The Day the Bird Went Silent

            The worst day at work was on January, the sixteenth in the year of our Lord 2008. The day the bird went silent. I was with HM-15, Helicopter Mine Countermeasures 15 the Blackhawks, and we worked on the Sikorsky MH-53E Sea Dragon. These aircraft, called “birds” in the Navy, are enormous and very powerful. To put it simply one of our mottos was, “Piss me off and I’ll lift your house.” Working on these “birds” was a very painful and time consuming evolution. We sometimes worked sixteen to twenty hour days because it takes eighty man hours for just one flight hour, but it is all worth it to see the Sea Dragon take flight. Long hours are hard but nothing compares to a day when your shipmates do not come back.

            Hurricane 01 was having RADALT issues just minutes before it left. This is not problem to a highly skilled and experienced Aviation Electronics Technician such as my self. I can remember the problem to this day; the Radar Altimeter was low approximately fifty feet. With just a quick tweak and test I told the crew, “Everything is 4.0 and Chubs I’ll see you later for a drink when you get back.” I watched as the “bird” took my shipmates away, never to return again.

            I went home that day with a sense of accomplishment, as I had just fixed the last issue with the aircraft and was getting ready to go out. I got dressed and ready early and then started to play videogames, quietly, in the dark and lonely barracks room. The telephone rang breaking the silence of my room at 8:20 PM, or 2000 for us military folk, and I heard words that shook me to the core, “Get in here now!” I asked my night check counter parts,”What’s going on, tools were good when I left and I took out the trash?” I said these words with the thought that we were just being recalled for someone not doing their job. The other side of the phone replied, “Forget about stuff like that get in here now!” “OK give me a minute to get in uniform” I replied but before I could say anything more the sound of slamming doors came from next door. “Just hurry in and bring in your uniform, you will change here. Bye” the phone yelled at me and went quite, just before my door was pounded on by my best friend, Dan, from next door.  Boom, boom, boom, went my door as Dan struck my door with a thunderous and rage filled fist.

            I grabbed my coveralls, boots and keys from the couch and ran to the door. “Let’s go John, we have to run” Dan said as I opened the door. He had a weird look on his face. I could tell something went terribly wrong. We jumped into his white Isuzu truck and peeled out of the parking lot. “Wow I didn’t know this little thing could do that” I thought as he shifted in high revs jolting us forward and back with each shift. “What’s wrong?” I asked as we rocketed towards the hanger. “Don’t you watch the news?” he said already knowing the answer. “No I haven’t seen the news just tell me.” I begged as no one would say a thing to me. “A bird went down…” he started to say before I interrupted him, “No, it didn’t quit playing with me.” “I saw the fireball on TV.” Dan said as we entered the parking lot.

            I have worked twenty hours a day seven days a week for a month in the heat of the desert but nothing is hard about that in comparison to losing your shipmates, shipmates are family. The worst part of it all was, besides the loss of comrades, how the crash happened. The aircraft hit a television tower in the thick fog at about 950 feet of its 1000 foot stance. When I heard this, I fell down and cried assuming that I killed them. I fixed the altimeter. I said it was good. I killed them if it was not. I felt guilty for everything. The incident report stated, “Due to the extreme weather conditions visibility was less then 100 feet. With low visibility and being slightly off course the aircraft crashed due to pilot error.” We lost three great men that day. Everyday I remember the day that the “bird” went silent and all of the Blackhawks cried.