A buddy of mine who's a retired Marine aviator and also now retired American Airlines pilot sent me this story....
Guam Approach Control : " ROGER YOUR EMERGENCY ! HOW MANY SOULS ONBOARD ? "
I'm a Navy C-9 pilot, a Commander with 20 years in Navy Reserves, who spends the other half of his time flying with the airlines. Here's a riveting typhoon story from the Pacific.
We were tasked to fly from Atsugi, Japan to Thailand, stay overnight, then we would pick up a Navy SEAL platoon, and take them with us them back to Thailand. Then after an overnight, we were scheduled to fly the SEALS to Guam. Flying to that fairly distant Pacific island was an unusually long-range mission for our military version of a DC-9.
In terms of range . . it was stretching it.
With the SEALS onboard, the mission went fine back to Thailand. However, on the Guam leg with the load of SEALS with their combat gear and supplies . .' gas ' would become an issue for the airplane. The cargo and passengers would cut our useable fuel onboard to only 30,000 pounds. And it reduce our time in the air to just four and one-half hours. Fine, if nothing went wrong. But of course . .
things went wrong.
Three (3) tropical depressions were beginning to stir things up in the Far East. One west of Korea wasn't a factor, but another was sitting on our side of the Philippines and it was slowly drifting toward our refueling point at Manila. The third, now given the name Samoi, was spinning up northeast of our destination at Guam. And its projected track would carry it 200 miles north of the SEALS' deployment base.
Unknown to the forecasters, now tropical storm Samoi was accelerating into super- typhoon mode. And it would soon alter its track to a collision course with our ETA . and churn-up Guam's darkness.
toejamet, Thailand, is a tourist resort area, so while overseas communication was expensive, it was not impossible. I was worried about the weather, I made long distance to various weather agencies, then decided to press on. With one day to spare, we should win the ' race ' with the first tropical depression. With the Navy SEALS and all of their gear on- board, we departed toejamet early in the A.M.
About 200 miles into the flight, the first thunderstorms appeared and we switched on the C-9's weather radar. It had tested out fine on the ground . . and tested fine after take- off. But now elected to die and not share details of the imbeded storms.
So we turned back to toejamet to get it fixed. We carried our own mechanics with us. And after we landed they found a broken wire. After simultaneously replacing the fuel we'd burned, we were off again. A couple of hours later than we'd planned.
The weather into Manila was dicey. But manageable.
We used our radar to skirt the worst of the storms, landed, and took on replacement fuel. The leg had taken three hours and 40 minutes. And we had shut down with 6,500 pounds of fuel remaining . . just above our legal requirement.
By flying East against the sun we had been losing daylight and we had landed at dusk.
Again, I hauled out my credit card and telephoned around to check the weather. The latest forecast indicated a chance of light rain later that evening in Guam. The forecast stated that we should not experience any weather problems. This final leg was projected to last three hours and twenty minutes. And we were confident we'd have fuel to spare.
Even though it is a small island, there are ( 2) two major airports on Guam. This was critically important to a C-9, because almost every time we flew it to Guam, we don't have enough fuel to go anywhere else . . but Guam. That was certainly true this night. But this planned leg appeared to be business as usual, and it was legal by every naval aviation regulation. And at that point, I would have flown it with my family in the back.
We took off in the deepening twilight, and maneuvered to avoid the storms that our radar began picking up with increasing frequency. On an air-to-air common radio frequency, an airliner pilot told us he'd just taken off from Guam and he said we should have no problems. So oblivious to the havoc . . super-typhoon Samoi would unleash . . we just pressed on.
We approached Guam at 10 o'clock that night. There was no ATIS informing us our air field had now closed due to worsening weather. But Approach Control was still up and running. And we arrived overhead with 7,500 pounds of gas. About what we'd expected.
On the other hand, it was certainly not enough to go anywhere else in the Pacific Ocean.
Typhoon Samoi had turned south on us. It was now headed toward Guam. And on Samoi's backside, swirling bands of severe thunderstorms began filling in. Although its center was 150 miles north, its growing mass now encompassed 1,000 plus miles of ocean.
Both airports in Guam have long, dual runways running from northeast to southwest. Huge cross wind problem down below : surface winds now roaring out of he back-filling thunder-storms were almost straight out of the West and they were now gusting up to eighty knots.
There was no way to shoot an ILS with winds that far beyond the tail wind limits for an ILS precision approach. So we set up for the TACAN 24 for a Non-Precision Approach to nearby Anderson Air Force Base.
Anderson's approach comes in over the ocean . . crosses over a cliff several hundred feet high, then touches down on the runway atop the cliff . . less than a half-mile from the cliff's edge. An eye-opener, even on a clear day. But factor in a significant, single vertical windshear at the wrong time - and not only will you not clear the edge of the cliff - we might not even see it coming.
At 150 knots, we experienced a horizontal river of rain. We could not see three feet, let alone the half-mile visibility required to land. But we continued on the approach. Then, in less than (3) three seconds, an upside windshear boosted our airspeed from 150 knots to 230.
Go-around was mandatory.
On the second approach the radar was now showing nothing but red on the
30-mile scale. We don't even fly through red . . let alone land in the red. Another go-around.
Approach Control then told us we'd been right over the runway approach end. Twice. But none of us had seen any runway lights . . just torrent-flooded dark windshields.
Fuel was now 5,000 pounds. I was ready to start bending the rules. I had to get closer to the ground to have any chance to get us down. I opted for an ILS landing in the other direction with a quartering 80 knot, shear-lined cross-wind off our tail.
Despite the out-of-limit tail winds, we began the approach with Autopilot locked on ILS. The GPS was showing a 40-knot tailwind ( the limit is 10 knots ). But I was out of ideas.
At around 250 feet, we experienced a problem that usually gets you in the flight simulator . . . the minus 40-knot vertical windshear when you instantly lose most airflow over your wings. And there is nothing you can do about it.
Our airspeed fell to just over 100 knots. At 95 . . we would have all died.
