View Full Version : Russian attempt to shoot down a Wessex
Cyclic Hotline
15th Jul 2018, 16:04
A rather interesting story. Anyone know any more about this?
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/07/14/soviet-warship-fired-royal-navy-helicopter-42-years-ago-foreign/
peterperfect
15th Jul 2018, 16:30
Events of that nature were not uncommon in that era. HMS Devonshire's Wx III was lost in December of that same year in a night take-off accident in the Bristol Channel when a short chain lashing was still attached near the tail wheel, the Flight Commander/P1 sadly perished as the aircraft lifted and back-flipped into the water. pp.
76fan
15th Jul 2018, 19:46
Earlier,1971, returning from the Med we got airborne in a Wessex 3 and circled and photographed a Sverdlov cruiser from the permitted height and range (which we had to estimate by eye). Every one of its guns followed us around .... I remember that it was a little uncomfortable but they didn't shoot!
Later, or the following year, like the above, I also got airborne at night from a DLG with the tail lashing still attached. It gave us a rather unexpected sharp pitch nose up but as I held it in the hover above the deck I was relieved, after a short delay, to hear that although we had got airborne with the nylon lashing attached it was not locked and had pulled free. Nobody's fault, just one of those things where the FDO had seen the lashing number clear away from the aircraft and believed the aircraft to be free. I guess we were lucky. That's the nature of accidents/incidents.
Got my own back on a Russian cruise ship in the mid-80s in Cyprus, firing red flares across his bow to stop him running over a sailing vessel in distress that he hadn't seen!
SASless
15th Jul 2018, 21:36
I should think the Russian Flares would have been described as "Red Rocket Flares" no matter their actual color!
bront
16th Jul 2018, 05:16
Later, or the following year, like the above, I also got airborne at night from a DLG with the tail lashing still attached. It gave us a rather unexpected sharp pitch nose up but as I held it in the hover above the deck I was relieved, after a short delay, to hear that although we had got airborne with the nylon lashing attached it was not locked and had pulled free. Nobody's fault, just one of those things where the FDO had seen the lashing number clear away from the aircraft and believed the aircraft to be free. I guess we were lucky. That's the nature of accidents/incidents.
WTF? Of course it was someone's fault, yours for not doing a walk around for starters!
John Eacott
16th Jul 2018, 05:24
WTF? Of course it was someone's fault, yours for not doing a walk around for starters!
Says someone who hasn't the faintest idea.
Shipboard operations have helicopters lashed to the deck during start and windup, with qualified ratings tasked to remove all lashings when signaled to do so by the FDO (marshaller to non Navy types). The ratings when clear of the helicopter hold up the removed lashings (tie-downs) and when checked the pilot is then cleared to take off. Since there are two lashings on the tail it would seem that the rating allocated removed only one and the FDO missed that in the dark.
SFA to do with 76fan and his preflight check :rolleyes:
John Eacott
16th Jul 2018, 05:30
Russian attempt to shoot down a Wessex
Journalistic nonsense yet again: it would take an exceptionally dull pilot to get hit by a flare! We would regularly check out the opposition during the Cold War, as they would check us: all part of the game. Sometimes one side or the other may get a bit carried away with a bit of a beat up, but for a flare to be potted off at an ASW helicopter would be the stuff of the Line Book. Hardly a diplomatic incident, IMO.
76fan
16th Jul 2018, 08:09
John, thanks for explaining that to bront. Sadly another case on pprune of a stupid comment made by someone with no experience of the subject.
steve_oc
16th Jul 2018, 11:45
Came back to the ship one night in my Lynx. No reply to radio calls and no response from the FDO, so I decided to go and hover alongside the port bridge wing to wake them up. At the same time, the Captain told the QM to go and fire a green Verey from the port bridge wing, which he did without looking to see if there was a helicopter in the way. It just missed.
S76 - yes but he forgot that the FDO is supposed to positively count each of the lashings and that is a process you can see from the cockpit. So there is fault to be owned by the rating, the FDO and the aircrew.
bront
16th Jul 2018, 13:01
Says someone who hasn't the faintest idea.
Shipboard operations have helicopters lashed to the deck during start and windup, with qualified ratings tasked to remove all lashings when signaled to do so by the FDO (marshaller to non Navy types). The ratings when clear of the helicopter hold up the removed lashings (tie-downs) and when checked the pilot is then cleared to take off. Since there are two lashings on the tail it would seem that the rating allocated removed only one and the FDO missed that in the dark.
SFA to do with 76fan and his preflight check :rolleyes:
Thanks John, point taken but it was definitely some one, or two's fault, or it wouldn't have happened. The rating and the FDO then.
Apologies 76fan, my bad.
76fan
16th Jul 2018, 13:41
Accepted bront. No harpoon or negative pitch on the Wessex, only the lashings to hold the aircraft down on a moving deck.
Crab. It was dark, the FDO saw the lashing number at the furthest point on the deck move away from the aircraft, You can't monitor all the lashing numbers from the cockpit of a Wessex at night when the aim is to get airborne as soon as possible after the lashings are removed from a deck which is moving about. You were a crab and therefore cannot have had much small ship experience. Helicopter operations from a small ship is a team effort and again you are apportioning blame without the experience of being there. It was my incident and I blame no-one ... so why should you think you know better now? I suggest you stick to what you know and stop trying to be clever on a daily basis.
Thomas coupling
16th Jul 2018, 14:32
76Fan - whoa there just a minute....
I AM small ships quailified and was the squadron QFI (RN) in my time for ship ops.
Two observations, if I may:
1. 1971 had a totally different perspective on flight safety- like there wasn't any!
2. It is always someone's fault when humans are involved and in this particular instance (or one remarkably like it), the situation arose where the rating(s) who were retrieving said lashings were not adequately trained. Two ratings went in under the disc that night - one for the front lashings and one for the tail lashings.
One of them couldn't undo the 2nd lashing fast enough - and so he removed only ONE lashing and returned to stand alongside the FDO and held up both ends of only one lashing which when counted by the pilot made the aircrew think there were four lashings removed.
The a/c launched and luckily the attached lashing snapped.
The rating was put on a disciplinary and removed from the ship. His defence being he was under extreme pressure to get in and out from under the disc and didn't think it mattered if one lashing (only) remained because he thought the a/c would be able to break free anyway. Badly trained deck crew and poor supervision by the FDO was the primary cause followed by additional contributory factors from the aircrew perspective.
PS: One doesn't need to be small deck qualified to be an SME on deck ops by the way, so go easy on Crab.
SASless
16th Jul 2018, 14:48
His defence being he was under extreme pressure to get in and out from under the disc and didn't think it mattered if one lashing (only) remained because he thought the a/c would be able to break free anyway.
Say What?
He should have told the truth....it would have sounded better!:ugh:
76fan - one of us was qualified and checked by NFSFRW (that's navy standards) to cascade deck landing training day and night to the RAF SARF - was it you????????
John Eacott
17th Jul 2018, 00:40
Let's look at this thread according to the way that operations were carried out at the time of the event, 1971: not 21st Century hindsight or even 1990s standards.
As TC says Flight Safety was a completely different kettle of canaries compared to today: even compared to the late 20th Century. Many incidents went either unreported or 'under' reported and after event dissemination was scarce as most of us who flew military back then can attest. The RN was probably the worst since the world wide operation with slower communications was such that signals could take days to work down through to the recipients. The easy way out was to not bother to share details following an incident outside the ship or squadron involved.
My logbook shows 305 day/115 night deck landings when I left, and one or three were certainly reportable incidents by todays standards. Those up the food chain decided otherwise and it was always dealt with at squadron level; such was the way of things in the 60s and earlier 70s.
What you say is true John but it doesn't excuse a personal attack when someone points out the correct procedure for deck ops.
Sandy Toad
17th Jul 2018, 11:50
Sorry Crab, what is Cascade Deck Landing on small ships?
SASless
17th Jul 2018, 14:22
Soft Shell Crab.....the shoe pinches a bit when it is on the other Foot!
This is Rotorheads remember!
SAS - not really since I don't make personal slurs (generally) and try to concentrate on the argument. And you know I am used to taking abuse from all sides:)
Sandy - the Deck Landing training was cascaded down from me to the Training Officers and QHIs on the SARF and then down to the pilots.
And I think HMS Clyde (on which much of the training took place) in the Falklands definitely counts as a small deck.
Sandy Toad
17th Jul 2018, 16:03
Crab, didn't realise you were using cascade as a verb, thought you were defining a type of deck landing - as in "stream" and one or two other "interesting" trials we did.....
Thomas coupling
17th Jul 2018, 19:59
A day in the life of....... (https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DHPheWEOc0e8&ved=0ahUKEwic8fnB9abcAhUHJ8AKHXnvDpAQuAIINjAH&usg=AOvVaw2LY0Gspzp8w69C0q6YMBIU)
That yellow Sea King has 'magic' chocks - they appear suddenly thanks to some sneaky editing!
John Eacott
17th Jul 2018, 23:33
That yellow Sea King has 'magic' chocks - they appear suddenly thanks to some sneaky editing!
and after the roll well forward of the pilot's sight line 'cos someone forgot to set the parking brake 'on' for a deck landing :p
Yes, they did forget the brakes but that forward sight line is the correct one for the Sea King - the other one is for Lynx:ok:
Senior Pilot
18th Jul 2018, 07:10
Yes, they did forget the brakes but that forward sight line is the correct one for the Sea King - the other one is for Lynx:ok:
So is it the pilot's eye line or the wheel line?
Well it's called the bum-line for the pilot to 'sit' himself on and the teaching was to run that under the handle on the outside of the pilots door - clearly there has to be some margin for error so if the wheels are on that line there is still adequate clearance for the tips at the front.
It is also slightly more comfortable to err forwards than back, since you don't have a crewman in the door giving 'con', to be sure the tail doesn't end up too far back.
John Eacott
18th Jul 2018, 11:35
Well it's called the bum-line for the pilot to 'sit' himself on and the teaching was to run that under the handle on the outside of the pilots door - clearly there has to be some margin for error so if the wheels are on that line there is still adequate clearance for the tips at the front.
It is also slightly more comfortable to err forwards than back, since you don't have a crewman in the door giving 'con', to be sure the tail doesn't end up too far back.
At 7:20 not only is there a crewman in the open door giving a con to the driver, but also waving to the adoring audience :hmm:
There shouldn't (IMO) be any erring off the pilot's sight line on a small deck: it would seem that after rolling forward the main gear finishes up on the sight line which puts the SK some 6-8ft forward of optimum and by default, the tip path that much closer to the ships superstructure. On many RFA decks we had about 12-15ft tip clearance to the hangar so we would land on the line: not fwd, and not aft, and all without the crew leaving their seats in the back.
Small ship decks have a lot more to their operation than seems to have filtered down over the years; 'Corporate Knowledge' is the buzzword for passing on experience.
Not saying they did it right John, and the procedure clearly dates the video from before 2010 which is when I was Standardised and then passed on the training which included landing on the bum line, no crewman in the door and putting the brakes on.
Up until 2010, there was little DL training except in the sim on the OCU as we had operated on the basis that RNSAR had - ie that a SAROP was a SAROP and could be treated as any other 'situation'. The grey funnel drivers realised, with more embarked ops happening, that everyone landing on a deck needed to be formally qualified - step forward (or was I pushed?) crab@...... but it's all water under the bridge now.......(see what I did there?):)
SASless
18th Jul 2018, 12:49
Even Crab's RAF Mates were trying to be rid of him by shipping him off to the RN!
Or....as Crab will tell it.....Best Man for the Job!
Sas, when the Gp Capt (full-bird Colonel to you) says 'get on with it', how much choice do you have?:)
The worst of it was how often I had to make the 16-hour flight down to the Falklands to train the pilots:{
Thomas coupling
18th Jul 2018, 22:21
Whereas, the RN treated SAR as a secodary role, the CRABS stood up a squadron of 200+ personnel, a Group Captain several Winko's and a fleet of 19 cabs just to do what we did during our lunch break. AND from a moving deck. The crabs did it from a 2 mile runway next to a hotel on Anglesey!
Had to get that one in - sorry Crab:D
SASless
18th Jul 2018, 23:31
he worst of it was how often I had to make the 16-hour flight down to the Falklands to train the pilotshttps://www.pprune.org/images/smilies/boohoo.gif
Think of all those Air Miles you accrued on Crab Air!
TC - have you forgotten 771 and Gannet SAR?:) I'm sure they would love to be remembered as 'part-timers' - not:)
The more tales I hear about the secondary role RNSAR (still working with ex-RN guys), the more I realise we got it right :ok: