North Sea Wessex suffered a fatal accident.
After Ben Breach's accident I took a S76A from Aberdeen to Yarmouth to make up the numbers. The attitude towards the job was totally different. Nobody wore uniform, they came to work in what appeared to be what they had come from doing the the gardening in. My area brief consisted of an A4 sheet with a diagram of the two gas fields we operated in with routes in and out and the Decca co-ordinates of the platforms.
I was given, and had to brief a cabin attendant who sat on the left hand seat. I programmed the waypoints and platforms into the Decca Tans and off I went.
500ft. to Bacton and picked up a few day trippers. The Tans told me which way to go to the Leman field and when I arrived it was about 200ft and half a mile. I used the radar to align myself with the field and carried on because a Wessex was plodding between the decks.
I was having to use the radar to approach a deck when the Wessex said something like he was going to the same place so I broke off the approach and exited the field to the north. I then turned in, reoriented to my map and started another approach.
There were a few fishing vessels I had seen on my travels and my track took me to the east of one these. As I passed it I noticed a glow high on my starboard side which became.
SHELL LEMAN
and there was a platform twice as big and high as the platforms I had been briefed about.
At that I pointed the aircraft at a clear part of the sea between the Leman field and Yarmouth and flew it back.
I didn't go back until I had had a COMPLETE area brief.