Too Quiet, Part 2 - Your Other Left

Cauliflower in Souk, Fez, Morocco - photo by JoAnn Sturman

by Steven R. Oberst

It was over 4 years and 1,800 flying hours later before I experienced another engine failure. The flight was a support mission taking ten Air Force security police (SP) to a missile site undergoing maintenance. On the flight were nine SPs riding in the passenger compartment, which was all the aircraft could accommodate. This was a single pilot mission, so the lead SP NCO, SSgt Reed, was seated in the co-pilot’s left seat position.
I completed my flight planning and noted that the power margin for takeoff would be slim. With ten fully equipped SPs and a warm day, power available would be adequate, but the takeoff would require some finesse. My technique in this type of situation was to bring the helicopter to a hover then gently move it forward, maintaining close proximity to the ground during the initial part of the takeoff maneuver. This is called maintaining “ground effect” and results in increased rotor blade efficiency, which in turn reduces engine power required for takeoff.
All seemed normal with the helicopter as I hovered out to the helipad for takeoff. I gently nudged the cyclic, the primary flight control stick, forward and slowly began to accelerate without using any additional power. I achieved translational lift without adding any power. (As a helicopter moves forward, about 15-20 knots in the UH-1 Huey, the helicopter achieves “translational lift”, a state which provides extra lift for takeoff.) At about 50 feet above the ground and approaching 60 knots I felt comfortable enough to increase power slightly. As soon as I raised the collective I heard a loud bang.
Reacting instinctively I immediately lowered the collective and looked at the gauges. Sure enough, the engine had failed, and the sudden quiet was memorable. When the mishap happened, I was flying over a flat grassy area between the main runway and a taxiway - perfect terrain for a forced landing. While keeping the nose straight, I elected to use a series of short flares with the cyclic instead of the continuous flare used in a normal autorotation. This technique allowed me to avoid striking the ground with the tail rotor, since the helicopter’s nose up attitude necessarily placed the tail close to danger. The aircraft gross weight was near maximum, but the flat, grassy surface beneath would permit me to keep the airspeed at higher than normal, so we would not fall like a rock from 30 feet in the final stages of the autorotation. Immediately before touchdown with an airspeed of 25 knots, I leveled the helicopter and pulled up on the collective to slow our descent. The helicopter skids touched down and we slid about a 100 feet.
The time from engine failure to coming to a stop on the ground was probably less than 15 seconds. I remember how quiet it got when the engine stopped and how everything seemed to slow down as I maneuvered through those 50 feet to the ground. It happened so fast that by the time the SPs in the back realized what had happened, we were safely down. However, SSgt Reed who was seated in the front seat, had an entirely different view of things. “Captain,” he said afterward, “that scared the shit out of me, but nice job!”
The previous day our engine mechanic, A1C Potts, made an improper adjustment of the fuel control which resulted in a compressor stall (the loud bang I heard) and the engine failure. Airman Potts apparently turned the control clockwise instead of counterclockwise and then failed to properly document the aircraft forms. This meant the change was never signed off by a maintenance supervisor, and I had no knowledge of the maintenance work completed. Potts was given a written reprimand and placed back in a training status.
This time it was my smiling face in the MAC Flyer, but another bonus came a few weeks later. Driving across the base, I was caught by an SP on radar. I looked at my speedometer just before I pulled over. “Damn,” I thought, “37 in a 25 means a ticket for sure.” The SP came up to my door and was about to ask for license and registration when he recognized me. “Hi, Captain,” he said with a grin, “try to keep the speed down a little, Sir. See you later.” It was SSgt Reed.