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.
No comments:
Post a Comment