Snow Job: The Great Cow Rescue Mission of 1976

 Easy Does It in Tanzania - photo by JoAnn Sturman

By Steven R. Oberst

I have always considered “snow” a four letter word. Sure, it can be nice to look at, build snowmen, or ski on, but who wants to experience the inconveniences of a major snowstorm?  Not many of us. My personal measure of a major storm is a snowfall of more than 20 inches. Of the 13 places I’ve lived since childhood, I experienced at least one major snowstorm in 10 of them. I saw storms with huge amounts of snowfall in Colorado, South Dakota, New Mexico, St. Louis, Seattle, Washington D.C., Richmond, Philadelphia and even while stationed in Germany. Fortunately, most of these places were more prepared for snow than where I live now in the western part of Washington state. Usually it rains here in the wintertime, but sometimes Canadian air will sneak across the border, and we’ll get a few inches of snow every year or two. People here cannot drive in snow, so you can imagine the gridlock this causes. On a rare occasion, like a storm in January 2012, we’ll get a major snowstorm. These get nicknames from the local media like snowmaggeddon or snowpocalypse. I guess this is in order to help explain the sheer terror these storms strike in the hearts of people who live here.  

When it comes to big snowstorms,  none of them can top the April 1976 storm that hit South Dakota the week before Easter. What made this storm significant was not the 25 inches of snow, but the 50 mph winds that came with it, resulting in drifts up to 20 feet high. Every Interstate 90 cloverleaf-overpass in the area was completely filled with snow. It took one day for the crews to get to the overpasses and then two more days for crews to dig them out using big front end loaders (big wheeled tractors with large front buckets) and dump trucks. Because the wind kept blowing after the snow stopped falling, the drifts kept reforming as the snow was being removed. My favorite visual memory of this storm was seeing kids, who lived in base housing, sliding out of second story windows on giant snow drifts. Needless to say, nothing moved on the roads for several days.

The day after the storm, our helicopter unit received dozens of urgent flight requests. There were five pilots who lived on base. A snowcat was dispatched to pick us up, because there were absolutely no wheeled vehicles moving anywhere. Enough maintenance people lived in the barracks to get five helicopters ready to fly. And, most importantly, our Operations Dispatcher, Sergeant Goodman also lived on base. The other nine pilots and the rest of maintenance would not be able to make it onto the base for over 48 hours. An army of snow equipment blasted out an area in front of our hangar, so we could get the helicopters out of the hangar and into the air. All five pilots logged over 10 hours of flying time that first day. Then, since the snowcat was not available to take us home, we slept on cots in the operations dispatch area. We had plenty of hot cocoa, sodas, and peanut butter sandwiches, but not much else to eat that evening. The next morning, the snowcat brought hot food and coffee from the dining hall, and we were soon back in the air for another 12 hour shift. Sgt. Goodman played a critical role, since he was the only person in the operations dispatch area while we were flying. Somehow he managed to keep track of all the missions, assign new ones, man the phones and the radio, and keep his sanity.

Most of the first day missions were in support of the people located in the missile support sites. There were 15 of these sites located in a 240 degree arc between 70 and 150 miles from the base. We carried fresh food and some replacement crews, but most of the needed replacements were stuck at home. With just one pilot per chopper, we had one of our maintenance personnel fly with us,so they could help with loading and unloading. A typical flight was about 2.5 hours with stops at three sites, and then back to the base for fuel and a new load of food and people.

There were helipads at each of the 15 support sites that had to be cleared by the site personnel. Each site had a front end loader, but it was still quite a chore to clear the helipads so we could land at the site. The helipads were 50 foot concrete squares and the snow had to be removed to create a 100 foot square of cleared area. This meant that a great deal of snow had to be piled around the helipad. Knowing that we were bringing food and replacements, the people at the sites were highly motivated to clear the pads.

It was of fun landing at a site helipad surrounded by a ten foot high wall of snow. But flying into these snowy sites could be tricky. Helicopters can create their own white out conditions when flying in close proximity to the snow covered ground. Normal helicopter takeoffs and landings start and end in a hover. In snowy conditions, hovering is not a good idea, because the snow will get caught up in the rotor wash and in a split second you are in a zero visibility cloud of swirling snow. Fortunately, our pilots all had lots of experience at making takeoffs and landings in these conditions. By planning and executing landing all the way to the ground, a skilled pilot would never lose visibility prior to touchdown. Once you landed, the snow would engulf your helicopter until you slowed the rotors by moving the throttle to idle.

Along with more missions to missile support sites, on the second day we started getting rescue calls. One for three people burned in a house fire, one for a pregnant woman going into premature labor, another for someone in urgent need of insulin, plus about a dozen or so requests to rescue people stranded on the interstate or a highway. Both days were a blur. I think I refueled four times on day one and five on day two, but at some point on day two, I realized that we could not keep this up for much longer. Fatigue was starting to catch up with us.

On day three just the five pilots and Sgt Goodman were plugging away. The mission requests kept coming, but some roads were starting to open, so the end was in sight. My last mission on day three involved a mission request from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). They sent an unusual rescue request directly to Rescue headquarters (HQ) at Scott AFB, IL. Rescue HQ then directed our unit to complete the mission on a major Indian Reservation to the south. I had just returned from what I hoped was my last flight of the day, only to be turned around for this BIA rescue mission.

I left the base with less than two hours of daylight remaining. The last thing I wanted to do was search for the survivors in the dark. With me was Airman Gerry Lewis, a small guy, but tough as they come. Our first stop was a ranch south of the base where we picked up emergency food supplies for the survivors. We were able to find a place to land near a large barn, and we loaded the back of the helicopter.

We headed further south to an area of the Reservation adjacent to the South Dakota Badlands. I had nothing but map coordinates as a probable location for the victims. Once we arrived in the general area, I set up an expanding square search pattern using the largest rock formation in the vicinity as a visual starting point. We could only fly at an altitude of about 700 feet because of the cloud cover. Visibility was five miles, but everything was covered in white. The terrain was full of draws and small canyons. With daylight fading it was a tense job scanning the snowy landscape for signs of survivors. Finally, after 20 minutes of searching, Airman Lewis spotted the survivors, about 25 in all, up to their furry chests in snow.  Yes, the survivors were a herd of cows, but not just any cows. Since they were owned by the BIA, these were federal cows.

There was no place to land, so Airman Lewis pushed out bales of hay and feed as I hovered at about 20 feet, just high enough to avoid losing visibility in the swirling snow. We got the stuff as close to the main part of the herd as possible, but the snow was so deep we had to wonder if all of the cows would actually make their way to it. As we headed back to the base, it began to snow. Fortunately, it would only be a few more inches added to the blanket of existing snow. By the time we landed I had far exceeded my 12 hour crew day, but I doubted anyone was paying attention to this detail in all the havoc caused by the storm over the past few days. 

And so came an end to my first and only cow rescue mission as well as the other storm related missions. I went home and slept for about 14 hours straight. Flight operations the next few weeks seemed boring after what we had been through. The unit got a letter from the BIA thanking us for getting food to their cows, and it was weeks before the other guys stopped “mooing” when I walked into the office. One of our pilots, Chris Polley, was quite good at drawing cartoons. The next week at the Officer’s Club, the guys presented me with a framed cartoon drawing, showing a helicopter dropping bales of hays to a herd of cows and mounted on a large, frozen cow pie. What better way to memorialize the great cow rescue mission of ’76?