out of control.
Fortunately our instructors were tolerant of our early incompetence, up to a point, and we either learnt fast as expected or faced being chopped. Six months and eighty hours flying time later and most of us were completing our captaincy checks before being awarded our wings. My own captaincy check was fantastic fun. I had to recce and land on top of Longships Lighthouse, just off the coast of Landâs End. Wings are the motif that Navy pilots wear on their left sleeve. Being awarded my wings was an extremely proud moment.
Little did I know that I would be on my way to war exactly a year after my first solo flight in a helicopter. Altogether I spent eighty hours learning to fly these sporty Gazelles, based at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall, before progressing onto the bigger Wessex at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset.
At this point, our training course of nineteen pilots went their separate ways. Twelve pilots were appointed to stay at Culdrose and do their Advanced and Operational Flying Training on anti-submarine Sea King Mark 2 helicopters. They would become
pingers
, named after the pinging sonar that Sea Kings dip into the sea in order to hunt submarines. I and six others were appointed to head up to Yeovilton to become
junglies
, the Navyâs commando squadron aircrew tasked to support the Royal Marines.
And so we learnt to fly the Wessex HU Mark 5. By the time I flew my first Wessex in 1981, the old bird had already been around for sixteen years. The Wessex was a whole different animal compared to the Gazelle. Whereas the Gazelle was light, fast, and handled like a sports car, the Wessex seemed heavy, slow, and handled more like a tractor. But once we got to know her, we quickly fell in love. The controls may have seemed sluggish at first. But we learnt to see them as forgiving. For a large helicopter of seven tons at maximum all-up weight, the Wessex was extraordinarily manoeuvrable. My personal record was of throwing a Wessex into a 110-degree wingover turn. Thatâs as near to upside down as I could get without the rotor blades flapping vertically upwards and applauding my impending crash. Having both frightened and impressed myself in equal measure, I resolved to be a little less ambitious in my aircraft handling. It never lasted. The Wessex was simply too much fun to fly.
Once started, the Wessex was incredibly reliable; the problem was getting it started. The electric cables didnât seem to like damp weather. I only ever had three emergencies in 700 hours flying a Wessex before, during and after the Falklands War. And they all happened on consecutive days. An engine failure was the first. I lost the primary hydraulic system on the very next flight and the secondary system the day afterwards. Had these latter two happened at the same time, I would now be dead. Without hydraulics , seven tons of air through the rotors would have caused the cyclic stick in the cockpit to thrash around wildly out of control.
Our Advanced Flying Training on the Wessex was spent mainly at Merryfield, south-west of the busy main airfield at Yeovilton. Our Gazelle training mostly took place in the same way at Culdroseâs satellite airfield Predannack. The ten-minute transit to and from Merryfield became a familiar routine that was usually an enjoyable journey free from practice emergencies thrown at us by our instructors. After just seven hours flying time of circuits and basic emergency drills it was an exhilarating feeling when my instructor Lieutenant Mike Crabtree jumped out and let me loose on my own for the first time.
Over the next few months, we practised basic circuits, instrument flying in cloud, navigation, night-flying and formation flying. On almost every sortie, we would practise autorotation, the emergency procedure needed when everything turns to a can of worms. If either the engines or transmission or tail rotor fail on a helicopter, the pilotâs only weapon to avoid making a big hole in
Fortunately our instructors were tolerant of our early incompetence, up to a point, and we either learnt fast as expected or faced being chopped. Six months and eighty hours flying time later and most of us were completing our captaincy checks before being awarded our wings. My own captaincy check was fantastic fun. I had to recce and land on top of Longships Lighthouse, just off the coast of Landâs End. Wings are the motif that Navy pilots wear on their left sleeve. Being awarded my wings was an extremely proud moment.
Little did I know that I would be on my way to war exactly a year after my first solo flight in a helicopter. Altogether I spent eighty hours learning to fly these sporty Gazelles, based at RNAS Culdrose in Cornwall, before progressing onto the bigger Wessex at RNAS Yeovilton in Somerset.
At this point, our training course of nineteen pilots went their separate ways. Twelve pilots were appointed to stay at Culdrose and do their Advanced and Operational Flying Training on anti-submarine Sea King Mark 2 helicopters. They would become
pingers
, named after the pinging sonar that Sea Kings dip into the sea in order to hunt submarines. I and six others were appointed to head up to Yeovilton to become
junglies
, the Navyâs commando squadron aircrew tasked to support the Royal Marines.
And so we learnt to fly the Wessex HU Mark 5. By the time I flew my first Wessex in 1981, the old bird had already been around for sixteen years. The Wessex was a whole different animal compared to the Gazelle. Whereas the Gazelle was light, fast, and handled like a sports car, the Wessex seemed heavy, slow, and handled more like a tractor. But once we got to know her, we quickly fell in love. The controls may have seemed sluggish at first. But we learnt to see them as forgiving. For a large helicopter of seven tons at maximum all-up weight, the Wessex was extraordinarily manoeuvrable. My personal record was of throwing a Wessex into a 110-degree wingover turn. Thatâs as near to upside down as I could get without the rotor blades flapping vertically upwards and applauding my impending crash. Having both frightened and impressed myself in equal measure, I resolved to be a little less ambitious in my aircraft handling. It never lasted. The Wessex was simply too much fun to fly.
Once started, the Wessex was incredibly reliable; the problem was getting it started. The electric cables didnât seem to like damp weather. I only ever had three emergencies in 700 hours flying a Wessex before, during and after the Falklands War. And they all happened on consecutive days. An engine failure was the first. I lost the primary hydraulic system on the very next flight and the secondary system the day afterwards. Had these latter two happened at the same time, I would now be dead. Without hydraulics , seven tons of air through the rotors would have caused the cyclic stick in the cockpit to thrash around wildly out of control.
Our Advanced Flying Training on the Wessex was spent mainly at Merryfield, south-west of the busy main airfield at Yeovilton. Our Gazelle training mostly took place in the same way at Culdroseâs satellite airfield Predannack. The ten-minute transit to and from Merryfield became a familiar routine that was usually an enjoyable journey free from practice emergencies thrown at us by our instructors. After just seven hours flying time of circuits and basic emergency drills it was an exhilarating feeling when my instructor Lieutenant Mike Crabtree jumped out and let me loose on my own for the first time.
Over the next few months, we practised basic circuits, instrument flying in cloud, navigation, night-flying and formation flying. On almost every sortie, we would practise autorotation, the emergency procedure needed when everything turns to a can of worms. If either the engines or transmission or tail rotor fail on a helicopter, the pilotâs only weapon to avoid making a big hole in
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