A Bad Day at the Office 

Summed up by four memorable quotes

By David Cook, December 1999

Pilot Peter Ivanoff inches his way up a steep ice slope above his crashed helicopter.

Antarctica, February 1960.  Picture: David Cook

Some fifty years ago my job was trying to map the coast of Antarctica, where the maps current at the time had long sections of blank paper, filled in perhaps with a cartographic draftsman’s best estimate of where the coastline might be, in an average season. The coast, that is the edge of the water, shifts of course, seaward 30 to 80 miles in winter, retreating to glacial ice cliffs or outcropping rocks in the summer. Therefore the object of the exercise was to fix the positions of rock outcrops, about the only identifiable features which remain stationary and can be used to control the air photography from which the maps are drawn. This was achieved using star observations in daylight, as required in the Antarctic summer, a rather drawn out exercise in those pre GPS, pre computer days; only about ten stars are visible in daylight with a theodolite. Even mechanical calculators were useless in the field as they stiffened up in the cold and refused to turn. It was all logarithms, altitude-azimuth tables and bits of paper, while sitting on cold rock; not good for the haemorrhoids.

The transport for this exercise was two Hiller 12E helicopters, the first Australian helicopters in the Antarctic. They were three place, the pilot in the middle, straddling the instrument pedestal, passenger on one side, heaps of equipment on the other, and no shoulder harness, of which more later. They cruised straight and level at 50 knots with the little engine turning over, from memory, at about 3000 rpm, working fairly hard; the whole thing vibrated noticeably. To this newly qualified Private Pilot the salient feature was the carburettor heat control. Approaching to land on a dicky stretch of sloping ice or the chopper pad on a rolling ship, with quick power and pitch variations required, the pilot had to spend an inordinate amount of time shoving the carby heat lever back and forth to keep the temperature in the safe range. Each change in collective pitch also required a change in manifold pressure to maintain the rotor revs, the automatic coupling of pitch and power not being around in those days. You don’t have any spare hands, or feet, when flying a chopper; the pilot was a busy man.

So we set off from Wilkes, now Casey, one sunny day, 60 miles south west along the coast, geologist Ian McLeod and pilot Ray Hudson in one chopper, surveyor, yours truly, and pilot Peter Ivanoff in the other. They always flew as a pair, for safety. About 30 miles out we crossed a glacier, ten miles wide, sloping down to the coast and fast flowing, as evidenced by the heavily crevassed surface, with wide gaps starting blue and becoming black as they went down to huge depths. No chance of any successful forced landings here. From the pilot:

Quote no. 1: ‘These things always go into automatic rough in places like this.’

A little further out we landed at a fuel dump in a clear gently sloping area where the surface wind was about 25 to 30 knots and then went on to the destination, a small stony beach, now Ivanoff Head, nestling at the base of a long steep ice slope stretching many miles inland. Both being new to Antarctic flying neither the pilot nor I knew much about katabatic winds, the convective flow down any slope which blows every day when there is not a blizzard to change its course. It reaches a maximum about 11 am or so, the steeper the slope and the nearer the ground the stronger the wind. At Mawson, located at the seaward end of a long gentle slope, it attains about 20 to 30 knots on an ordinary summer’s day. In winter it gets really windy. Today, many miles to the east and at 3000 feet, it seemed like a nice day.

On approach to the beach the usual air speed of 30 to 40 knots did not seem to be getting us anywhere. More power, steeper descent – I remember noticing 74 knots and we were going backwards. From the pilot: Quote no.2: ‘We had better get out of here’.

A left turn, downwind out over the foam streaked sea, seemed not an attractive option. Theories like ‘Keep the airspeed constant and you don’t sink’ seem irrelevant when you are going backwards. So we turned right, trying to climb along the steep slope with full power and full pitch, but the wind, rushing downhill, over a 100 foot ice cliff and onto the sea made it impossible.

From the pilot: Quote no. 3:’ Hang on Dave’. This seemed, retrospectively, to be an understatement.

He rolled the aircraft onto its side and flew it hard onto the surface. The undercarriage skids broke off and the cross members stuck solidly into the ice, as he had intended. The rotor blades broke off and the engine, still at full throttle, screamed its head off. Eventually the pilot, dazed from smashing his face against the instrument panel (no shoulder harness, no crash helmet) reached out and cut the ignition. To say everything became deathly quiet would be inaccurate but at least we could shout over the noise of the wind.

The next step was to climb out onto the steep slope, slippery like a fresh frozen ice cube, and attempt to stand up in the 50 knots plus wind. With no crampons for the boots and only a roll of rope and one ice axe between us there was only one way out and that was up, away from the menacing cliff top where most of our externally loaded gear had already slid over and disappeared into the sea.

The method was for me to laboriously climb up, cutting one step at a time, to the limit of the rope, and there cut two steps for myself and two for the pilot. Then he would pull himself up along the rope, lying prone on the ice to cope with the effects of the head blow and loss of vision due to blood, and eventually sit in his set of heel holds while I set off on the next rope length. The theory was that if I started to slide he would gather in the loose rope as I went past and hang on; life is full of untested theories.

On one of these stages I photographed him heaving himself upwards. When he reached me he said (Quote no. 4): ‘Bloody funny time to be taking photos’.

Peter Ivanoff on the steep ice slope above his crashed helicopter. Picture: David Cook

Ray, the second pilot, having stayed at a safe height and observed all the events related above, radioed the ship and then pulled off a magnificent landing on the nearby peninsula, far enough from the beach to at least have the wind blowing more or less horizontally but still in violent turbulence. This was achieved, on about the fourth attempt and in wind which exceeded the forward speed of the helicopter, by having Ian, the geologist, peer backwards out of the open door calling ‘left a bit, right a bit, down’ while they backed precariously into a penguin rookery, slid sideways into the partial shelter of a large rock and put down in 15 inches of penguin droppings. The rotor brake was ineffective and it was 15 minutes before the pilot felt able to release the controls and jump out to try and stop the flailing rotor by gripping the tail rotor drive shaft with gloved hands.

Peter Ivanoff (left) and David Cook following the crash. Picture: David Cook

Meanwhile Ian, the knight in shining armour in all this as far as the pilot and I were concerned, set off, also working without crampons and with no safety rope, and nothing to attach it to anyway, to cut steps for about half a mile along the steep, wind swept ice slope to meet two tired and grateful people coming the other way. When we reached the beach, our original destination, Ray, the second pilot, had a tent erected and a welcome hot brew made.

There must be some obvious lessons to be learnt from this exercise. Maybe one less obvious would be to always wear a life jacket when flying near the sea, regardless of whether you intend to actually fly over it, much less fall into it.

The crashed helicopter above the ice cliffs and the ice slopes traversed by Ian McLeod, David Cook and Peter Ivanoff to reach the rocks in the foreground. Picture: David Cook

Time for a tot of Akvavit! (from left) Ian McLeod, Ray Hudson, Peter Ivanoff and David Cook. Picture: David Cook

Postscript: There was a story, which I cannot vouch for, that, a year or two later, an Australian De Havilland Beaver, equipped with floats, was operating about 100 miles inland. The engine developed carby ice, almost unheard of in the Antarctic with temperatures way below freezing. They managed to keep the engine going by fiddling with the priming pump and, losing height, half gliding, half flying they just made it to the coast. They scraped over the cliffs, put it down safely on the water, looked out the window and there was the wreck of the Hiller, still plastered on the ice like a fly on the wall. The carby ice cleared itself and they flew home to Mawson, no doubt wondering how, in a continent two and a half times the size of Australia, such things might happen.

Pictures compiled by Grahame Budd

Editorial note: The accident occurred on Saturday, 13 February 1960.

References 

Cook, David, 'A Bad Day at the Office', Aurora Magazine, June 2009, pp. 21-22.

Hudson, Ray T.,  'Antarctic Helicopter Accident', AIRCRAFT, December 1983, pp. 40-42.