A July Flight in the Gulf

In April "07 I flew out to Bahrain with a few other people to replace a group who were complete with a 6 month tour and on their way home. For anyone who doesn't know, Bahrain is an island about 20 miles east of Saudi Arabia. I had stopped there a couple of times before but only for a few days at a time, never more than a week.

What we did out there was transport cargo, mail, and passengers out to ships stationed in the Arabian Gulf. Flights would last anywhere from 2 to 7 hours long depending on how many ships we would visit and how much stuff we had to move. Just think about cramming 3000 pounds worth of mail and materials into a space the size of a walk in closet and flying it around for 5 hours... thats about the gist of it.

Now, I will not go into a lot of detail about the heat of the Arabian Gulf. It plays a considerable role in power and performance of helicopters and how much weight we can carry. The reason I won't spend a lot of time on it is because there is really no way to describe what 140 degrees feels like. I've tried to before but its a "had to be there" thing. You might be thinking that it gets better with the windows open once you start flying but just think about this. Imagine 50 hair dryers blowing on at the same time... on high. Not a lot of relief.

So, we would come into work a find out where we were going, what ships we were gonna land on, and how much cargo we were gonna move. After that it was usually time to pre-flight the aircraft followed by a formal flight brief going into detail about the mission. Once all that was done, myself and another crewman would head back to the aircraft to start loading up which took anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes depending on the amount. Finally once that was done, I would usually change into dry socks and a shirt. Remember, its hot.

After taking off we would begin to follow a pretty standard route to wherever we had to go. The Arabian Gulf is really not that big. You can fly around at 160 knots and go all the way up north and back in about 5 hours depending on the wind. Its usually pretty interesting because there's a lot to look at. Beautiful blue water in some parts combined with purplish brown oil slicks in others. Schools of jellyfish, sharks, and sea snakes swimming around right at the surface. Fleets of Arabian fisherman in 50 foot boats that are all exactly the same. I did see a pod of sperm whales one time, but I think they were lost.

This "commuting" portion of the flight was usually uneventful as long as we did our fuel calculations correctly and the ships we were going to were in the spots they told us they would be in. The latter was much less accurate. More often than not we would get about 30 miles from them, get in touch on a radio, and they would tell us were to go.

Once we landed, it was time to unload and refuel. Now, unloading on a ship is a lot like unloading on the ground. The only differences are that you have to be much quicker, ships like to move around in the water, you can't talk because a helicopter is loud, and you're wearing about 30 pounds worth of flight gear. By the way, its no less hot on a ship. Usually they would have something for us to take back to the "beach" such as mail or passengers and such, which means putting up / taking down seats and keeping all the mailbags separate. It was always an adventure in one way or another. I always like when we would get somewhere with one idea of what we're gonna pick up and find out not a single thing was right.

Now, there's an unspoken rule I used to live by whenever you fly to a ship and I taught it to everyone I ever trained. Always, always, always, no matter what... get food from the ship. That way when you've gone to 4 different places you can mix and match your options and actually have a decent meal. By the way, the Australian Navy has the very best food ever created on a boat. It was like winning the lottery when you found out you where going to land on the Aussie ship.

After all your stops were made it was time to head back home. We often had about an hour or more to chill out and relax on the way back to Bahrain. Sometimes the crew would decide to climb to 7,000 or 8,000 feet so we could get to a comfortable 105 degrees or so. Once you got above the smog and sand and pollution, it actually turned out to be pretty nice.

There were variations to every flight of course. But all in all, that was how it worked. It was hot and sandy and most of the time, miserable. But I knew that being stuck on a ship and receiving a letter or a package from your family could make your day. To know that I was able to deliver some of the comforts of home to very deserving sailors... well that always made my day.