Great thread!
I experienced several spurious fire warnings in the Sea King - in the hover at high ambient temps, dipping down around Rosie Roads mostly. Confirming an actual fire was part of our emergency response for sure but I can't recall if it was well laid out in the checklist.
I do recall having an actual electrical fire inside the sonar dome control box at the AESOP station during a practice IFR approach in VMC. Cabin filled with smoke and we declared a mayday and landed on a nearby beach. Of course, the base went nuclear, ringing the crash bells, etc. We were fine on the beach, where the Aesops hauled the box out and tossed it out the door and we sat with the rotors turning until it stopped smoking, trying to get comms with the base...
A couple of observations though:
I have noticed that some RFMs have excellent definitions of land as soon as practicable, possible and immediately and others are quite vague, also that some have just practicable and possible and no immediately.
I have also noticed that some aviation "communities" have great emergency handling theory and others do not. When I flew the big grey pigs we were taught to approach emergencies in a four part process:
1. Initial actions
2. Analysis
3. Corrective Action
4. Follow up
Initial actions were essentially "fly the aircraft" meaning get to a safe regime of flight where attention could be given to the emergency without adding risk.
Analysis meant "what do you see?" and involved calling the indications and deciding what the actual emergency was.
Corrective action meant getting in the checklist and following the procedures within.
Follow up involved determining what effect the emergency will have on the mission and where we would recover and how. It also included a discussion on what was the next worst thing that could happen so we could look through that checklist and choose our recovery plan accordingly.
Now, we were military and shipborne so this may seem an onerous process but I have used it since in several different aircraft to inject calm and order into a stressful inflight incident. Of course, some emergencies will leave you no time to work through these steps as a hands and feet response will be required RFN to save the ship! Oh well.
Bah, sorry this got so wordy!
V7