Ya gotta love pilots
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Ya gotta love pilots
Not sure if this is the right place to post this video, or even if it is new here. But still: A baby chimp being rescued from poachers in the Congo and being flown to safety can’t help but make you love pilots. Thank you.
Gnome de PPRuNe
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: Too close to Croydon for comfort
Age: 60
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When he was searching for fleas, who was watching for traffic? 
Something that happened to me in 1966.
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..
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..
