Flights into Guatanamo Bay

[Chiefttp]

I was a Gitmo qualified pilot and certified to teach the “Gitmo Arrival” I flew there many times in a C-141. As others have mentioned you could not go into Gitmo unless you were paired with another pilot who had been there before. We had a C-141 almost crash there in 1992. Ended up with a hard landing and tail scrape…he was lucky. Here is the crux of flying the “Gitmo Approach” to Rwy 10. The final approach was only 3/4 mile long. So your base leg had to be low, Think that a normal 3 degree glide path puts you 300 feet AGL at one mile. So your base leg had to be about 250 ft AGL. The field itself was on a bluff around 50 ft or so above sea level..so as your making your turn to final, you can’t really see the approach end of the runway. If you wait until you can see the runway, you’ll overshoot which opens up another can of worms….So the danger in flying this approach is rife with potential issues.
1. Your starting your turn to final without a clear view of the approach end of the runway
2. You have to make a low level banked turn to final which necessitates a very large power increase because your fully configured. This was one of the biggest issues pilots had going in there, they had no idea how much extra power was needed to maintain approach speed in a level turn, dirty.
3. The prevailing winds were usually from offshore, a right crosswind which also exasperated your lineup.
4. Task saturation and Tunnel vision. While the pilot should be concentrating on his airspeed and lineup, as he’s making a level turn to final with everything hanging out (gear, full flaps) They were eyes outside looking for the runway, which they wouldn’t see until almost lined up with it. So as they were looking outside, their airspeed would start to bleed off, and they would unconscionsly increase their bank angle sometimes to over 40 degrees, trying to line up. Setting up a high bank, low airspeed scenario.
5. If you did everything correctly and were on speed and lined up, you’d tend to be high crossing the threshold because it was not intuitive to descend during this phase. The runway was about 8400ft IIRC not terribly long..so some guys would dive her down and set up a sinkrate scenario as they were combatting the crosswind too.
6. A technique I thought was very helpful was to split duties during the approach. One pilot concentrated on airspeed control, while the other concentrated on lineup. This worked well.

As you can see, pretty demanding, especially in a older, large jet like a C-141,707 or DC-8. I flew C-17’s into Gitmo, and with a modern cockpit, HUD, and impressive short field capabilities, it was a “Piece of Cake” in that aircraft.