The Royal Navy Lynx, page 25
‘Whilst wrestling with the cyclic, I noticed the airspeed drop from 60 knots. The most appalling graunching and high-pitched whining noise was audible. I sensed that in the cockpit there was a feeling of complete disbelief that this was actually happening to both of us. The relative comfort and excitement of what had been a cat and mouse tussle with two FPB’s had become a real-life drama of terrible proportions. I managed to arrest the initial pitching and rolling such that I was able to initiate a Mayday call. Instinctively, I lowered the collective, fearing that a control surface failure would follow at any moment as I did so. Flailing wires (I did not know how many) chattered up the windscreen towards the rotor disc. Fearful that they would obliterate the main rotors or pitch control rods, I pulled up the collective. The wires thankfully returned to the base of the windscreen and became tautly stretched across the nose of the aircraft. In addition to those, another wire appeared to be below the aircraft, but it was not possible to ascertain whether or not it was actually snagged on the airframe.
‘I had neither the foresight nor the confidence in my ability to retain control to attempt to reverse the aircraft out of the dilemma. I don’t know how fast the aircraft was flying at this stage, but certainly the sensation was one of virtually being in a precarious hover with rapidly deteriorating yaw control and marginal cyclic control. Only a few seconds had passed since we had first struck the wires and yet the whole event seemed to be taking place in slow motion.
‘Suddenly another almighty “BANG” and both windscreens cracked; mine much worse than the observers, so much so that my forward visibility now became obscured. Almost immediately the lower Perspex window adjacent to the rudder pedals shattered, filling the cockpit with fragments of plastic. It seemed that the aircraft was on the point of breaking up. “I think we are going to die, Phil!” retorted my observer. I think I believed him. As I hung onto the controls, it seemed that we were completely powerless to do anything and a feeling of hopelessness weighed heavily upon us. The grating and whining noise was becoming intolerable. For no logical reason other than the desire to do something in an effort to escape from what seemed like a catastrophe, I pulled up the collective. The aircraft pitched nose down and suddenly there was yet another loud “BANG”, accompanied this time with a flash of light. Another “BANG” followed and the aircraft lurched upwards. At this stage I convinced myself that we had suffered a tail rotor failure, since yaw control was becoming more and more difficult. Apparently clear of wires I now dumped the collective. I communicated my intentions to the observer with a second Mayday call, “376 ditching, ditching”.
‘The observer rapidly conducted the crash checks down to the step “engine condition levers off”. At this point, it became apparent to both of us that we would not make the water, but rather a rocky foreshore backed by cliffs, precluding any kind of engine-off landing. With no time to discuss the problem, I snapped, “pulling power” and gingerly raised the collective. To our great surprise and immense relief the aircraft responded and a gentle climb was initiated with an equally cautious turn away from the cliffs. Following a brief control check, we located a football pitch on the outskirts of Rong village. With a careful search of the area, an uneventful landing was completed despite marginal forward visibility through my shattered windscreen.
‘Once safely on the ground our sense of sheer relief was overwhelming to the point of tears. What had seemed an eternity had lasted only about thirty seconds from hitting the wires to the moment we had broken free. The evidence of our encounter was only too obvious from the damage to the aircraft.
‘One might now ask why didn’t the aircrew see the pylons even if the wires were virtually invisible? The answer lies in those few ill-fated seconds prior to the incident. We had located and been engaged by the enemy. During our evasive action our attention being drawn to the tactical situation and not the real threat, the wires! As we looked through the windscreen in the poor grey light, we did not see any wires or even the pylons. I wonder how much of our attention was really centred on the battle rather than a thorough and comprehensive lookout. I had fallen into the trap of thinking that it was safe to become more aggressive. Had we not been so preoccupied with the battle, then we would have had no cause to descend so readily into the channel opening in the first place. A 180° turn and a safe retreat at the same altitude at which we had first transited the channel would certainly have been more in accord with the prevailing conditions.
‘This incident occurred during a NATO exercise in simulated conditions. Had the engagement been in wartime under hostile fire conditions with the FPB’s firing real bullets, then the desire to seek shelter in the channel entrance, I suggest, would have been even more pressing. The question of how safe it is to evade such an engagement, and by what means, in the wire strewn areas of Norway, remains a very real problem for the military aviator.
Sometimes the aircraft did totally unexpected things:
The Final Flight of XZ249
By the Flight Commander of HMS Avenger Flight: Lieutenant Commander Barry Bryant:
Pilot: Lt David Midgley
Aircrewman: LAEM Gary Stewart,
Passenger: Commanding Officer HMS Avenger, Captain Peter Woodhead.
‘Sunday, 4 May 1983, was just another Armilla day in the Gulf; hot, calm, with local warring nations not being particularly warlike as our tankers sailed through the Straits of Hormuz. It was time for HMS Avenger to take a day’s stand-down off some godforsaken stretch of desert and the boys were looking forward to a banyan in Bandar Jissa. Except that the captain, an ex-Junglie pilot of some note, and now some seniority, had received a lunch invitation from some old muckers in Oman. Thus the Flight, with their usual good grace at such a time, prepared to give up their day of rest to take the boss into what passed for civilisation. I idly reminded myself that at least we were more relaxed than exactly a year previously when we had been airborne in the vicinity of HMS Sheffield when she was hit by the first Exocet of the Falklands conflict.
‘A routine taxi trip into Seeb, where we refuelled and cancelled a stores VERTREP as being too hot and heavy. Back to the ship for a quick meal before returning to pick up our sociable boss from the Junglie lunch club. Having installed the amiable captain in the back with LAEM Gary Stewart, the aircrewman, we headed back to Avenger looking forward to at least a couple of banyan beers before sunset, but it would be a good few days before we tasted alcohol again. Some fifteen minutes into the flight, the pilot, Dave Midgley, said fairly calmly, “There’s something wrong with the pedals”. Just to keep us going in a straight line, he was having to apply more and more boot on one side – can’t remember which side now, but this was clearly not good and we hadn’t got a clue what the problem was. Having made the Pan call we decided to try to close the ship, although it was becoming increasingly apparent that although we could maintain some direction going forward, a deck landing was probably not going to work and still the pedal mismatch kept getting worse. About two miles out and just as we were planning for a controlled ditching alongside, there was a loud bang from the general direction of the tail rotor and life became very exciting for the next twenty seconds or so. It was probably about twenty seconds, but it felt rather longer.
‘I called, “Mayday, tail rotor failure” etc. and although I don’t remember doing so, I apparently kept transmitting updates fairly calmly throughout the descent. The aircraft pitched violently and began a spin into the sea which was probably at an angle of only about thirty degrees, but it felt vertical. There was certainly a lot of sea coming towards the windscreen! Survival seemed unlikely, not that there was much time to consider it, but it seemed slightly ironic having survived bombs, bullets and icebergs the previous year. We hit the sea with an almighty bang and like many others before us were saved by those many visits to the dunker. The flotation gear had been ripped off and the aircraft rolled to the right and swiftly sank. Fortunately, at least for me, and despite feeling uncomfortable around the lumber regions (which proved to be a classic “ejection seat fracture” in reverse), I just floated out and inflated my Mae West and then had perhaps the bleakest few seconds of my life; the aircraft had gone and apparently my three colleagues with it. Little did I know the struggles going on beneath the surface as Dave the pilot, with a far worse spinal thoracic fracture, had to go down before coming up while, with incredibly cool thinking, Gary the crewman managed to untangle the captain from the rescue winch and get him clear of the sinking aircraft before escaping himself. They both, like me, turned out to have lumbar fractures. Huge was the relief as all three popped to the surface, although clearly in some discomfort. Avenger, meanwhile, had weighed anchor and was racing towards us with that famous Type 21 frigate acceleration and we were swiftly hauled over the side of the whaler. Just what you need with spinal fractures! The ship headed swiftly for Muscat where we were transferred to the Sultan’s hospital at Seeb before being casevaced to Haslar a few days later by the RAF. We all returned to duty in due course, although it took Dave a very long acquaintance with hospital at Headley Court. The captain, Gary, and I, rejoined the ship in Sri Lanka a couple of months later. In due course, I’m delighted to say, Gary was presented with a Royal Humane Society award for his actions on that day.
‘The aircraft was subsequently recovered in one piece from the sea bed and we were reacquainted in the investigation hangar at Fleetlands. The blades were still fairly intact, not a lot of rotor revs on impact! While the front seats had punched through the floor. Someone had calculated a force of minus 14G, but all a tribute to the inherent strength of the Lynx design. It turned out that part of the tail rotor pitch change mechanism had been milled out too far by Westlands and the inherent weakness had twisted before breaking, putting the tail rotor into full coarse pitch. I suspect the Board of Enquiry said a lot of other things, but I don’t recall reading it – we had a life to get on with!’
Authors note: This accident, apart from making Dave Midgely half an inch shorter, caused some concern, as it seemed to take forever to find the cause. In the end, six months later, a Westland WG 30 in America suffered a similar failure (it was the same design of tail rotor system). Luckily, once again, everyone survived. However, the culprit was found to be, as Barry Bryant says, the failure of the pitch change link on top of the tail rotor gearbox. The failure was due to metal fatigue caused by a combination of wear on the hydraulic jack mounting and high vibration. The solution was to reengineer the link, and in the meantime a routine inspection and remote monitoring system was installed on all aircraft. The real concern over this was that the tail rotor threw on pitch and so the aircraft rotated in the opposite direction to that covered in all tail rotor emergency procedures up until then. Afterwards, Dave Midgely recalled that, as he didn’t have a clue what was going on, he simply did the crash checks, shut down the engines and pulled up on the collective at the last minute. That they all survived is a tribute to the strength of the aircraft and the skill of the pilot. Once again time would solve the problem when the system was redesigned to make the tail rotor rotate in the opposite direction and a force gradient spring fitted into the control run. This spring system ensured that the blades would not go to full pitch in the event of a control failure.
The following two stories were provided by Lieutenant Alun Read. After reading them it might be clear why his nickname is ‘Lucky Al’:
APRIL 1992 – Formation tip strike
‘Having recently joined 702 Squadron to become the training officer I was tasked to learn the “Pairs Display” routine which was part of my Terms of Reference.
‘This first sortie was the first flight after Easter leave and was authorized despite formation flying being a shortfall on my Lynx conversion and was flown solo in both aircraft.
‘The lead was Lieutenant Mike Holloway in 635 and myself as No 2 in 636.
‘The weather was fine and we flew to Merryfield (Yeovilton’s satellite airfield) for about fifty minutes practice before returning to Portland. As I remember, we were authorized to half a rotor span distance for formation. All went well until about eight miles from Portland on the return.
‘I elected to remain in formation (echelon port) whilst conducting pre-landing checks and stayed close, as it appeared easier than my previous experience in a Sea King at one rotor span. I decided to do the checks two at a time for safety; none of this was discussed at the brief.
‘Just before I had completed the checks there was a sound similar to a 7.62 machine gun report and as I looked up, the air was full of dark “confetti” like a cloud. I watched 635 roll right and invert completely, diving rapidly from our 1000ft rejoin height. It disappeared within a second, behind and well below me. At this point I put out a PAN call on the radio to Air Traffic, who asked if it was for exercise (they had previously asked for a practice emergency on the approach frequency).
‘The aircraft had already started descending quite quickly despite me not lowering the lever. I pulled to restore level flight but got to the top limit of movement with only about 65% Torque and had to slow down to get level.
‘(A couple of weeks earlier, Lieutenant Commander Peter Palm had diverted into Exeter with a vibration. When the second aircraft arrived with engineers, one of the main rotor blades lifted from about half way down the blade in the downwash by about 30 degrees, as the main spar had cracked almost all the way through.)
‘I knew exactly what had happened almost immediately and aware of the fragility of the blades, wanted to land with the minimum of control input. Vibration was enormous and I was bracing my foot against the instrument panel regularly so as to read the instruments at all. I picked a field next to the Moonfleet Hotel (which was already in my 12 o’clock and into wind) and the aircraft, almost without input, got me there. I elected for a zero/zero approach without much of a recce and made a pretty good landing considering my heart rate.
‘Immediately on landing I heard Mike calling to say that he had landed safely (on ‘Hurberry Hill’), albeit his wheels were completely under the turf.
‘We both shut down without the rotor brake.
‘636 had lost about 3ft of all four main blade aerofoils and all tip caps, the main D spar was intact except where the tip caps had been ripped out! There were several puncture wounds in the tail assembly and the tail rotor blades (small but scary).
‘635 had lost a similar amount of lift area, but to only three blades, one had just lost a tip cap so his vibration was extreme.
‘636 flew exactly one year later, 635 a couple of weeks after that, almost all rotating parts had been changed, including all four engines. My punishment was running a training programme with two aircraft missing. I got very drunk in the Officer’s Club and Mike drove me home. I don’t remember ever speaking to him again.’
Authors note: This accident happened with the old metal blades fitted. Had it been the BERP blades, the imbalance and loss of lift would have been much more severe.
OCTOBER 1996 – Slide off HMS Marlborough
‘It was the day after my thirty-sixth birthday and we were holding at RNAS Culdrose as a second aircraft to support an anti-drug operation in the South West Approaches. Then the operation was stood down for the weekend. I was looking forward to Happy Hour when the call came from Task Group Commander at sea to go to the ship to collect some passengers and take them to Poole. The weather was horrid, sea state 6 or more, with 40–50 knots of wind. Due to the nature of the operation no SAR cover was made available and we were to arrive at the ship some 240 miles south-west of Culdrose as it got dark. We had an overload tank fitted. Despite my concerns, I was persuaded that this mission was an essential operational task and that normal safety/weather considerations were not relevant. We went.
‘It turns out that the Flight embarked on the ship (another crew from 815 Squadron), had flown off at 1400 with a load of officers to go to a Mess Dinner at Portland, leaving the Special Forces on board as a way of guaranteeing that we had to come.
‘On transit, we passed our Point of No Return (PNR) with about fifteen minutes to run, having only just established UHF communications with the ship. Marlborough insisted that the weather was suitable, but didn’t really provide any specifics. The sea state was so high that the ship was actually getting damaged internally when trying to achieve a conventional flying course of Red 30 (wind from thirty degrees to port) due to the size and steepness of the waves, so had elected for an R90 wind. This was giving about fifteen degrees of roll, the limit was six degrees.
‘A further complication was that the ship had a modified Harpoon Grid, which was too shallow to accept the MK1 Harpoon and our aircraft had not been modified. We had to land swivel and lash down without a Harpoon, in up to 50 knots of wind. It was getting dark and we had no alternate plan so landed, swiveled successfully and took eight lashings and fuel, remaining rotors running.
‘I cannot remember now whether we were expecting four passengers and six sneaked in, or six and eight sneaked in, but the buggers definitely sneaked big time and with more baggage than a removals van, they too were very keen to get off the ship for the weekend!
‘We considered shutting down as the weather/deck/motion/weight, were all beyond my experience, but still believing this was an “operational” sortie we continued. The aircraft must have weighed more than 5100kg (Mark 3 max was 4875kg) and we had no Harpoon.
‘The ship stuck with the Red 90 launch option, so we had to remove lashings, swivel and go. Contrary to the Flying Guide, I did the pre-take off checks whilst the lashings came off, just in case we slipped whilst castoring! You are supposed to wait until into wind apparently.
‘Lashings off, we tried to castor the nose wheel, but it wasn’t man enough for the weight and was not rotating correctly after about five seconds of trying. At this point the observer, Lieutenant Butch Bowers, called, “full sub min pitch”, and something about a bloody big wave. I did as I was told immediately and then listened to his description whilst looking at a huge wall of water. The aircraft had rotated about thirty degrees to port at this stage without the correct indications for the nose wheel, but then started to rotate to starboard despite full left pedal. This was as the roll to starboard was at its maximum. As the ship rolled level the aircraft slowed its rotation and stopped about Green 30 as the second bigger wave arrived. As the ship rolled beyond ten degrees the aircraft rotated to starboard again and started to slide towards the starboard side of the flight deck. We arrived at the edge facing Green 90, at walking pace and still with full sub min pitch applied. I foolishly believed that the four inch spurn water edge would stop us, but we didn’t even slow down. As we bumped the nose wheel over the side of the ship I pulled from bottom to top of collective lever movement in less than one second; 70% negative torque to probably 150% up. The Nr (rotor speed) drooped audibly, I took a glance at the gauge and saw below 90% Nr (I think). The aircraft seemed to keep moving horizontally and I felt we were airborne, but certainly not going up. We were downwind in 50kts, well overweight in the dark (pre NVG) between two 40–50ft waves. The Helicopter Controller in the ship said afterwards that as the ship rolled upright the flight deck nets missed the tail rotor by less than a foot, but he was looking at a camera image from the ops room. The ship had rolled to approximately twenty-three degrees as the stabilizers had cut out at fifteen. Whoops!
