Gunship Over Angola

Preflight preparation for navigating along a particular route involved first marking turning points on a plastic-laminated 1:50 000 map with a chinagraph pencil (wax crayon). Then you would draw straight lines between the successive points with a long plastic ruler (or anything with a straight edge), marking off the progressive distance in nautical-mile increments (one nautical mile equals approximately 1.95 kilometres), noting also the corresponding time-to-fly calculations and measuring the magnetic heading for each leg using a plastic protractor. The map would be folded in such a way as to allow the pilot to ‘page over’ when reaching the end of a map segment and expose the next section of the desired route. At a cruising speed of 85 knots (roughly 160 kph), not fast in anyone’s imagination, it was still all too easy to lose track and end up at the wrong place at the wrong time, something I was reasonably adept at doing.

In my final test on the Alo III Chopper Course, the examination was conducted by a legendary testing officer and instructor called Major Piet Klaasen, known far and wide for his magnificent moustache and rich Malmesbury bry (burr, pronounced ‘bray’). Unbeknown to the good major, I had been detained, for reasons I will conveniently overlook, in the nurses’ residence of a teaching hospital in Bloemfontein during the previous night. I had escaped by shimmying down a drain pipe from a fourth-floor room just in time to make it back to AFB Bloemspruit, shower and run up to the flight line to await the imminent arrival of the testing officer.

I did not have long to wait. The flight engineer who was to accompany us advised me to direct my breathing away from the testing officer when he arrived lest he detect the pungent evidence of my previous evening’s quite obvious overindulgence.

^{The group who did the helicopter course at 87 Advanced Flying School with me (I’m at the back, fourth from the left).}

Major Klaasen arrived and the test commenced. We started off with a three-leg navigation exercise to the northeast of Bloemfontein. The temperature was hovering around the 7°C mark, there was no blue sky at all, and the cloud base was at only about 90 metres. Thick mist obscured the tops of even the smallest hills, and there was a strong westerly wind blowing. The combined effects of the meteorological conditions, sleep deprivation and a raging hangover were to expose my limited navigation prowess even more than would have been the case in sunny weather. As the wind was coming hard from the port side, at almost right angles to the desired track, I countered this by positioning the nose of the Alo a little into the wind in the vain hope that I had ‘guesstimated’ the offset angle correctly and the aircraft would accurately (magically?) follow the chosen path to the first turning point, located about 40 nautical miles (74 kilometres) away.

So, I initiated a slight turn to the left.

I tried to match the natural features, such as hills and rivers, that we were passing on the ground with the corresponding symbols and squiggles on the map unfolding on my knee, but it all rapidly became a blurred jumble of confusion.

So, I turned a little further left.

Halfway through the leg I thought (erroneously) that I recognised a hill-and-stream combination that seemed to correspond to the map. It showed that I was right of the track.

So, I turned a little more to the left.

Major Klaasen said nothing. He just sat there, as was his role, and observed me turn left. Then left again, and then left again.

Finally, we emerged from a gap between two cloud-covered hills and a small town appeared directly in front of us. My navigation skills were such that I knew there were no towns anywhere close to the track that the aircraft was supposed to be on.

‘I think that I have drifted off track,’ I mumbled into the microphone.

‘No shit, Sherrrrrrrrrrlock!’ guffawed the major.

‘Do you go to Prrrrrretorrrrrria on the weekends?’ he asked.

‘Yes. Sometimes.’ I replied.

‘Then you should rrrrrrrrecognise the town of Brrrrrrrrrrandfort! We are now only 18 miles off trrrrrrack! That is a worrrrrrrld rrrrrrrrecord deviation for a 40-mile leg! Congrrrrrrrratulations!’ he trumpeted with great mirth and a total absence of malice.

Repositioning to where we were supposed to be, I managed to progress through the remaining two legs of the navigation exercise without further incident. Major Klaasen then put me through my paces in rigorously testing the full range of my newly accumulated Alo III flying skills, and declared that I had managed to meet the minimum standards demanded.

All that remained was for me to redo the navigation section of the test, albeit on a very different and more difficult route, which I did successfully the following day.