When a
sparrow beats itself to death
As
members of the Air Rescue Service during most of our missions we were the
rescuers. Other times for various reasons and to our dismay, we became the
rescuees. Here are some stories and photos of the latter.
The first is by (P) Neil McCutchan – DET52 EARC MacDill AFB, FL:
We were practicing water
pickups with the basket over a deep channel that lead to the base's
marina/dock. I think there had been a requirement that we do some practice
pickups added after we got the baskets. We were using a piece of wood to scoop
up.
David Fraser was pilot and I was co-pilot. An (FE)
and two (ABR)
Firefighters were in back. As we were doing one of the practice pickups we
heard a loud 'rattle' sound. To me it sounded like a machine gun would in the
movies. Dave said that he was having problems keeping altitude and called for
the hoist to come up. (I think it was on the way up already.)
The guys in back fastened down everything and we tried to get back to the
shoreline. David knew we couldn't make it. I
called a Mayday; “Rescue 1 is ditching in the bay”.
It didn't take long for us to hit the water. It wasn't jarring as David still
had some collective control left and we weren't going forward very fast at the
time. Fortunately we had moved away from the deep water into the shallower
portion of the bay.
As we went under it reminded
me of those movies that show the periscope of a sub going under. The helicopter
ended up on the bottom on the co-pilot's side. The bubble broke out (thank
goodness). I was able to get out thru the broken bubble and stood on the
bottom. Looked up (still underwater) and said to my self 'pop the water wings.'
We all got on the surface OK.
One of our other rescue 'copters came over, but we waved him off since there
were a number of us in the water and the base's rescue boat was fairly near us.
Neither David nor I could swim. It was mandated that
all crewmembers learn (I never did). And eventually all of our
'copters (three) had floatation devices installed on the sides. It was
discovered that the turbine hit the casing making the sound. The helicopter
couldn't be recovered for over 24 hours. They had to get a barge in and of
course high/low tides played a part in recovery. It was therefore a complete
loss because of salt water corrosion.
As a side line, I heard that same sound on my last
flight on active duty at Incirlik. I was co-pilot with David Weist. This time I
was actually flying the 'copter making a max performance takeoff from one of
the alert pads we used for practice. We were paralleling the runway on the
takeoff and I heard 'that sound.' We were high enough to do an autorotation
to the active runway. Later I received an Air Force Safety Award that was mailed
to my home.
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This Narrative is by (MT) Donald Glassford
31ARS
We were going to make a training flight and Ken
Dotson was the Pilot. We had 2 ABR/Firefighters in the back, so for weight and
balance I rode in the left seat. Everything was going good through the pre
flight checklist when we were notified of another Inflight Emergency. Ken gave
the pull sign for external power. We had a new young Crew Chief and in his
haste to get us airborne he gave the thumbs up sign without removing the power
plug from the bird. Ken pulled in collective and we were off to an altitude of
30-40 ft when the power unit cord bent in the aircraft and separated at the
APU.
Needless to say it came up
into the rotors like a rubber band and very large chunks of rotor blade started
to leave us. By this time we knew we were in bad trouble. There was really no control
except a little rudder. We hit in a crab
and rolled left onto my side. She just lay there and beat the rest of the
rotors off. When we finally stopped, Ken shut down all the fuel and I believe
that is what saved us because no fire started. At the same time I reached up
and disconnect the battery. By the time Ken and I exited the Cockpit, the
Firemen had also gotten out. Thank God
no one was hurt seriously and that is about all I remember.
Things happen, I guess!!
Another perspective of the same incident by (ABR) Hoyd “SANDY” Sanders:
I remember it
quite well. SSgt Defreze was late for work. I covered for him on a
scramble for an in-flight emergency and it landed safely. We returned to
the pad. When we shut down SSgt Defreze came walking across the ramp and
I took my gear and headed for the fire station to put it away. As I was
approaching the fire station I heard the klaxon go off announcing another
in-flight. I heard the chopper spinning up as I walked into the Fire
Station. The Crash Trucks were just leaving the station and about that
time the chopper crashed. The Pilot was Capt Dobson; ABR/Firefighters
were SSgt Cooksey, and SSgt Defreze. I cannot remember the flight
engineers name. A young guy maybe from
Cooksey jumped
out and ran after the sparrow finally beat itself to death. As he was
running away, Defreze was still in the airplane yelling. He had hurt his
back. Cooksey ran back to the airplane jumped inside threw Defreze out on
the ramp then took off again. I do remember Capt Dobson was trying to
shut the airplane down and the Medic was in the left seat and the airplane was lying
on the left side. SSgt Defreze as I recall, never got over his back
problem. As you and all know, the cable from the power cart was the cause
of the accident.
There were lots of contributing factors. We would scramble from the
pad next to the hanger and the whole crew including the Flight Engineer got on
board after start up. We then flew out near the runway to pickup the FSK.
We had been having problems with the release on the aircraft dropping kits so
we were restricted from flying over the parked aircraft on the
hardstands.
Just a little 31st Air Rescue Squadron
Trivia.................
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