DEREK'S STORY Episode 3 " Landing Sideways"

LANDING SIDEWAYS

Once I persuaded a brave, and luckily for me, very skillful, pilot to land in extremely high winds, in the middle of a thunder storm in the middle of a very dark night. I swear to this day we landed across the main runway at Salisbury Airport. It was, without doubt, the most frightening landing I ever did – with a parachute, or in a plane.

Freefall ops were sometimes mounted from forward airfields. This necessitated me, and whichever PJI was available, to board an Islander and fly with the troops involved, to the forward airfield. Here we would grab the Fire Force Dakota, brief the pilots, stick all the maps and photographs to the floor of the aircraft, and finally carry out the sortie.

This happened quite a few times. On this occasion, the operation was mounted from Buffalo Range, and the drop took place deep inside Mozambique. The only prickle was I had to return to New Sarum for another operation which was due to be mounted the next day (as I may have mentioned several dozen times, we were always frantically busy.)

However, after carrying out the first drop, a line of thunderstorms rolled in between Buffalo Range and New Sarum. This made flying home a difficult, and possibly dangerous, scenario. However, due to the urgency of the op. the next day, I managed to talk the Islander pilot into flying me back to New Sarum and into the afore-mentioned landing. As we skidded across the runway, I said, what I was certain were, my final prayers.  But, somehow, we survived and the next morning, early morning parachuting took place on our training D.Z. as planned. And that night I headed North, this time to drop more H.A.L.O. troops deep inside Northern Mozambique territory. The War waited for no man.

This photograph is of a 3 Squadron Rhodesian Air Force Britten Norman Islander and it is painted with  the usual Anti Strella missile paint of the time. These aircraft were used in the courier type role and I flew in them on numerous occasions to various forward airfields.  I would then use the Dakota on station  for the HALO operations. After I was posted to Air Force Head Quarters I often persuaded a fellow desk bound warrior to fly me in one of these aircraft to visit the various Forward Airfields. On one occasion we flew into FAF1 (Forward Air Field 1) at Wankie and on the return trip we had a full load of passengers in the back. The Skipper fired up the engines and taxied out to the end of the runway. I was looking at the map to see which heading we were going to take for our trip to FAF2 at Kariba when the Skipper said to me "O.K. she is all yours", put his hands on his head and ducked below the instrument panel. I being a cocky PJI said " Fine".folded my map grabbed the throttle levers and pushed them to the stops. I had not locked my seat and it slid back, so I could not reach the rudder peddles,' OOPS'. The aircraft swung to starboard and started to go off the runway. No problem - I just reduced power to the port engine, straightened the aircraft up pointing down the runway before re-applying full power and took off. I might add that  the ten passengers were not amused and a few of them thought their last day had arrived. They all knew me as one of those silly PJI's who jumped out of serviceable aircraft and now one was flying them. What Next??    


 All free fall (HALO) operations were dispatched by an officer PJI, because it was a hell of a responsibility, and the person responsible also had to do the navigation.  As more PJIs became commissioned officers I started to delegate more of these tasks to them and on all occasions they did a magnificent job. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, we were working in the pre-sat.nav days and had to rely on map-reading, common-sense and our eye-sight to get us from point A to point B.

 On one of these freefall operations, the station commander at New Sarum,  Group Captain Len Pink, and Bernie Vaughn, the Navigation Leader  from 5 Squadron Canberra Bombers, came with us clutching a suitcase-sized, black box. I did my usual thing, sticking maps and photographs onto the Dak floor, checking the oxygen bottles and oxygen masks etc. Then, with the pilots up front co- operating magnificently as usual, we flew our course via the various turning points I’d pre-selected.

This flight really sticks in my mind because the temperature outside the Dak was minus 40 degrees C.  With the heaters on max up front, the passengers and crew were relatively warm. But I was absolutely freezing and really hated everyone else on board for the duration of the flight.

After leaving our final IP, we ran in, using our usual method, ie. a good-old-fashioned stop-watch. When we reached our pre-selected DZ, a relatively clear space amongst the trees, 20,000 feet below, I dispatched the free fall box and the troops followed.  Everything went fine, and the troops landed spot- on target with the box conveniently near-by.

It was only later I discovered that the black box was, in fact, the fore-runner of the modern GPS. I received a pat on the back from the navigator and the station commander, and gave myself on too. The troops were delivered absolutely on target. Not bad for a PJI with self-taught navigation skills.

 Did you know we were real greenies in the Rhodesian Airforce? We sometimes flew out of Mabalahuta. This airfield was unusual because there was a large tree dead in line with the runway. Everybody was reluctant to remove it – it was a very nice tree and also provided a certain challenge to the pilots. Aircraft had to dodge around it in order to take off or land.

Soon enough a pilot didn’t dodge quite far-enough and the Dakota actually hit the tree with a wing tip. The tree was fine but the end of the wing was rather dented. No need to panic. Control was maintained and we did the op. Upon return, a tech simply got out and chopped the bent bit of wing off with a hacksaw. The tree was subsequently removed with a small amount of plastic explosive and some det cord. We may have been occasional greenies, but, as usual the PJIs would find the easy way to do things.