailand. But 'gas' became an issue because we now had SEALS and their combined combat cargo onboard. That extra weight limited the amount of fuel we could carry to about 30,000 pounds . . or four and one-half to five hours' worth.
Three tropical depressions were beginning to stir things up in the Far East. One was west of Korea; it wasn't a factor. But one was sitting just to the west of the Philippines, slowly drifting east toward our refueling point at Manila.
The third, named Samoi, was spinning up to the northeast of Guam, but sliding to the northwest. Its projected track would keep it 200 miles north of the island.
Unforecasted, Samoi would soon . . accelerate . . to super typhoon status.
Phuket, Thailand, is an international resort, so while overseas telephone communication was expensive, it wasn't impossible. Worried about the weather, I made several long-distance calls to
our scheduler and various weather agencies around the area. We managed to identify an alternate airport for Manila.
So I decided to press on with the mission.
With one day to spare, we would beat the first typhoon into Manila.
With the SEALS on board, we departed Phuket airport early that A.M. About 200 miles into the flight, the first thunder storms started to appear, and we switched on the weather radar. It didn't work. It had tested out fine on the ground, and it had tested fine in the air, but now it wouldn't show us the storms.
We made the only decision we could. Turned around to get it fixed.
We carry our own mechanics with us, and an hour and a half later, back on the ground in Phuket, where they found a broken electric wire.
Again, we fueled the aircraft and started off . . now more than two hours late.
The weather into Manila was dicey, but manageable. We used the radar to skirt the worst of the storms, finding clearer weather as we approached the field, landed, and refueled. That leg took three hours and 40 minutes, and we landed with 6,500 pounds of fuel, just above the legal planning limit of 6,000 pounds.
By flying East against the sun we had been losing daylight and it was now dusk. Again, I hauled out my credit card and telephoned to re-check the weather. The forecast indicated a chance of light rain later that evening in Guam, but we should have no real problems.
And the final leg was projected to last three hours and twenty minutes, so we were confident we'd have fuel to spare.
Even though it is a small island, there are two major airports on Guam. This is important for a
C-9, because almost every time we fly to Guam, we don't have enough fuel . . . to go anywhere else but Guam. That was certainly true this night.
This planned mission leg was business as usual, legal by every naval aviation regulation. Hey, I would have flown it with my whole family there in the back.
We took off in the deepening twilight
And began maneuvering to avoid the storms that our radar now picked up with increasing frequency. A commercial pilot talked to us on an air-to-air common radio frequency; told us he
had just taken off from Guam, and that we should have no problems. Oblivious to the havoc that [ soon to become ] typhoon Samoi would unleash . . we pressed on.
We approached Guam at 10 o'clock that night. There was no ATIS [ auto-weather broadcast ] from our destination airfield had now closed because of the worsening weather. Approach control was still up and running. We arrived overhead with 7,500 pounds of gas, about what we had expected . . but certainly not enough . . to reach at any other island's runway.
Typhoon Samoi had slowed and turned south and was now headed toward Guam.
On the typhoon's backside, swirling bands of severe thunderstorms had begun to fill in. Although the storm center was 150 miles north, the typhoon now encompassed an area 600 miles across and 1,200 miles long.
Both airports in Guam have long, dual runways that run from northeast to southwest. The winds that came roaring in with those back-filling storms were crosswind to Guam's runways, almost straight out of the west . . at times reaching 80 knots. Those treacherous winds kept us from shooting an ILS approach. A precision approach would have placed us well beyond the tailwind limits for the aircraft.
We set up for the TACAN 24 for a non-precision approach to Anderson Air Force Base. It comes
in over the ocean, crosses over a cliff several hundred feet high and touches down on the runway atop the cliff . . less than a half-mile from the edge.
On a clear day, it can be an eye-opener.
On a night like this . . it can kill you.
One wind-shear downdraft at the wrong time . . and not only will you not clear the cliff . . you might never see it coming.
If you've ever had to pull your car to the side of the road during a heavy downpour you can relate to the conditions that night. Now, imagine driving along at 150 miles an hour . . and not being given the luxury of stopping.
The rain was horizontal. We could not see three feet ahead let alone the half-mile that is required to land from that speed. On the first approach, an 80-knot wind-shear took our speed from 150 to 230 knots in 2 seconds.
An emergency go-around was now mandatory.
The second approach featured a little less wind-shear. Our radar was now showing nothing
but red on its 30-mile scale.
We don't even fly through red normally. Let alone land in it. According to Approach Control,
we had been over the end of their runway.
TWICE !
But we never saw a thing.
I was ready to start bending the rules. I had to get closer to the ground to have any chance to
land.
I opted for a downwind ILS landing in the opposite direction.
We began the approach with the autopilot locked on ILS despite the out-of-limit winds. The
GPS showed a 40-knot tailwind [ the limit is 10 knots.] On the other hand, but I was zero on
new ideas.
At around 250 feet, we got theONEEMERGENCY SCENARIO that always
' GETS YOU 'in the flight simulator :
The minus 40-knot vertical wind-shear !
You instantly lose the airflow over the wings airfoil, that are keeping you airborne. If the C-9 stalls out . . there is nothing you can do about it. In two blinks of an eye, our airspeed fell to 100 knots.
If it had touched 95 knots . . all of us would
. . have been ' wiped out.'
I clicked off the autopilot . . and shoved the throttles to the stops . . trying to initiate a windshear recovery on the edge of control. At one point, I actually saw runway lights. But we couldn't land
with that combination of airspeed, windshear, and almost no visibility.
We went around again.
I got clearance to Guam International, 20 miles away. Fuel level was now at 4,400. We declared minimum fuel.
Approach asked : " How many souls on board ?" and we knew they might need those numbers, so they could inform the rescue teams how many bodies to look for.
The controller then said his radar showed the landing pattern weather was . . getting worse !
We were cleared for our fourth approach, a VOR/TACAN 24 [ another non- precision approach ] to Guam International.
So far, all the approaches had been backed up by my copilot using our homemade Global Position Satellite (GPS) approaches. And he had been calling out all centerline deviations.
I had been flying real instruments. Approach called the position of terrain obstructions and they gave us unofficial help for centerline [ although they did not actually have ' precision radar ' ] and could not ' legally ' do it.
I recognized the controller's calls for what they hopefully might be. And I started cheating 50 to 100 feet on the minimum descent altitudes. In the blinding rain, we could see absolutely nothing
straight ahead.
So we went around again.
Now, Guam's TACAN distance measuring (DME) was knocked out of service, by the typhoon. So, we were cleared for the non-directional beacon (NDB) using best ' approximate ' approach to muck-buried Runway 24.
ONLY . . ONE
RUNWAY LEFT . . . maybe none !
The fuel gauge read 2,800 pounds. Because C-9's high deck angle can cause the engines to ' flame out . . . ' going around ' is not recommended with fewer than 1,500 pounds.
We turned on all the fuel-tank pumps [ even in the empty tanks.] Then opened all cross-feeds. We had been over the end of runway every time, we just hadn't been able to see anything.
We had enough gas for one or perhaps two more tries. I was quickly thinking of what I needed to say into the cockpit recorder right before we crashed.
As we asked for turn-in vectors to the NDB, our crew chief [ whose birthday was that day ] asked over my shoulder : "OK guys, what alternative are we planning, next ? "
I decided to couple up the NBD with GPS computer and autopilot - - an unauthorized, untested technique that allows the computer to fly the aircraft without having to make any visual reference.
Using the autopilot-altitude hold, I eased down to 100 feet below approved minimums. This allowed me to glance outside without absolutely focusing on flying instruments with my hands.
We drove in and caught our first break . . a gap between the waves of dark thunderstorm cells rolling across the island. We saw the tree-tops . . then saw the runway at three-quarters mile.
I immediately ' clicked off the autopilot ' while instantly diving off 100 feet to avoid any possibility
of leaping back into the clouds. We were still in moderate rain. In close, I pushed over further.
Thirty or forty feet from the threshold of the runway, we picked up a 40-knot vertical windshear heading us BACK UP !
But I continued to shove the nose down . . willing to have it ' hit ' if necessary.
At 15 feet . . I jerked back . . . managing to level out at 5 feet. Incredibly . . ending up
with a smooth touch down !
As we hydroplaned on the rain-soaked runway, after the anti-skid brakes released several times. We stopped on centerline. With 3,000 feet remaining.
We sat there for a minute.
The fuel was 2,000 pounds. Torrential rain closed back in on us. I could not see to taxi.
Stopped again.
Riotous applause erupted from the SEALS in the back. They had known we were in trouble . .
But only the three of us up front . .knew we were so LOW on . . useable gas ! !
Thirteen inbound civilian airliners had received the same weather report as we did that night.
They all started out expecting to land at Guam, but they all carried enough fuel to divert to Tokyo, Manila or Okinawa. And before or after attempting even one approach, all thirteen diverted to their alternates.
We were the only aircraft who made it in that night . . or for the next 24 hours.
Around midnight, as we pulled into the gate, our crew chief gazed around the cockpit and said, in
a flat voice : " Well . . it looks like I have survived one more birthday ! "
We parked with 1,700 pounds of fuel and several minutes later . . our internal power unit ( APU ) flamed out .
We actually had less than 500 pounds of usable fuel remaining . . as we were hydoplaning on landing.
Will I ever fly around the Far East with the Navy again ?
Absolutely.
Will I ever fly to an island destination that has a tropical depression nearby ?
Not on your life.
Sometimes even your best is not good enough.
by Cdr. Dave DeLance
[ abridged ]
Sweat Factor Ten.
SEA STORY……..BUT TRUE
I'm a Navy C-9 [ military DC-9 ] pilot, a 20-year commander in the Navy Reserve, who, the other half of his time flies as a Captain for an airline.
We were tasked to fly from Atsugi, Japan to Thailand, stay over night, fly another leg to pick up
a SEAL platoon, bring them back to Thailand, spend another night, and then return them to their forward deployed home base in Guam.
This was an unusual [ but not unheard of ] long-range mission for the military version of the DC-9.
The entire mission went fine, with the SEALS on board, all the way back to Thailand. But 'gas' became an issue because we now had SEALS and their combined combat cargo onboard. That extra weight limited the amount of fuel we could carry to about 30,000 pounds . . or four and one-half to five hours' worth.
Three tropical depressions were beginning to stir things up in the Far East. One was west of Korea; it wasn't a factor. But one was sitting just to the west of the Philippines, slowly drifting east toward our refueling point at Manila.
The third, named Samoi, was spinning up to the northeast of Guam, but sliding to the northwest. Its projected track would keep it 200 miles north of the island.
Unforecasted, Samoi would soon . . accelerate . . to super typhoon status.
Phuket, Thailand, is an international resort, so while overseas telephone communication was expensive, it wasn't impossible. Worried about the weather, I made several long-distance calls to
our scheduler and various weather agencies around the area. We managed to identify an alternate airport for Manila.
So I decided to press on with the mission.
With one day to spare, we would beat the first typhoon into Manila.
With the SEALS on board, we departed Phuket airport early that A.M. About 200 miles into the flight, the first thunder storms started to appear, and we switched on the weather radar. It didn't work. It had tested out fine on the ground, and it had tested fine in the air, but now it wouldn't show us the storms.
We made the only decision we could. Turned around to get it fixed.
We carry our own mechanics with us, and an hour and a half later, back on the ground in Phuket, where they found a broken electric wire.
Again, we fueled the aircraft and started off . . now more than two hours late.
The weather into Manila was dicey, but manageable. We used the radar to skirt the worst of the storms, finding clearer weather as we approached the field, landed, and refueled. That leg took three hours and 40 minutes, and we landed with 6,500 pounds of fuel, just above the legal planning limit of 6,000 pounds.
By flying East against the sun we had been losing daylight and it was now dusk. Again, I hauled out my credit card and telephoned to re-check the weather. The forecast indicated a chance of light rain later that evening in Guam, but we should have no real problems.
And the final leg was projected to last three hours and twenty minutes, so we were confident we'd have fuel to spare.
Even though it is a small island, there are two major airports on Guam. This is important for a
C-9, because almost every time we fly to Guam, we don't have enough fuel . . . to go anywhere else but Guam. That was certainly true this night.
This planned mission leg was business as usual, legal by every naval aviation regulation. Hey, I would have flown it with my whole family there in the back.
We took off in the deepening twilight
And began maneuvering to avoid the storms that our radar now picked up with increasing frequency. A commercial pilot talked to us on an air-to-air common radio frequency; told us he
had just taken off from Guam, and that we should have no problems. Oblivious to the havoc that [ soon to become ] typhoon Samoi would unleash . . we pressed on.
We approached Guam at 10 o'clock that night. There was no ATIS [ auto-weather broadcast ] from our destination airfield had now closed because of the worsening weather. Approach control was still up and running. We arrived overhead with 7,500 pounds of gas, about what we had expected . . but certainly not enough . . to reach at any other island's runway.
Typhoon Samoi had slowed and turned south and was now headed toward Guam.
On the typhoon's backside, swirling bands of severe thunderstorms had begun to fill in. Although the storm center was 150 miles north, the typhoon now encompassed an area 600 miles across and 1,200 miles long.
Both airports in Guam have long, dual runways that run from northeast to southwest. The winds that came roaring in with those back-filling storms were crosswind to Guam's runways, almost straight out of the west . . at times reaching 80 knots. Those treacherous winds kept us from shooting an ILS approach. A precision approach would have placed us well beyond the tailwind limits for the aircraft.
We set up for the TACAN 24 for a non-precision approach to Anderson Air Force Base. It comes
in over the ocean, crosses over a cliff several hundred feet high and touches down on the runway atop the cliff . . less than a half-mile from the edge.
On a clear day, it can be an eye-opener.
On a night like this . . it can kill you.
One wind-shear downdraft at the wrong time . . and not only will you not clear the cliff . . you might never see it coming.
If you've ever had to pull your car to the side of the road during a heavy downpour you can relate to the conditions that night. Now, imagine driving along at 150 miles an hour . . and not being given the luxury of stopping.
The rain was horizontal. We could not see three feet ahead let alone the half-mile that is required to land from that speed. On the first approach, an 80-knot wind-shear took our speed from 150 to 230 knots in 2 seconds.
An emergency go-around was now mandatory.
The second approach featured a little less wind-shear. Our radar was now showing nothing
but red on its 30-mile scale.
We don't even fly through red normally. Let alone land in it. According to Approach Control,
we had been over the end of their runway.
TWICE !
But we never saw a thing.
I was ready to start bending the rules. I had to get closer to the ground to have any chance to
land.
I opted for a downwind ILS landing in the opposite direction.
We began the approach with the autopilot locked on ILS despite the out-of-limit winds. The
GPS showed a 40-knot tailwind [ the limit is 10 knots.] On the other hand, but I was zero on
new ideas.
At around 250 feet, we got theONEEMERGENCY SCENARIO that always
' GETS YOU 'in the flight simulator :
The minus 40-knot vertical wind-shear !
You instantly lose the airflow over the wings airfoil, that are keeping you airborne. If the C-9 stalls out . . there is nothing you can do about it. In two blinks of an eye, our airspeed fell to 100 knots.
If it had touched 95 knots . . all of us would
. . have been ' wiped out.'
I clicked off the autopilot . . and shoved the throttles to the stops . . trying to initiate a windshear recovery on the edge of control. At one point, I actually saw runway lights. But we couldn't land
with that combination of airspeed, windshear, and almost no visibility.
We went around again.
I got clearance to Guam International, 20 miles away. Fuel level was now at 4,400. We declared minimum fuel.
Approach asked : " How many souls on board ?" and we knew they might need those numbers, so they could inform the rescue teams how many bodies to look for.
The controller then said his radar showed the landing pattern weather was . . getting worse !
We were cleared for our fourth approach, a VOR/TACAN 24 [ another non- precision approach ] to Guam International.
So far, all the approaches had been backed up by my copilot using our homemade Global Position Satellite (GPS) approaches. And he had been calling out all centerline deviations.
I had been flying real instruments. Approach called the position of terrain obstructions and they gave us unofficial help for centerline [ although they did not actually have ' precision radar ' ] and could not ' legally ' do it.
I recognized the controller's calls for what they hopefully might be. And I started cheating 50 to 100 feet on the minimum descent altitudes. In the blinding rain, we could see absolutely nothing
straight ahead.
So we went around again.
Now, Guam's TACAN distance measuring (DME) was knocked out of service, by the typhoon. So, we were cleared for the non-directional beacon (NDB) using best ' approximate ' approach to muck-buried Runway 24.
RUNWAY LEFT . . . maybe none !
The fuel gauge read 2,800 pounds. Because C-9's high deck angle can cause the engines to ' flame out . . . ' going around ' is not recommended with fewer than 1,500 pounds.
We turned on all the fuel-tank pumps [ even in the empty tanks.] Then opened all cross-feeds. We had been over the end of runway every time, we just hadn't been able to see anything.
We had enough gas for one or perhaps two more tries. I was quickly thinking of what I needed to say into the cockpit recorder right before we crashed.
As we asked for turn-in vectors to the NDB, our crew chief [ whose birthday was that day ] asked over my shoulder : "OK guys, what alternative are we planning, next ? "
I decided to couple up the NBD with GPS computer and autopilot - - an unauthorized, untested technique that allows the computer to fly the aircraft without having to make any visual reference.
Using the autopilot-altitude hold, I eased down to 100 feet below approved minimums. This allowed me to glance outside without absolutely focusing on flying instruments with my hands.
We drove in and caught our first break . . a gap between the waves of dark thunderstorm cells rolling across the island. We saw the tree-tops . . then saw the runway at three-quarters mile.
I immediately ' clicked off the autopilot ' while instantly diving off 100 feet to avoid any possibility
of leaping back into the clouds. We were still in moderate rain. In close, I pushed over further.
Thirty or forty feet from the threshold of the runway, we picked up a 40-knot vertical windshear heading us BACK UP !
But I continued to shove the nose down . . willing to have it ' hit ' if necessary.
At 15 feet . . I jerked back . . . managing to level out at 5 feet. Incredibly . . ending up
with a smooth touch down !
As we hydroplaned on the rain-soaked runway, after the anti-skid brakes released several times. We stopped on centerline. With 3,000 feet remaining.
We sat there for a minute.
The fuel was 2,000 pounds. Torrential rain closed back in on us. I could not see to taxi.
Stopped again.
Riotous applause erupted from the SEALS in the back. They had known we were in trouble . .
But only the three of us up front . .knew we were so LOW on . . useable gas ! !
Thirteen inbound civilian airliners had received the same weather report as we did that night.
They all started out expecting to land at Guam, but they all carried enough fuel to divert to Tokyo, Manila or Okinawa. And before or after attempting even one approach, all thirteen diverted to their alternates.
We were the only aircraft who made it in that night . . or for the next 24 hours.
Around midnight, as we pulled into the gate, our crew chief gazed around the cockpit and said, in
a flat voice : " Well . . it looks like I have survived one more birthday ! "
We parked with 1,700 pounds of fuel and several minutes later . . our internal power unit ( APU ) flamed out .
We actually had less than 500 pounds of usable fuel remaining . . as we were hydoplaning on landing.
Will I ever fly around the Far East with the Navy again ?
Absolutely.
Will I ever fly to an island destination that has a tropical depression nearby ?
Not on your life.
Sometimes even your best is not good enough.
by Cdr. Dave DeLance
[ abridged ]
