Flying with the Air Det

By Captain Peter Curtis

27 May 2008 — It’s a beautiful Mediterranean day as we hurry south, three Canadian ships eager to get into the Arabian Sea and begin their mission. With only a few days to go, the crews are working hard to complete all the required preparations.

Today’s mission is typical for a ship’s air detachment at this stage of a deployment: a sortie combining delivery of equipment with a close look at a “contact of interest” — a vessel with connections to terrorism — known to be in the neighbourhood.

Our first hop has us loading up the Sea King with a spare engine that will find a new home in HMCS Calgary while we return with another. What seems like a pointless swap is actually a typical manoeuvre in the constant shuffling of equipment, people and schedules that keeps all the task group’s helicopters, aircrews and maintainers current, qualified and capable. Our spare engine has fewer hours on it than Calgary’s and, due to a serviceability snag earlier in the month, the Calgary detachment has flown fewer hours than we have. The goal is to ensure that the crew that can fly more hours has the engine with more hours available to fly

The ship turns briefly onto a heading that gives us a wind suitable for take-off. We get airborne and immediately spot our tanker, HMCS Protecteur, 10 nautical miles away. Although the sky is blue and clear, she is all but invisible in the heat haze rising from the calm water. We navigate into the low-level fog looking for Calgary and have to use our sensors to find her 20 nautical miles away.

It’s always fun to land on another Canadian ship — the flight deck is familiar and we can visit with Air Force friends. Once on Calgary’s deck and plugged into the internal communication system, we exchange greetings, news, rumours and, in this case, engines, which we haul through the Sea King’s cargo door with a hoist and hard work.

Everything gets buttoned up, the communication wire is pulled, and we are off with the new engine occupying the better part of the cargo bay. Immediately starting our next task, we use our sensors as well as guidance from the ship’s radar and intelligence to search for our contact of interest.

Just before we left HMCS Iroquois, Staff Intelligence asked us to check out a large container ship. Making only one pass so the target doesn’t suspect our interest, we find the vessel, confirm its identity and take some close-up photos. We never learn the ship’s history or the reason for our tasking — but we don’t have to. Our photos will go to the ship’s intelligence section and we probably won’t hear about it again.

On our way back to Iroquois, we have time for some training sequences. Regular training is the only way to maintain the high level of skill the Air Force demands, and we will have no time for it once we’re in the operational area. It makes for a busy flight.

As we approach Iroquois, she briefly changes course to accommodate our landing and then turns south again. On landing, the helo is automatically attached to the ship and the flight deck is a fury of movement with engines screaming and rotors turning. In 15 minutes flat we change aircrews, refuel the aircraft, unload the spare engine and load new equipment, and launch again.

Once the Sea King is off the deck and away on its next mission, our crew heads to the ready room for our debrief, feeling satisfied with our contribution to the Task Group’s mission. We are surprised to find that, along with the engine, Calgary’s air detachment has included a little gift: a portrait of the Iroquois detachment’s mighty Sea King, call sign “Arrow”, rendered in rainbow colours courtesy of Photoshop. We grit our teeth, as they have beaten us in this deployment’s first volley of inter-ship rivalry.

Capt Peter Curtis is a CH-124 Sea King pilot deployed on Operation ALTAIR with HMCS Iroquois’ air detachment.