It was scheduled as a routine 3.0 hour training hop; an easy jaunt between Atsugi Naval Air Facility and Camp Zama Army Base – both located just a couple of hours southwest of Tokyo by car, and much less at 3,000 feet and 120 knots.
Lt. Mike Rush was my co-pilot for the sortie. We had just returned a few days earlier from one of the numerous deployments that the USS MIDWAY (CV-41) conducted during my three-year hitch in Helicopter Squadron TWELVE (HS-12). Due to our forward deployed status in Yokosuka, even the youngest pilots had log books reflecting hundreds of hours of operational flight time; hard earned hours, mostly at night, between 40’ and 500’over an unforgiving ocean. Today’s flight was sure to be a snoozer.
It felt almost pedestrian to be training at the required 3,000 feet above Japan’s countryside and foothills of Mt. Fuji. At that altitude, coupled with the daily haze over much of our AOR, the scenery was just not that inspiring. Helos and helo pilots are meant to fly low. It gives us the feeling of speed. As Maverick said, “I feel the need for speed.”
No matter how illusionary it might be in a helicopter, his words still apply. So with about 30 minutes left in the hop, Mike, or maybe I, got the bright idea to practice autorotations at Camp Zama.
Practice autorotations simulate engine failures and must be muscle memory-type maneuvers for all rotary wing pilots. And any time two salty Lieutenants, with a few thousand hours of flight time each, and hundreds of carrier quals under their belts, decide to practice autorotations, you know there’s going to be a competition. Flying the downwind leg of the pattern, I challenged Mike to “put us on the numbers.”
He turned upwind, I brought back the throttles, and he nosed her over. The helo fell out of the sky like a Coke machine. At the requisite altitude, he called for full power, I obliged, and he smoothly raised the collective, brought the nose up, and leveled off, hovering only a few feet above the runway numbers. Textbook. Then he turned the controls over to me. It was my turn. Same challenge, same result.
After our third pass, Sr. Chief Kirch, our lone crewman for the flight, advised us there was a civilian local outside the wire, taking pictures of us. Now we had a common cause. Rather than competing against each other, we decided to make the photographer earn his pictures. We told Chief Kirch to let us know when the photographer was set up.
Then, as soon as Ansel Adams put his camera bags down and his tripod up, we started a slow roll for takeoff. Once airborne and back in the pattern, we would spot the photographer’s location in relation to the runway, and purposely land at the furthest point away from his position. We then waited, and instructed Chief Kirch to let us know when he was abeam of us and set up once again to take pictures.
Chief Kirch channeled his inner race horse announcer voice, “Sir, he’s packed up his camera and tripod and is running full steam to us.”
“Sir, he’s slowing down and setting up his tripod and getting several cameras out of this bag.”
“Sir, he’s focusing his lens.”
That was our cue. We’d push the cyclic forward, pull up on the collective, gain some speed and lift off. We alternated at the controls, taking turns abusing the poor fella. One of us would spot the hapless sap’s location at one end of the field, and judging the furthest point from his location, we’d either cut the approach tight and pull back the throttles, or shoot long for the other end of the runway. We performed pass after pass, auto after auto, watching the cub photographer sweating through his clothing to get a picture of our mighty Navy war machine. This sophomoric little game of ours went on for about ten evolutions in the pattern.
July in Japan is hot and humid; not meant for running wind sprints up and down a runway, loaded up with camera gear. All three of us so-called mature Naval Aviators were beside ourselves laughing at the photographer’s sweaty misery. I guess there’s a mean streak in all of us. And like all mean people, we were about to get our comeuppance.
To be continued….
