Aden in 1987 was like a crumbling museum of British Colonialism. The British Empire east of Suez had died some twenty years previously, with the arrival of the Russians, who had been invited by the ‘Front for the Liberation of Socialist South Yemen’, ‘FLOSSY’, for short, to fill the newly-vacated British boots.
I was flying a De Havilland Twin Otter for a Swiss company, on contract to a Canadian oil company. We were looking for oil in the historic Hadramaut Governorate of South Yemen.
The Hadramaut is actually a seasonal river in a wide canyon which is inhabited by a population made all the more cosmopolitan by centuries of trading in slaves, gold and ivory from Africa and rubies, emeralds and rare exotic spices from the Orient with Phoenicians from the Levant.
The valleys are decorated with majestic Baroque palaces, built out of sun-dried mud bricks. These are the lands of Sindbad the Sailor and Bilqis, Queen of Sheba. Sodom and Gomorah are up on the plateau to the south of the Wadi Masilah.
This is where history began and Franz and I shared this fascinating cradle of Western civilisation
together for more than two years, without scratching each other’s eyes out, which proved that we got on reasonably well together.
Frank was a real ‘Pilot’s Chief Pilot’. When he did an inspection of a project, you could be sure that he had looked into every crevice. He wanted to know every detail… for example, how was the security situation? This was very relevant on some of the projects because the company tended to operate in rather unfriendly environments and we lost some aircraft and crew to hostile action while we were there, so it was important that the crew got on with the client.
But how did the client get on with the crew? How did the crew get on with Head Office? And how did the crew get on with each other? That was of prime importance if they were stuck out in the ‘Empty Quarter’ with the nearest human habitation a hundred miles away beyond the furthest horizon.
‘decorated with majestic Baroque palaces’
Franz and I had shared the same flight deck for more than two years with this client and we seemed to fit in like another part of the furniture, which was rather interesting, because we were two chips off very different blocks of wood…Franz’s role-model was Arnold Schwarzenegger, which involved some intense physical training and careful attention to the finer points of Airline Uniform, particularly the gold bits. This even applied to the ubiquitous ‘Rayban Aviator’ sunglasses demanded by ‘Real’ pilots. They had to have the classical fine gold rims and lenses tinted dark enough to allow the wearer to inspect possible ‘talent’ without being obtrusive.
I, on the other hand, have been known to clean my desert boots in the washing machine and my socks have a habit of not matching each other. Wings and Bars are for getting through red tape on the way home on leave.
Where we really clicked was in the flying. We both stuck to the book, although I would say that Franz was particularly good on the technical side of things, where I was more experienced with landing in silly places.
Anyway, Frank worked his way through checking us all over and finally it was my turn.
Frank, with his wide experience of test flying everything from the ‘Alphajet’ to the Dornier ‘Sea Star’, also loved the old ‘Twin Otter’ and was keen to demonstrate its extraordinary honesty in slow flight.
During our initial training on it in Norway, we were warned not to select Full Flaps until totally committed for a short landing, because, in the event of an engine failure during a full-flap go-around, with full power on one engine and nothing on the other, the aircraft tended to flip over on its back and drill a smoking hole in the ground.
I stupidly mentioned this characteristic to Frank and immediately regretted it when I saw the ‘Test-Pilot’s hands together as he said “Well, Hugh… why don’t we give it a try?”
So we climbed to five thousand, over the sea, in case things went as I was expecting. With shaking hands, I selected full flaps and gently put the props up to fine pitch, before nervously easing the power up to maximum.
“OK. Hugh… now try stalling her.”
So we did that and the Old Girl simply wallowed about as though she didn’t really want to stop flying.
Then Frank reached up to the power levers and said, “Well that wasn’t too bad was it? Right, now I am going to close and feather the left engine, as would happen with a genuine engine failure. If anything nasty happens, I want you to close the right engine, select ‘Flaps 15’ and fly her out of it.”
By this time my heart would have been clearly visible in the back of my throat, so I shut my mouth in order to prevent it making a mess on the windscreen during the coming manoeuvre.
The wallowing became a gentle nudging to and fro and the aircraft began to waddle off to the left, reluctantly losing a bit of height as she went.
“There!” said Frank, his grin stretching from ear to ear, “So now you know!”
I managed to swallow my heart again and as we returned to the airport, Frank turned his Chief Pilot’s face to me and said “Okay, Hugh, you and Franz have been flying together for a couple of years now and I want to hear, in complete confidentiality, if you think that there is anything which he doesn’t like about your relationship.”
‘been known to clean my desert boots in the washing machine’
“Oh no.” I replied, “We get along famously!”
“So there is absolutely nothing you would like to would like to talk about?” Frank pointed his finger at me to emphasise his seriousness, “I would really like to know and we can sort things out before I go.”
” Well Frank,” I scratched my head rather coyly, “The only thing I can think of is that he doesn’t like the fact that I never wear dark glasses… but it is just a joke, I think!”
“Don’t worry, Hugh, we will sort that out!” said Frank as he jumped down from the flight deck and marched off, before I could complain.
That evening, over beers, he produced a report from the ‘American Medical Journal’. It concerned the effects of artificial lighting on the birth rate among male office workers in the States. Basically the Sun never gets to stimulate the erogenous Stapes in the eyes of the fifteen hundred candidates in the survey and this causes a marked effect on their Libido, leading to a noticeable drop in their sexual activity.
The last paragraph added, almost as an afterthought, that this effect also appears to apply to those who frequently wear Sun Glasses.
Franz didn’t touch his ‘RayBans’ for months after that!
