Nevermore

[Scott MacLean]

Nevermore by Cdr. Dave DeLance

Anyone who has spent time at NAF Atsugi, Japan knows all about the ravens. 
Thousands of them, caw loudly and raucously, from the golf course to the 
flight line. They wake you every morning and are still at it every evening.

Early last month, I could have sworn I heard one whisper "Nevermore."

I'm a Navy C-9 pilot, a 20-year commander in the Navy Reserve who also 
flies as a captain for an airline. My time is nearly equally split between 
my civilian and military jobs. I spend months each year in Japan or Italy, 
flying passengers and cargo for the Navy.

Last month, we were tasked to fly from Atsugi to Phuket, Thailand, stay 
overnight, fly a leg to pick up a SEAL platoon, bring them back to Phuket, 
spend another night, and then return them to their forward deployed home 
base in Guam. This was an unusual but not unheard-of mission for a C-9.

The entire mission went fine all the way back to Phuket on the second 
night. Gas started to become an issue when we had both of the SEAL det 
crews and their combat cargo on board. That extra weight limited the amount 
of fuel we could carry to about 30,000 pounds-four and a half to five 
hours' worth.

Three tropical depressions were beginning to stir things up in the Far 
East. One was up north, to the west of Korea; it wasn't a factor. But one 
was sitting just to the west of the Philippines and slowly drifting east 
toward Manila. The third, named Samoi, was spinning up to the northeast of 
Guam and sliding northwest. Its projected track would keep it 200 miles 
north of the island. It would soon accelerate, unforecasted, to super 
typhoon status.

Phuket, Thailand, is an international resort (where the movie "The Beach" 
was filmed), so while overseas communication was expensive, it wasn't 
impossible. Worried about the weather, I made several long-distance calls 
to our scheduler and various weather agencies around the area. We managed 
to identify an alternate airport for Manila and decided to press on with 
the mission. We would beat the first typhoon into Manila with a day to spare.

With the SEAL team on board, we departed Phuket airport early that morning. 
About 200 miles into the flight, the first thunderstorms started to appear, 
and we switched on the weather radar. It didn't work.

It had tested fine on the ground, and it had tested fine in the air, but it 
wouldn't show us the storms. We made the only decision we could and turned 
around to get it fixed. We carry our own mechanics with us, and an hour and 
a half later, back on the ground in Phuket, we found the broken wire... 
Again we fueled the aircraft and started off, now more than two hours late.

The weather into Manila was dicey but manageable. We used the radar to 
skirt the worst of the storms on our way in from the west, and we found 
clearer weather as we approached the field. The leg took three hours and 40 
minutes, and we landed with 6,500 pounds of fuel, just above the legal 
planning limit of 6,000 pounds.

Again we refueled. We were losing daylight by flying east and it was now 
dusk in the Philippines. Again, I hauled out my credit card and called to 
recheck the weather. There was a chance of light rain later that evening in 
Guam, but we should have no real problems. The next leg was projected to 
last three hours and 20 minutes, so we were confident we'd have fuel to 
spare. There are two major airports on Guam, even though it is a small 
island. This is important for a C-9, because almost every time we fly to an 
island, we don't have enough fuel to go anywhere else.

That was certainly true this night. This leg was business as usual, legal 
by every naval aviation regulation. I would have flown it with my family in 
the back.

We took off in the deepening twilight, maneuvering to avoid the storms that 
the radar picked up with increasing frequency. A commercial pilot talked to 
us on an air-to-air common radio frequency; told us he had just taken off 
from Guam and that we should have no problems. We pressed on, oblivious to 
the havoc Samoi would soon unleash.

We approached Guam at 10 p.m. There was no ATIS (automatic weather 
broadcast)--the field had closed because of the worsening weather.

Approach control was still up and running. We arrived overhead with 7,500 
pounds of gas, about what we had expected but certainly not enough to go 
anywhere else.

Typhoon Samoi had slowed and moved south. Counterclockwise, swirling bands 
of severe thunderstorms had begun to fill in on its backside.

Though the storm center was 150 miles to the north, the typhoon encompassed 
an area 600 miles across and 1,200 miles long.

Both airports in Guam have long, dual runways that run from northeast to 
southwest. The wind that came roaring in with those backfilling storms was 
almost straight out of the west, at times reaching 80 knots. Those 
treacherous winds kept us from shooting an ILS approach. A  precision 
approach would have placed us well outside the tailwind limits for the 
aircraft.

We set up for the TACAN 24, non-precision approach to Anderson Air Force 
Base. It comes in over the ocean, crosses a cliff several hundred feet high 
and touches down on the runway atop the cliff, less than a half-mile from 
the edge. On a clear day, it can be an eye-opener. On a night like this, it 
can kill you. One wind shear downdraft at the wrong time and not only will 
you not clear the cliff, you might never see it coming...

If you've ever had to pull your car to the side of the road during a heavy 
downpour you can relate to the conditions that night. Now imagine yourself 
moving at 150 miles an hour and not being given the luxury of stopping.

The rain was horizontal. We could not see three feet ahead let alone the 
half-mile that is required to land from that speed. On the first approach, 
an 80-knot wind shear took our speed from 150 to 230 knots in two seconds. 
A go-around was mandatory.

The second approach featured a little less wind shear. The radar was now 
showing nothing but red on the 30-mile scale. We don't even fly through red 
normally, let alone land in it. According to Approach Control, we had been 
over the end of the runway both times, but we never saw a thing. Fuel was 
now 5,000 pounds.

I was ready to start bending the rules because I had to get closer to the 
ground to have any chance to land. I opted for a downwind ILS, landing in 
the opposite direction. We began the approach with the autopilot locked on 
ILS despite the out-of-limit winds. The GPS showed a 40-knot tailwind (the 
limit is 10), but I was out of ideas. At around 250 feet, we got the one 
that always gets you in the simulator: the minus 40-knot wind shear. You 
instantly lose the airflow over the wings that keeps you airborne. The 
aircraft can stall and fall and there is nothing you can do about it. Our 
airspeed went to around 100 knots. We would have died if it had reached 95. 
I clicked off the autopilot and shoved the throttles to the stops, trying 
to initiate the textbook wind shear recovery on the edge of control. I 
actually saw runway lights at one point. But we couldn't land with that 
combination of airspeed, wind shear, and visibility. We would have crashed 
on the runway. We went around again.

I got clearance to Guam International, 20 miles away. The fuel was now 
4,400. We declared minimum fuel. Approach asked for "souls on board," and 
we knew that was so they could tell the rescue teams how many bodies to 
look for. The controller said his radar showed the weather getting worse.

We were cleared for our fourth approach, a VOR/TACAN 24 (another non 
precision approach) to Guam International. So far, all the approaches had 
been backed up by the copilot using homemade GPS approaches, and he was 
calling out centerline deviations. I had been flying real instruments, not 
computer-generated ones. Approach called the position of the actual terrain 
obstructions (to our left) and gave us unofficial help for centerline 
although he did not actually have "precision radar" and could not "legally" 
do it. I recognized his calls for what they were and started cheating 50 to 
100 feet on the minimum descent altitudes. We still couldn't see anything 
forward. We went around again.

The TACAN (DME) went out of service sometime during the go-around, so we 
were cleared for the NDB (at best approximate) approach to runway 24, the 
only one left for us to use... The fuel gauge read 2,800 pounds.

Going around is not recommended below 1,500 pounds in the C-9 because the 
deck angle may cause the engines to flame out. We turned on all the 
fuel-tank pumps, even in the empty tanks, and opened the fuel cross-feed.

We had been over the end of runway every time, we just hadn't been able to 
see. We went around for the fifth time... We had enough gas for one or two 
more tries. I tried to decide what to say in the voice recorder right 
before we crashed.

As we asked for early turn-in vectors to the NDB, the crew chief (whose 
birthday was that day) asked, " OK guys, what are we going to do now?" I 
decided to couple up the NDB approach on the GPS computer with the 
autopilot--an unauthorized, untested technique that allows the computer to 
fly the aircraft without outside reference. I flew to 100 feet below the 
approved minimums on autopilot-altitude hold. This allowed me to look 
outside without concentrating on the instruments. We drove in and caught 
our first break, a gap in the waves of thunderstorm cells rolling across 
the island. We saw the ground, and, for the first time, saw the runway at 
three-quarters of a mile.

I immediately clicked off the autopilot and dove to 100 feet to avoid any 
possibility of going back into the clouds. We were still in moderate rain. 
In close, I pushed it over. We picked up a 40-knot wind shear 30 or 40 feet 
from the end of the runway. I continued to push the nose down, willing to 
have it hit if I had to, but I managed to level out at five feet and, 
incredibly, ended up with a smooth touchdown. The antiskid released several 
times as we hydroplaned on the rain-soaked runway.

We stopped on centerline with 3,000 feet remaining. We sat there for a 
minute. Then the torrential rain closed back in, and I could not see to 
taxi. The fuel was 2,000 pounds. Riotous applause erupted from the back.

They had known we were in trouble, but only the three of us in the front 
knew we only had enough gas left for one more pass.

Thirteen civilian airliners had received the same weather report as we did 
that night. They all started out expecting to land at Guam, and they all 
carried enough fuel to divert to Tokyo, Manila or Okinawa. In other words, 
they had an extra 30,000 pounds of gas. That's what we had started with. 
All 13 diverted to their alternates, some before an approach and some 
after. We were the only aircraft who made it in that night (or the next 24 
hours).

Around midnight, as we pulled into the gate, our crew chief looked round 
the cockpit and said, flatly, "Well, it looks like I survived another 
birthday."

We parked with 1,700 pounds of fuel. The APU flamed out 4-5 minutes later. 
We actually had less than 500 pounds of usable fuel remaining on touchdown. 
Will I ever fly around the Far East with the Navy again?

Absolutely.

Will I ever fly to an island destination that has a tropical depression 
nearby? Not on your life. Sometimes even your best isn't good enough. Three 
days later, we made our way back to Atsugi. As we shut down and walked away 
from the aircraft, I turned around. Sitting all by himself, up on the tail, 
was a big, old black raven. I could swear he winked at me and whispered, 
"Nevermore".
_______________________
Scott MacLean
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
ICQ: 9184011
http://www.nerosoft.com