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.
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