I had seen the film ‘South Pacific’. I had also been to Fiji so I had no illusions about lying under palm trees by a golden beach being fanned by nubile dusky maidens in grass skirts. The road to the hotel was as I expected, lines of shelters with makeshift counters displaying various vegetables for sale being fumigated by the smoke from battered minibuses plying their trade. It got better as we approached the hotel with the residential properties either built on stilts or walls so as to keep the living area at first floor level. The hotel was run by Taiwanese Chinese, as were most of the businesses in Honiara. Fairly basic, the rooms had painted breeze block walls and a small balcony overlooking Ironbottom Sound where fairly large ships of the US and Australian Navy had been sent to the bottom by Japanese warships.
Honiara is in the island of Guadalcanal. The battle of Guadalcanal was where the Japanese were finally stopped and forced back during the Pacific war. It was all about an airfield that got the name Henderson Field, latterly Honiara International. The famous watchtower was still there as were the traces of 16 in. shell holes dug by the Japanese bombardments. Still sitting forlornly in the middle of the Honiara River estuary was a Japanese tank that was stopped half way across.
The operation itself was in support of the Australian and Kiwi police that were running law and order. There were new police stations built in various parts of the islands and they had to be supported much in the way that would be expected in a military operation,; ie, being supplied with food fuel and staff changeovers. The other task was SAR cover for the entire nation that was spread over hundreds of square miles. For this the aircraft had to be able to reach any point and return without refuelling. This was enabled by sponson tanks and a 300 litres crashproof tank in the cabin which gave it a 300 mile radius of action. In addition there was a winch, a night sun searchlight and the ability to carry 4,500 kilos under slung. One of the first things I had to do was
précis my considerable winching and load carrying experience and send it off to Canberra so that they could add those qualifications to my licence. There were two other Bell 212s belonging to a different company which used to look after the police stations in Guadalcanal itself. We were tasked by a civilian company that was contracted by the various governments to organise transportation for the whole RAMSI project.
Something new for me was GPS approaches. We had GPS for navigation but with a GPS approach there was slightly different equipment.
When one wished to carry out a GPS approach one would select the approach from the route library. The GPS would then check the there were at least four satellites in view during the whole approach and fifteen minutes after. On the final approach the beam bar sensitivity would be increased by a factor of four so that full scale was down to .25 of a mile. There were advisory heights being given to you but as the aircraft was not fitted with a three axis autopilot the Decision Height was as for a non precision approach. There was on airstrip in Malaita where the pattern was in a lagoon with 4,500 ft. hills on the shore. As you flew the crosswind pattern of the leg the top half of the radar would be red with ground returns until you got the command to turn on to the finals heading,
Honiara itself had one effective shopping street. The clothing stores were just a mass of clothing on hangers arranged in some sort of potential wearer’s sex and age. They were again run by Chinese and had a strange system of stock procurement. They would buy bales of clothing, by weight, from Taiwan. When the bale arrived it would be sorted into different items and then placed on the rails. One of the staff would be in a chair almost at ceiling level to ensure that any items were not nicked. Everything was incredibly cheap; a T shirt was about 10p, so there was this continuous rugby scrum until the stock was exhausted. The next day they would start again. There was one civilised coffee shop which was crammed with expats most of the day.
The longest regular trip we did was to Rennel Island. This was about 135 nm. south of Honiara. It had a few roads and an airstrip where the police camp was. They had a huge appetite for diesel and we used to take four of five drums there every week. Because there was no aviation fuel there we had to have round trip fuel plus all their rations and suchlike. This made us quite heavy; in fact, heavier than I had ever flown one before. The normal maximum weight in offshore service was 18,960 lbs. (8600 kg). For this trip we would depart at 20,000 lbs (9100 kg) which was still below its maximum USL weight of 9,200 kg but it was +30 degrees outside. Four or five drums would be in a net on the end of an eighty foot strop so that you could lose an engine up to pulling the load off the ground and still recover. After that I can still remember my brief to the co-pilot.
“If we lose a engine before 45 knots we bin the load and land straight ahead. If we lose the load after 45 knots but before 70 we bin it and fly off. If we lose it after 70 knots we fly over the sea and then we bin it.”
We would hover with about 97-98 % input torque which gave little power to go anywhere. However, talking nicely to the aircraft would persuade it to go in the right direction and once you got decent airspeed you were off. You then had to start a climb to 7,000 ft. get over the mountains to the south of the airfield. A clean aircraft would cruise at 125 knots at 7,000; with this lot hanging on underneath it could only manage 70 knots. Nature would sense which valley you were aiming to go through and would immediately block it with a cumulus cloud. There would than follow this game resembling enormous conkers where you were weaving between clouds and the mountain tops finding a way through. This is where my experience in Borneo paid off; in spades.
Once over the top one could descend to 1,000 ft. and get about 90 knots or so, so it was autopilot in, feet up and have a fag…………………………..