Risk Management Magazine

Under night vision goggles (NVGs), none of us could tell the area I picked was going to be soft, deep sand that grabbed us by the wheels the second we touched down. As the aircraft abruptly stopped, all of us were thrown forward and caught by our harnesses, except one crew chief.

The radios were silent, systems were in the green and the Atlantic Ocean was rolling calmly along the empty white-sand beaches below. “Bird, 11 o’clock,” the left seater said matter-of-factly. “Contact,” responded the right seat, followed by smooth cyclic inputs that guided the aircraft effortlessly toward the one o’clock position.

My career, like those of most Army aviators, consists of routine flights that represent a lot of planning. But some of those routine flights turn into memorable events. One of those now-memorable flights was a routine mission transporting two people from Cairns Army Airfield at Fort Novosel, Alabama, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and then returning.