Harry Benson - Scram!

Wideawake very quickly became a hub of activity. The first Royal Navy warships and their auxiliary supply ships arrived off the island on Tuesday 6 April, diverted from Exercise Spring Train in the Mediterranean. Stores began to arrive on RAF transport aircraft, load-lifted out by the ships’ own helicopters. The sudden build-up of stores and aircraft threatened to descend into chaos. The Wessex crew watched in horror and amazement as an Army Scout helicopter lifted its load off the ground before the groundcrewman attaching the load had time to clear. With his arm stuck through the net, the poor crewman dangled helplessly underneath the Scout as it transitioned away. The pilot finally got the message on the radio from a frantic air traffic control tower and returned back to dispersal, whereupon the load and passenger were dropped unceremoniously.

The Wessex engineers did a remarkable job of preparing the first two helicopters. Within thirty-six hours of arrival the two aircraft had been unfolded, assembled, ground-tested and made ready to fly. They embarked on the giant 23,000-ton stores ship RFA Fort Austin on 7 April, joining the three Lynx helicopters already embarked. Fort Austin ’s first task was to get down to the South Atlantic as quickly as possible to resupply the ‘red plum’, HMS Endurance , the much smaller Antarctic survey ship, which was fast running out of fuel and stores.

Non-aviators have told me that watching a helicopter hovering steadily adjacent to a ship that is ploughing through the waves seems mystifyingly impressive. How on earth does the helicopter keep moving ahead at exactly the same speed as the ship? They have less to say about the actual landing on a pitching and rolling flight deck. Perhaps having achieved the miraculous by synchronising aircraft and ship movement, the landing looks just like more of the same.

The reality for the pilot inside the cockpit is pretty much the reverse. Hovering alongside the ship is the easy part. It’s the landing that can get quite exciting. To an experienced Navy pilot, deck landings vary in difficulty depending on wind and sea conditions. However, they are merely part of the remarkable routine of flying at sea.

Learning the technique that turns this potentially dangerous task into the safely routine is an unnerving experience. I first learnt from Lieutenant Graham Jackson towards the end of my training on 707 Squadron. ‘Jacko’ was great fun to fly with, everybody’s friend and an excellent instructor. He gave the appearance of being slightly wild but, like most Navy pilots, was in fact superb at his job. It was a mystery how he remained so amiable in spite of our best efforts to crash with him.

He took me out for my first ever deck landing on a sunny but hazy winter’s day off the coast of Portland. I flew the Wessex out across the Dorset coast and on towards the RFA Green Rover , a small fuel tanker with a single gantry at the front and large flight deck on the back. I tried to kid myself that I would be cool and professional as I first sighted the ship and began my descent; my waterproof immersion suit held in all the heat and sweat that revealed my true state of mind. Jacko was relaxed and casual as he talked me down. ‘OK, Harry, line yourself up off the port quarter. Start your descent now. When you get to about half a mile, bring your speed off so that you end up alongside the deck.’ He must have been as nervous as I was but never showed it.

‘No probs, sir,’ I lied.

It’s easier to gauge distance to the ship by approaching from a slight angle rather than directly from the stern. The idea is then to follow an imaginary glide path that ends about twenty feet above and twenty feet to the left of the flight deck. Our aircrewman Steve Larsen in the cabin behind us had gone quiet as I set up the approach. As I got nearer the ship, I gradually increased power to compensate for the slower speed, eventually bringing the big helicopter to an unsteady hover alongside the flight deck. ‘Fuck,’ I said. ‘Do you really want me to do this?’

Graham Jackson laughed. Ignoring my question, he continued talking me through the approach in a matter-of-fact way.

Hovering next to a moving ship is not terribly different to hovering next to a stationary building or a tree. In each case the wind is always relative to the helicopter. The difference is that the sea around the ship is moving whereas the land around the building or tree is not.

It was really hard to keep my eyes on the ship and not be distracted by the rush of water swooshing past. Although the sea was fairly calm, Green Rover was also rolling gently from left to right and pitching up and down on the mild swell. I was very aware that my landing site was moving around.

The rushing water and rolling ship made me want to compensate for every little movement. I started to swing around in the hover just like my first slapstick attempts in the Gazelle nine months earlier.

‘Try not to move the controls so much. You’re overcontrolling.’

I let the cyclic stick in my right hand return to its spring-loaded upright position and my hover immediately stabilised. I could keep steadier if I focused on an imaginary horizon way out in the distance and ignored all of the movement around me. I also had to shut out the thought that this would be my first deck landing.

‘Keep your eyes on the base of the hangar and watch the flight-deck officer with your peripheral vision.’

In fact there wasn’t a hangar on the Green Rover but I knew what he meant. The base of the superstructure at the front of the flight deck was the place nearest to the centre of the ship that therefore moves around the least. I could see the flight-deck officer waving his bats to clear me across to land on his deck. My next temptation was to hold back so that I didn’t drive my blades into the ship’s superstructure.

‘You need to come forward a bit so that you can then move across directly above the bum line.’

A thick white line painted across the deck showed me where my rear end needed to be. So long as I stayed above the line, I wouldn’t drift forward into the superstructure or backward and miss the deck altogether. The superstructure ahead of me looked mighty close to the helicopter’s whirling blades.

Although requiring accurate flying, it turned out to be the easiest part of the whole deck-landing process. All I had to do was edge the helicopter sideways and drift along the line. As I moved across the deck, I also descended to five feet. There was an uncomfortable shudder through the flying controls as the Wessex moved into the turbulent air behind the ship. With another small movement on the cyclic, I stopped my sideways drift.

The flight-deck officer now had his arms and bats held outwards to tell me to hold my position. In rougher seas, I came to realise how important it was that the flight-deck officer knew his ship. Even in the roughest seas, all ships stop rolling eventually and stabilise for a short while. At that moment, the flight-deck officer waves the pilot down. As he waved me down, my hover started to wobble again. I needed to land vertically and had to stop the sideways drift. I held the cyclic stick steady for a second or two so that my hover stabilised. I then lowered the collective lever in my left hand.

‘Firm and decisive,’ said Jackson.

We collapsed onto the deck with a wobble from one wheel to the other.

‘Keep lowering the lever.’

The helicopter sunk down heavily on its oleos and the bouncing stopped. We were down.

The flight-deck officer lowered his bats. A quick thumbs-up sign from me and four groundcrew ran in with nylon strops to lash the helicopter to the deck.

Jackson turned to look across at me. ‘Well done, Harry. Your first deck landing.’