The passing of an incredibly brave pilot.
Reading today's Melbourne `Age`newspaper and turned to the Obituaries page (as one does at my age). One was about a former Royal Air Force pilot and medico age 93 who died in England this month. He was Air Marshal Sir Geoffrey Dhenin.
What caught my eye was the story of him flying a Canberra bomber through the mushroom clouds of atomic bomb tests to gather radiation samples. For those who have never flown a Canberra it is a twin jet-engine bomber operated by a single pilot. It does not have an automatic pilot, nor a flight director and has only one artificial horizon and it can operate over 50,000 ft. Imagine hand flying IMC at that altitude. Lose the one and only AH and you are on limited panel with a vengeance. It's all about good training.
Here are a couple of edited extracts from his exploits:
In 1953 Britain undertook two atomic bomb test firings in the Australian desert at Maralinga 500 kms north of Woomera. When the first weapon detonated on Octover 13, Dhenin was already airborne in a Canberra at 30,000 ft. As soon as the mushroom cloud developed he turned towards it and placed a wing tip with sensor attached into the cloud to obtain radiation readings.
Using special instruments his observer calculated the probable dose rate. Once assured the rate "would not be suicidal", Dhenin turned for the centre of the mushroom cloud.
It was dark inside the cloud and the aircraft buffeted dramatically, but Dhenin was able to maintain control. The transit was successfully completed and he made two further passes through the cloud, one through the top and one through the base, before returning to Woomera. It was the first time that an aircraft had flown through a mushroom cloud.
The sortie ended for him and his crew with an ice-cold shower and a change of clothing. He later remarked "We have seen Dante's Inferno".
In 1957 he flew an RAF Canberra to Christmas Island in the Central Pacific to obtain samples from a nucleur explosion. He flew through that cloud at 50,000 ft to obtain radiation samples. Again - no autopilot and just raw data.
You need superb pure flying skills to do that.
During WW2 he served as a junior medical doctor on bomber stations in England. One night a Lancaster crashed near its airfield on return from a raid over Germany. Dhenin was immeditely on the scene to find the injured rear gunner trapped in his crushed turret. Although there was a high explosive bomb in the blazing wreckage, Dhenin administered medical aid as he and another airman tried to release the man.
For 30 minutes they worked in the intense heat before a crane arrived to lift the wreckage. Dhenin then crawled under the raised wreckage and released the gunner, one of only two survivors of the seven-man crew.
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I reflected on the immense bravery of the man and the skill of his flying a Canberra bomber through atomic clouds. Those were clouds infinately more dangerous than a Cu Nimb because of the tremendous heat inside the cloud and associated turbulence. Then I came home and switched on to Pprune and the first thing to hit me on the Oz forum was all gloom and doom and strike threats from Jetstar and Qantas pilots and I thought it would be a good idea to change the subject and write the story above. It's all relative, isn't it?