Fire! Fire! Mayday! Masyday! We're Going Down!

摘要

Those words are as clear in my mind today as they were on April 10, 1981. We were a flight of two SH-3Gs, flying from NAS North Island to NAS Fallon for predeployment training. That morning, we attended a normal brief, and our pilot said we would stop at NAS China Lake for fuel and chow. We loaded the aircraft with cruise boxes, a ladder, and luggage, then departed for China Lake. This portion of the flight was normal, with the exception of an intermittent low howl that came from the gearbox area of the No. 2 engine. The rest of the crew seemed to dismiss this noise; in fact, they even had a name for it, "the H-3 howl."