Chapter I

Part II

Mount Jefferson

89-26200

Friday, July 29^th, 1994

The word “Dead” was transmitted over the radio.  “Say again” someone else transmitted.  Immediately everyone began to speak up not only inside of our aircraft but also outside of the aircraft.  And at an altitude of 10,000 feet anybody listening on that frequency also heard the word Dead!

As soon as the word Dead was transmitted in the open our command post miles away at home station heard it over the radio; “This is the command post; understand the victim is a Delta?”  Oh no, this is not good.  Even as the new guy, I had a feeling nothing good was going to come of this as I listened to the chaos over the radios.  “Jolly 21, This is the command post; understand the victim is a Delta?” repeated the sergeant at our home station command post.  I could picture the chain of command standing behind the sergeant listening back home with anticipation.  Bullet responded with “standby.”  He was now trying to sort things out in flight between our flight of two helicopters and the sheriff’s helicopter and the local civilian rescue teams on the ground.  As to who actually transmitted the call in the open as to the victims alleged condition nobody admitted it.  Not that it mattered at this point because “Delta” was now being transmitted every couple of minutes.  Delta was our code word used over the radio in the clear for deceased. “What is going on Razor?” asked one of the PJs.  “Everyone quiet” he responded to our crew – “Understand we have a Delta?”  “What?”  “Who said that?” “How can you tell?”  “Who is with the victim and declared him a Delta?” these were just a fraction of the transmission made by the sheriff’s helicopter and civilian rescue teams on the ground and we could even hear the sheriff’s home station.  Basically all involved, these questions were even echoed between us inside.

“Jolly 21 flight this is the command post understand the victim is a Delta return to base immediately.” and just like that the mission came to an immediate halt.  Immediately the PJs expressed their strong desires to exit the aircraft onto the rocks to verify the climber’s condition.  I was all for it, let’s do it.  But I was just the co-pilot on number two and that meant that I was so far down on food chain when it came to making decisions it did not matter what I thought.  I also did not realize at the time many of the implications.  I asked “Ok so what is the big deal, let’s go get him dead or alive.”  I had always been trained never leave a man behind.  In the military, training beats into your head over and over again, never leave a man behind in combat alive or dead.  But this was not combat.

Another thing that I did not realize is that Air Force Regulations do not allow us to just pick up dead bodies.  As a rescue pilot I am only allowed to risk my life and the lives of my crew members to save a life.  I am not allowed to risk my life or the lives of my crew or any life on the ground assisting us just to recover a body.  I am not allowed to place anyone in harm’s way to recover a body without first receiving higher headquarters permission.  And that meant more time.  Time was something we were running out of on the mountain.  It was getting late and it would be dark soon and we did not have the fuel to wait for permission to recover a body.  

Razor knew no one would grant us permission to do this at night.  It is dangerous enough during the day.  Jolly 21 did the only thing they could, they inserted some of the civilian rescue team members as close as they could in hopes that they may be able to reach the climber and determine his condition first hand.  Then we heard; “Command post, Jolly 21 flight returning to base.” I am sure that was a tough call for Bullet to make being a sheriff himself in his civilian job.  And just like that the mission was over.  The victim was now presumed dead.  I remember feeling sad not only for the victim “May God rest his soul,” but also feeling sad for his family.  I am sure they were at the base of the mountain waiting on pins and needles for good news.

It was now getting dark in the cold shadows of the mountain and by the time we would reach Portland International it would most certainly be black of night.  “Crew let’s get ready to return to base and plan on an instrument approach recovery, FE please hand me the pubs kit,” said Razor with a bit of disgust under his breath.  Nobody wanted to go home especially the PJs.  As quiet professional everyone turned their attention to the task at hand outwardly, inside everyone was disgusted with the situation.

Tarzan handed Razor the pubs kit per his request as I started to load the coordinates to Portland International into our navigation system.  Moments later, Razor slammed the approach plates onto the radio console.  “What is your problem Razor!” I responded immediately. I knew he was upset that we were not given permission to continue with the mission, but did he have to throw things at me.  “You have to look at the approach plates to appreciate the joke.” Razor said.  I picked up the approach plates and the cover said Montana not Oregon.  “Well there must be another one in the kit for Oregon?” I responded.  Razor said “No! look for yourself!” as he shook his head and looked out his window no doubt thinking what an idiot his co-pilot was.  And I was. I had taken a pubs bag from an aircraft that had landed earlier in the day returning from a cross country flight from our sister squadron in Arizona.  The Oregon approach plates which were obviously used by the previous pilots for their approach into Portland were still in that aircraft.  No matter, it was still my fault for not taking the time to check the cockpit and the Pubs kit and verify it was complete and all the approach plates were accounted for.  No approach plates for Oregon meant we had no data on how to execute an instrument approach into Portland International or any other airport in the state of Oregon.  Another reason this was such a sore subject with Razor was that just two days earlier on a previous training flight together I had been counseled more like yelled at by Razor as my instructor pilot while we sat in a running helicopter in the middle of the runway at Scappoose Industrial Airpark for not brining the pubs kit on the flight.  Something he did not discover until we needed them to fly a practice instrument approach at the end of the training sortie.  My argument at the time was that it was Razor’s responsibility as the assigned aircraft commander. As a pilot in command in the Army I signed for everything including the copilot.  Razor’s argument was that it was my appointed duty as the assigned copilot, and he did not care how the Army did things!  It was a ridicules argument on my part because I was continuously comparing the way things were done in the Army to the way things were done in the Air Force.  In the end I was wrong, for not taking the time to transfer the original pubs kit which I signed for to the spare aircraft.  No matter, his point was well taken and I would never make that mistake again.  And ultimately learned to forget the way the Army did things and accepted a new way of doing business for the rest of my training.

Our solution was simple receive all of the data from Jolly 21 over the radio and Razor a seasoned instructor in the squadron had practically memorized the ILS into Portland International.  ILS stands for Instrument Landing System which is a precision runway approach aid based on two radio beams that allows you to navigate vertical and horizontal through the clouds down to the lowest possible altitude above the runway.

As we descended out of the mountains and approached Portland International it was now covered by a black moonless sky above and below you could only see a glow through the clouds beneath where you knew the large city was located.  A layer of clouds about thousand feet thick blanketed the city all the way down to minimums which is 200 feet above the runway.  Great minimums I thought what else can go wrong today?  As a former Army guy I could count on one hand how many times I had actually flown in a real cloud in the past ten years.  Needless to say in the Army Kiowa pilots considered flying in the clouds an emergency procedure.  With only one unreliable Non-Directional Beacon or NDB in my mighty OH-58A Kiowa I would still considered it an emergency procedure today.  An NDB is the least exact of instrument approaches.  

The Pave Hawk on the other hand is another story it is a cornucopia of instrumentation.  Onboard it has an ILS, a VOR, TACAN, ADF, and DME, not to mention Inertial Navigation, Doppler, and GPS, can you say Score!  “Crew standby for an instrument approach.”  Razor announced as he continued to set up all the radios I just mentioned with the proper frequencies while I flew the aircraft over the city descending from 6000 to 4000 feet.  As I continued to maneuver the aircraft under radar vectors from approach control Razor briefed the ILS approach.  All the while we could hear Jolly 21 being cleared for the ILS approach and being advised that an American Airlines 737 had just broken out at minimums.  We waited with anticipation.   “Jolly 22, Jolly 21 we just broke out at 200 feet and it is not getting any better, good luck see you on the ground.”  Upon hearing that Razor said; “I have the controls copilot back me up.  Approach control Jolly 22 is ready for the approach.” Approach control cleared us for the approach and Razor started his descent into the cloud layer below us.  Please break out, please break out, I thought to myself.  Not breaking out of the clouds at the bottom meant having to go-around.  This means begin an immediate climb to avoid hit the terrain or obstacles and request radar vectors for another attempt or divert to an alternate airport.  We were low on fuel so going to our alternate was the plan.  Our alternate airport was located just across the Columbia River on the Washington side and we had just enough fuel left to make it there with reserve.  I found it strange how the weather was always different just across the wide river.

It took me a while to get comfortable flying in the clouds some pilots describe it as flying inside a ping-pong ball.  It can be disorienting if you look outside, just fly the instruments, trust your instruments, and you will be just fine.  Again I thought to myself please break out!  At 200 feet we could barely make out the white rabbit lights, score!  They are a set of white strobe lights that give the appearance of moving in a straight line toward the end of the runway.  I call them beautiful.  As we punched out of the clouds just below minimums right over the runway I was exhausted.  As we taxied back to parking in the fog I could hear airplanes behind us on their approach calling a go-around.  We had shot our approach without a minute to spare.  Sitting there in the cockpit waiting for the rotor blades to come to a complete stop I was in awe at what we had just accomplished.  No survivor but the capability the United States Air Force has to rescue a survivor from any environment and in any weather condition, day or night is awesome.  I was tired and excited about what had just occurred, the only thing that would have made it a perfect day is if we could have found the climber alive.  And no buffoonery over the radios!  No survivor meant, no green feet for me today.

The next morning fresh crews were launched in search of the missing climber. Nothing.  They discovered the gully extremely raked by fallen rock and the climber could not be located.  Upon their return to base they asked Knuckles; “Are you sure you saw a body?” Doubt was beginning to circulate around squadron as to an actual sighting of a body. Knuckles a good old country boy later told me “I thought they were nuts, how could they not locate the body.” There was no doubt in his mind as to what he saw.  He saw a man at the bottom of a 1000 foot cliff lying head down on a giant boulder.  An investigation following a lawsuit was started.  It was later surmised that the body was swept down the gully into a crevasse.  Further recovery efforts were suspended due to the teeming rock fall.  

A register entry at the summit dated 28 July 1994 revealed that Larry Hermens did indeed summit Mount Jefferson but had expressed concerns about the descent.  He was 16 years old.

Monday morning maintenance called Razor and I over to see what little was little was left of the turbine engine and interior walls of the combustion chamber.  There was literally nothing left of the inside.  Little did we know at the time of the compressor stalls that three of four bolts that hold a metal cover over the External Stores Support System (ESSS) attachment points departed the aircraft and were sucked into the air-intake and ingested by the engine.  The Inlet Particle Separator or IPS blower sucks dirty air from the front of the engine and blows foreign objects overboard in order to prevent internal damage to the engine.  In our case you could see where the IPS blower managed to send one of the three bolts over board by the thread marks left on the internal walls of the blower.  That left two bolts unaccounted for and that was enough to destroy the engine.  Maintenance personnel were astonished that the engine held together and did not explode and possibly catching the aircraft on fire.   This incident was reported through both the operations and maintenance channels to higher headquarters and as a result the entire Pave Hawk fleet was grounded until each aircraft passed inspection of the same ESSS bolts.  To our astonishment the majority of the aircraft in the fleet had lose bolts and in few cases missing bolts.  This included most of our own Pave Hawks of which we owned a total of nine birds.  A fix was immediately implemented and the fleet returned to duty as soon as possible.  

During my walk back to the operations building after looking at the dissected engine, I was reliving in my mind what could have happened had the engine not held together but dismissed my catastrophic scenarios.  I just thanked God that the engine held together.  I was still excited about my new occupation.  I was excited because I had been part of a real mission and torn because we did not find the  missing climber alive.  My thoughts and prayers immediately turned to his family and friends for their loss.