The lazy blogger recycles
I wrote this article as punishment in 2004 for almost killing myself and 4 others. It was never published. But I was able to find it on the "Approach" website in their vault, along with thousands of other unpublished articles. Still no way to share it, but could download a copy. Still can't share most of the stuff on their site. Sad, cause it's the Navy's Safety Center. I guess copy and paste are just as good as emailing, RSS-ing or sharing through Google Reader.
Enjoy.
Riddle Me This
By LT Aaron Aschenbrenner, MH-60S
How far into this article are you going to read? Was it the aircraft that drew you in? The crafty title perhaps? Why do we read any of these stories? Ostensibly to learn from the mistakes or victories of others, but do we really take the lessons to heart? Could we simply be indulging our curious interest in the failings of others?
hy do we write these articles? Do we really learn anything from the random alignment of other people’s stars that led to their near miss or flawless execution during that dual-engine flame-out? Couldn’t we save some money and just replace these articles with the obvious lessons contained in all of them: Don’t fly into the ground or water, pay attention, other folks can kill you too, know your systems, speak up, ask why, use your crew, you aren’t superman-hence the aircraft around you.
There you go, lessons that fixed wing and rotary folks can take something from. No more skipping that harrowing, but not particularly applicable night recovery to the back of an AFS (The ship that brings you food). Don’t we assume that helo guys skip the jet stories? Prop guys don’t care about autorotations. And just what catches the aircrew’s eyes?
Why do we repeat stories whose lessons are self-evident? Does anyone who has made it this far in life and this article take anything new from the fact that on a beautiful sunny afternoon in the Philippine Sea, I almost flew myself and four shipmates into the water for no other reason than I was stupid/arrogant/hubristic/over-confident enough to think that a descending left turn from 500 to 300 feet was the right time to start helping my copilot with some button pushing. Swear to God, I looked up, saw the water and was certain we were done. Even as I instinctively rolled wings level, pulled in power, and nosed it over just a touch, a chorus of “Power, power, power,” rang out.
Did someone reading the above just now realize, “Wow, I do that all the time, and maybe it isn’t so smart?” Now the usual, “Well, if it saves one person, or gets through to one person.” I guess that is a valid point, but still it doesn’t seem to necessitate a minute-by-minute explanation of that afternoon.
Is there a better way to reach people? Better than the shotgun approach, hoping that two or three “saved” per article per issue will add up to a decrease in mishaps? I don’t know. I just can’t shake that feeling of hollowness, where safety magazines are left about to present an atmosphere of “Safety always.” I suppose that is why we do safety surveys, and our favorite downward trending graph of mishaps would indicate that thinking about safety, implementing programs and controls, standardization, have made us safer members of the aviation community.
That being said, couldn’t we just make up harrowing adventures? What is the role of an Approach article? If we are just passing on lessons, society seems to get along with fables and myths as much as anything. Does the message mean that much more because a fellow P-3C pilot lost four engines? Don’t we just fall into the typical, “Glad it wasn’t me,” reaction?
Maybe it’s like popular culture, where the constant exposure and repetition are the keys to slowly, but surely, getting the message across. Maybe it’s just cathartic for the author to share that moment of weakness, frailty, and fallibility, to remind the reader they too are not immune from—wait, why aren’t they?
I haven’t given you my entire bio. In all likelihood, you aren’t me, and we have little in common. Our stars aren’t the same; we don’t eat the same cheese. Maybe I was distracted with marital problems at the time. Maybe my bookie had been hassling me. Maybe I had been underachieving and was trying to show folks I could chew gum, pat my head, and dance a polka while making a descending right turn. Ah see, I went left; had I gone right, everything would have been fine.
Ultimately, the author figures out what message he wants to present, and then tells the story that way. Or, if it isn’t a flattering story maybe he doesn’t tell it. I think those stories are the key: The ones where we came up short of our own expectations and lived to tell about it. Being a band of highly compensated egomaniacs, who are trained and paid to do it all, and believe that anything, OK, most anything, is within the realm of our capabilities.
We need to be reminded that if we don’t watch it, if we don’t use CRM, if we don’t know our systems and consult the horoscope daily, we could be in for a hell of a surprise when we try to play submarine. Constant vigilance is tough. At the end of the day, we all make assessments as to when we can relax in the aircraft: Whether we are at the controls, or in back monitoring the sonobuoys. The only way we come home and make the landings equal takeoffs is by thinking, questioning, watching, aviating, navigating and communicating, and by using CRM—maybe all of these. At the very least, check what house the moon and Venus are in.
LT Aschenbrenner flies with HC-5.
