{"id":5162,"date":"2019-04-04T18:17:42","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T01:17:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=5162"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:51","slug":"228-midair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/228-midair\/","title":{"rendered":"#228 Midair"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s still there, but there was a time when, I\u2019m told that if you wandered into the bachelor officers\u2019 quarters at Coast Guard Air Station, San Francisco and then into the lounge there, you\u2019d see a stuffed seagull behind the bar.\u00a0 Seems appropriate.\u00a0 After all, it\u2019s the Coast Guard and we ARE on the coast.\u00a0 Perhaps you\u2019d like to know how that moth-eaten stuffed gull got there.\u00a0These are the events as I remember them:<\/h3>\n

He was a helicopter SAR (Search and Rescue) crewman when I was stationed at the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station, San Francisco in the late sixties.<\/h3>\n

It was a time when there seemed to be a shortage of copilots.\u00a0Normally there would be a crew of three in the \"\"
\nHH52A helicopter:\u00a0 A pilot, co-pilot and hoist operator, or SAR crewman.\u00a0 With no Co-Pilot aboard, the hoist operator would often sit in the copilot\u2019s seat on the left side of the helicopter.\u00a0 We all enjoyed it.\u00a0 The pilots would often let us fly and it was a treat to be able to pilot the big turbine helicopter.\u00a0 If we got diverted from a patrol to an actual case, the hoist operator would scamper back to his usual spot in the doorway and lower the rescue basket.\u00a0 For most cases the abbreviated crew worked pretty well (see \u201cDog Day in the Coast Guard\u201d in the Tailwheeler\u2019s Journal).<\/h3>\n

It was a lovely day in San Francisco and the young petty officer was perched in the left seat of the helicopter.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember who the pilot was.\u00a0 Perhaps it was Lt Bobby Long.\u00a0 I just don\u2019t remember.\u00a0 The two men were cruising along and enjoying the flight.\u00a0Unbeknownst to them, another aviator was also enjoying a flight that day.\u00a0 The large white sea gull was flapping along, watching the bay waters below in case he should spot something tasty to gulp down.\u00a0 Perhaps that\u2019s why the normally sharp-eyed bird didn\u2019t spot the Coast Guard helicopter bearing down on him.<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/h3>\n

I\u2019ll bet that he noticed the helicopter about the same time that the helicopter crew noticed him.\u00a0 It was too late for any of the participants to avoid the coming collision.\u00a0 And collide they did.\u00a0 The Gull shattered the Plexiglas of the helicopter\u2019s right front windshield.\u00a0 His suddenly lifeless body had not only left a gull-shaped hole in the windshield of the helicopter, but his next target was the face of the helicopter\u2019s pilot.<\/h3>\n

\u201cSmack!\u201d the gull and the young Coast Guard officer\u2019s face momentarily occupied the same space. \u00a0The gull was dead.\u00a0 The pilot was rendered unconscious.<\/h3>\n

There was only one sentient being left at the scene of the collision.\u00a0The young Petty Officer was suddenly promoted from hoist operator to aircraft commander.<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m a big fan of the importance of training.\u00a0 Training is what so often enables us to do the right thing because someone else dreamed up all the things that could go wrong and drummed it into our heads to take a specific action at a specific time.<\/h3>\n

The Petty Officer was well-trained.<\/h3>\n

\u201cCoast Guard Air Station, San Fran, this is Helo one three eight six.\u00a0Mayday, mayday, mayday.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had a bird strike.\u00a0 The pilot is unconscious.\u00a0 I\u2019m the hoist operator.\u00a0 I\u2019m changing course for Air Station San Fran\u201d.<\/h3>\n

In the blood-spattered cockpit, he did what he\u2019d been trained to do.\u00a0He could fly the helicopter.\u00a0 He could adjust its course back toward the air station.\u00a0 The landing, however, would be a real rodeo!<\/h3>\n

In the meantime, helicopter pilots crowded into the ops center at the air station and he was now advised by experts on how to pilot his now-drafty steed.\u00a0He approached the air station, which occupied a small corner of the San Francisco International airport.<\/h3>\n

I wasn\u2019t there, but I\u2019ll bet that young man was sweating bullets as he prepared to land the big Sikorsky for the first time in his life.\u00a0 And I\u2019ll just bet that to this day, he\u2019s never heard a more beautiful sentence than that which came across his helmet\u2019s earcups as he approached the air station.\u00a0 \u201cuh, okay, uh\u2026 I\u2019ve got it!\u201d<\/h3>\n

The words came from the young lieutenant, who wiped the gull blood off his face, caged his eyeballs and resumed control of the crippled helicopter.<\/h3>\n

The helicopter swooped in for a somewhat normal landing in front of the air station and taxied into its parking place.\u00a0 Medics and Coasties with nothing better to do swarmed the helicopter as it shut down and the pilot applied the rotor brake.\u00a0 They oohed and ahhed over the large hole in the windshield.\u00a0They patted the Lieutenant and the Petty Officer on the back.\u00a0 At some point, someone gathered up the limp carcass of the former Seagull.<\/h3>\n

The last I heard was that the gull was taken to a taxidermist and then back to the Air Station.\u00a0 So when you wander into the Bachelor Officer\u2019s Quarters at Coast Guard Air Station San Francisco, take a look in the bar.\u00a0 There, keeping a silent watch over years of flying stories and other lies is that large stuffed seagull.\u00a0 And now you know how he got there.<\/h3>\n

Happy Swooping!<\/h3>\n

Brian<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cCoast Guard Air Station, San Fran, this is Helo one three eight six.\u00a0Mayday, mayday, mayday.\u00a0 We\u2019ve had a bird strike.\u00a0 The pilot is unconscious.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[35,67,173,174],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}