James Huston - Marine One

As the voices stopped, the screen went blank. Nobody said anything. We all had new thoughts, some things that confirmed what we had thought, others that conflicted. But not only was the puzzle not solved, the animation raised more questions than it answered.

The question foremost on my mind, though, was why the flight data recorder had stopped. I looked at Marcel. "You find the circuit-breaker panels?"

"Yes. But they're burned."

"Can you tell what circuit breakers are out?"

"Maybe. They have the pieces of plastic, and they're going to have to reconstruct the board. Some of the circuit breakers are still there intact, but most have been burned off."

I thought about where the circuit-breaker panels were near the pilot and what circuit breakers were on them. "Is there a circuit breaker for the flight data recorder?"

Everybody turned to me at once. The implications of the question were self-evident.

Marcel answered, "Yes."

"I know where the hydraulic-boost-pump circuit breaker is," I said. It was down to the right, just below the pilot's knee, and back a little bit on the right side. "Is the flight data recorder circuit breaker near that?"

Marcel stared at me. He nodded his head slowly. "Right below it. Unmarked. It looks like a dummy. Do you think he tried to pull the hydraulic breaker and got the FDR?"

I stood without answering for a minute. Everybody was looking at me, expecting me to say something, but it just didn't make any sense. Finally I said, "If you had a boost pump failure and had a circuit breaker pop out from the boost pump, he'd figure that out pretty quick and try to reset it. So he'd reach down, feel it, and push it in. The only thing I can imagine that would involve the flight data recorder circuit breaker would be if he decided to pull it out before he pushed it in and grabbed the wrong one. Seems unlikely."

Marcel threw his hands up. "Then why else would the flight data recorder circuit breaker have popped?"

"We don't know that it did. But maybe there was something wrong with the flight data recorder." Or he pulled it on purpose, I said to myself. "Did you load this flight data recorder info into the simulator?"

"Of course. It has been ready all night."

We headed toward the simulator room down a long hallway. I said to Marcel, "Does it have an FDR circuit breaker?"

"No, it's a standard helicopter, not Marine One."

"I want to fly it and feel what Collins felt."

Marcel held the door for me and the others who wanted to watch the flight from the control room of the simulator. The simulator room itself was enormous. It held three fully operational helicopter simulators on hydraulic stands. The cockpits were complete and identical to those operational helicopters. Each was surrounded by a dome that could project any image from mountains to bad weather to images of other aircraft.

We climbed up to the simulator that had been prepared, and I strapped into the right seat, the pilot-in-command seat, where Collins was sitting on the night of the accident. I put on the headset and Marcel took the left seat. An accomplished helicopter pilot, he had spent ten years flying attack helicopters with the French army. The cockpit was fairly dark, but the internal lights made the preflight routine feel like a normal night launch. I went through all the checklists from memory, and Marcel was right there with me turning on some of the systems to get us going. We could just have told the computer "go," and they would have put the simulator immediately in the air approaching the White House as Collins was at the beginning of the CVR. But I wanted to fly it from Andrews Air Force Base to the White House just as Collins had. I wanted to leave there with the same fuel Collins had and fly to the position he had gone to when we first encountered him. Then if things changed, if the computer put switches and settings different from where I had them, it would mean either Collins had done things differently from me, or he'd missed something.

Marcel and I took off from Andrews and headed for the White House. WorldCopter had actually flown the route from Andrews to the White House numerous times to film the route and get good video to put into the simulator to train the Marine One pilots.

I had asked them to plug in the actual visibility and ceiling that existed at the White House when Collins made his approach; so we weren't seeing much on the way into Washington, just an occasional light from a monument. The synthetic aperture radar, though, made the terrain look like a moving picture. We could recognize the White House on the radar before we saw it.

I began my descent, nearing the point where the FDR and CVR would take over. I was right on track when Collins's voice came over my headset. I released the controls and looked for changes. A couple of things were set differently, different preferences for a couple of displays, but nothing significant.

The cyclic in my right hand-the stick, as nonhelicopter people might call it-and the collective in my left hand, which controlled the engine and the pitch of the rotor blades, moved as if possessed. Knowing it was duplicating the exact movements of a dead man made it even more spooky than it would have been anyway. I listened carefully again to Collins's conversations with President Adams and the others, then prepared for the moment when Collins lifted the helicopter off on its last flight. I placed my hands on the controls lightly, so I could feel everything he had done. My feet were equally light on the pedals that controlled the tail rotor.

Then Collins and I, together, lifted off from the South Lawn. He flew the helicopter with a confidence and fluidity I had never seen before. It was like driving in a car with a professional instead of just another driver. I tried to anticipate how he would handle the helicopter, thinking how I would get it to go where I knew he wanted it to go; but every time he would do it just a little differently from what I anticipated, and I would know immediately that his way was better. More efficient, smoother. Brilliant.

The White House faded in the mist and rain below us as we climbed aggressively to the northwest, away from the ground, where things were always the most dangerous. If you get tossed around at five thousand feet, it's just annoying. If you get tossed around at fifteen feet, it can be fatal. All those spinning blades and so many things to hit.

The flight was well-known to us by now, and we watched carefully as Collins took us through it. There weren't any new surprises en route. The simulator tried to indicate rough weather and turbulence, but was admittedly imperfect in doing so. Still, we could tell it was one hell of a bad night.

As we approached the last minute of the flight, Marcel and I looked at each other, wondering what we'd notice from here that we hadn't seen anywhere else. The cyclic was moving much more than it had before. I could tell Collins was fighting what was happening. No doubt much of it was due to the gusting winds, which made me wonder if he was moving the cyclic or if it was simply being left behind in numerous involuntary jerks of the helicopter, like hitting the curb with your tire and feeling the wheel turn in your hands.

The final movements of the controls in the cockpit were like hitting a curb in a car. Abrupt changes, but in a short throw. Fighting something, back and forth, movement not obvious from watching the animation from any angle. Then one last thing before the simulator stopped moving-the nose of the helicopter pitched up dramatically. Again, watching on a screen didn't give you the full appreciation for the fifteen-degree nose-up attitude. You could certainly see it, but seeing it from the cockpit was much more dramatic. Something bad had happened right there. Before the FDR cut out. What it led to after that was impossible to say, but I knew something had happened. Not a gust of wind or turbulence. Something else.