Bravo Zulu

Navy farewells the Seahawk Bravo and Battle Budgie

Flying low over storm-tossed seas off Newcastle, NSW special forces soldiers aboard a Navy Seahawk helicopter launched from frigate HMAS Stuart eyed their target and at the chosen moment, fast-roped onto the deck of the North Korean freighter MV Pong Su.

‘You don’t need combat operations to make mistakes at sea.’ CDRE CHRIS SMALLHORN

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At the same time, other special forces boarded the ship from inflatable boats. They speedily seized control, ending a chase which started four days earlier after police intercepted 125kg of heroin dumped from the ship onto the Victorian coast.

A year later, in April 2004, halfway across the world, a Seahawk, also from HMAS Stuart, assisted in the rescue of a group of American sailors, whose small boat had been blown up in a maritime terrorist attack on Iraqi oil facilities at the top of the Persian Gulf.

Then in 2011, a Seahawk – again flying from HMAS Stuart which certainly seems to partake in its share of interesting operations – played a central role in the rescue of three crewmen of a Yemini dhow which had been seized by Somali pirates.

That’s just three of the many incidents in which Sikorsky S-70B-2 Seahawks have been involved in a long and distinguished career in Royal Australian Navy service.

Whether it’s bushfire and flood in Australia, rescues at sea such as the 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race or interception of drug and weapon smuggling vessels in seas between Pakistan and east Africa, the Seahawks have been there.

But before any pilot took the controls of a Seahawk, he or she learned to fly helicopters at the controls of the Aerospatiale (now Airbus Helicopters) AS350 BA Squirrel, an aircraft which has served in all three services in peace and war for more than three decades.

Now both types have officially retired from service, farewelled at a ceremony conducted at HMAS Albatross at Nowra, NSW on December 1.

Seahawk ‘Bravos’ and Squirrels conducted a flypast, along with their replacement, the Sikorsky-Lockheed Martin MH-60R Seahawk ‘Romeo’ and the Airbus Helicopters EC135.

This was a moving occasion for the young and older pilots, engineers and maintainers, for both types have departed with proud records.

Sixteen Seahawks were purchased and that’s how many are retiring. “We have never lost one. Whilst you will find those sorts of statistics for VIP jets and utility machines and the like I can’t find another example with an aircraft that was brought into service for combat operations,” said Commodore Chris Smallhorn, commander of the Fleet Air Arm (COMFAA) and a former commanding officer of 816 Squadron which operated the Seahawks.

“You don’t need combat operations to make mistakes at sea because it is so very unforgiving, with a deck moving around, particularly at night time and at times in the most extreme of weather conditions. Clearly that is a credit to the airframe and its design and Sikorsky. Importantly it is a credit to the sailors, officers, public servants and industry who have supported the Machine.”

As a training helicopter, the Squirrels notched up a few bingles but none ever resulted in fatalities or even serious injury.

For some, flying Squirrels has led to significant achievements. One is Vince Di Pietro, COMFAA prior to CDRE Smallhorn and now chief executive of Lockheed Martin Australia.

He said the Squirrel was fundamental to developing a capability that is now very much taken for granted – flying helicopters off the back of warships.

Until the Squirrels arrived in mid-1984, the Navy’s only experience of helicopter operations from small ship decks was using a Bell 206 from hydrographic ship HMAS Moresby.

“We had never had any real experience of using helicopters on small spritely decks like a frigate. Our only other shipboard experience until that state was Wessex and Sea King helicopters on the aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne,” he said.

“We had other ships like HMAS Stalwart with helicopter decks. But they weren’t fully permanent flights. Squirrel was really very much the aircraft that paved the way for us to start using the Seahawk seriously at sea. It got the ships used to using helicopters, it got the aircrew used to being at sea in small ships.

“All of that experience came together quite as a matter of fact rather than being fully appreciated for the significant transition that it was.”

Australia’s acquisition of the S-70B-2 Seahawk followed a US Navy requirement for a multirole helicopter to replace its ageing Kaman SH-2F Seasprites.

Following a detailed evaluation, the USN selected the SH-60B Seahawk, an aircraft based on the familiar Black Hawk, although with extensive modifications for maritime use.

The first US Navy SH-60B Seahawk entered service in 1984.

The type has since proved stunningly successful, with variants used by 12 other navies. In late 1984 Australia picked Seahawk over the Westland Lynx to be the Navy’s new helicopter, configured for antisubmarine warfare and anti-surface Warfare.

Secondary missions were to include basic utility helicopter duties such as transporting personnel and stores, maritime search and rescue, humanitarian and disaster relief missions and assisting in boarding Operations.

As it turned out, Seahawk performed far more of the latter Missions.

For Australia, initially, eight aircraft were to be acquired for $317 million but that was subsequently increased to 16. The first, aircraft N24-001 arrived in early 1988 and the last, N24-016 in 1992.

CDRE Smallhorn noted Australian Seahawks were vastly different to US aircraft when it came to sensors and combat system.

“The aircraft truly broke new ground with an integrated combat and sensor suite and a semi-glass cockpit,” he said.

‘The Seahawk truly broke new ground with an integrated combat and sensor suite.’ CDRE CHRIS SMALLHORN

Officially the aircraft was termed the S-70B-2 Seahawk Role Adaptable Weapon System (RAWS). Did anyone outside the project office ever call it that – probably not. To most everyone, it was just the Seahawk.

Former Labor government Defence Minister Kim Beazley recalls how that decision came about.

Beazley, at that time in 1984 Assistant Defence Minister, said the Labor caucus was debating whether to choose Seahawk or the British Westland Lynx, favoured by the force development analysis section of the Defence Department.

“[Prime Minister] Hawke noticed that [Defence Minister] Gordon Scholes was really struggling and he got hold of me and said ‘go into the caucus and into the cabinet and you are going to hammer them on the need for a Seahawk’,” he said.

Hawke believed Seahawk was the superior aircraft. “Hawkie was into everything and he preferred the Seahawk so I was ordered in to crush the caucus opposition. Lynx was offering a better industry package. Seahawk hardly had a package at all.”

“I took the delivery of them by the time I became defence minister and they are rippers.”

Beazley said the sole shortcoming of Seahawk was the absence of a dunking sonar, redressed on their Romeo replacements.

“We have always been a bit off the pace in ASW but we are on the pace again now with the new ones,” he said.

“What they need is another six and they need to reconfigure the two LHDs for ASW capability. They have room for them because they are only carrying half a dozen of the others and they have capacity for 20 aircraft.”

The decision to acquire a naval combat helicopter capability really followed other bigger and better known decisions – to retire carrier HMAS Melbourne and shelve plans for acquisition of a replacement.

One of the first acts of the new Hawke government, elected in March 1983, was to drop plans for a new Carrier.

Fundamentally that was because a big deck carrier was just too expensive and there were other new capabilities on the way with a stronger claim on limited funds. And maritime aviation capability could be delivered by helicopters operating from warships.

“With the demise of the Fleet Air Arm fixed-wing capability we needed to maintain a footprint at sea. In rolls the Squirrel, and the next thing you know we are operating these impressive aircraft off frigates at sea,” CDRE Smallhorn said.

“We were shaping and preparing our Navy for helicopter small deck operations that were to be the mainstay of naval aviation.”

The acquisition of Squirrel – or Ecureuil in the aircraft’s native language – stemmed from a decision of Fraser government Defence Minister Ian Sinclair in August 1982.

What was needed was a replacement for Vietnam War era UH-1B Iroquois in the training role plus a new utility type for the RAN. The government decided to buy 18 Squirrels for $23 million – 12 for the RAAF and six for the Navy.

This was a type first flown in Marignane, France in mid-1974 and intended as a civil utility aircraft. It proved more than popular, with more than 3,500 produced and operated around the world.

The first Australian Squirrel was a Navy aircraft, serial-numbered N22-013, handed over in France in November 1983.

CDRE Smallhorn noted the Squirrel was a basic small helicopter designed for civil operation and never intended for operation off ships.

“You look at what the aircraft is, how it’s made and what it was originally designed for and it really is rather extraordinary when you think of what we have achieved,” he said.

The RAAF initially operated Squirrels as its training helicopter at 5 Squadron at RAAF Fairbairn, Canberra. Subsequently they went to the joint Australian Defence Force helicopter school at RAAF Fairbairn, although as Army aircraft.

That gives the Squirrel another distinction as just about the only aircraft to have served in all three services. Even widely-used Dakota transport aircraft and Tiger Moth trainers never served with all three Services.

Some RAAF Squirrels were also intended for search and rescue operations at RAAF bases at Darwin, Williamtown, NSW and Pearce, WA but proved not well suited to that mission. Subsequently the SAR contract was awarded to the National Safety Council of Australia with larger Bell 212s.

Navy Squirrel aircraft were intended as the fleet’s training and utility helicopter, operating from the Adelaide class FFG frigates, pending the arrival of the larger Seahawks.

The Navy used its Squirrels to learn about operating helicopters from small warship flightdecks.

Di Pietro said in those early days the Navy did quite extraordinary things with these little aircraft.

“We landed the aircraft in degraded modes day and night on the deck,” he Said.

“We did things like hydraulics-out landings, emergency low visibility approaches, manual fuel landings. We would simulate ship deck and aircraft emergencies day and night. We literally were able to transition the Navy from one which had not seriously seen any small ship flight operations to being competent on warships to an amazing depth.” He said the Squirrel was a delight to fly and a great aircraft on which to learn to fly.

“It taught you all the right things about helicopters that you needed to know. It had limitations which you needed to understand and work to and it also had a great deal of character,” he said.

Di Pietro said the Squirrel featured an elastomeric rotor head and very good control setup.

“Such was the control setup that you could put the thing on the deck in pretty serious weather conditions and do it safely,” he said.

And then came Gulf War 1, with Australia dispatching a naval group to join the US-led coalition to evict Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait.

Saddam’s troops occupied Kuwait on August 2 1990 and the three ships of the Australian task force sailed for the Gulf just over a week later.

At that time, the Navy had a mature helicopter capability in the Squirrels but which was never intended for maritime let alone operational use. And it also had a new capability, the Seahawks, intended for just that role but not yet fully accepted into service.

It was decided to send both to the Gulf, with two Seahawks and three Squirrels embarked on the three ships.

“So we put in a GPS system (on the Squirrel), EW (electronic warfare) system, nothing too flash, and put a gun on the side of the helicopter and it went away in support of operations in the Gulf, particularly working with the S-70B-2s also deployed to Gulf War 1,” CDRE Smallhorn said.

And so was born the ‘Battle Budgie’.

“It was doing things like top cover missions for boarding operations while Navy was enforcing the UN sanctions on Iraq.”

So, as well as its central role in pilot training, Squirrels also served in war and warlike environments.

Those initial Seahawk deployments to the Middle East were the first of many to come which continues to this day under what’s now called Operation Manitou.

CDRE Smallhorn said the Navy’s 816 Squadron has had assets deployed to this region almost continuously since 1990.

‘And so was born the ‘Battle Budgie’.’

He said he could think of no other unit in Australian military history which had assets deployed for greater than a quarter century.

“In all of those operations, in the terribly unforgiving environment of maritime aviation and to still have the same 16 airframes that we purchased, is an extraordinary story. We are very proud of that record,” he said.

“It is easy to hear stories like that and to think that what we do is easy. It’s not easy. It’s hard. It’s a tough grind to make sure that our airworthiness and safety is retained while we still are as lethal as we can be as a warfighting organisation.”

The Squirrels have also played a central role in development of the Navy pilot and aircrew training regimes, organisation and practices which have produced such a commendable safety regime.

CDRE Smallhorn said the Navy’s Aircraft Maintenance and Flight Trials Unit (AMAFTU) and their instructor workforce were the crown jewels of the Fleet Air Arm.

“AMAFTU develops the limits by which we operate our aircraft and the instructors ensure we imbue the skills and culture to stay within those limits. Together they give you a good airworthy and safe system in the military environment,” he said.

That’s resulted in a very comprehensive pilot training system. Anyone aspiring to fly helicopters for the Navy must first pass the full RAAF initial flight training course.

So by the time a pilot starts initial Navy helicopter training, he or she already has their wings.

CDRE Smallhorn said it was done that way for a couple of reasons.

Seahawk and its successor the Romeo are both single-pilot aircraft and Navy deployments typically involve a small group operating from the back of a ship for six-nine months far from home base.

“We need to train a very mature aviator. You put them out on our ships and we are well aware of how rapidly an environment can change and lose its seamless integrity if you have the wrong sort of person,” he said.

“The way we develop our aviators is not just about their professional acumen. The 60 Romeo is in every sense an aircraft equally as complex and in some cases more complex from a combat system perspective, than your modern day fighter.

We need to train a very mature aviator.’ CDRE CHRIS SMALLHORN

“What we are creating clearly has to be somebody with great professional and personal acumen. They roll out of here as day/night, all weather international captains. And that’s it. It is the only place in Australia where we train aircraft captains straight from their conversion ready for day/ night international ops in all weather conditions as well as in militarily contested environments.”

Both Squirrel and Seahawk have reached a well-earned retirement.

The last Seahawk made its last flight from Nowra to Canberra on December 4, landing at the showgrounds, from where it was transported by road to the Australian War Memorial’s nearby storage facility. This machine, Seahawk 872 (serial N24-003) was involved in the 2004 rescue of American sailors following the terrorist attack on the Iraqi oil terminals.

Squirrel N22-017 was delivered to the War Memorial in August. The two are set to be displayed together.

In service, the Seahawks featured advanced weapons and sensors which were progressively updated. CDRE Smallhorn understands it was the first aircraft in Australia equipped with a FLIR (forward looking infra-red) sensor. Subsequently it was upgraded with an advanced EO/IR (day and night television), along with electronic warfare and self protection systems.

He said the aircraft themselves remain in excellent condition.

“If it wasn’t for the fact that you can’t support most of the combat, mission and avionics systems, there is a lot of life left in them from a vehicle perspective. But from a supportability perspective, it’s time,” he said.

Seahawk Romeo brings the very latest sensors plus more – a dipping sonar, critical to an effective antisubmarine Capability.

The Squirrels, meanwhile, are being replaced by 15 new Airbus Helicopters EC135s, again a widely used and successful civil design.

CDRE Smallhorn said in its day Squirrel was a top of the line small utility aircraft.

“Today we only operate multiengine aircraft. First and foremost we wanted to bring multi-engine thinking from the very first point our aviators strap into a helicopter,” he said.

“The Squirrel is also fairly basic in a systems sense.”

Pilots who have already undergone RAAF training on modern navigation and avionics systems are taking a couple of steps back when they strap into a Squirrel.

“Too long on a machine that is not continuing to exercise and stretch a young aviator is not ideal for their professional development. The new helicopter replacing the Squirrel, the EC135 is multi-engine and has a modern glass cockpit,” he said.

“They are a beautiful modern helicopter, ideal for training future ADF rotary-wing aviators. They are operating here at HMAS Albatross right now.”

With them comes a full simulation system including three full-motion simulators plus tactical training systems which feature virtual reality.

“We are bringing on a system that is more of a ramp as they move towards frontline aircraft, without the big leap. It’s aiming to smooth out the path to operational conversion training which is pretty full on,” he said.

EC135s will provide the flight training for the new ADF joint helicopter school to be built within the Navy’s 723 Squadron. Maintenance of these aircraft will be performed by Boeing Defence, another first.

“That’s the first time that I am aware of in the Fleet Air Arm history – the FAA was stood up in 1948 – that we have had a squadron without a uniformed maintenance element,” he Said.

Though the Navy never lost a Seahawk, it had some close calls.

In January 2001, aircraft Tiger 83 came close to ditching during a night winching exercise in the Shoalhaven Bight. Problems with the automatic flight control system led to an uncontrolled descent to within three metres of the water.

An incident the same year at Wagga Wagga led to a Squirrel being written off in manual fuel landing while teaching a trainee pilot.

The instructor pilot was then Lieutenant, now Captain, Grant O’Loughlan, who said the aircraft encountered ground resonance – where it shook itself apart – spun around, with the tail breaking off.

‘But from a supportability perspective, it’s time.’ CDRE CHRIS SMALLHORN

He said there were two responses to ground resonance– either take off or shut down immediately – with neither possible in the brief moments as the aircraft shook violently at up to 10Gs.

“I flew Lynx, Seasprite and Seahawk and they have all been good and I just had that one unfortunate incident,” he said.

“On Monday [December 4] basically everything I have flown in my career in helicopters will be in a Museum.

“I used to fly Squirrels off the back of a ship and I think I much preferred having a Seahawk strapped to me or a Lynx – something a bit more robust to handle challenging conditions at sea. However, I learned a lot as a baby Squirrel pilot. I enjoyed it immensely.”