Letter - Brief Article - Letter to the Editor

Approach, August, 2001 by J.L. McKay

Re: "Plenty of Skippers ... Not Much Fuel" (April 2001)

Lt. Churchill covers the incident precisely, not missing anything. He even brought back memories of when I was on USS Theodore Roosevelt with six Marine CH-53s, being put in a starboard "D" until the jets landed and being told that there was plenty of water to ditch a helo that was low on fuel. One of the main reasons this crew pushed on as they did was because they had the three COs on board. The article starts by saying, "I thought it was strange, but since we were dealing with ships' COs. I figured the ships would stay close enough to the carrier." When they are flying to another ship, they talk to their ship and find out which way they are heading. Since they are low on fuel and had not contacted the ship they are heading to, the HAC said not to go any faster, since they have their CO, and are going to be tight on fuel. The flight went on, they made all their stops and they got back to their ship. During the debrief, again they focused on the COs, stating they "Should have been more vocal with the people in CIC about closing the distance between our ships and the carrier. After all, we were going to be picking up the COs of all three that were ultimately going to be together."

I know the importance of COs, but I don't feel it should matter who's on board when dealing with the lives of passengers on naval aircraft. I think this article shows extremely close "fuel low" limitations. Couldn't they have taken on more fuel? If so, why didn't they? After all, they were briefed that there would be no fuel on the carrier. I think the crew depended too much on the passengers they were carrying to allow them to get additional fuel if needed. Also, what about the carrier deck evolution; was that not briefed? Sometimes flight decks get clobbered. Don't get low on fuel--fuel starvation over water means you are going to get wet. Don't let the window of opportunity be the one you need to get out of in an emergency situation.

MGySgt. J.L. McKay
HMM-266 Maintenance Chief