Heli story

[iainms]

I have been searching for the story the guy told of moving Gurkhas in the jungle, and the monkey that one brings on board ! Still smilling about it now!:ok: Any one know how I find it ?

[Senior Pilot]

It's in what's the most stupid thing a passenger has done (http://www.pprune.org/rotorheads/231004-whats-most-stupid-thing-passenger-has-done.html), Post 42 (http://www.pprune.org/4959543-post42.html) by Fareastdriver:

Borneo mid sixties. Operating with a Whirlwind HC1 (S55 with a jet engine to you Americans) on the border with Indonesia. I was flying solo, no crewman, shuttling Ghurkhas rotating from an FOB called Pensiangan to our main base at Sepulot. Loading was simple: Hold up four fingers when you land and four Ghurkhas run in with their kit. One thumps your leg when they are ready and off you go. They tend to collect things so they would carry other packs apart from their army kit so allowing 220lbs each for a Ghurkha base transfer was about right.

I picked up the last stick, only three of them. They had a lot of stuff but weight wasn’t a problem so off I went. I had just settled in the cruise when this gibbon climbed up through the left hand footwell. He climbed onto the seat and looked at me. Not liking what he saw he turned and started to launch out through the port window. Just as he was going out he looked down and realised that he was a thousand feet above the trees so he grabbed the cyclic and pulled himself back in again. Now both of us were looking UP at the trees.

He was now terrified so he jumped for comfort to the nearest human, i.e.me. In a flash he was wrapped round my shoulders and head and trying to strangle me. I got him off and as I pushed him back to the other side two sets of brown hands poked through the floor to recover him. One hand got hold of a leg but little gibbon wasn’t interested. There are lots of things to grab hold of if you don’t want to go out through the floor. Cyclics, collectives, speed select levers, HP cocks and he was having a go at most of them.

There was nothing I could do. I had clamped the collective so I had a hand free to fend off his attentions to the switches and cocks on the centre console. He wasn’t interested in going down and his keeper couldn’t get him down. The only thing I could do was put it on the ground and sort it out then.

There was a clearing with a sandy river bank ahead that I had used before so I set up the descent. As be passed through two hundred the gibbon started to take an interest in the scenery and fortunately the blokes downstairs did too so things calmed down a bit.

It was quite peaceful until we touched down and then the gibbon shook himself free and bolted through the port window. There was a screech as he passed the jet pipe but then he disappeared on all fours into the trees at ten o’clock. Two nanoseconds later a Ghurkha rocketed after him with his Armalite and disappeared into the same trees. I was now stuck. I couldn’t shut down as in Borneo a river can go from zero to twenty feet of water in five minutes and I didn’t have enough fuel to wait very long. After a minute or so I managed to get the attention of one of the other passengers and got him to climb up the side of the aircraft so I could shout at him.

He didn’t speak English so I pointed in the last known position of his mate and held out my hands in a query fashion. He gave me a thumbs up, spun a finger and pointed upwards. I repeated his sign language and he nodded and gave another thumbs up. With that he climbed back into the cabin and thumped my leg to show that they were ready. Not a lot I could do so I took off and flew to Sepulot.

We were living in the Ghurkha officer’s basher so I collared OC HQ Coy and told him what had happened. I described where I had left him but he wasn’t concerned. “He’ll be back tomorrow,” and he was. Complete with gibbon..

[iainms]

Brilliant :ok:

[ShyTorque]

It's a great story!

The Gurkhas in Belize obtained a big black billy goat which also turned out to be scared of helicopters. Having butted its way out of it's crate, it too ran away into the jungle.

But from a Puma helicopter at cruise altitude. OK, to be honest it plummeted - but it did try to run.

[SASless]

In a land far away many years ago, we got involved in the relocation of some villages to what was called strategic hamlets. That involved loading up the ol' Chinook with villagers, their belongings, waterfowl, chickens, pigs, and canines and flying them to their new and supposedly "safe" locale. You can imagine the fun this provided hauling all sorts of critters and people in a helicopter for their very first ride....all at one time.

When it came down to fetching the water buffalo, the Army came up with a novel idea. (Army Novel Ideas can be interesting!) They did not want to sling load the Water Buffalo's as they felt it would traumatize the poor critters thus the Army came up with a grand scheme. The Army fetched in some Vets (All Creatures Great and Small types), who drugged the Buff's so they would sleep the trip away. The plan was simple....land the Chinook with the Buff at the ramp....fire up the trusty cargo winch and drag slumbering Buff into the aircraft, throw a strap or two over the dozing critters, and away off to the Promised Land we went. At the landing site....a small truck with a heavy rope was used to drag the snoozing Buff off the aircraft and away we went for the next couple.

Several rounds into this we got the system working.....just like clockwork until we had to shut down for a quick maintenance break and refuel. We grabbed our next load of a single Buff and off we went. About halfway there....Buff woke up from a bad dream....figured out the bad dream was not as frightul as the nightmare extant. Add in the noise of the Chinook, the headache the poor critter had from the drugs, and some very sore hide from being dragged into the aircraft, and the next thing I knew I had two door gunners and a flight engineer crowding into the cockpit with the coey and myself. That was a bit awkward....but not nearly as awkward as when the Buff decided he wanted to take a tour of the cockpit to complete his orientation to US Army Helicopter Air Mobile Operations. This was topped by my very alert, motivated, but slightly less than mentally agile gunner who said he was going to shoot the Buff with his trusty dusty Army issued Colt 1911 .45 Caliber Automatic Pistol.

Next thing I know....I hear three loud reports from the pistol....animal sounds that cannot be described adequately....and the realization we had a most unhappy passenger who was complaining about the inflight service arrangements. Added to all of his other miseries, the poor Buff now had ear problems from the muzzle blast from the pistol and some dents in his armor plated noggin. Having seen enough of the cockpit, the Buff rearranged the cabin, spied the ramp exit opening luring him away from the cockpit and took a tour of the aft end of the helicopter.

About this time the LZ appeared and we landed without the usual flourishes and the flight engineer went out the passenger door up front and used the external access to the ramp control to lower the ramp. He said the last he saw of the Buff it was stampeding out of the village at a high rate of hay consumption heading west towards Laos.

I never hauled another Buffalo inside the Chinook after that.....and developed a very strong resistance to participating in anything preceded by Army Enlightened Thought if at all possible. From then on, the Buffs went by cargo net as an underslung load. They ran the whole way according to the flight engineers who watched them as the Buffs rode the net.

[Fareastdriver]

Late ninteen nineties a Japanese fishing crew was picked up hanging on the debris of their boat. Nobody believed their story and they were regarded as crazy or drunk. What actually happened was.....

A Russian Antonov freighter had completed a job in Japan and were flying back to the mother country. They had on board a bull that had been acquired to improve the stock of one of the crew's farming father. It had been sedated and tied down but as in Sasless's case it had woken up and broken free. It now had a total sense-of-humour failure and was charging around the hold intent on wrecking it. Having no guns or anything to protect themselves the crew depressurised and opened the ramp. The bull saw the light and made his escape for freedom.

Twenty thousand feet below there was this Japanese fishing boat.........

[22clipper]

Bit tamer than the tales to date but scary enough for civi street none the less. A couple I knew were into wildlife rehabilitation & my mate agreed to collect an eagle in his R22 for some TLC from his partner. About 10 minutes from home the eagle's bolt cutter of a beak made it's way through the cardboard fruit box chosen to transport the critter, followed shortly after by the head.
Moving from a closed, darkened cardboard box to a daylight lit R22 cockpit didn't exactly agree with the head & a talon escaped the confines of the box shortly after in a gesture of moral support. My acquaintance ran the scenario of a loose eagle sharing his cabin through the 'what if' mill &, like Sas, got this sudden urge to be on the ground, fortuantely R22 autos are notoriously quick.
Me, I'm very wary of any live cargo. Got talked into taking Santa to a fete once. I eyed the portly gent. He was a textbook shopping centre style Santa, red suit, cap, fake beard & a bell. I asked what he intended to do with the bell. "Ring it as you fly me in" he said. Now Christmas comes in summer down under so this was a 'doors off' sortie & the R22 tail rotor is on the pax side of the aircraft. I pocketed the cap, gave the fake whiskers a good tug to check security then tied the bell to his wrist with some rope, last thing I wanted was him loosing it in the direction of my tail rotor during an overly vigorous ringing session. I just had this mental 'what if' sound file running in my head of the music an 'R22 tail rotor - hand held bell' two piece orchestra would make, you know a short impromptu composition for tail rotor & bell, it wasn't that sweet a tune I figured.