Too Quiet Part 1 "Ask Me No Questions"

Ceiling Hassan II Mosque Casablanca - photo by JoAnn Sturman

By Steven R Oberst

“Autorotation is the state of flight where the main rotor system of a helicopter is being turned by the action of air moving up through the rotor rather than engine power driving the rotor.” --Wikipedia

Don’t be fooled by this simple definition. This “state of flight” cannot be sustained indefinitely, so powered flight, although less exciting, is preferable. However, in case the engine quits, it is desirable that the pilot have the ability to execute an autorotation to a safe landing (one that everyone walks away from). Autorotations were my favorite thing to do in a helicopter. Flying helicopters is fun, but doing autorotations is over-the-top fun. To me, entering an autorotation was like starting down the first big descent on a roller coaster ride, only unlike the coaster car, which hopefully stays on the tracks, helicopters have considerable maneuverability while in autorotation. Practicing autorotations is entertaining, but there is added adrenaline when you do one for real. Plus, in a Huey, the turbine engines are quite noisy, so when the engine quits the sudden quiet really gets your attention.

When I was learning to fly helicopters with the U.S. Army, it was the belief of many Army aviators that pilots would experience an engine failure every for every 1,000 hours of flight time. I never heard a similar axiom among Air Force helicopter pilots, so I surmised that maybe this was more of an indictment of Army maintenance than it was factual. However, ten years and 3,000 hours in single engine helicopters later, I had indeed experienced 3 engine failures.

First Failure: Ask Me No Questions…

In the early 1970s Air Force helicopter pilots graduating from the Army program at Ft Rucker, AL were sent to the 1550th Aircrew Training and Test Wing at Hill AFB, UT to learn the Air Force approach to helicopter flying. Think of it as a “re-blue-ing”. The duration of the training depended on the type of helicopter you would be flying at your next assignment, so for an H-1F Huey pilot, the program was six weeks long. Much of the time was dedicated to search and rescue training, but there was also time spent on emergency procedures. This was to ensure you learned how to perform these procedures the Air Force way. For example, the Army performed autorotations to the ground with the engine at idle. The Air Force used a power recovery method that resulted in power being reapplied near the end of the autorotation with the maneuver ending in a hover instead of on the ground. Near the end of my six week training program at Hill I was scheduled to fly on an emergency procedures training mission. I had not previously flown with the instructor for this flight, Captain Mack Jackson, or the other student, Captain Vince Baggit.

Mack was a better looking version of Robert Redford. He carried himself with a swagger that set him apart from the other instructors. Vince on the other hand had the look of someone who was perpetually bored. He had been flying a desk for five years. I had met both of them a few weeks earlier when a group of pilots gathered at the Hill Officers Club for the Wing Commander’s promotion party. Vince quickly let me know he felt that being in the six week training program was a waste of his time because he already knew how to fly search and rescue. Meanwhile I watched in awe as woman after woman literally threw herself at Mack during the evening.

We took off from Hill AFB on a summer afternoon and flew a short distance to the Ogden Municipal Airport to practice the emergency procedures. Vince was flying and I was sitting in the jump seat. Half way through the flight we would switch places. I noticed how relaxed Mack was. So much so that he even put his feet up on the dash while Vince was flying. Vince was not a particularly good pilot, and his performance on the emergency procedures was underwhelming, but Mack never said a word. This is cool I thought, an instructor who is so laid back, he just lets you fly.

When it was my turn to fly, I did several autorotations with no problems. Then I did a manual fuel approach to a slide landing, which was kind of a tricky maneuver in this particular Huey; however, Mack was so relaxed he had his feet up on the dash until just before I landed. A glance at Vince revealed that he was sound asleep in the jump seat. Our next practice emergency procedure was a hydraulics off approach and landing. Once the aircraft was established on the downwind leg of its traffic pattern, the standard procedure was for the instructor to identify the hydraulic switch located at the top of the pedestal between the pilots. Following an acknowledgement from the student pilot, the instructor would turn the switch off.

When I had turned the aircraft downwind, Mack, with his feet on the dash, merely said “Ready?” Before I could respond he reached over to the middle of the pedestal and turned off the main fuel switch. Within a couple of seconds the engine flamed out and it got quiet. All I could hear in that first moment in time was the swishing sound of the rotor blades. Then red cockpit warning lights started flashing and a warning horn started screeching, indicating the engine had failed. I found myself lowering the collective (power control), entering an autorotation, calling “Mayday” over the radio, and looking for a place to land. All I could see on my side of the helicopter were trees and the Ogden River. Finally Mack came to life. He got on the controls with me, but did not take them away from me. I said “Do you see a place to land?” Then he said “I’ve got the controls.” He entered a steep turn to the left towards Interstate 84. By some dumb luck or due to a higher authority’s intervention, there in front of us was an open grassy area inside an off-ramp cloverleaf. Mack dodged the light poles surrounding it and made a perfect power off, autorotation landing in the middle of the cloverleaf. We barely felt the touchdown.
I could not believe what had just happened in less than a minute. This idiot instructor had tried to kill us by turning off the fuel instead of the hydraulic switch, but had then redeemed himself by doing a perfect autorotation to the cloverleaf. Should I punch the guy or hug him? I did neither.

Mack calmly reported on the radio to the tower that we just had an engine failure, but had landed safely, giving them our location. A maintenance team was dispatched from Hill AFB along with a van to take us back to the base. The aircraft was thoroughly inspected. It was no surprise to me when maintenance could not find anything wrong. Another pilot was brought to the site the next morning. The aircraft engine was started and after determining that everything was operating normally, the pilot flew the helicopter back to the base. I was told by another instructor that the incident would be investigated.

I dreaded being interviewed about the incident because I was not going to lie about what happened, and I knew this would not be good for Mack’s career. I was only ten days from being done at Hill and moving on to my first flying assignment. To my surprise, no one ever asked to interview me or ask me any questions about the incident. Vince, who was asleep when the incident happened, was certain that the engine just flamed out on its own, which is exactly what he told me he said to the Major conducting the investigation. I guess the Major felt he did not need to bother with interviewing a mere second lieutenant. So, I never told anyone that Mack had turned off the main fuel switch and caused the engine to flame out.

The next month I saw Mack’s smiling face in the MAC Flyer (a monthly safety magazine published by the Military Airlift Command, forerunner to today’s Air Mobility Command). There on the page giving kudos to crews executing successful emergency landings was a short article about Mack’s successful autorotation to an Interstate cloverleaf following an engine failure (cause unknown).

Next Week: Part II of Too Quiet: "Your Other Left"