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  I had struck up a great friendship with Stork. When he discovered my second preference was to fly the Mirage fighters – another elite aircraft in the RAAF – he warned me against it. He said, given my personality, I’d get bored in the fighters because all they do is shoot bullets and drop bombs. Also, the waiting list to get a command on a C-130 Hercules – the planes that do most of the interesting foreign assignments – was too long. He said I should apply for 38 Squadron, flying Caribous.

  The Caribou is a medium-sized, twin radial engine, propeller-driven STOL transport aircraft. (STOL means ‘short take-off and landing’.) They can carry a large load and they have remarkably complex flight controls enabling them to take off and land on 300 metre–long runways – very short in aviation terms. The Caribou’s large tyres can be deflated to 20 psi, which means that if a four-wheel-drive vehicle can drive over a surface the Caribou can land on it! It’s for all these reasons that the Caribou was the Australian Army aircraft of choice for the front lines of Vietnam and for the untamed jungles of New Guinea.

  Stork said, ‘Caribous are exciting – you’ll work the aircraft to its limits. The flying is diverse and fascinating, and you’ll have your command within six months.’

  I applied for F-111s but there were still no slots. So I said, ‘I’ll take Caribous.’

  CHAPTER 4

  Wombat Airlines

  The de Havilland Canada DHC-4 Caribou is a Canadian ‘tactical’ transport plane that first saw service in the Australian military in 1964, in Vietnam. Its 4-tonne payload permitted these aircraft to carry two large Army Land Rovers or an equivalent weight of artillery pieces, but, during my time, the Caribou was mostly used in tactical roles such as carrying supplies to remote villages in New Guinea and supporting Australia’s Special Forces.

  The Australian armed forces loved the Caribous; they were strong and enjoyed a dignified career. When I undertook my Caribou conversion course in 1980, there were plans back then to retire the aircraft and find a replacement, but a capable replacement was never found and the aircraft served for another 30 years. Of the initial 29 Caribous that entered RAAF service during the Vietnam War, eleven were still in service when they were decommissioned in 2010.

  The Caribou was powered by two 1450-horsepower Pratt & Whitney radial piston engines. These were classic engines that proved to be powerful, reliable and simple to maintain. But like all supercharged engines, they needed to be treated with great respect. So the Caribou conversion course included lots of theory about engine design and operation – radial engines contain many heavy rotating parts that could be damaged by under-boosting just as much as over-boosting. The engine start was just as critical. Three long-stemmed switches needed to be ‘tickled’ in the correct timing sequence to start the cranking, fuel pump and ignition – get it wrong and everyone within 200 metres would hear the explosion and see the flames. I have very fond memories of the P&W engines, and I think I am wiser for the experience because the principles we learned then can be applied to any engine, even jet engines.

  The Caribou had remarkably impressive performance. The high wing allowed for operation on narrow and makeshift runways while the high tail section meant an easy-access cargo door could be lowered at the rear of the aircraft, whether on the ground or airborne. This 15,400-kilogram aircraft could take off and land on 300 metres of unprepared strip (a standard Boeing 737 or Airbus A320 requires a minimum take-off and landing distance of 1700 and 1400 metres respectively). Some of the places I operated into during my years with 38 Squadron tested this famous STOL capacity to its limits. We were trained to operate into these runways at night using only six runway lights: two at each threshold and two along the left side of the runway. In reality there were few runways we operated into that were 300 metres short, but we were trained for the worst case so we never felt stressed when operating into limiting airfields.

  Unlike most aircraft, the propellers on the Caribou’s engines could be put into reverse. This feature is used to reverse the aircraft on the tarmac, but its main benefit is to reduce stopping distances. It also reduced airflow and lift on the main wing. You might engage the propellers into reverse during landing if you find yourself ‘floating’ down the runway and unable to put it down on the ground quickly – but you have to be mindful of the effects: you would drop like a brick if the wheels were higher than two feet above the ground.

  For such a basic plane, the Caribou had very complex flight controls. But once you were airborne it had an effective operational ceiling of just 10,000 feet because the cabin wasn’t pressurised. The super-charged engines could have powered us higher, but on those occasions where we did ‘push the envelope’ and climbed up to 20,000 feet, the cold limited our enthusiasm – our fingers and feet froze, and everyone needed oxygen masks.

  The Caribou was a fabulous machine to develop ‘hands-on’ flying skills. It had no radar, so we couldn’t see embedded ­thunder­storms in front of us, and it had no autopilot to fly us through turbulence. We ‘rigged for rough running’ – disconnecting the HF aerial from the receiver and tying everything down for the ensuing roller coaster ride – whenever we thought we might be about to enter the ‘twilight zone’ in a thunderstorm. We also had primitive navigation equipment. When outside the range of our radio navigational aids, we navigated over water by flying at 100 feet and used the Beaufort scale to calculate wind speed. Over the desert, we calculated our drift angle by pressing a soft pencil to the window to track an object abeam us on the horizon. It doesn’t get any simpler than that!

  New Guinea was the theatre in which the Caribou and its pilots’ skills were proved. Many of our landings were onto short, soft runways carved out of the jungle and the hillside. We could land and take off from any runway, but if we suffered an engine failure the remaining engine provided insufficient per­formance to climb out of the valleys and over the 14,000 foot-high mountains. The safety height to clear all obstacles was up to 15,000 feet, well above our single-engine performance ceiling. So for most of our flying in New Guinea, we had to stay under the cloud – and therein lay the challenge. Anyone who’s lived in Papua New Guinea will tell you that to fly under cloud in the interior of that mountainous country means flying through narrowing valleys and finding saddles that you can either leap over or you have to evade. We had to know our aircraft’s evasive 180-degree turn potential – get this wrong and you’d be dead.

  Our navigation in New Guinea was completely visual, the co-pilot thumbing his way along a topographical strip map as we traversed valleys, always below the cloud base. To enter cloud would be to enter a no-man’s land of zero visibility, and those who did would have sweated, knowing that sighting a tree in the fog would be an ominous warning that you had seconds to live before slamming into the side of a mountain.

  One of the most challenging and rewarding runways we operated into was Tapini. Located in the Owen Stanley Ranges in New Guinea at 3100 feet above sea level, Tapini was a native village with no access roads and no telephone or electricity. It’s just an isolated village with an undulating boggy grass runway cut out of the jungle into the side of a sticky red clay mountain.

  We operated Caribous in Tapini using performance standards and procedures that would never be permitted by civil regulators. The mixture of high altitude, low performance, short runways and high temperatures meant we had to operate with extreme rules if we were to operate at all. At 2000 feet (660 metres), Tapini’s runway was long enough, but the ­Caribou’s engine performance in the tropics at 8000 feet, par­ticularly on one engine, was appalling.

  We created our own flight plans, maps and instructions to get to Tapini. These were surprisingly simple, just showing Tapini as a cross on a hillside. To land at Tapini we navigated under the cloud – along the valleys, over the saddles to the ‘entry point’ where we met, then followed, a descending goat track along an escarpment off our right wing. At the point where the goat track diverged, we’d bank hard left, fly around a ridge, and only then would we expect
to see Tapini a short distance ahead. Descending with the goat track put us at the right height; turning at the goat track marker put us on the runway centreline. No radios, no electronic guidance, no air traffic control clearances. The challenge didn’t end when we touched down – the runway dipped down initially then climbed at a 15 per cent gradient up to the far end of the runway. So after touchdown we had to put on a lot of power to drive up the steep slope to the end of the runway, quickly do a 90-degree turn to stop sideways, then shut down. Magic!

  The take-off at Tapini was more dramatic – a 600-metre dash downhill initially, then uphill for the last part of the runway, then over a cliff, at which point we became airborne as the ground disappeared below. A quick turn down-valley and we’re looking down thousands of feet to the valley floor. That’s if everything went perfectly.

  The Caribou’s performance at take-off was a remarkable learning curve, something that I still appreciate today. For us, the biggest challenge was the ‘dead zone’ – a portion of the runway from where (if an engine fails on take-off) there’s not enough runway remaining to continue to accelerate on one engine and take off, and not enough to brake and stop before the end of the runway. How did we handle it? The captain’s take-off brief included: ‘If we have an engine failure between tree number 1 [pointing to it] and tree number 2 [pointing to it], then we can’t stop on the remaining runway and we can’t continue a take-off on one engine. So in this case I’ll steer the aircraft into that ditch or drive it between those two trees to rip the wings off and stop us.’ The dangers of flying Caribous in New Guinea were very real and in the time they operated there, there were two crashes, one fatal.

  As well as our operations in New Guinea, we supported the Special Air Service (SAS), who were based at Swanbourne Barracks in Western Australia. Our assignment was to take them out to Corrigin in the Western Australian interior and then support them in their low-altitude parachute runs. The lowest height a parachutist can open their chute is about 500 feet, which is too high for a stealth approach (under radar and enemy fire) to a drop zone. So we’d practise flying over the treetops at 100 feet, finishing with a perfectly timed 2-G pull-up, and followed by an almost zero-G ‘bunt-over’. The loadmaster then helped the soldiers get out through the rear cargo door as fast as possible. The pull-up had to be managed precisely as the heavily laden soldiers, who were standing ready for their jump, couldn’t handle more than 2-Gs of acceleration. Too much G during the pull-up and they’d collapse to the floor. The bunt-over at the top of the ascent also had to be flown carefully because the soldiers would become almost weightless. If we pushed our control column forward too aggressively, then there would be too little G in the bunt and they’d float weightlessly into a position that would be impossible to recover from when the G came back on – nasty!

  I learned some valuable lessons in terms of leadership and responsibility during my operations with the SAS. The flying was exhilarating, and a good example of how the services (Army and Air Force) have to coordinate and work very closely with one another. When you start your flying career you are focused only on the aeroplane – keeping it in the air, getting the take-offs and landings right, and navigating correctly. But once you transition to an operational squadron your focus broadens. It is assumed you can fly your aircraft well – indeed you are expected to fly it to its limits – and you’re expected to bring the aircraft back in one piece, but the aircraft is now just a tool, a means to an end. In the military it’s all about the mission – you have to deliver. You’re responsible for the aircraft, the passengers and the task. The SAS put their ultimate trust in you and expected you to fly the right path and profile to support their low-altitude jumps. It’s your job to dovetail their requirements with the aircraft’s capabilities to keep the operation safe.

  I was 22 years old, and that was young to be taking charge of the lives of 30 SAS jumpers and their instructors in a tactical environment. I loved it! Perhaps the RAAF psychologists knew more about me then than I knew about myself.

  We had some great times relaxing as well. One afternoon when we’d been in the bush with the SAS for almost two weeks, the other guys in my crew wanted to go further east for the weekend, to a gymkhana on a property a few hundred miles away in the desert south of Kalgoorlie. I wanted the detachment to relax at this rodeo near Kalgoorlie – where there’d be plenty of entertainment and fun – so I suggested to the SAS commander, ‘I’d love to give the guys a break, but how can we achieve this?’

  He smiled and replied, ‘I think we need to do some more practice jumps in the desert, it’s the perfect training terrain.’

  So we flew to the property, spent Saturday doing parachute drops, then let the boys enjoy the gymkhana for the rest of the weekend.

  The RAAF crews contained a lot of characters. Light-hearted times were important in order to balance the confronting reality of life in both the army and the air force. We were often reminded how small the gap between life and death was. Dave ‘Cass’ Cassebohm deserves an honourable mention as an RAAF legend for his remarkable escape from an aircraft crash. On 19 March 1968, Cass was in a Sabre fighter armed with rockets taking off from Butterworth airport in Malaysia. He was passing the end of the runway at 50 feet when the engine failed. He flew under 30,000 volt power wires then ploughed into the paddy field in front and stopped in an irrigation ditch. The jet was engulfed by fire. All the evidence suggested that he should have died from impact forces and the post-crash fire.

  As fate would have it, Cass had been in a special safety briefing immediately before his crash. The briefing discussed a new technique for minimising body overshoots during car and aircraft crashes. When a severe impact was imminent, the theory recommended the victims put their feet up high, and then bury their faces into their hands, and their hands against their knees. An hour later as Cass’s fighter skidded off the runway, he jammed his feet hard against the rudder pedals and pushed his forearms against the instrument panel. He then braced for impact by burying his head into his arms. The plane slammed into the paddy field; Cass took one look up during the deceleration to see mud and grass flying overhead the canopy. The missiles disappeared down into the mud.

  The aircraft was destroyed. The deceleration forces were extraordinary: the aircraft’s oxygen cylinder tore free from its metal mounts, punctured the fuselage then ended up 30 metres in front of the wreck. Cass survived uninjured. He was able to extract himself through the small gap in the canopy only after taking his helmet off, and then escaped to safety.

  Cass’s Sabre crash was the first time the hands and feet technique was used, and proven successful. The professor who had given that briefing became an internationally recognised expert in crash survival. His theory and Cass’s experience became the reference points for the crash survival techniques that are taught today. Every time you fly, think of Cass when you observe the ‘brace’ instructions as part of the cabin crew’s pre-flight safety announcement and hope you don’t have to use them.

  Many people don’t realise the extent to which aviation safety relies on experience being passed person-to-person in a crew room or over a beer. In an age where planes run on auto-pilot and flight computer systems, the interaction of peers and mentors is still one of the most important learning tools.

  CHAPTER 5

  Aide-de-Camp

  After eighteen months flying Caribous and having the time of my life, I was promoted to flight lieutenant.

  Nonetheless, I was starting to get frustrated with my career progression. The Caribou flying was great but I didn’t want to continue flying it for too long – the technology was getting old and I was still not getting any closer to flying the aircraft of my dreams – the F-111. There was also a lot of bureaucracy for pilots in the RAAF – paperwork, reports, secondary duties – and I wanted to stretch myself more. I wanted more responsibility and more authority. I figured if I couldn’t get this through a conventional flying posting I’d get it by jumping the queue and mixing with the crème de la
crème of the bureaucracy. So I decided to be an aide-de-camp (ADC). Two positions were available at the time – the ADC to the chief of the Defence Force or the ADC to the governor-general. The decision was easy.

  In the middle of 1981 I made an appointment with Ian Mallett, my postings officer at Canberra. I had a long chat with Ian, telling him I wanted a greater challenge. I still wanted to fly the F-111, but if this was not possible then I wanted to be an ADC.

  Ian said: ‘You mean ADC to the chief of the Defence Force?’ And I said, ‘No, ADC to the governor-general. It’s the governor-general or nothing.’

  Ian was surprised. Few if any pilots ever show an interest in being an ADC. They mostly regard the position as a useless ground job, full of ceremony. Ian was also slightly reluctant about my request. He was supposed to talk to me about options and ‘broadening horizons’ – all that excellent career stuff – but his job, to a large extent, was really to ensure that people who’d been put through the multimillion-dollar RAAF Academy and pilot training were kept busy in the profession for which they’d been equipped, which, for me, was flying the SAS around in a Caribou.

  Nonetheless, the RAAF relented and I was dispatched to Government House in Canberra as one of three candidates. The other two were close friends and we worked out very quickly, while waiting in the anteroom, that I was the only one who really wanted the job (one friend pulled out when he discovered the job was so busy you had to remain single for the duration). After a day of interviews with the governor-general, Sir Zelman Cowen, and the other official staff, I was offered the position of being the Air Force ADC to the governor-general.

  I reported to Government House in February 1982 armed with a new wardrobe – uniforms with aiguillettes, business suits, white mess dress, black tie and tails – ready and eager to take my career in an entirely new direction. Each of the armed services provided an ADC, so the Army and Navy ADCs and I planned the schedules of the governor-general and accompanied him on all engagements. We had ‘high-tech’ equipment in 1982: a telephone pager and a first-generation fax machine.