“Uh, stand by.” Deep in the hull of the ship, he probably had no idea if it was raining or not. He would need to get someone on the bridge to let him know.
AWR1 said, “You kidding me? They found the only storm cell within fifty miles. They probably went towards it knowing that we’d be coming in for landing now.”
Victoria said, “AWR1, what do you see on radar?” Their radar was meant for picking up surface contacts. And while it was not technically certified to detect the storms, it was sensitive enough to detect a submarine’s periscope and did a pretty decent job at telling her which clouds to stay away from.
“I have the controls,” Victoria said.
“You have the controls.” Both pilots had their own set of pedals, cyclic, and collective sticks. The pedals controlled yaw, the cyclic controlled pitch and roll, and the collective controlled the power of the aircraft.
Free from flying, Juan typed a few keystrokes into his multipurpose display and saw the radar image that AWR1 was bringing up.
The crew of three was flying an MH-60R helicopter about one hundred and fifty miles off the coast of Central America. The deployment was supposed to have been a counternarcotics operation — they should have been looking for speedboats full of cocaine and other drugs on their way to Mexico. Instead, the Navy had seen fit to assign them to an international training exercise. Most of the participants were from Central and South America. Farragut was the only US Navy ship.
Most of the last two hours had been spent performing over-water surveillance — flying circles in a pitch-black sky that could only exist over a hazy and humid ocean. The dark night sky was occasionally lit up by lightning from a band of thunderstorms that had been steadily getting closer throughout the flight.
While Juan normally loved watching summer thunderstorms roll over his home in Atlantic Beach, Florida, he was significantly less comfortable tonight. Watching thunderstorms from the comfort of your covered porch was one thing. Dodging them at a few thousand feet over the water was another.
AWR1 Fetternut made calls from his radar scope in the back of the helicopter. “Come left to two-two-zero. That should get us through these two cells, and it should be clear on the other side.”
“Okay, that looks good, left to two-two-zero,” responded Victoria. The aircraft veered left and then leveled out.
Juan sucked back water from his CamelBak straw. After three hours of flying in this heat, he was very dehydrated. The heavy gear, constant concentration, and late hour were all taking their toll. He just needed to nail this approach and get it in the trap. That combination of efforts had proven elusive to him on many nights this cruise. To put it bluntly, he sucked at landings.
“Cutlass, Farragut Control, the ship is at flight quarters.”
“471, Deck. I’ve got numbers when you’re ready.” That was the voice of one of the other junior pilots on the ship. Now that they were landing, he had manned his station behind the protective glass overlooking their landing spot on the rear of the ship.
“Stand by,” Victoria said. She said internally, “Juan, your controls.”
“I have the controls.”
“You have the controls.” The three-way positive change of controls was one of the many safety precautions aviators took. Most mistakes were made when everyone assumed that someone else was doing a very simple task. Bad things often happened when something taken for granted stopped working for a moment. The three-way change of controls made sure that one of the pilots was always responsible for controlling the aircraft.
Juan said on the external radio, “Deck, 471, ready for the numbers.”
“Seven-one, Deck, roger. Ship’s course and speed is one tree at ten, winds one-niner-zero at two, pitch one, roll tree, how copy?”
“Ma’am, you got it?”
“Yup,” Victoria replied, penciling the numbers down on her kneeboard.
“Copy all, Deck,” Juan said, and then took a deep breath. He looked at his distance measuring equipment. It gave him a distance estimation to the ship, accurate to the tenth of a mile. He also had twisted in the ship’s course. A needle on the compass in front of him centered up as he maneuvered the aircraft to be on centerline while flying his approach.
The needle used information from navigational instruments on board the helicopter combined with a beacon on the ship. The needle started sliding away from centerline as Juan began to stray off course.
Staying on course required constant adjustments from the pilot. He had to make these adjustments based on barely noticeable changes from his instruments. All the while, he had to lower the aircraft’s altitude and reduce speed on a specific profile. Failing to do this would cause them to crash or wave off.
Victoria said, “I’ve got you a little left of course.” He could feel his stick move in his hands as Victoria made her own inputs on her controls, “helping” him to make the correct control input.
“Roger,” was all he could say. His tired eyes were racing from one gauge to the next. Altitude. Airspeed. Ball. Fuel. Distance to the ship. Repeat.
“One point two miles, starting the approach. On instruments.” He lowered the lever in his left hand that decreased the power and collective pitch of the aircraft. The radar altimeter began ticking down.
“Passing three hundred feet…” He blinked away a drop of sweat. It blurred the vision through his NVGs. As they got lower and closer to the destroyer, more and more detail came into view. Now he could make out the wake of the ship.
“Still a little fast, Juan. I have you at eighty knots. Start bringing that airspeed back.”
From the back, AWR1 Fetternut double-checked the altitude and distance. He said, “One mile.”
Juan pulled aft on his cyclic with his right hand and continued to take power out with his left hand. The faint glow of the green flight deck lights was now visible on the aft end of the ship.
Juan still felt dizzy. He realized he was cocking his head to the left.
“Two hundred feet,” he said.
“Point four miles.”
Victoria said, “You’re high and still fast. Take out some more power. Aft cyclic.”
He tried to do what she said. His scan of instruments was all over the place. He fixated on his airspeed, which started getting really slow. There was that dizzy, sliding feeling again.
He tried to look out the chin bubble, the glass floor of the helicopter, at the ship. They were way too high. He needed to get lower. Dammit, how had they gotten so high on the approach?
“Juan, aft cyclic.”
“Point one mile.” They were almost there.
Juan said, “Radalt hold off.”
Victoria reached down and depressed the button that would turn off the radar altimeter, an autopilot function. She must have only taken her eyes off what Juan was doing for a split second.
“Power, power, power!” came the call from the rear.
The helicopter was descending behind the ship. Juan looked in horror at his airspeed — now reading zero.
Airspeed was life. His vertical speed indicator, which told him how fast he was descending, was below five hundred feet per minute. He gritted his teeth and pulled power, pushing the nose forward. The altitude warning was going off in his helmet with a series of loud beeps. They were below fifty feet, and he was staring at the stern of the destroyer growing larger in the window.
“I have the controls,” said Victoria calmly, but loud enough that everyone was sure to hear.
He didn’t let go, but he could feel her forcing the correct inputs through her controls. She immediately pulled in a lot more power, gained altitude, then adjusted the attitude of the helicopter so that it floated neatly over the center of the flight deck.