Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Corpsman Chronicles XXXVIII: What the firetruck is wrong with my leg?





Part 1. The day got away from me and I want to get something up, even if it's incomplete. And almost certainly improperly numbered. Ah well. This one is brought to you by Arthritis!

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What's the difference between a fairy tale and a sea-story? A fairy tale begins, "Once upon a time..." A sea story begins, "This is no shit!"

I try to be careful to change names, but to the best of my recollection the events and locations are substantially correct. Of course I can only describe events from my perspective, so there's that. Readers who were present will doubtless have different recollections of any particular event. This is what it was like to serve in my tiny slice of the U.S. Navy between the late 1970's and early 1990's. It really was an adventure.


Remember,

This is no shit!

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Early 1980's. USS Boat, her Airwing, and her Battle Group were working up for a deployment. We were at sea in the middle of a complex exercise, charging up and down the east coast of the U.S., with the Airwing was serving targets at Pinecastle 



and Navy Dare



as Amphibs 
s

put Marines 
Bright Star '82

over the beach in both areas (more or less). The two operating areas/targets were 600 miles apart.
As the crow flies, about 525 straight-line nautical miles apart. Just for fun, Kimball, Nebraska (upper left) is circa 1,600 straight-line statute miles from Navy Dare, 1,500 from Pinecastle. Could our Intruders and Corsairs have put fused ordnance on target on time at NAS Kimball? There were comparable distance targets in China and the Soviet Union in the SIOP package.

It was a glorious exercise to participate in with more than 40 warships and close to 20,000 sailors and Marines just smashing the day, every day.

As a slight aside, these exercises were frequent and routine 40 years ago. They were standard practice. Everyone in the fleet did at least one each year. On deployment, Navy and Marines continued to train, doing multiple exercises, some smaller, some larger than the workup exercises. And here's a fun fact. There is exactly zero chance that today's U.S. Navy could conduct a single mid-1980's workup exercise even given a five year lead time. Doesn't mean the navy is bad. It just means it's not prepared to conduct war at sea or to project power or to put Marines over the beach. Which, yeah, is a solid definition of "bad" for  the U.S. Navy, given its mission. Good food for thought for the U.S. Citizen, who is actually in charge of the Navy, sharing the burden of responsibility with some 300 million fellow Americans.

Anyway, there was always a C-SAR (Combat Search and Rescue) component to these exercises. For this one a couple of lucky JO aircrew were selected at random...

USS Boat, Ready Room Eight. The Skipper is deep in discussion with Skeds. Lieutenant Junior Grade Schmuckatelli IV, who recently drew three on-base speeding tickets in three days, saunters into the compartment from the portside passageway. The Skipper looks up, grins an evil grin, and crooks a finger. "Hey Shitbird," he says, "C'mere. I got a good deal for you."

Two hours later a pair of JO's who belong to different squadrons yet share the same last name are whisked ashore in infernal contraptions and dumped unceremoniously into the deep, dark, forbidding woods. In different locations.

Up on the roof I'm preparing to strap in to the cargo seat in the back of an SH-3H Sea King parked on Spot Five astride the waist catapults.
Aft of Spot Five, but you get the idea. s

We've just finished pre-flighting the helo and we're prepared to launch on a C-SAR mission. The sun has set, leaving only a fading glow on the western horizon. Nobody's gonna get a pinky launch on this go. We're somewhat light with only a half-bag of gas, about 2.5 hours to splash. There's an M-2 and an M-60 mounted, and we've got several thousand rounds to fire off. We'll do the shooting at Pinecastle, then we'll go elsewhere to extract the Lieutenants Junior Grade Schmuckatelli IV from their punishment tours good deal training evolutions. Good times!

"On the flight deck. It's time for the 2100 go. All unnecessary personnel clear the flight deck and catwalks. Check to ensure complete and proper flight deck uniform. Helmets on and chinstraps buckled, goggles down, sleeves rolled down. Check pockets for FOD. Check chocks, tie-down chains and for all loose gear about the deck. Stand clear of intakes and exhausts, propeller and rotor arcs. Start the go aircraft, start 'em up!"

Within a few moments we're fired up and the helo leads us to believe it's ready to fly. At this stage of the workup exercise we've been at sea and working very hard for about 10 days. Everyone from the Skipper of the Boat and Airwing Commander down to the most junior E-1's on head cleaning detail are tired after more than a week of 18-20 hour days. Our helo crew is no exception, and if I recall correctly I'd already bagged about 40 flight hours since the boat left Pier 12 at Norfolk.

From his place in front of the helo and in clear view of front office staff, but well outside the rotor arc, the LSE signals the blue shirts to break down chains and pull chocks. I get on my belly and hang my head out of the big cargo door on the starboard side of the aircraft. I double check that we are indeed free of tie-down chains and that the chocks are gone. It pays to check, as attempting rotor-borne flight while tied down by an overlooked chain will ruin your whole day. On the ICS I report we're clear. It's time to go flying.

I strap into my seat for the take off. The helo does her windup shimmy and I can feel her getting light on the wheels. With a bit of shudder and wiggle we pick up to a 15-20 foot hover over the deck. This is always a bit of a tricky maneuver as the boat is moving ahead through the sea (making about 30 knots this particular evening) and the last thing you want is to mismatch forward airspeed. If you drift aft, or let the boat move forward relative to you as you hover, it will be a bad thing. There's another helo turning aft of us, lots of crewmen on the deck, and farther aft a gaggle of manned-up and turning jets. You can imagine the shitstorm that would erupt if our helo backed into that mass of aircraft and humanity.
Takeoff from Spot Four, not at night. M-60 machine-gun mount in the cargo door.

With hover checks complete, we're ready to depart the carrier and execute our mission. The helo tilts very slightly forward and to the left and we began to head out.

It happens very quickly. There's an atypical shudder and the sound of the rotor RPM alarm over the ICS. "Don't settle!" from the HAC, who was in the left seat and not flying the takeoff. Less than a moment later, "MY AIRCRAFT!"

The helo lurches right and down and we hit the deck hard. My seat collapses as designed, in excess of the 10 g load limit. Through the airframe I actually feel the rotor blades as they hammer the deck and bite into the tail cone. A mist of hydraulic fluid fills the cabin as ruptured lines bleed out. The rotor brake works and the front office quickly cages what's left of the whirling mass of blades. The helo finishes thrashing about and comes to rest tilted to the right on a collapsed landing gear and pointed about thirty degrees to port with the front office hanging over the port catwalk. Five men hang suspended in a single moment of time, wondering whether we're going over the side. The moment passes and we do not go over the side.

While the front office shuts down the engines the Crew Chief polls the crew, and everyone rogers up okay. In the background the Air Boss is yelling and the flight deck crash alarm is wailing. I scramble over to the cargo door and notice that there is shit everywhere. Where did it all come from? The deck in the cargo area is buckled and the airframe is obviously warped. With hydraulic fluid all over the place the deck is incredibly slippery and I have a challenge just standing upright against the unusual deck angle. I wobble over to grab my SAR bag as the Crew Chief and Second Crewman exit through the cargo door, followed closely by the 2P. I fling my SAR bag through the door and my feet shoot out from under me. I hit hard enough to see stars for a moment, then the HAC lands atop me in an undignified sprawl. More stars. The HAC, who as Captain of the good ship Sea King must be last to abandon his command, motions me toward the warped opening of the cargo door. I fight through disorientation and quickly regain my feet. This is not my first rodeo. I shuffle-slide to the door and hop out.

Something unexpectedly grabs my left foot and I pitch hard forward in mid-air. My velocity and vector are completely in the hands of Sir Isaac, with gravity, momentum, and the unanticipated drag on my left foot all participating in the event. Hot anger flashes through my mind as I wonder what the fuck the HAC is playing at, grabbing me like that. The anger passes even as it ignites as I somehow realize I'm tangled in a gunner's belt. For an instant I'm face and body down in mid-air, with gravity driving me toward the unforgiving non-skid coated steel below. In an interesting physics demonstration my body and legs began to roll to the right just as my left shin smashes into the bottom edge of the cargo door frame. That hurts!. As my body and legs continue to roll to the right, my trapped left foot actually torques left. I feel a pop and sudden searing pain deep in the calf of my left leg. My body and legs continue to roll to the right and I'm suddenly face up with my legs tangled like spaghetti. At this point my shoulders and helmet-protected head smash into the fuel-covered flight deck. The impact momentarily knocks the wind out of me and for the third time in 10 seconds I see stars. Simultaneously the monkey strap lets go of my foot and my legs continue to rotate out of the helo, causing me to do a rather awkward and ungainly reverse somersault. I end up face and belly down on the flight deck, looking back at the helo and thoroughly covered in JP-5 and hydraulic fluid. Fuck me!

I catch my breath for a moment and scramble to my feet. My left leg from the knee down feels different, somehow, but it doesn't hurt at all. It is very stiff and hard to move, but I can move it and walk somewhat normally. We quickly gather as a crew and stand there a bit uncertainly, gazing at the wreck of our aircraft. It looks much the worse for wear, tilted over on a broken starboard mainmount, with only stubs remaining of the five main rotor blades, and a partly severed and drooping tail cone. A steady stream of fuel and hydraulic fluid make a growing puddle beneath the wreck. In what seems like an instant hose crews are there and begin washing the petroleum distillates overboard with streams of salt water.

I take a quick glance around. Aft of us the second go Sea King is lifting. There is a gaggle of turned-up A-6's and A-7's waiting for the cats. Over by the island a tow tractor is already yanking the spare Sea King out, soon to be manned by the spare crew. On the bow the cats are busy flinging Tomcats and Intruders into the darkened sky.

"Drag that piece of shit onto El-Two," bellows the Air Boss over the 5MC, "and let's get a FOD walkdown on the waist! Bear a hand!"
Although this Sea King is Canadian, smashed over on the left side, has completely lost half of the tail-cone including tail rotor and horizontal stab, not to mention being crashed on concrete rather than on a carrier deck, it looks remarkably similar to the remains of the aircraft featured in this post.

"You guys get the fuck out of here!" shouts the Air Bosun, instantly and masterfully in charge of the sudden rat fuck on his flight deck. There was no fire and no bodies to police up, so the main thing was to get the trashed helo secured and out of the way so the rest of the go jets could launch and get on with the mission. This was full up 1980's carrier ops and there would be no crying or hand wringing. Ashore there were targets to serve and aircrew to rescue.

We got the fuck out of there, and headed for the ready room via a stop at the paraloft to ditch our flight gear. This was my third (and final) helicopter crash, and by far the easiest. I was feeling pretty good about not ending up upside down in the water...
Not as much fun as you might think, but miles better than the helo dunker! s

or feeling like I'd been spit out of a blender into a swamp.
Brit Sea King crash, 1989.

As far as the logistics of getting home after unassing a busted helo go, crashing on the flight deck was a pretty good deal. No swamp, no swimming, no fiddling with a PRC-90, no waiting for rescue. I was all slimed with kerosene and red hydraulic juice, so that sucked, but I was whole and walking away with only a bit of a stiff legged limp.

Just as in my previous Class A mis(hap)adventures, I was euphoric and energized with close-call adrenaline. The biggest fly in the ointment was that I found it difficult to navigate the ladders down from the 0-4 level (flight deck) to the 0-3 level. Down into the catwalk, through a twisty light trap, then inboard. My left leg just wasn't doing what it was told and it was rather vexing. It hurt in a way it had never hurt before and I felt like I should be able to walk it off. As I wobbled down the 0-3 passageway I found the knee knockers almost too hard to step over. On top of that I'd received the worst shin bark in history. In the paraloft I began stripping and discovered a relatively deep laceration over the shin, oozing blood and stinging fiercely from fuel and oil. Both flight suit and wet suit were torn through over the shin laceration. So it was a world-class shin bark, but it had nothing to do with the wrongness in my leg. The leg didn't move right, didn't bend right, didn't obey motor commands right, didn't feel right. The whole thing, from hip to toes, felt a bit numb, except for the shin, which ached and burned. It was weird and not at all welcome. I left my destroyed flight suit and wet suit in a reeking heap, then struggled into boots, green flight deck trousers, and my red cross emblazoned white (ish) flight deck jersey. Following 
behind my fellow helo destroyers, I slowly limped to the ready room.

The ready room was a hive of activity as various people scurried around working both ongoing flight ops and the beginnings of an aircraft mishap investigation. Our crew began working our debrief and answering preliminary questions. The two airwing flight surgeons showed up to "invite" everyone to medical for blood tests and paperwork. They polled the five of us for injuries which we all replied in the negative.

"What," asked Commander Jaime, my own personal Oceana-based flight surgeon, "about that?" I'd taken an aisle seat on the right side (looking toward the front) of the ready room and had more or less instinctively extended my left leg alongside the seat in front of me. It had felt like the most comfortable position. Commander James was pointing to the deck where a  growing puddle of blood was forming. It was dripping from my pant leg which had somehow become saturated with the stuff. I was completely surprised to see the blood. Shit, the shin bark was just a scratch!. What the hell? As I reached down to see what the hell was going on the pain began in earnest. "Ah, shit," I groaned, "what the fuck's wrong with my leg?"

Doc Jaime quickly raised my pant leg. There was a thin but steady stream of blood flowing from the shin laceration and my calf was beginning to swell. I had (and have to this day) huge and powerful calves, so there was less swelling than it looked like to the doc, but it was still obvious to me.

The doc called for a first aid kit and began applying a gauze and ace wrap pressure dressing to the shin laceration. My medical mind began working the problem, as did the doc's. Our fruit machines hit the jackpot pretty much simultaneously.

"Fuckin' fibula," I said with a hint of irritated wonder in my voice. "I got tangled in the gunners belt when I bailed out and twisted the shit out of my leg. It didn't start to hurt until just now though."

"Looks like it," said Commander Jamie. "Now how are we going to get you down to medical?"

The trip down to medical was a breeze for a guy with two working legs. From the ready room it was about 100 yards aft, down four ladders, then forward a few yards. Easy. For a guy with only one good leg and a fibular fracture of unknown severity, it would be physically hard, painful, somewhat risky, and require some assistance. The knee knockers would be a bitch. Going down the ladders would be fairly easy with the gravity assist, but a tumble could spell disaster.

The wild card was the unknown severity of the fracture. We didn't know for sure that there was a fracture, but all the signs and symptoms pointed toward a spiral fracture caused by the torque applied to my foot and leg when I got tangled up and fell. A spiral fracture meant sharp bone ends, which could lacerate nerves and blood vessels if they moved about very much.

The smart thing was to be cautious. Splint it, then ride a stretcher up one level to the flight deck, down the bomb elevator on the starboard side of the island, which would deliver me to the hangar bay, thence to another bomb elevator down to the aft mess deck, within spitting distance of medical.

Just one problem.

That dude who was me, at that time and in that place, well, that dude would rather be dead than look bad.

Here's hoping that part two doesn't take six firetrucking months!

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Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.




9 comments:

  1. SIX in a row. Sarge and his crew might be getting nervous seeing what one guy can do by himself!

    I have enjoyed everyone of your Corpsman Chronicles, and learned a lot.

    I have also learned from this one that if I had known then what I learned today, I would not have felt so safe and
    comfortable riding as pax in the H-3s in Roosy Roads. Of course they had just gotten those to replace raggedy ass old H-34s, and everyone felt tons safer in the H-3s.
    Looking forward to more!
    John Blackshoe

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks John!

      A few years ago I was on Midway in San Diego, showing off for friends and family. As we walked through the Sea King on deck and I mansplained how cool I used to be I suddenly realized that the 2018 me would not, under any circumstance, crawl into one of those infernal machines and go aviating. Which made (and still makes) me wonder, what the firetruck was wrong with me?!? It's a cool thing to have done, I guess, but what was I thinking? Ha-ha-ha, ape-lizards are funny critters, as the great Walt Garrison noted.

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

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  2. Edge of the seat stuff right there Shaun, most excellent!

    And what JB said, man, yer on a roll!

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    1. Thanks Chris. That was an interesting evening for sure. I think I may have finally returned to a place where the writer feels okay about writing again. It feels good.

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

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  3. what caused the bird to die?

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    1. The gearbox failed, without even giving us a chip light. Sudden unplanned deconstruction. Putting that pig back on the deck with decaying rotor rpm was one hell of a bit of skilled flying.

      Thanks for stopping by and commenting prairiegopher!

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  4. Things don't feel so bad as long as the adrenaline is pumping. Went around a hairpin turn on a mountain road in the dark when I felt a sudden bump and the bike slid out on me, mangling the foot on the down side. As it was 0-dark-30 there was no one awake at home to take me to the hospital, and I was not about to pay for an ambulance. A cop gave me a ride home and I walked into the house and waited for people to wake up. When the adrenaline wears off....it doesn't feel so good. Had an excellent surgeon put the jigsaw pieces back together again, so I'm good.
    Frank

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    1. Thanks Frank!
      I agree adrenaline is great stuff. It's got me through some rough patches for sure. Kind of amazing how it lets you do stuff to get out of immediate danger, stuff that your body simply will not do when the fight/flight mode subsides.
      Thanks for stopping by and commenting!

      Delete
    2. Worked at a Nebr state agency for a while. During the mandatory highway safety class, the trooper related a story that took place while he was patrolling out west. There was a highway accident on the outskirts of a small town when he was nearby. Arriving, there was one car that was totaled but the driver only showed some minor cuts and scrapes, and was not looking or acting shocky. He just wanted a ride home. Walked up to the front door, unlocked it, stepped through, and fell over dead - multiple major organ ruptures. Even if he had been instantly transported to a major trauma center he wouldn't have made it. But for that 15-20 minutes he was acting like there was nothing wrong. The human body can be an amazing thing.
      Frank

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