Kipling and seamanship

I'm reminded of a story.
A sergeant is addressing a class of squaddies.
" This officer 'ere is going to give you a talk about Kipling. Now, I don't suppose any of you ignorant lot have ever kipled"
 
Naw! The old Dak just wouldn't get airborne with 20,000 rivets loaded on!

They even had to select the smallest of their paratroops for operational drops, in South Africa. I was astounded to see a fleet of them at the air force base in Cape Town ( Air Force Base Ysterplaat ) when first I went there.... I genuinely thought I was looking at a museum, or an airframe graveyard. I learned that they are as cheap as chips to operate, and the guys who fly them - bush pilots - have tens of thousands of hours on 'em.....so they know exactly what can be done and what to avoid 'cos they've been doing just that for decades.

Must have been blerry cold in the cockpit, to say nowt of 'down the back', of your Antarctic encounter. Maybe the pilot turned left, on getting airborne out of Ysterplaat, instead of right.... and just kept going.... ;) I've thinking it would have been one hell of a delivery trip, whichever way round one tried it.
 
zoidberg said:
Naw! The old Dak just wouldn't get airborne with 20,000 rivets loaded on!

They even had to select the smallest of their paratroops for operational drops, in South Africa. I was astounded to see a fleet of them at the air force base in Cape Town ( Air Force Base Ysterplaat ) when first I went there.... I genuinely thought I was looking at a museum, or an airframe graveyard. I learned that they are as cheap as chips to operate, and the guys who fly them - bush pilots - have tens of thousands of hours on 'em.....so they know exactly what can be done and what to avoid 'cos they've been doing just that for decades.

Must have been blerry cold in the cockpit, to say nowt of 'down the back', of your Antarctic encounter. Maybe the pilot turned left, on getting airborne out of Ysterplaat, instead of right.... and just kept going.... ;) I've thinking it would have been one hell of a delivery trip, whichever way round one tried it.
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They've been used in Antarctica for quite a while - I think it's the rough field landing capability that makes them suitable. They were used to pioneer landing on blue ice - that's places where the solid ice of the glacier is exposed with no snow on top of it; it's a very flat and smooth surface. Imagine landing on a skating rink! However, I saw one in 2005, landing at Rothera - it had just done a transAntarctic trip, though I forget from where.

That said, I can't on a quick search find anyone who is still operating them in Antarctica. It used to be Adventure Network International.
 
AntarcticPilot said:
I think it's the rough field landing capability that makes them suitable.
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That rings a bell. They're relatively lightweight, and the pressure-loading they exert on a landing ( runway ) surface is small, compared with that of a Hercules C-130, for example. They can lift a useful load into an 'unprepared' short strip - a bulldozed long clearing in the African bush, or a nearly-level stretch of ice cap with the snow scraped away - and get off again, empty, without making the surface unusable for other landings/takeoffs.

You don't want an aircraft stranded somewhere remote, perhaps for weeks, because the runway surface is too ploughed up to risk a take-off. It's a complex assessment/calculation relating to the Bearing Surface and the calculated damage the mainwheels will do. This is done for licensed airfields' runways by professionals; bush pilots have to exercise some considerable judgement, for recent weather changes everything.
 
zoidberg said:
That rings a bell. They're relatively lightweight, and the pressure-loading they exert on a landing ( runway ) surface is small, compared with that of a Hercules C-130, for example. They can lift a useful load into an 'unprepared' short strip - a bulldozed long clearing in the African bush, or a nearly-level stretch of ice cap with the snow scraped away - and get off again, empty, without making the surface unusable for other landings/takeoffs.

You don't want an aircraft stranded somewhere remote, perhaps for weeks, because the runway surface is too ploughed up to risk a take-off. It's a complex assessment/calculation relating to the Bearing Surface and the calculated damage the mainwheels will do. This is done for licensed airfields' runways by professionals; bush pilots have to exercise some considerable judgement, for recent weather changes everything.
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I was at Rothera when Polar 4 (a Dornier 228) was written off by a heavy landing at Rothera; indeed, I saw the aircraft landing on the same day (ISTR) as the Dakota came in. Rothera is a commonly used staging point for aircraft coming from elsewhere in Antarctica; it has a runway with a prepared gravel surface, which is a rarity in Antarctica! And aircraft arriving is enough of a break in the routine of the station that a lot of people watch aircraft coming in or taking off. It was immediately obvious that it was a heavy landing, and creases in the fuselage were clearly visible! Opinion amongst the BAS pilots was that the Dornier aircraft were marginal for operations in Antarctica, not really being strong enough. BAS uses Twin Otters and a Dash 7; Twin Otters have been successfully rebuilt after being flipped by the wind when on the ground!. I should say that the landing that wrote the aircraft off was caused by fatigue induced pilot error; the landing was at the end of a long flight.
 
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The principles and practices of airmanship are closely interrelated to those of seamanship. The one grew out of the other, and there's still a degree of cross-fertilisation..... but not nearly enough IMHO.

One hears quite a lot about 'pilot fatigue'. That needs to be understood - and not superficially - in the context of effective decision-making and responding well to early signs of problems.... such as departures below a planned airspeed on approach. 'It's the last bit of the last mile that kills'.

There is a strong tendency to rationalise "Yes, I'm tired, but it'll be alright. I'll just plough on.....'

We see exactly the same process going on in a boat on approach to a haven/harbour. Every so often, it isn't alright..... and there's insufficient capacity to recover the situation when it swiftly goes all the way wrong.

Pilots are taught, and some use, a deliberate 'Missed Approach Procedure' in that they'll fly the aircraft down to a predetermined point on the approach path - say, to 300' and 1 mile from
the runway threshold - then deliberately climb away and go round again. That gives the opportunity to experience actual conditions on the approach and performance down to the point where a safe landing is just about guaranteed.

Doing an approach to a harbour entrance in poor weather/visibility conditions but then doing a deliberate 'Go Around' permits a similar heightened awareness. Having a 'Go Around' plan already considered/briefed is also helpful in the event of a ship suddenly departing through the narrow entrance, as has happened at Fowey and Newlyn on a couple of occasions.
 
zoidberg said:
The principles and practices of airmanship are closely interrelated to those of seamanship. The one grew out of the other, and there's still a degree of cross-fertilisation..... but not nearly enough IMHO.

One hears quite a lot about 'pilot fatigue'. That needs to be understood - and not superficially - in the context of effective decision-making and responding well to early signs of problems.... such as departures below a planned airspeed on approach. 'It's the last bit of the last mile that kills'.

There is a strong tendency to rationalise "Yes, I'm tired, but it'll be alright. I'll just plough on.....'

We see exactly the same process going on in a boat on approach to a haven/harbour. Every so often, it isn't alright..... and there's insufficient capacity to recover the situation when it swiftly goes all the way wrong.

Pilots are taught, and some use, a deliberate 'Missed Approach Procedure' in that they'll fly the aircraft down to a predetermined point on the approach path - say, to 300' and 1 mile from
the runway threshold - then deliberately climb away and go round again. That gives the opportunity to experience actual conditions on the approach and performance down to the point where a safe landing is just about guaranteed.

Doing an approach to a harbour entrance in poor weather/visibility conditions but then doing a deliberate 'Go Around' permits a similar heightened awareness. Having a 'Go Around' plan already considered/briefed is also helpful in the event of a ship suddenly departing through the narrow entrance, as has happened at Fowey and Newlyn on a couple of occasions.
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Indeed, there are many similarities - obviously, things usually happen much more slowly on boats than aircraft, but otherwise there are a lot of similarities. The main one is the requirement for constant situational awareness; how often do you read of accidents in either medium happening because people lost awareness of their surroundings? Just recently we had the case of the cargo ship running aground on the Pentland Skerries because the watch keeping officer had lost awareness of the situation the ship was in, and reacted to warnings inappropriately.

The main similarity in both cases, though, is that solid stuff is dangerous, and keeping away from either the ground or the shore when in doubt is basic safety.
 
As a general point, in relation to the two posts above, I will always stay at sea rather than try to enter an artificial harbour in blowing weather. This goes back to RT McMullen in the 1880s, but I am genuinely shocked by the number of RYA Yachtmasters whom I have sailed with who have wanted to "get in somewhere".
 
With a decent crew and a well set up boat, I agree that staying out in a blow is safer than trying to get into a difficult harbour - look at the Dover Calais ferries that get stuck outside Dover for hours at a time, but a weaker, tired crew may not be up to that. After all, if going into a port is an option, you can't just set up a drogue and retire below, or you'll end up as an RNLI statistic. Any port in a storm? Well, not Chichester in a southerly gale and a spring ebb, but Pompey's a couple of hours away and, as long as the engine's reliable, it's a pretty safe entrance in any weather.

I can't help thinking that, ocean passages apart, with modern forecasts, there's normally little excuse for being out in seriously nasty weather.
 
Stemar said:
With a decent crew and a well set up boat, I agree that staying out in a blow is safer than trying to get into a difficult harbour - look at the Dover Calais ferries that get stuck outside Dover for hours at a time, but a weaker, tired crew may not be up to that. After all, if going into a port is an option, you can't just set up a drogue and retire below, or you'll end up as an RNLI statistic. Any port in a storm? Well, not Chichester in a southerly gale and a spring ebb, but Pompey's a couple of hours away and, as long as the engine's reliable, it's a pretty safe entrance in any weather.

I can't help thinking that, ocean passages apart, with modern forecasts, there's normally little excuse for being out in seriously nasty weather.
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With a weaker, tired crew, I would more particularly not want to try an iffy entrance (for the avoidance of doubt, for me, that includes anywhere between Portsmouth and the Medway and between Harwich and the Humber!)

I think that, in home waters, you can pretty much always heave to if you have space to leeward. if you haven't got space to leeward, you are going to have to make some, no matter what, and that will be unpleasant, but that goes into your basic passage planning. By way of example, if you are east of the Wight in a westerly you are going to run into the southern north sea.

I agree that you can usually avoid nasty stuff, the exception being when you are time limited and the moderately bad weather you had planned for decides to spawn a secondary, etc.
 
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Kukri said:
With a weaker, tired crew, I would more particularly not want to try an iffy entrance (for the avoidance of doubt, for me, that includes anywhere between Portsmouth and the Medway and between Harwich and the Humber!)

I think that, in home waters, you can pretty much always heave to if you have space to leeward. if you haven't got space to leeward, you are going to have to make some, no matter what, and that will be unpleasant, but that goes into your basic passage planning. By way of example, if you are east of the Wight in a westerly you are going to run into the southern north sea.

I agree that you can usually avoid nasty stuff, the exception being when you are time limited and the moderately bad weather you had planned for decides to spawn a secondary, etc.
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Agree one should keep away from continental shelves and avoid 'iffy' entrances, even if an inexperienced crew is tired and frightened. That said, depending on the precise wind and wave direction, Eastbourne can be okay, as can Dover. If they're open to a SW wave train, they're obviously out, in which case Cherbourg, Ouistram, etc. can work.

That said, with modern weather forecasting, one would have to be either damn unlucky, or a bit silly to be caught out in a major storm?
 
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