Lonely looking sky

The Bronco, no, we are not talking here about untrained horses used in rodeos whose sole purpose seems to be to unseat unwelcome riders, but something nearly as famous: the Rockwell OV-10 Bronco, a twin-engine turbine-prop aircraft. This is probably the only airplane in the Air Force inventory that can “do it all”. This airplane can fire missiles and Gatling guns just as easily as it can be transformed to carry small amounts of cargo or even a few paratroopers or drop life rafts for shipwrecked people in the sea. Back then, however, that day in 1978, we were not asked to do anything as glamorous as saving people from sinking ships. Instead, three of us had been sent to Wichita Kansas in the middle of the winter to collect three refurbished Broncos and ferry them back to Florida. We were supposed to form a formation of three after take-off; alas, right from the start things did not go exactly according to plan.

I watched as the first two Broncos, freshly repainted in regulation green, began their roll over the surprisingly narrow runway, disturbing the early morning snow piled up on either side of the runway. They left a trail of shimmering icy mist in their wake, illuminated and sparkling in the early morning sun in sharp contrast to the drab building on the other side of the apron. As soon as the two planes, one after another had literally jumped into the freezing air with ease, I saw their landing gears fold back within the fuselage and then gain speed rapidly. At the end of the runway, the lead plane banked hard at full climb power and made a sharp right turn towards the south-east.

Damn,I thought, or maybe it was something more profane - he wasn’t supposed to do that, he was supposed to hold at least one minute upwind and only then begin his one-eighty degree turn. Being last I was the one supposed to turn sharp to allow me time to catch up and join the formation.

‘The radio cracked alive in my helmet as I heard ground control say, ‘Purple zero-seven, hold for incoming traffic, you’re cleared for take-off as soon as the flight of three Cessna T-37’s has cleared the active.’

‘Roger, cleared for take-off after traffic.’ Great, I thought, that will be another eight minutes before I’m airborne. It was in fact, I noted, a full twelve minutes before I would join the lonely sky in search for the other two planes, now well on their way from the Wichita Kansas to Ford Smith along the Arkansas River. I contacted the lead plane flown by Roger McKenneth, an older experienced pilot who had spent his time in Vietnam and Cambodia flying missions for the famous or maybe infamous Air America during the war; a good and caring sort of a man but discipline was not part of his vocabulary. I heard him say he was climbing from sixteen thousand feet to flight level two-ono-zero or twenty-one thousand feet for mere mortals; I too was now climbing steadily, with the two Garrett T-76 engines on either side of me burning with a comforting hiss. I did not see the two planes but I knew they were somewhere out there quite far ahead of me and still climbing. For a while, I listened to their animated chit chat and commenting on the snowy vastness below us… yeah, tell me about it. By the time I levelled off at twenty-one thousand feet and breathing in my oxygen mask I noted the outside temperature - minus 48 degrees Celsius. Inside it wasn’t all that pleasant either, a mere fifteen degrees but the sun radiating through the Plexiglas felt warm and comforting. I followed the needles on the two VORTACS, the navigational aids that keep the aircraft on track and became aware that my course seemed to have shifted to a more northerly course than was planned on my IFR flight plan. I now also noticed with some consternation that both needles were now swaying lazily from left to right as if they were chasing any signal they could get hold of. For how long had they been feeding me with erroneous information? I called the lead plane and asked what heading he was on but there was no answer. It began to occur to me that I hadn’t heard any radio transmissions for quite a while. I tuned in Tulsa ATC - Air Traffic Control - expecting a flurry of verbal activity but there too the radios remained ominously silent, it did not matter which radio I used or which station I tuned in to, there was only silence. Only now did it begin to register on me that in likelihood I had become an aircraft without any form of communication or navigation… in fact, the whole system had gone dead; I was no more than an insignificant bleep on someone’s radar, like a ghost, flying somewhere over a frozen landscape, and more to the urgent point… where the hell was I? Where had this dysfunctional system taken me?

I turned the dials on the altitude encoding transponder and punched in Seven-Six-zero-zero, telling whoever might be receiving the signal that I was an aircraft suffering complete radio and navigational failure. I didn’t hold much hope however that anyone would see the distress signal… I was clearly suffering a general electronic failure; apart from the engines doing their job with faithful perfection, the silence was both deafening and disconcerting. I was sitting in a tight cockpit surrounded by Plexiglas allowing for an amazing but disconcerting all-round view, a bit like being strapped onto a chair hurtling through space into the unknown.

Below me lay the Kansas, or perhaps the Arkansas countryside, endless and frozen, covered in a blanket of snow. To my right, presumably Tulsa, the sky had taken on an ominous colour of lead, a sure sign of an approaching snowstorm, the east too began to darken; only the north still looked reassuringly sunny, but for how long? Somewhere in the back of my head, I heard Neil Diamond’s song, “Lonely looking Sky”, Yes, it could barely be more lonely, my formation mates had long since disappeared on their way to Ford Smith if they had not been diverted to Fayetteville. The radios had died and I was sitting on a two thousand horsepower bucking Bronco that was asking, “Where to boss?” Yes, where too indeed? I knew I was off course and only had a very vague idea of my position somewhere in the sky at twenty-one thousand feet sucking in a limited supply of oxygen that would run out as surely as my fuel would run out.

I could see the weather closing in and “guestimated” – we pilots do that sort of thing rather a lot - that within thirty minutes I would be swallowed up into the clouds and go IFR, (Instrument Flight Rules) and that was something I couldn’t allow to happen under the circumstances.

All pilots flying above eighteen thousand feet are required to file an Instrument Flight Plan and of course, they have to be instrument rated, capable of flying instrument approaches into an airport in rain, snow or sleet with a cloud layer down to two hundred feet above ground level or less depending on category…  Fortunately, however, I still had visual contact with the landscape below me or the situation could have become quite grim.

Funny things began to creep into my mind at that stage, I had the option to eject but one look at the thermometer, now indicating a menacing minus 49 degrees Celsius, would make any sane person think twice, not to mention the barely more inviting temperature upon landing, a balmy minus twenty-six. Anyway, why would I leave an otherwise perfectly good aircraft? While I was debating what to do or where to go, sunny Florida came to mind, I was however suddenly shaken out of my reveries by an explosion of noise in my helmet. My god, are those human voices? Yes, that certainly sounded like an air traffic controller rattling off instructions to an airliner on its way to Tulsa. More voices filled the speakers in my helmet but I had a hard time butting in, would anyone hear me? One of my radios had suddenly sprung back to life and was receiving - but would it also transmit? Considering no one answered my calls, it didn’t sound like it.  I tried again and again. “Tulsa control, this is Purple Zero Seven, how do you copy?”

And then suddenly a voice, a human being who seemed to acknowledge my existence.

“Zero Seven this is Tulsa, are you squawking Seven Six Zero Zero?”

Yes, I was indeed the aircraft that had been transmitting the dreaded distress code and miraculously just about every airport within radio reach had received it and steered conflicting traffic out of my way. I explained my predicament, but then again, of course, they already knew all about it. As soon as the radio failure code had gone into the ether, all the alarm bells had gone off. They knew who I was, where I came from and where I was going to and, they had long since calculated all the options with the remaining fuel. The air traffic controller then gave me a new frequency for one-to-one communication in the hope the radio would not quit again.

“Tulsa, how about radar vectors for Tulsa Airport?”

“Negative Zero Seven, you will reach it you will reach it, but be advised that we have gone solid IFR with a snowstorm”. After a moment of ominous silence, he added, “Your radio is unreliable… We cannot guarantee a safe approach and landing under zero visibility… you copy.”

Oh yes, I had copied and then suggested several other options but none seemed to be viable. If I didn’t have a sixty-knot headwind and would run out of fuel, then the place had gone solid IFR due to the approaching snowstorm.

“Zero Seven…?  If you cannot maintain VFR - visual references - AF Command suggests you leave the aircraft as soon as possible… as in eject, you copy”

Eject? Have they gone nuts? There’s nothing wrong with my plane. The very thought of it, I liked this plane; as long as it kept on flying I wasn’t going to let it spiral down and crash into a pathetic heap into some rancher’s frozen land.

“Negative”, I answered; I’m not abandoning a perfectly good ship… suggest you find me a field somewhere.”

The radio stayed silent long enough for me to wonder if the radio had abandoned ship once and for all.

But then suddenly the reassuring voice reappeared. “Zero Seven, we found you a small airfield… Pryor Field… it’s snowed-in… and closed… say your intentions.”

“Take me there,” I said.

“I understand your choice is Pryor Field… OK, turn right heading One Niner Five and begin a five hundred feet a minute descent to six thousand feet.”

Yes! I was going somewhere, where the hell Pryor Field was or what I would find there I had no idea, but I was going to take this plane out there, snow or no snow. This aircraft had been to Vietnam and back; it was built for war and rough terrain so a bit of snow didn’t scare us now, did it? I set the power for a slow descent and began to follow the controller’s directions.

Twenty minutes later he set me up for a so-called “Radar Approach”, now talking to me every fifteen seconds….

‘Five degrees right… five degrees more, you have a fifteen-knot crosswind… keep this heading… rate of decent two hundred. you doing good buddy... keep this heading.’

The air traffic controller did a wonderful job considering he was miles away from me, staying with me from the moment of the first contact till the end.

‘You are lined up for final… do you have the runway in sight?’

No, I did not have a runway in sight; all I saw was a large expanse of snowed-in flat terrain and further afield, to the left, a presumably empty control tower and a few adjacent buildings.

After a moment of silence, I finally said, ‘Sir, if you can guarantee I have a runway there in front of me then that’s where I’m going.’

‘Affirmative, you are perfectly lined up… but it’s your choice… you can still abandon ship.

I concentrated on the white expanse lying in front of me and if I recall well, all I said was, ‘Well, I’m going in then.’

Then at last, after having accompanied me for the past forty minutes he pronounced the final words that will stay printed in my mind maybe forever.

‘OK, in a few seconds I will lose contact with you… you’re on your own now Sir… good luck. Give me a phone call when you’re down.’

I did not have time to thank him, out of reach by now, the radio was of no further use.  I began to prepare for a final approach and put in ten degrees of flaps, lowered the gear and waited for the three green lights. Then in rapid succession, I put in thirty degrees of flaps, put the props in high pitch and added power to keep the same rate of descent. As I came closer I suddenly I noticed things sticking out on either side in front of me, presumably runway lights covered with a thin layer of snow. Yes, I thought… there really is a runway out there, all for me and no one else. I kept a sharp eye out for any obstructions amidst the glistering snow, as a mere five years later I would be doing again for the blinding sand in the Sahara desert. At last, I pulled the power back and holding the stick back I let the aircraft settle on the invisible tarmac in a fifteen, maybe a twenty-five-centimetre layer of fluffy snow. It was, by and large, a very soft landing, maybe the softest ever and now riding through the snow, the Bronco decelerated rapidly and then came to a complete halt. We were on the ground… together; it was almost as if the Bronco knew I had not abandoned the old warhorse.

I then noticed a white and black pick-up truck with blue and red flashing lights slowly driving in my direction on what I assumed to be a taxi-way. A mysterious but very welcome hand motioned me to follow and again, I added enough power to plough the plane through the snow and began to follow the truck to the ramp leaving a misty spray of snow in the backwash of my props.

At last, I shut the engines down and opened to the canopy. The first thing to greet me was the icy morning air and the second was the local Sheriff now stepping out of his pick-up truck.

‘Howdee! I heard ya’ll had a little problem up there… fancy getting some coffee, pancakes and ham and eggs?’

“Ya’ll” being my plane and I, or probably better expressed in the local lingo, “me and my plane”.

‘Man, am I glad to see you,’ I said, ‘and yes, I would love some pancakes, ham and eggs, coffee, the whole damn lot.’

The Sheriff gave me a warm smile saying, ‘Well, get in then and you can tell me all about it.’

And I did. He was maybe just another good-hearted person that slipped in and out of my life, but still today, I remember him, just as I remember the faceless Air Traffic Controller who brought “me and my plane” back to "terra firma" in one piece.

James Delahaye.