The rush to get into the fray. Desert Storm Continued.

I want to preface this next memory with a caveat that a lot of things happened due to poor decision making. When you were in the middle of a situation, you only saw it from your personal perspective and unless you were diligent you could have a biased opinion of the events that surrounded you at the time. I have no reference to this recollection except my own and I will admit to being biased toward the decisions made by my chain of command during these events. With that said, here goes the next adventure in my recollection of Desert Storm.

This is the day after the big Air Assault mission described in the previous post. Nominally, February 25th 1991, but that date could change if I can locate my log books and reconcile times and dates to what I recall. That disclaimer out of the way, here goes. The ground war was raging and the embedded reporters broadcast it live. There was a lot of pressure from our Battalion Commander (LTC Wilmouth) for us to get into the action. We were still in Saudi and he wanted us to move forward and deploy to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Cobra in Iraq. It may well have been that Brigade and Division were pushing for this, but from what we could tell locally, this was an urgency for the Battalion Commander, not the Division. We had an early morning warning order for a 6 AM takeoff. We were all up early, ate and pre-flighted in preparation for the mission. This included making sure we had stocks of food and other items as we were not likely to return to our Saudi base of operations anytime soon. The pilots all went to operations for weather briefings and intelligence on the operation, the crews worked on their birds.

The weather forecast was pretty bleak. It was windy with advection fog. Advection fog occurs when warm moist air, moves over a drier ground surface. Advection means a horizontal movement of air. Unlike traditional fog, advection fog can occur even when it is windy. We could barely see from one helicopter to the next (roughly 200 yards). The sky was gray and if the sun was out we couldn’t see it. The order of the day was essentially wait for weather to fly the mission. Weather, the force of nature we all had to submit to, was not being cooperative. By noon, it was apparent that we were not going to be leaving anytime soon, if at all. But we kept on checking the forecast and listening to the BBC news for any hints at what was going on with the ground war. It was just a long and tense day with no relief in sight.

CW2 Bill Leitsch was tasked as the Air Mission Commander (AMC) as he was pretty much the most experienced AMC of our unit. This was comforting as Bill was thorough and smart and he also was not intimidated by our commanders. He was keeping us updated with the information he had available and sometime during the afternoon we were told that this morning mission was now going to be a NVG flight. We prepped our NVG equipment and made sure that our crew was aware of the current plan.

I can tell you that there was a lot of tension at the air mission briefing. Most of us anticipated that the weather would get worse again and flying in bad weather, under NVGs, in the desert, during a war, was not at the top of anyone’s wish list. The mission was simple, just move six aircraft up to the FOB where they would be available for support missions. The impression we were getting from the command was that we were winning the war fast and if we didn’t hurry, we’d miss out on it before the fighting ceased. Personally, I was fine with that concept, but this was the 101st and they wanted into the party.

We climbed in to the cockpit after the Air Mission Briefing (AMB), CW3 Mark Hutchins was in the left seat and was the Pilot-in-Command. I was in the right seat and Snyder the Flight engineer was on the ramp. The crew chief was Dustin (I hope I can remember his last name eventually) and we had an infantry door gunner in the cabin window on the left side. We were the fifth of six Chinooks and the sixth was piloted by CW4 Tommy Gilman and CPT Cynthia Dubots. The formation was staggered trail which you can picture by taking six steps in a straight line in the sand. Bill Leitsch was in the lead, LTC Wilmouth in the jump seat. On the right side, then second aircraft forty-five degrees to his left rear and we alternated the stagger all the way back. This had the fifth aircraft on the right side of the formation and I was flying from the right seat. Not optimal, but this wasn’t unusual either. Tommy was flying the sixth aircraft from the left seat so the pilots flying the last two aircraft were both sitting on the outside of the formation.

The region the 101st was assigned was pretty much empty desert. Nothing of any strategic value like oil or gas, or a river or spring, not even a road. This was some pretty bleak terrain. There wasn’t even sand for any real consideration, just dirt and rocks, lots of rocks. The rocks in general were roughly six inches or larger most less that a foot and there were flat areas that could have ponded if it rained and they were just packed earth. We used these areas for landing sites and erecting tents. Mostly it was just a reminder that humans had little business being there.

One defining characterizing of the general border between Iraq and Saudi was an escarpment that ran east and west generally along the border. I believe at one time it may had been a physical barrier type border but for the most part the people of the region were Bedouin and had little use for political borders. But the escarpment gave us a decent physical indication that we’d crossed into Iraq. From that point, the ground started a slow extremely shallow decent into a valley that at some times during the year might have a stream or creek at the bottom.

As were moved further and further north, the ceiling, which had been marginal when we started, began to drop and the visibility became worst the further north we flew.  Adapting to the deteriorating weather, Bill slowed the flight to around 40 knots as the visibility had continued to drop. We were maybe 50 miles into the mission and about halfway to our destination when I heard a radio call that the second aircraft had lost visual contact with the lead aircraft.

The other five aircraft came to a stationary hover as Bill in the lead acknowledged that we’d become separated and he was making a slow right turn of 180 degrees to the south to try and re-establish visual contact with the flight. The next 30 seconds seemed like an eternity as all the aircraft were trying to maintain position and visual contact with each other and also be on the lookout for the lead aircraft so that were didn’t end up with a surprise collision when the lead aircraft reached the flight. Snyder finally established contact with the lead aircraft emerging from the clouds at 5 o’clock to our right rear. We passed the tally ho information to the flight and they turned right and headed south again in a flight of six aircraft.

At this point the AMC declared a mission abort and informed the flight that we were returning to our site in northern Saudi. (The Air Mission Commander has all command authority during a mission. Even the Battalion Commander, LTC Wilmouth, couldn’t over-ride his decision). Returning to the south, the visibility began to improve and we were able to accelerate to the normal 90 knot cruise speed we normally flew. As we approached the escarpment was when things really turned bad for me.

The escarpment was a line where the ground just dropped away about 50 feet. It may have been created by a fault line, I don’t know. What I do know is that when we passed over it and I saw the ground drop out of sight in my peripheral vision. I encountered a physical reaction to a visual cue. The physical reaction was that I nearly barfed all over the cockpit. I had never encountered such violent nausea as I felt at that moment. I managed to blurt out to Mark: “Take the controls I’m disoriented!” Mark had been navigating and had a lap full of maps. He tossed the maps on the console and took the controls and replied: “I have the controls.” I put my head down and closed my eyes and tried to sort out what was happening to me. It appeared, after a minute or so, the nausea had abated and I brought my heat back up and started to look around.

When a crew flies NVGs, each crew member is responsible for scanning a section of airspace around the aircraft. The pilot in the left seat is responsible for nine o’clock out the left window to one o’clock just past center of the windscreen. In the right seat, I was responsible from eleven o’clock to the three o’clock position. The enlisted crew in the rear covered three o'clock to nine o'clock. I looked out the right window then started to scan moving left toward the center of the windscreen. As I turned toward eleven o’clock for some unconscious reason I continued to scan to my left until I was looking across the ends of Marks goggle tubes out the left window. I was terrified to see a CH-47 beside and slightly below us. Our rotor blades were overlapping the blades of the other helicopter, a deadly situation.

I’ll be the first to admit we should have ended up in a pile of smoking debris in the Saudi desert. How we survived can only be described as a divine miracle. Apparently, in our transition from my flying to Mark taking the controls, we’d slowed slightly. Tommy, sitting on the outside of the formation was gauging his position from the forth aircraft directly ahead of him and had failed to see slowing down moved up beside us. I don’t blame them for this as my getting sick predicated the incident and the visibility was crap to begin with.

When I recognized what had occurred I (in retrospect) said the only thing that could have saved us from a sure death. I told Mark “TURN RIGHT, TURN RIGHT, TURN RIGHT!!!” and Mark without hesitation pushed the stick to the right lifting our blades away from Tommy’s and we made a 360 degree right turn and looped around to become the sixth aircraft in the formation. The timing of the turn was gratuitous as a few seconds into the turn the door gunner noticed the Chinook beside us and screamed into the intercom. Had we not already been turning I believe Mark would have been startled and we could have decelerated more which would have assured blade contact and a crash.

We radioed to the to the flight that we’d turned out of the formation and we were coming up behind them as the sixth aircraft in the formation when the bird we nearly hit radioed back that they had just encountered an engine failure. Now Tommy made a running landing in the desert per the emergency procedure. They found a suitable spot only about five miles north of our company field site. Mark circled overhead and made sure that they were down and safe while the maintenance bird came around also landed with them for assistance. The remaining four aircraft returned to the field site for our own landings.

Landing in the desert, as I’d discussed before is a challenge under good conditions. When you were tired, rattled and you were spiking adrenaline, it was damn near impossible. Mark tried the first approach and we aborted it when we browned out. I took the controls and tried a second attempt with the same result. Now besides being out of endurance and shaking from an adrenaline rush we were also dealing with the fact we were low on fuel and we really needed to set the aircraft down. On our third and final attempt, we worked together and managed to get the aircraft down with the only casualty being our tent, which we blew over while landing. We shut the aircraft down and finished the post-flight just happy to have survived.

Somehow, having to put out tent back together was the least of our concerns and we were down and safe. The conditions had been exactly what we had anticipated and the crew and maintenance issues were just the feather in the cap of exactly how bad things had gone that day.

My perspective of the start of the Operation Desert Storm ground war

The G-Day (February 24, 1991) for the ground war in Iraq was a unique morning for the crew of Army Copter 82-23780, a CH-47D from Alpha Company, 7th Battalion, 101st Aviation, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault), XVIII Airborne Corps. On the afternoon of the 23rd, we were briefed on our mission during the early morning hours of G-Day. Part of the G-Day Invasion of Iraq included the deep insertion of three Long Range Surveillance Detachment (LRSD) teams by UH-60 Blackhawks from the 101st. Those helicopters were outfitted with external fuel tanks and were tasked with transporting LRSD teams deep within Iraq, close to aircraft maximum fuel range. An AH-64 Apache (also equipped with extended range tanks) flew with each Blackhawk as security. Due to the ranges involved and possible complications that could require one of these UH60 aircraft to land due to fuel exhaustion before returning across friendly lines, we were tasked with a “Fat Cow” mission for G-Day.

A “Fat Cow” is a CH-47D equipped with a tank and pump unit, an aircraft refueling team, and three, 600-gallon aluminum fuel pods filled with Jet Petroleum grade 5 (JP5) mounted inside the cargo bay of the aircraft making it an air mobile gas station. I can say in all honesty this is not the mission I wanted at the start of a war, during a war or anytime someone had the opportunity to send high velocity projectiles in your general direction. The fuel tanks on the helicopter are crash worthy and also self-sealing. If you crash hard in a Chinook and the tanks are full, they are designed to detach from their fuel fittings and seal themselves while remaining inside the pod on the ground, next to the aircraft. If punctured by small arms fire up to 30 mm, the fuel cells are built in two layers with a gel in between that when punctured and exposed to fuel, will seal the puncture. The 600-gallon pods we were carrying inside the aircraft were neither crash worthy or self-sealing and in general made me nervous. I didn’t like this mission in training and I liked it less now that I was doing it at Midnight as a war was beginning.

We were setup at a forward air refueling point (FARP) setup for this mission on the Saudi/Iraq border, at a point where it was just within the range of all three of these Blackhawk missions. Returning from their insertions, if any of the aircraft had became fuel critical they were to fly to the FARP and top off their tanks. The deepest insertion into Iraq was the bird we were most concerned about. If the other two had no delays or route detours, they were not expected to need the FARP. The third was almost assured to need the FARP and if they had delays or route changes to avoid contact there was a good likelihood they would land, and once assured down and safe but behind enemy lines, the Apache would come to the FARP where we were waiting. It would be our mission to take them fuel guided and guarded by the Apache that had been their escort. Of course, that was all on a moonless night, flying Night Vision Goggles.

The good part is all three insertion missions went off without a hitch and when the Blackhawk we were waiting for arrived at the FARP, we fired up our bird and flew back to the staging area and made the standard desert landing which for a helicopter was essentially a controlled crash.

You see when you made a desert landing approach with a helicopter (More especially with a heavy Chinook) you had to deal with the dust cloud that flying inside a personal hurricane created. In forward flight, you had passed a boundary in flight mechanics called Effective Translational Lift or ETL for short. ETL is the point in forward flight where you out run the disturbed air hovering created. Disturbed air created less lift than clear, undisturbed air. Generally as you accelerated between 20 and 30 knots airspeed you passed thru ETL and got more lift and flew out of a dust cloud in the desert as an added bonus. Making an approach for landing in the desert was the exact reverse.

As you passed through ETL you needed additional power to stay in the air, and as you slowed down to land you were slowly enveloped by your dust cloud. This started with the rear of the aircraft and the cloud kept moving forward as you continued to slow down and descend to the ground to land. At a point, roughly around 20 knots and 30 to 40 feet from the ground you got surrounded by the dust cloud and you lost sight of all ground references with maybe the exception of the ground in your chin bubble. In normal circumstances, anywhere but the desert or blowing snow you’d abort the landing at this point. But since you didn’t have any place you can land without this problem occurring in the desert (Or blowing snow for arctic flyers) you learn to deal with it.

First you flew over the spot where you decided you wanted to land and did a recon checking for bad things like gullies, dunes, big rocks and holes that you wanted to avoid so you didn’t damage the aircraft. Once you picked a spot, having determined that there wasn’t any place better (and stopped wishing for a 200 by 200 concrete pad), you dealt with it by keeping the wings (Blades) level, you maintained a 300-feet per minute rate of decent on the Vertical Speed Indicator (VSI) and had your co-pilot read out the altitude on the radar altimeter while you continued the approach to the ground.

As you felt the rear wheels make contact with the ground (hopefully just about the same time your forward speed was approaching zero) you smartly lowered the collective pitch control (dump the collective in pilot speak) and engaged the brakes which were atop your rudder pedals. Then you just sat and waited for the dust to settle. If you were lucky, you landed safe and had no appreciable aircraft damage. (Any landing you could walk away from was a good landing. Any landing you walked away from and the aircraft was still flyable was a GREAT landing.)

Our Pilot-in-Command (PIC) Mark made a great landing as usual and we unloaded the internal fuel pods into a waiting Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck (HEMTT) tanker. The crew then unloaded the tank and pump unit and refueled the aircraft (I wonder where we found a fuel truck at 2AM hehehe). We bedded down in the now empty aircraft and waited for the morning activities. Since we were out of crew rest, we couldn’t fly after dawn that morning and had to wait until the afternoon to join in the festivities of the day.

I’m going to call out myself here as I don’t at the moment have an accurate timeline of events after the Fat Cow mission. In my foggy (and now proven not to be so accurate on times and dates) brain, I seem to remember sitting watching a lot of activity around us and wishing we are a part of it.  I have conflicting memories of a major air assault and the trials and tribulations of some of the things that went on with the 101st doing a massive airlift and some decisions I strongly disagreed with as those decision were made during the operation. I’m going to try and reconcile these with my log books (If I ever find them) and through coordination with other pilots who were there. I THINK we sat on the ground while the initial air assault was done moving 1st Brigade in one huge Airmobile operation. That afternoon, once we had sufficient crew rest, we joined the fray and helped move the Brigade Staff and division artillery forward into Forward Operating Base (FOB) Cobra. Keeping that in mind, the story continues….

I can remember being at the Pick-Up Zone (PZ) for this big lift. Our Battalion Operations Officer (S3) (Major Meacham) was briefing us on the lift operation. One of the things we were arguing with her about was the takeoff direction. The local wind blew out of the northwest 360+ days a year and the planning for the mission had been based on that data. Of course, the wind was blowing from the southeast instead, 180 degrees opposite of what we needed. In a normal situation, we would have changed the takeoff direction to the south and made a left turn north after takeoff.

The S-3 was not having that occur. I argued my point and she insisted that all the planning had been made with the takeoff to the north and she was not going to make a change and cause all kinds of confusion. She apparently didn't remember that taking off downwind is STRONGLY discouraged and could cause problems but I digress, I’m getting ahead of myself. I can remember being pissed that were we being unsafe because this is war knowing that the change I proposed would have been easily dealt with by the pilots (We’d all had weather change takeoff directions, sometimes in the middle of an operation). This wasn’t a new concept (except to her).

The next thing I learned was that out crew had been checking out our initial loads while the pilots were getting briefed. They provided us with more bad news. Apparently between the time the vehicles had been weighed and the time we arrived to pick them up and carry them 100+ miles into the desert. The vehicle operators had heard about Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and had decided to re-enforce the floors of their High Mobility Multi-Purpose Vehicle (HMMV or Humvee) with about 3000 lbs. of sandbags PER vehicle. The loads were rigged in the 101st standard Shotgun conjuration. A shotgun rigged load consisted of 2 Humvees rigged side by side using their bagged camouflage nets as padding between the trucks. This was the preferred method as it required no equipment other that what was in each vehicle’s standard load. This was always a great choice in empty places like the Saudi desert where you had few resources you didn’t bring with you. We liked flying this load because it was very stable but we were now concerned because of the added weight of the loads and the downwind takeoff could be a big problem.

We were part of a flight of six Chinooks hauling vehicles for the Brigade Personnel Office (S1) for first Brigade (I think it was their S1, could have been the artillery’s) who's supported unit had moved out early in the morning. Due to the tailwind, just hooking up the loads was a problem. All six-aircraft picked up and we moved right, over the loads. We all tried to hover with slings hooked but slack, until all six could lift at once and then we picked up the loads to a hover. I can remember looking at the torque meter and watching it go past 100%. In theory, 100% was max gross weight and you never exceeded 100%. At that point I kinda committed to that if I could pick it up we’d fly with it and quit looking at the gauge. The aircraft was vibrating so that reading it was not really easy.

We ended up hovering with the load and I was glad that our maintenance officer had set the engine power higher than normal during the last engine teak. (The Army sets the power rating of the engine lower that the maximum for lifetime endurance). This is about the time that things got hairy. One of the aircraft ahead of us browned out (Lost the view of the ground and got disoriented). This is bad without a load and worse when your options are limited by carrying a heavy one. The pilots had to make a quick decision and the next thing I know they came up out of the top of the dust cloud that had consumed them without their load.

As the dust settled we could see the two Humvees laying upside down and pretty beat up from their landing. Paperwork was flying around in the gale our birds were creating.  The Chinook had to land on the far side of the PZ for a precautionary landing. Punching off the load required that the aircraft had to be checked out by maintenance before it could fly another mission. The Air Mission Commander (AMC) decided we could continue our mission with the remaining aircraft and we took off toward Forward Operating Base (FOB) Cobra 100-miles to the north.

The rest of the mission was relatively normal as we found the landing zone (LZ) and landed our loads without any issue. We turned around and made it back to our staging area and the FARP to refuel. Somewhere, either flying up to the LZ or back to refuel I calculated the total weight of the aircraft during that flight. I estimated the gross weight at 57,600 lbs. This meant that the load weight was well over the 18,900 we were briefed at the beginning of the mission. We exceeded max gross by over 7000 lbs. We made a second turn and flew a 105 MM howitzer and Humvee the second load for the division artillery. After refuel we returned to our forward operating site we’d used earlier near tap line road Saudi Arabia for the night.

Another day in the books and we made it home (That was an ironic word in the desert) safely.

Other tails of Nairyah during Desert Shield

During the coalition buildup before Desert Storm, there were a lot of logistical missions that my unit provided for the 101st Airborne Division as they were deployed along the northern border of Saudi Arabia. To make support missions in this forward area more timely and to save aircraft time flying back and forth to King Fahd International Airport (KFIA) our unit started stationing a Chinook at an abandoned airstrip in the town of Nairyah for a week at a time.

In general, this was not a bad assignment, as any assignment where you were flying was a good assignment, but it was a vary hit or miss opportunity. Some days we’d have missions and other days it was just a day spend doing minor aircraft maintenance and reading a book or such. The airstrip was made from tar and sand and hadn’t been maintained for years. We had to be careful parking the aircraft to choose a slightly different spot as parking on the same spot would cause the landing gear to since into the tarmac. The town was just a couple of hundred yards away and you could tell the time by the Adhan call to prayer performed by a Muezzin from the mosque broadcast over loudspeakers five times day. In a way, the timing of calls to prayer was reminiscent of the bugle calls you heard daily on an Army installation. It was also a reminder that we were not at home, but in a place, far away and very different from home.

Since we were essentially on our own, it felt strange to be so isolated. Nairyah was (and still is from looking at the map) a small town and is fairly isolated by American standards. Only the desert areas of the western United States would the isolation seem at all familiar. I was surprised that we didn’t generate more interest from the local population but I’m pretty sure they’d been warned to stay away, and regardless, we saw little of the local population during the time I was stationed there. Nairyah is located in northwest Saudi Arabia along a road we designated as “Tapline Road” due to the oil pipeline associated with the highway. The units we supported were spread out generally along this road and there were five or so established landing zones built for logistical support near these units.

There was a cargo supply point for both ground and air units complete with refuel point for helicopters setup roughly a quarter mile east of our airstrip. This is where we picked up our loads. We got briefings from the operations team (they’d drive over to our location and give us our missions) then we’d go fly the mission. The usual mission was hauling Meals, Ready to Eat (MREs) to deployed units. This was our favorite cargo as this was a triple hook load (used all three cargo hooks) and they were about 18,000 lbs. total weight. Heavy loads were nice as they fly steady and it really felt like you were doing something useful. There was nothing more annoying than hooking up to a light load. Light loads were unstable, and bounced around a lot, limiting how fast you could fly and often these type loads, due to aeronautic forces, tended to come apart in flight. Any time we saw MRE’s rigged for a load we knew it was going to be a good day.

The most interesting thing about a general support cargo mission was you never knew exactly what you were going to be doing. One such day was a circuit where we were doing a passenger run, almost like a scheduled airline. This day we had a route of six LZs I believe. We had outbound passengers (mostly soldiers returning to their units, some new replacements, some messengers etc.), all going to one stop or another. It was kind of like being a bus driver driving his route. We left the cargo ramp with 8 or 10 passengers and made the first two or three stops on our route. Just finding these places was a challenge as the terrain in northern Saudi Arabia wasn’t really conducive to flying by landmarks (There aren’t a lot of things that just pop out at you from the sky) and with camouflage and all, the units were not super visible, for good reason. We did pretty well and the rudimentary GPS system we had was generally helpful if an LZ was hard to find just by visual references alone.

At one stop, we landed, and slowed the rotors to about 92% (minimum beep, as slow as the rotors could run while in flight mode) and the Flight Engineer lowered the ramp to let passengers get off and get on. As the soldiers for the next stop got on board, so did a stray hound dog. Generally, animals saw a Chinook and headed the other direction due to the noise and the dust storm we created in the desert. I don’t know if this dog was deaf or just very accustomed to the things going on there, but he just trotted up the ramp and hopped up on the seat, and started looking out the window. His tail just a wagging. (There is a rear-view mirror in the cockpit that looks back the companion way into the cargo deck, I could see the Flight Engineer and the dog in the mirror.) Specialist Snyder asked what he should do and I asked him if the dog was causing any problems. He said no, so I asked him to complete his before takeoff check. He replied that the passengers were all secure, ramp was up and dog was seated. We brought the rotors up to speed, completed our before takeoff checks and flew to the next stop. Snyder told us that during the flight the dog continued to look out the window and wag his tail, we landed as the next stop and the dog got off as soon as Snyder dropped the ramp. I assume he got to where he wanted to go. Chalk up stray dog delivery as mission accomplished.

Non-standard loads also seemed to be the norm when we flew out of Nairyah. On day, it was three Air Force pallets of Block Ice. 20,000 lbs. of ice makes for great air conditioning and that was the coolest flight I think I had in the desert. While we were being loaded, we got our amusement for the day. There was a second aircraft loading ice while we were loading but it was a UH-1H “Huey”. Don’t get me wrong, the UH-1 is a great aircraft, I love flying them, but they don’t make for a great cargo lift craft in the heat. They have a very limited cargo capacity due to density altitude restrictions. We watched as five, 200 lb. blocks of ice were slid into the cargo bay. When they tried to take off, FAIL! We watched (Chuckling) as they broke off and unloaded pieces of the ice until they got down to about 700 lbs. and they were light enough they could take off.

The most amusing incident occurred returning to the cargo pad at Nairyah. We were hauling some external load to the pad (Maybe the forklift I mentioned in a previous story) and we were making our approach to the pad. This was unusual as we normally came in empty and left with loads. Flying to the cargo pad with a load was a different flight dynamic. When you made an approach with a load, you tried to avoid flying over populated areas and items like tents and such because the gale force winds the Chinook created flying under load were pretty intense. If something went wrong and you had to release the load, it was generally considered to be quite rude to drop a load on top of someone.

The logistics of the cargo pad, with a hot refuel point and housing tents for personnel required all approaches to be made from the south. Sanitation requirements required that the latrine had to be located downhill from the housing tents and as far away from other operations as feasible and still be reasonably close enough to use. These requirements resulted that least one latrine was located on the southeast corner of the compound, close to the cargo pad LZ. The latrines were 4-hole crappers made of plywood and screen mesh. 

Up to this point, there hadn’t been any issues with approaching aircraft and the latrine. But I also doubt a heavy load had been flown into to the LZ either. Regardless, I was making an approach into the LZ. I was making a very steep and slow approach trying to minimize turbulence and avoid overflying the latrine. As I descended through about 100 feet and had passed the latrine my way to the pad, my Flight Engineer mentioned that the latrine had blown apart from the rotor wash. It appeared that the guy who was in it didn’t appear too be too happy about having his toilet blown up around him.

I guess some days shit just happens.  

Night Vision Goggles can’t always help you in the dark

During Desert Shield my unit was tasked with various support missions to support of the 101st Airborne Division and other units by delivering cargo or moving assets from one place to another. While we flew these missions, we also coordinated some of the flights to allow us to maintain currency with some flight training requirements. One requirement of Night Vision Goggle (NVG) qualified flight crews was to fly at least once every thirty days to maintain current NVG qualification. If you exceeded thirty days, you had to be re-certified by an Instructor Pilot (IP) and we tried to avoid that as IPs were usually busing with other training needs.

My NVG recertification flight during Desert Shield was also my Readiness Level 1 (RL1) Day/Night/NVG checkride. I was again flying with one of my favorite Instructor Pilots, CW3 Jerry Nollie. Jerry was a six-foot four-inch black gentleman from Georgia. He had an extremely personable manner in his instruction manner and I can't begin to tell you how much I learned from Jerry regarding how to fly the CH-47D with skill and precision. He just had a way of making you relaxed and confident in the cockpit.

We started the flight at dusk, allowing us to get all the day and night unaided maneuvers completed as night set in. One thing about the desert, is the transition from day to night seems faster due to the lack of trees and clouds. Once we had full darkness, we goggled up with our NVGs and started with all the maneuvers we could do at the airfield. Those tasks completed we flew out into the desert for the final training task, a running landing in the desert.

Landing in the desert in a helicopter is an exercise with your relationship with your helicopter, your crew and God. In the CH-47D this meant that as you started your descent to land, you were talking with your crew chief in the side door. He was telling you about the dust cloud as it started to catch up with the aircraft during deceleration. Your co-pilot (my IP Jerry, in this case) was giving you airspeed and altitude callouts can confirming the before landing checks. You were picking out a spot in the sand the looks to be obstacle free and fairly level.

Slowing to about 20 knots and descending through 75 feet the crew chief would tell you when the dust cloud was at the back of the aircraft, amidships and approaching the cabin. This is important as while passing through 20 feet, the cockpit was now surrounded by the dust cloud and you looked down through the chin bubble and tries to make some kind of visual contact with the ground. Copilot confirmed we were descending at less than 300 feet per minute and you felt for the back wheels touching the ground. You then reduced power and let the aircraft come to a stop, then you let the cloud settle and made sure that you didn't hit anything. Sounds like fun right?

Now, let's add to the fun. The leading edge of the Chinook rotor blade is a large aluminum D-Spar. At night, when sand hits the blades, you get sparks. Under NVGs, these sparks look like the 4th of July end of ceremony fireworks finale, only in green. It produced enough light that the goggles shutdown due to excessive light. Now Jerry, the crew and I were going to do a running landing in the desert under goggles, and I was scared to death.

We scouted around a bit and located what looked like a nice spot (Pretty much the area for miles was flat desert). We were trying to ensure there were no gullies that we might hit as that would be a bad thing. Visibility was crap because there was no moon, a thin overcast at high altitude and only starlight available. Since I'd done my day running landing without issue, Jerry didn't demonstrate one, I just flew it myself. We did our before landing checks, I confirmed what each crew member was doing on the approach and I picked a spot and started my descent.

It was dark, and it was so hard to see, then as we slowed and the dust cloud started, we got some help from the sparks at first and I got a good look at my chosen landing spot. As the cloud of dust started surrounding us our goggles started shutting down and Jerry called 20 feet and less than 300 feet per minute on the descent speed. I started looking down through the chin bubble and waited until I felt the rear wheels make contact and dumped the collective and neutralized the controls. I looked over at Jerry and he was pale as I'd ever seen a black man. We both agreed that was the scariest thing we ever did in a Chinook. We did our before takeoff checks and then I took off and we returned to base, NVG RL1 checkride complete.

A few days later, I put that training to use. This day’s mission was to a forward supply point near a small desert town called Nairyah, roughly 60 miles north of King Fahd International Airport (KFIA) and return to the airfield. These was a very routine flight and we really didn’t expect anything of any real interest to happen. One novel item was that we had a passenger in the jump seat between & behind the pilot seats. One of our flight surgeons (Major Rhonda Cornum) needed to get her hours in (Like pilots, they have a designated amount of flight time they must log periodically) and the Major needed to log some time, so she came along with us on this flight.

The flight route to Nairyah had been established early in our deployment and we all knew it by heart. Fly west from KFIA to a dirt road about 30 miles inland from the gulf coast, then follow the road north to Nairyah. The was done partially due to the fact that there were very few remarkable terrain features you could use to navigate in the desert. Army Aviation had just started to embrace Global Position System (GPS) technology. The GPSs in some of our aircraft were hand held Army Infantry GPS units adapted (poorly) for use in aircraft. The installation was very crude and the GPS only gave you a direction arrow and a distance, nothing like the modern GPS systems that are available later.

Some of our aircraft also had OMEGA Very Low Frequency (VLF) navigation devices that were part of the first generation of worldwide navigation devices. OMEGA gave you a visual display like a modern GPS but the OMEGA had limited accuracy of around +/- 4 miles which wasn’t very helpful in the desert. There is an old aviation joke that defines the acronym for Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) as “I Follow Roads”, we referred to this joke often flying this supply route.

The flight up to Nairyah was uneventful. It was a clear but moonless night and the amount of starlight available in the desert made it quite easy to see using the NVGs. NVGs amplify available light so that you can see in the dark. The AN/AVS-6 goggles we used amplified light 3000 to 4000 times, so a starlit night in the desert was a perfect working environment. We located the road landmark easily and both the GPS and the OMEGA (suspenders and belt you know) seemed to be working fine.

We landed in Nairyah and unloaded the cargo from inside the Chinook and we learned that part of our return load would be a 12,000 forklift that needed depot level repairs, rigged as an external load. This was a welcome surprise as we not only got to stay NVG current but we got some external load hook up practice at the same time. We loaded up what internal cargo and or passengers we had, then picked up and hovered over to the load. Hookup was uneventful as this was a often practiced maneuver for us and we took off flying south down our lonely little dirt road in the desert.

Like every flight, we’d been briefed on the weather before the flight, and it was the usual “Clear, blue & twenty-two” referring to a clear blue sky and 22 miles of visibility. But as aviators all too well know, weather conditions can and do change while you are in flight. That weather briefing was over 5 hours old when we left Nairyah but is was the most current information we had available as there was no weather reporting station in Nairyah. What we didn’t know but we learned soon enough was that a thick overcast cloud layer had formed in the south at several thousand feet and it was moving north.

We were cruising south, and were talking with the Major on the intercom as she was new to flying in a Chinook while hauling an external load. The further south we flew, the view in our NVGs gradually became dimmer and dimmer and dimmer. Since these devices only amplify ambient light and do not produce light, you learned to deal with variations in brightness as part of your training, but this change was so gradual that it probably took us twenty miles or more before we recognized there was a problem. It became evident that we were quickly losing our visibility and ability to see anything. Similar to driving into a fog that gets thicker and thicker till you can barely see in front of your car.

I was the pilot on the controls and CW3 Mark Hutchings was the Pilot-in-Command and was navigating. We all noticed that we really couldn’t see squat at about the same time. The loss of ambient light at this point was really problematic. We were far enough from any town, city or any other light source that you could not determine the horizon and tell where the sky stopped and the ground started. I turned on the infrared spotlight and that illuminated the exact spot on the ground below the aircraft and nothing else.

This was dangerous as you tended to fixate on the single spot and then lost your bearings and flew into the ground (bad idea). The only comforting thing was the fact the we’d flown this route several times and we knew for sure that the biggest change in the terrain was a rock outcropping that was about 50 foot tall. We were flying 300 ft. above ground level (AGL) which gave us a minimum of 200 ft. ground clearance for the load hanging below us.

We were in a pickle as we knew generally where we were at, but we were not exactly sure. Worse, I was having a harder time maintaining my altitude and attitude as I was lacking visual references needed to maintain Visual Flight Rules (VFR) flight. With no other viable choice, Mark told me to transition to instruments, maintain a wings level attitude, fly a 170-degree heading, 70 knot airspeed and keep the radar altimeter at 300 feet. I’ll be the first to admit this was against so many rules I cannot count, but sometimes you do what you have to do.

Mark told Major Cornum to monitor the radar altimeter while he tuned up the field Non-Directional Radio Beacon (NBD) setup at KFIA by the 101st when we arrived. Since KFIA was incomplete, there wasn’t an instrument approach available for us you use like we would have done stateside. Mark did some quick thinking and developed our navigation plan.

Since we’d flown west (270 degrees) outbound, then when the beacon was out our left door on the Heading Select Indicator (HSI) we would turn toward the NDB. We didn’t dare fly direct toward the airfield as we had no reconnaissance of that route and we didn’t know if there were any obstacles we might fly into. Flying per Mark’s plan, we at least knew that there was nothing for us to hit as long as I stayed at 300 ft.

So, there I was, flying instruments less than 500 feet off the ground while carrying an external load. This was not a situation I ever wanted to repeat. We got to the navigation turning point and I made a nice, slow, level turn toward the east and we followed that little arrow on the HSI hoping it would lead us to Oz (or at least back to the airfield). About 5 minutes after the turn, we started picking up ambient light from the airfield and the goggles began to work again. After another mile or two we were back in business flying the NVGs and were soon within radio range to talk to the tower.

We made our approach to the cargo ramp and set down the forklift, then hovered to the side and landed and unloaded the remaining cargo and passengers. Then the standard trip to refuel and parking in our spot on the taxiway. A safe end to one of the most hair raising and tense non-combat flights in my life. (WHEW!)

Welcome to Desert Storm

The 16th of January 1991, we received a scatter order. A scatter order for an aviation unit is a coordinated mission to send the aviation assets away from a fixed base to a site in the field where we could spread out and park at a position that the enemy had not determined was our base. We knew something was up, but as usual, we had no real idea of what is was. What we did know was grab out stuff, don't leave anything you cared about, get it into the helicopters we had been assigned and fly to our scatter site. With the scatter order given, things again had become intense similar to when we had first arrived in country in September. I’m pretty sure we’d been given a warning order (Essentially, a heads up that something is getting ready to happen) a day or two prior, so tensions were on the rise and the order to scatter was unsurprising. The scatter rendezvous site for Alpha Company, 7-101 Aviation, was just a map grid coordinate in the desert roughly 30 miles southwest of Dhahran. I knew the rest of the battalion was in our general vicinity, but not exactly where.  I do know that 400 helicopters left the airfield that day and went to the desert.

The only significant item at the site was a small oasis on the west side. We landed all the helicopters in a very large circle with the nose of each aircraft pointed outward.  This gave us a nominal defensive protection of having the door mounted machine guns pointing outward. No one was really excited about the idea of repelling an attack sitting in an aluminum air-frame with over 1000 gallons of JP5 (Jet Petroleum grade 5 aka Aviation Grade kerosene) on-board. Incoming bullets and fuel have a bad history. 

We spent the afternoon setting up a command post in the center and establishing ground based radio communications with Brigade Headquarters. I sure someone in command knew where the rest of the Aviation Brigade scatter locations, but I, as a peon, didn’t know and really didn’t care. Previous military experience always predicated hope for the best, prepare for the worst and reality is usually somewhere in between those two parameters. We scouted the area and established a perimeter and we were ordered to keep out chemical protective masks at hand due to some Iraqi propaganda hinting at their plans for using nerve gas against the infidels (the coalition forces).

The only thing of real interest that afternoon occurred when a local Bedouin shepherd passed next to us with his herd of long haired sheep and goats. They were seen approaching by our forward observers and some idiot asked if we should shoot. With tensions high I was not surprised by that question, I was glad that no one shot first and asked questions later. I mentioned that I didn’t feel the sheep or the shepherd were a threat and we all agreed with that consensus. For those who haven’t encountered sheep and goats in the Saudi desert, I can affirm that they do stink.

After the break in the boredom with the local livestock, we set about deciding where to sleep and it was agreed that inside the helicopter was not going to be our sleeping quarters. While it was January, the daytime highs were in the 90s and lows in the high 50s and having a breeze was still a primary consideration. Sleeping under the stars was the consensus preferred choice. The desert sky at night was such a sight, I highly recommend it. Most people never live far enough from civilization and the associated light pollution to see what the night sky looks like when you are in total darkness. As a kid, I’d never really seen the Milky Way, so I never really understood it’s magnificence. We just laid there on our cots, looking at the stars and discussing what a beautiful sight we were beholding. We were all still riding an adrenaline rush can couldn't sleep, so we just laid there on our cots and talked about the sky. Then, not too long after midnight, January 17, 1991, something changed.

We began to notice some movement in the sky. It took a few minutes but we soon understood the significance. Coalition fighters, F15s, F16s, Tornados, Mirages, F18s and the like were forming up into flights of 4 aircraft and heading north. We’d lose track of them as they turned off their navigation lights (the red and green lights you see on the sides of all planes) as they entered the combat area. Wave after wave after wave of planes headed north. 

Someone broke out a short-wave radio and tuned in the BBC. We’d already established that in OUR opinion; the BBC was giving the most accurate news (didn’t hurt they were the only news available at that time on short-wave radio either) and we started listening to what the BBC had to say. Like anyone who was glued to the news during Desert Storm, we were hanging on every word from the reports coming from Baghdad. 

Two hours after we’d seen planes heading north, we started to observe them returning. Again, wave after wave of planes returning to base. We were pretty stoked at seeing them return and then we noticed one flight only had 3 planes. Outbound most had been flights of 4 and there were two or three that left in pairs, but no flights of three. The mood suddenly got a lot more somber as we hoped that the pilot of the missing plane was safe and uninjured. As the sorties recovered to base there were a couple more that were either missing a plane or had a plane that was obviously not in great flying condition (Trailing the others, not in close formation I’d assume in case they had to eject or such) and finally the sky was again just stars. We were in the middle of an active war. Sometime in that early morning we fell asleep and most of us were up at first light and we talked about what we saw and heard on the radio. 

January 17, 1991 started out with us being witness to the might of the coalition air power, then it turned into another dreary, hot, boring day in the desert. We’d become accustomed to having a full-service base and now we were “back in the field” so even routine items became more difficult. Taking care of the call of nature was likely the least enjoyable items on my list of things I didn’t like about camping. Since this was a temporary site, there were no latrine facilities and you had to go find a place away from the bivouac area to take care of business. We all knew how to do all this, some of us just found having a real bathroom was a luxury we really enjoyed. Our meals were MREs (Meal, Ready to Eat) combat rations. Real food was the second thing you missed besides a real bathroom. 

I can’t say that anything of any consequence happened the rest of the day except they had posted a duty roster for radio watch and someone from operations had gone from aircraft to aircraft passing the word. It was pretty much a given fact that we didn’t have much of a threat on the ground so no perimeter guards were posted. However, contact with Brigade and Battalion commands had to be maintained 24/7 so a radio watch was established. This meant that some fortunate people, like myself, had to get up from a sound sleep and go stand in a tent two hours at a time. Listening for any communication from brigade and responding to an occasional radio check which was just confirming someone was awake on each end of the radio links.

There I was, at 12 AM January 21, 1991, relieving the sleepy and bored person who had the shift ahead of me. I made my required radio check and started walking around just trying to stay awake. Boredom is likely the worst thing about military life. It seemed to follow you everywhere and of course just as soon as you thought nothing is ever going to change, some joker threw in a wild card and life got exciting. The Iraqis had been lobbing Scud missiles at Israel for weeks and we knew about the PATRIOT (Phased Array Tracking Radar to Intercept On Target) Missile defense systems in theater. On a mission to Dhahran, I’d seen a Patriot battery setup and I’d managed to talk to some of the officers there about the battery out of mutual interest, (I was curious about their stuff, they were curious about my chopper). 

At 12:29 AM, I just happened to be looking in the general direction of Dhahran when I saw a white streak zoom off into the sky. There was an overcast layer of clouds at about 8,000 feet and the streak (A Patriot missile) climbed through it and there was a bright flash above the cloud layer when it intercepted a Scud. As I was figuring out in my sleep deprived daze what I’d just seen, a second missile launched. It was quickly followed by two more, all of which had gone in the same general direction slightly north of the city. The fifth one was the most interesting as it made a sweeping curve off to the west then turned up and to the north as it also raced above the clouds with the others. Five missiles and five flashes above the clouds was pretty definite to me that Scuds (2 I confirmed later) had been intercepted. At this point my biggest concern was how fast could that PATRIOT battery reload? 

While I was taking this all in, I got a radio call from Brigade for us to put on our gas masks. I was incredulous. Nothing had occurred within miles of our position, there was no threat, and this guy was wanting me to have everyone wake up and put on a gas mask at 1 AM. Since there was no immediate threat even if those missiles had nerve gas in their debris, it would have taken hours for it to drift to our location. Luckily for me, before my sleep clouded mind had processed the order, the all clear was given by more informed sources and the order to mask was rescinded. That was the way I remember my first few days during operation Desert Storm. We were really in a war.