Of their many complaints about RAAF support – (or their perceived lack thereof) – by the Army when the RAAF provided the helicopter support, the one that drew the most passion from Army was the RAAF’s unwillingness to leave their air assets (usually Iroquois and Caribous) out in the field, right on the FEBA, overnight. (I think ‘FEBA’ might be an out of date term today?) In the late 70’s and into the 80’s, the RAAF bent overboard to accommodate the Army over this demand, so that we saw, (I think ridiculously), Caribou crews digging shell scrapes beside their aircraft before they retired for the night to get their ‘rest’.
There was a double bunger effect in this misguided policy.
(1) The Army unit the Caribou crews was supporting would be doing its (only) two weeks in the field for the year, after which, it would retire back to its base, take a week to clean and service its equipment before everyone went on a well-earned leave break after living rough in the field. The Caribou crews would return Richmond or Townsville (where their aircraft could be properly serviced, which they couldn’t in the field) and be back in the field with a different aeroplane two or three days later supporting another Army unit for two more weeks, and so on ad infinitum for the whole year.
(2) No one ever seemed to ask the question how any potential enemy could fail to miss the massive ‘mortar magnet’ of a Caribou tail (even camouflaged, as they attempted to do) sticking up like a bloody beacon in the countryside or how the poor bloody groundies could hope to do anything but the most basic servicing on their aircraft after dark in a tactical environment demanding no or minimal lighting.
(3) As unfashionable as it was to say it, (and continues to be to this day, it would seem), this left crews dangerously unrested when forced to fly day after day (and all too often, night after night, sometimes with NVGs) in very demanding circumstances. It’s a fact, not an opinion, that this ridiculous situation lead to the death of a very experienced Iroquois crew who were killed in a CFIT accident when approaching an aerodrome at night after attempting (the operative word being ‘attempting’) to rest during the day for days on end in tents in the middle of a busy Army encampment in near 50 degree heat.
What makes this old Army sticking point and myth (“the RAAF work Tuesday to Thursday, from 1030 to 1330 and insist on staying in five star hotels”) even more problematic is the equipment they’ve purchased since taking over the rotary wing element. Without exception, it’s been ultra high tech ‘hangar queen’ equipment that will demand a high level of expert maintenance on a daily basis and which will be almost impossible to do in the field - and much of this maintenance, thanks to the horribly misguided policy that a recently-retired CDF and some before him allowed to be implemented, saw much of the ADF’s maintenance ‘outsourced’ to civilian contractors.
I wait with bated breath to see if – or how – they’re going to get civilians living in the field to service the Tigers and MRH90s.
The end result will be that the glossy, plastic wunderfleigers will be, (just as the RAAF Iroquois and Caribous did 40 years ago), be returning to a main base most nights if not every night so that they can be kept operating. Surely to God they're not going to insist that C-27 crews dig themselves shell scraps and sleep under their aircraft wing as the Caribou crews did in the 80s and beyond?