CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER 4 GLENN SIEGRIST
5th General Support Aviation Battalion, 158th Aviation Regiment,
12th Combat Aviation Brigade
Ansbach, Germany

Just when you think you have it made in the shade as you’re pulling sweet duty in Kuwait for a week or two, along comes a haboob that turns your ordinary night vision goggle flight into one for the books.

Our unit, Company B, 5/158th General Support Aviation Battalion, "Big Windy," was tasked to send three CH-47D from Iraq to Kuwait to transport Soldiers, Airmen and Seamen to and from Camp Bucca, Iraq. Most crews would assess this as a simple mission because they had performed it many times since Camp Bucca was established.

After arriving at Udairi Army Airfield, the crews spent the next few days going about their normal routine of preparing their aircraft, coordinating services, briefings and submitting flight plans. On day five of the mission, the flight was going as planned. The flight of three Chinooks was on its fourth turn back from Camp Bucca. The standardization pilot from Big Windy was giving me an instrument evaluation in the lead aircraft. In Chalk 2, we had the highest risk crew since this was only the pilot in command’s second flight as PC. In Chalk 3, bringing up the rear, we had an instructor pilot and the platoon leader.

As we took off on the fourth turn of the night, I thought our visibility had diminished to the west and mentioned it to my left-seater. He agreed and called Chalk 2 to get a weather update. We got a thumbs-up on the weather (sky - clear, visibility - 9999), so we continued to Bucca. We arrived for our fourth offload of passengers and, within 10 minutes, we were on our way back to Udairi for our fifth and final turn.

Throughout the evening, I had practiced instrument approaches into the airfield to complete my instrument evaluation. At 20 miles out, we broke off from the formation and started to climb to 2,000 feet and contacted Udairi ground controlled approach. During the climb, we listened to the other two aircraft talk back and forth about how suddenly the visibility had lessened. I could still see the lights at Udairi some 15 miles away. However, within 30 seconds, we lost visual contact with those lights and, 20 seconds later, could not see the stars above us. I immediately announced I was inadvertent instrument meteorological conditions and went to the instruments for real. We had the advantage since we were set up for instrument flight already, so the transition for us was quick and panic-free.

The other two aircraft were not having such a good time. Chalk 2 was losing visuals on Chalk 1 at 450 feet above ground level. A crewmember suddenly announced he was experiencing vertigo and becoming spatially disoriented. The problem was he never announced what station he was calling from (i.e., right-door gunner, left-door gunner). This caused confusion with the pilots in the front seats as to who was SD. The crew finally figured out it was not the pilots up front with SD; it was a crewmember in the back of the aircraft. Nevertheless, not 10 seconds later, the IP on the controls experienced SD and had to transfer the flight controls to his co-pilot. By then, the co-pilot who took the controls had lost visual contact with lead and the ground and, consequently, announced he was IIMC.

Chalk 1 was just about to do the same when the tower at Udairi airfield turned up the runway lights to full bright, enabling the lead aircraft to gain a visual on the runway. (The control tower had cut off the lights for us since we were using NVG due to washing out of the runway on landing.)

My aircraft was vectored on downwind five miles east of the airfield at 2,000 feet mean sea level. Life was looking good for us. My left-seater pulled out Volume 7, Approach Plates, for our area and tuned in the TACAN for ALI AL SALEM AB, OKAS, in case we didn’t break out of the dust storm while on approach into Udairi. The approach went well, as it should have, having two instrument examiners at the controls. I have to say our situation was very controlled compared to the first time this happened to me back in 1998 in Korea. That’s another story I’ll have to share one day.

By now, the other aircraft had climbed to 1,700 feet MSL and was vectored behind us to bring it around for the 360-degree precision approach into Udairi. We contacted the final controller, who started us on a descent within seconds of establishing communications with him. We had a tailwind of 30 knots, so I slowed the aircraft to keep from having a high rate of descent while on the glide path.

At one point, we were falling out of the sky at 1,000 feet per minute just to stay on glide path. This was too quick, so I gradually reduced my airspeed to put the aircraft in a safer rate of descent. I asked my left-seater to take the controls when he had visual with the runway. At 700 feet MSL, we broke out — only 100 feet above decision height for a missed approach. The left-seater announced he had a visual on the landing environment and took the controls, landing the aircraft abeam Charlie taxiway. We taxied off the active and turned into parking.

We tuned into the final controller’s frequency and listened like concerned parents watching the driveway for their teenagers to come home after their first night out with the family car. We sat there listening to the controller transmit heading adjustments to the pilots as the second aircraft made its way through the haboob: "On glide path, on course, three miles from touchdown, on glide path, on course.” At one mile, with the help of NVG, we could see the aircraft break out from the haboob and land safely to runway 36. All back safe and sound!

I was proud of the crews that night. They all did as they were trained and brought their aircraft and buddies back home for more missions.

Lessons Learned

1. IIMC break-up plan. Always brief a good IIMC break-up plan when flying NVG in a desert environment. We did these briefings before every flight and they turned out to be excellent lessons for the junior crewmembers. They also reinforced why we conduct thorough briefings for every mission, no matter how routine or mundane the task may seem.

2. Crew mix. Just because you throw an IP into the crew mix to plus-up the crew for risk mitigation doesn’t mean he will be a player when the chips are down. When the IP in Chalk 3 gave the controls to his co-pilot, the survival of the whole crew was placed in the hands of the weakest link. A side note to all aviation trainers: Ensure you’re holding everyone to the standard; just good enough is never good enough. Go the extra mile while training. You might not be around to see your hard work pay off, but you can bet there will be smiles on the faces of the crewmembers’ families when their Soldier gets off the bus after a deployment. One day, that aviator may have the lives of all onboard in his hands while the high-time guy is trying to find his fourth point of contact with both hands.

3. Experience. From a distance, I sensed bad weather coming and, as an air mission commander, should have turned the flight around and waited for the weather to pass. Given my experience in operating in the desert environment and knowing that weather forecasting can be a best guess at times in Kuwait and southern Iraq, I should have gone with my gut feeling and not gotten caught up in the “just-one-more-turn-and-we-are-done” mindset. There are some things that cannot be trained, and only experience can teach you. Slow down and double-check your work if time permits. With 15-month deployment tours, we certainly were not short on time. During debrief, all crewmembers acknowledged at some point they had suspected reduced visibility. Remember the old adage: If you’re thinking it, chances are some of the other crewmembers are too. Say something!

4. IIMC training. We were fortunate we had been operating in the area of operation around Udairi for a week and most of us had the opportunity to perform approaches into the airfield. Given the lack of IMC training conducted in the AOR in Iraq, things could’ve turned out quite differently had this not been the case. Trainers should continue to look for opportunities to train instruments. I know it’s difficult to find time with heavy mission loads and threat; however, the extra effort could save lives in the future.

5. Committed is committed. Once I announced I was IIMC and going to instruments, there should have been no second guessing. A few of our crewmembers in the back were continuing to call out when they saw a ground light flicker or a star above. This did not bother me; but with a more junior crew onboard, the temptation could exist for some to quit flying instruments and try to return to visual meteorological conditions. Trying to regain VMC has been a major contributing factor in many of the IIMC deaths in Army aviation. Crews should be briefed that once pilots are on the instruments, talk should be kept to a minimum so pilots can focus their attention on flying the aircraft.


FYI
A haboob is a type of intense sandstorm commonly observed in the Sahara desert (typically Sudan), as well as across the Arabian Peninsula, throughout Kuwait and in the most arid regions of Iraq. Haboob winds in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Kuwait are frequently created by the collapse of a thunderstorm. During thunderstorm formation, winds move in a direction opposite to the storm's travel, and they will move from all directions into the thunderstorm. When the storm collapses and begins to release precipitation, wind directions reverse, gusting outward from the storm and generally gusting the strongest in the direction of the storm's travel.