Plotting my own path - Spreading my (short haul) wings

This part of my aviation journey takes place from July 1990 through to the end of 1993. It’s condensed to a few highlights for the sake of getting through the rest of the articles I’ve set out to write this year.

Also please note I have deliberately not named other people who were involved in the various events I discuss, for fear of getting them wrong and/or not having room / forgetting to mention others more worthy.

RAAF Base Richmond

My first posting after pilots course was to fly the DHC-4 Caribou at No 38 Squadron, RAAF Base Richmond, near Sydney.

I turned up at Richmond as a brand new Flying Officer, excited to be joining the ‘real’ Air Force. Before I did any flying though, I was sent to Combat Survival Course.

Combat Survival Course

Combat Survival Course was conducted in and around Townsville in tropical north Queensland. To acclimatise, we ran up Castle Hill each morning – this was not fun!

The course involved lessons in the classroom, spending an afternoon floating in a life raft in the Coral Sea with a bunch of other people vomiting from sea sickness as sea snakes swam past us, trying to find food to eat in the bush on short notice overnight camping expeditions, and the ultimate test – 7 days of escape and evasion in the heavily wooded hills to the west of Townsville, simulating a scenario of trying to get from one place to another to be rescued while some local infantry soldiers eagerly tried to catch us.

I lost 7 kg during escape and evasion. By the end of it, I was adding a stock cube to a cup of hot water and calling that my main meal for the day. One of our course members lay too close to the fire and his flying suit caught on fire, and another took home lasting scars on his arms from being tied to a tree by some over-excited army types (I was lucky enough to evade capture).

One of the things I distinctly remember is that the course notes recorded tenacity as being one of the key characteristics of a combat survivor. I have carried this word with me ever since as a kind of internal driving force for when things get hard, to never give up, to double down again and do what needs to be done to achieve my objective. Invoking the power of tenacity has helped me to get through some tough situations and achieve things that were seemingly impossible at the time.

Flying the ‘Bou

The Caribou, with a maximum take-off weight of 28,500 lb (12,927 kg), was designed to carry 32 people and land / take-off from unprepared airstrips. With its rear ramp, it could be used for parachuting and air dropping loads. It proved itself in Vietnam and was the Australian workhorse for smaller scale tactical transport and civil aid operations for decades. The aircraft had two, twin row radial engines, was not fitted with autopilot or pressurisation, and flew at a fairly sedate 140 knots true air speed (2 miles per minute for planning purposes). With a big long straight wing and effective high lift devices, it could almost hover in a strong wind and land in a very short distance.

The main goal of a junior pilot with no other obligations was to do as much flying and travel to as many places as possible. Our favourite pastime was board-watching – keeping an eye on the Ops Board – a massive piece of backlit perspex that set out all of the Squadron’s planned flying activities (and especially forthcoming deployments), to jostle for (or avoid if it was a para Nowra) the limited number of crew positions on the next trip as it was being written up.

If we were unlucky enough to be stuck at home and not be flying, we’d play some sort of sport most mornings – I have enduring, fond memories of playing touch footy with a kick on the last.

These were the days of the cash imprest. When we deployed, we took enough cash to pay for our expenses, and generally this task was given to the junior officer. It was never fun carrying a lot of cash, being responsible for it and trying to account for everything we spent at the end of the trip.

Another difficulty we often experienced was trying to get a hire car when none of the crew were over 25 – we could fly an aircraft in operations but not hire a car to get around the place!

After a little while living in the Officer’s Mess, I moved out into a share house with a couple of other people. I had just met a young lady who I liked, so I invited her to our housewarming party, excited to show off our new place. The day of the party, I was on what we called a Snowy Trainer – flying to smaller, more challenging runways in the Snowy Mountains to practice our navigation and flying skills. Just before taking off at a small aerodrome called Talbingo, a check of the magnetos revealed that only one was working (you need two for redundancy in the event that one fails inflight), so we ended up stuck there overnight while another aircraft came to rescue us, and I missed my own housewarming party. This was definitely not a good way to impress someone!

The task for my captaincy check was to fly to Canberra and pick up the motor bike of a new Squadron executive. I’m not sure it was high up on the list of defence priorities, but it was apparently a worthy task, so after diligently planning and executing that trip, I was promoted to the left-hand seat.

My first flight as captain was to fly some Councillors from the local Shire Council on a scenic trip around Sydney (another high priority Defence mission!), and I can remember one of the Councillors asking me how long I had been flying (she must have felt that I looked very young and therefore inexperienced) and of course I said ‘quite a while’. There was definitely no shortage of confidence.

As I gained more experience, I was trusted to undertake more complex flying tasks, including maintenance test flying, which involved taking the aircraft through various test procedures to check the serviceability of affected systems. We landed many times with one engine shut down or a feathered propeller due to some sort of issue.

While I was at Richmond, Australia became involved in a UN peacekeeping mission in Cambodia, and I was nominated as one of a few crew members to be deployed there. Two aircraft were painted white, we learnt some basics of the language and prepared to deploy, but for some reason the commitment was never required so the deployment didn’t happen.

We sometimes provided relief manning to the single-aircraft detachments at Darwin and Perth. On one trip to Perth, we were tasked to assist the SAS with some (pretty hardcore) training which involved flying some soldiers dressed in immersion suits and parachutes to the south of the state and dropping them into the cold water of the Southern Ocean off Denmark, at night. We needed to refuel prior to the drop, so we had to land at Albany Airport first. To practice the ‘covert’ nature of the task, we landed with the aircraft landing lights off (these were the days before night vision devices), and just as we touched down, felt and heard a loud ‘thump’. Turning the lights on, we noticed several kangaroos hopping across the runway. After cleaning the remains of an unlucky animal off the undercarriage and checking serviceability, we continued on our way, dropping the soldiers into the freezing water and returning home – just another night of tactical transport flying!

Papua New Guinea

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to fly in Papua New Guinea, a place that has wonderful people, spectacular scenery and challenging flying. We practiced navigating through high terrain, flying in challenging weather conditions and landing/taking-off at many unprepared strips with a performance limited aircraft. We’d often be asked to carry things – like bags of grain, fencing and construction materials, live animals and other produce, from one place to another as part of our assistance to the local communities.

We had just started using GPS as an aid to navigation – this involved a hand-held Trimble GPS with toggles to move the numbers/letters up and down rather than typing things in via a keypad – that we stuck with Velcro onto the dashboard. When we went to PNG, we often found that the airstrips we flew to were not very accurately surveyed or represented on maps/charts, so the GPS, which was accurately taking us to the coordinates we entered, couldn’t be relied upon. Rather, we still had to look out the window and navigate via map to ground.

One time we struck and killed a dog on landing, so rather than stop and apologise, which could have resulted in us being stuck there for some time as local diplomatic processes resolved, we decided to turn around and take-off as soon as possible. We were lucky not to hit some of the people who had rushed to the scene of the crime.

The photo shows me at Menyamya, PNG.

The move to Amberley

At the end of 1992, No 38 SQN moved to RAAF Base Amberley, near Brisbane, Queensland, into the facilities vacated by No 12 Squadron (which had operated Chinooks) when it was disbanded. I missed the mass formation flight from Richmond to Amberley, (which apparently provide a few opportunities for improvement in the debrief) as I was on holiday in Africa, climbing Mt Kilimanjaro and visiting some other equally spectacular places in Kenya, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Moving to Amberley was a dream come true – it represented better weather, easier flying (no significant terrain to speak of and nowhere near as much exposure to icing conditions), but most importantly, it was where the F?111s were based.

Recruiting

I was promoted to the rank of Flight Lieutenant (FLTLT) on 01 January 1993.

Somehow (perhaps because I wasn’t around to defend myself while I was on holidays) I was seconded in a representative role to Australian Defence Force recruiting from March to July 1993. I joined two others, one each from the Army and Navy, with the task of presenting on military careers to school students in Queensland and northern New South Wales. We spoke to a wide range of young people with varying levels of interest, travelled a lot, saw some wonderful places and played a fair bit of golf (school finishes at 3 pm, so there was usually enough time to get 9 holes in each afternoon).

During the recruiting tour, I took the opportunity to go flying over the Easter school holiday break. I was tasked as co-pilot on a short training flight to check out an airstrip near Noosa that was thought to offer a good opportunity to practice short take-offs and landings. Unfortunately, there was a mis-calculation of the width of cleared area vs the aircraft’s wingspan (29 m) and we ended up trimming the tops out of some palm trees with our left wing. We didn’t get to fly this one home – another crew drove up from Amberley and after the wing was repaired, took responsibility for its recovery. From this incident I learnt the importance of having validated aeronautical data when planning aviation operations.

September 1993 – Guyra F-111 accident

On 15 September 1993, I was tasked as captain to fly some people to the site, near Guyra, of the F-111 accident which took the lives of Jeremy McNess and Mark Cairns-Cowan on the night of 13 September 1993.

This was the worst day of my life, worthy of a more thorough discussion in an article of its own.

Short Haul Trophy

In October 1993, we took an aircraft across to New Zealand for training, and to compete for the Short Haul Trophy.

Flying amongst the snow-capped mountains of New Zealand’s South Island and sharing the camaraderie of our RNZAF counterparts, especially snow skiing at Mt Hutt, was a real treat.

The competition involved planning and flying a low-level route with timed checkpoints, accurately air-dropping a load of containers and then touching down as closely as possible to a marked threshold on a short runway. In those days, planning was done with a chinagraph pencil on a plastic-covered topographical map, a nav plank and calculator. We managed to score more points than our competitors and were awarded the Short Haul Trophy - see the photo below.

Meeting my future wife

After the very distressing events of the Guya accident, my life took a significant turn for the better, when in late October 1993, I met the love of my life. We were introduced by a close friend, to whom I am forever thankful. We have now been married for 29 years and counting.

Grounded

By the end of 1993 I was a fully-fledged, fairly useful operational Caribou pilot, with 932.9 hours on type.

I had expected (hoped?) to spend another year at No 38 SQN, but out of the blue, I was posted to a dreaded ground job that hadn’t previously existed. I thought this was a bit unfair - how could I formally record that I didn’t want to be posted to a position if it didn’t exist in the system???

The task of amending aircrew manuals had previously been carried out in a central office in Melbourne, but it was decided that each flying Group would do this task in-house, and so it came to be that I was posted to the job of F-111 Aircrew Manuals Officer, based at Headquarters, Strike Reconnaissance Group. This was another one of those situations where, after initial feelings of indignance and thoughts of ‘why me?’, I turned my mind to how I could make something of the opportunity.

I was being posted to the F-111 Group Headquarters – another unexpected step closer to fulfilling my dream.

Have you plotted your own path? Let me know in the comments – I’d love to hear your story, and I’m sure others would too!

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From an early age, Keith felt the calling to be a pilot, to experience the thrill of taking an aeroplane off the ground and having the freedom to move at speed in three dimensions.

After decades of military and airline flying, Keith now leads respected aviation consultancy Aviation Projects and shares his expert opinion on all things aviation.

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