Right after I joined my first squadron after getting my wings, I started hearing stories about what happened on first flights as a helicopter aircraft commander (HAC). Some were funny, some were scary and some were, well, just stories.
They all seemed to happen sometime right after you get a check ride and voilà, one is designated a HAC. Again, the custom is that the junior HACs either fly together or with more senior ones for a few weeks. The idea is that it is a transition period so they don’t do something dumb and bend a helo.
About a halfway through my first cruise, my annual NATOPS check was due. NATOPS is an acronym for Naval Aviation Training and Operations Procedures Standardization that is a set of rules, standards procedures that govern how Navy aircraft are operated. Every airplane has its own NATOPS manuals and there are ones for every aspect of carrier and air station operations.
NATOPS came about as a way to reduce Naval Aviation’s accident rate back when it was implemented in 1961. Its effect was dramatic. In 1961, the Navy and Marine Corps had 19 major accidents every 10,000, non-combat flying hours. By the time I made my first deployment in 1970, it had dropped to nine and shortly thereafter to two per 10,000 flight hours.
The NATOPS “check” consists of an open and closed book tests, an oral quiz and a flight check. Back in the old days, the flight checks were done in the helicopter because we didn’t have simulators capable of supporting a check ride. One’s grades on each element went into your training record and your annual fitness report.
NATOPS also dictates the minimum amount of flight time both total and in the particular helicopter one needs to be designated a co-pilot and a HAC. To make a long story short, I passed along with three other co-pilots.
Right after I became a HAC, my best friend in the squadron – also a newly designated HAC – were told to take some mail, parts and two people to the guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Oklahoma City stationed about twenty-five miles off the coast of Haiphong Harbor. The cruiser was about a 150 miles north-northeast of the carrier U.S.S. America located at Yankee Station in the Gulf of Tonkin.
Other than avoiding armed sampans and fishing boats, it should have been a routine flight. Take off, climb to a thousand feet and head toward the Oklahoma City. Just before the America lost us on radar, she gave us what is known as “pigeons” – bearing and distance from our position to the last known position of the cruiser. The interesting part is that if we drifted to the east, we’d fly into the airspace of the People’s Republic of China. To far west, and we would be over North Vietnam. Neither was a good thing.
My friend flew the outbound leg as the HAC and we landed, discharged our passengers and cargo and picked up a sailor going on emergency leave along with a half a dozen bags of mail. It was a nice fall day and we took off and headed back to America.
About halfway back, our aircrew man – we were only flying with one because it was a logistics flight, not a rescue mission – keys his mike. “Ahhhh, Lieutenant Liebman, we’ve got jet fuel all over the floor of the cabin.”
“Are you sure it is not residue from spilled fuel?”
“Yes sir… It is coming out from somewhere on the floor and not dripping from the overhead or spraying out of the fuel lines.”
That was good to know because the lines are pressurized and would spray out of a pinhole leak. Besides being messy, the fuel mist coming out of a tiny hole quickly vaporizes and will catch on fire if there is a source of heat.
The engines in the H-2 are mounted on the roof of the cabin, just forward of the main transmission. The fuel lines are inside the cabin and run from the belly of the helicopter to up along the structure to the engines. Brackets hold them to the airframe.
The Navy jet fuel is known as JP-5. It is less volatile than JP-4 that the Air Force uses. In fact, you can toss a match into a bucket of JP-5 and it will not burst into flame. However, if one exposes it to a constant flame source or electrical sparks, JP-5 will burn.
“Unstrap and see if you can see where it is coming from?”
By now, on his own initiative, the aircrew man had stacked the mailbags on the empty canvas seats to keep the precious mail from getting soaked by JP-5. The pungent smell of jet fuel filled the cabin and the cabin floor glistened. Our passenger was sitting cross-legged on the canvas seat and his eyes were wide. Even he could tell this was not routine evolution or a prank.
First decision – How do we prevent the helicopter from becoming a fireball?
Answer – turn off all the electrical equipment not absolutely needed to stay in the air. Even though our avionics were in the nose compartment, well away from the fuel, the wires to their antennas ran through the belly of the airplane, where the fuel cells were located.
Second decision – Do we go back to Oklahoma City or to we continue on to America?
Answer – even though the cruiser was closer, once we landed, the helo was hard down and the cruiser’s maintenance facilities were limited nor would it have the parts to repair the H-2. Plus, we’d clutter up her helicopter deck which would make delivery of parts more challenging. On to America.
By now, there was enough fuel on the deck of the helicopter so that it was dripping out the doors and had migrated forward to the cockpit because it flies nose down. Jet fuel was collecting in the chin bubble just beneath the rudder pedals and the floor under my heels was slippery.
The aircrewman happened to be one of our jet engine mechanics and he kept a small tool kit on board. While we were trundling toward America, he was unscrewing the access panel to the forward fuel cell’s boost pump. Once it was open, he could look into the belly of the helicopter and see the fuel cell.
The forward well was dry which meant the leak was coming from the aft cell. So far, the fuel gauges weren’t showing a big difference between the fore and aft tanks, but it was there and we suspected, it would get bigger the longer we flew.
When he unscrewed the aft access panel, fuel sloshed out. He didn’t need to shine his flashlight into the compartment to tell him that the aft tank had ruptured. We turned off the pumps in the tank and pulled the circuit breakers.
Third decision – How much fuel have we lost? If it was out of the tank, it was unusable.
Answer – It was unknown. After a quick discussion, we decided to pump whatever fuel we could out of the aft tank and into the forward a.k.a. the sump tank. The way the fuel system worked on the H-2 is that fuel is pumped to the engines from the forward tank. As it empties, fuel is pumped from the external tanks to the aft tank and then into the forward tank. By the time this all started, we had burned the fuel from the two external tanks. From what we could tell, the forward fuel tank was full and not leaking. That was the only good news.
The forward/sump tank only contains about 675 pounds of JP-5 when full. That translates to about 40 minutes of flying.
The assumption we made was that we were landing in 35 to 40 minutes. Ditching in an H-2 and surviving was not a sure thing. Assuming we could put it in the water and get out, we’d be afloat in the shark and sea snake infested waters of the Gulf of Tonkin where we often saw both animals basking near the surface.
The Gulf of Tonkin was full of fishing boats. Where we were, they were primarily North Vietnamese who would get a nice bounty for bringing in four American POWS. If the boat that picked us up was Chinese, all bets were off as to what would happen?
We turned the TACAN – that’s a gadget that gives a plane the range and bearing to the ground station – back on. Thankfully, the helicopter didn’t blow up or catch on fire and it worked. America was less than 50 nautical miles away. At our maximum range airspeed of 90 knots, it was going to be close.
Fourth decision – do we stay at a thousand feet or do we descend to a hundred feet so that if the engines started to unwind or we caught on fire, we could just plop the helo in the water?
Answer. We decided to stay at one thousand feet where the TACAN worked.
At forty miles out, we turned on the UHF radio and declared the obvious – we had a serious emergency. The ship wasn’t conducting flight operations but scrambled one our detachment’s helos to escort us back to the ship.
Right at about 30 miles out, the low fuel level light came on. We now had twenty minutes of fuel left. The good news was that the light and the fuel totalizer now agreed. The bad news was that we would land with less than hundred pounds of fuel or six minutes of flying.
I looked into the Plexiglas “chin” bubble just forward of my feet saw about six inches of JP-5 sloshing around. My co-pilot had a similar amount in front of his feet.
When we touched down on America, the fire crew had their silver suits on, their fire hoses laid out and charged and the fire truck was just outside the runway markings on the angled deck. Thankfully, we didn’t need them.
We also didn’t need to shut down the engines. As we were being chocked and chained down, the engines started to unwind signifying that the front tank was empty.
After our mechanics pumped out the aft fuel compartment, they pulled out the bladder. It had a two foot long split. We suspected that when the tank was pressurized to feed fuel to the engines, the fuel just gushed out. Getting the smell of JP-5 out of the helicopter took much longer. The cabin had to be washed with a strong detergent so that the fuel and its residue wouldn’t linger and the fuel compartment had to be flushed and drained.
Looking back, I smile when I think about it. The one good thing about the flight is that the JP-5 got into my leather boots and ruined them so I got a new pair. Instead of laces, they had zippers up the front. They looked cool if nothing else.
© Marc Liebman, March 2018, All Rights Reserved
