Library Reference Number: 202
The Blizzards Of 1978
January 1978 had already been a busy month for D Flight 202 Squadron at RAF Lossiemouth. By Saturday 28th January, I had already been on four mountain rescue jobs in the Highlands that month and was about to clock up another. We didn’t know that this was just to be the start of four days of hectic activity. We had had a couple of met warnings of the imminent arrival of North-Easterly Severe Gale Force 9 increasing to Storm Force 10, which meant winds of 35-40 knots gusting to 50-60 continuing till at least midday Sunday. We got a taste of the weather to come when we were scrambled, late in the afternoon, to an exhausted member of an RAF Regiment training expedition who had collapsed at Faindouran Lodge in Glen Avon in the Cairngorms, a most inaccessible place in the conditions with knee-deep powdery snow being blown by a strong north-easterly wind at 2500 feet. We got back to base after dark, put the aircraft to bed and noted in the log ‘Rotten Weather’. In our absence another met warning had arrived - ‘snow and sleet overnight with moderate to heavy falls with drifting’. We kept ourselves briefed throughout the evening as weather forecasts became more ominous. Finally at 23:30, just before going to bed, I phoned the Rescue Co-ordination Centre (RCC) at RAF Pitreavie Castle to check if there was anything in the wind for tomorrow. They replied that they had just been called by Northern Constabulary at Inverness asking for a helicopter to be at their landing site as soon as possible after first light, and warning that it could be used all day on a number of incidents.
We were established to man what we called the First Standby aircraft for twenty-four hours, sleeping at the flight and available at fifteeen minutes readiness by day and one hour at night, with a second crew on-call at home to man the Second Standby aircraft during hours of daylight only. To keep this routine going 24/7 we had four crews of Pilot, Navigator and Winchman. Occasionally a major emergency arose and it was a case of all hands to the pumps; off-duty crews would be called in and if there was a spare aircraft that would be manned by them. In this operation, we immediately called the following day’s Second Standby crew to be in by first light and phoned around for further crew members to be ready to man-up our spare third aircraft if required.
At first-light Sunday morning, around 08:00 hours, the number of available SAR helicopters in Scotland would be at best six, our 3 Whirlwinds at Lossiemouth, 1 serviceable 22 Squadron Wessex at Leuchars, 1 Royal Navy Sea King from 819 Squadron at Prestwick declared for SAR and a civilian S-61 at Aberdeen. By last light, barely nine hours later, all of them (the S-61 excepted), and three reinforcement aircraft, two from south of the border, were spread around the north of Scotland, 3 of them a bit worse for wear.
Of our three Whirlwinds, one was having its engine changed at Inverness after ice-ingestion during the rescue of 7 people from vehicles on roads south of Inverness, a second (my aircraft) was at Wick having rescued 35 people from bus, cars, lorries and trains, while the third aircraft was (very conveniently!) parked in the Craske Inn car park on the Lairg-Tongue road, having been grounded by a raging blizzard during road searches. The Leuchars Wessex, en route to an exhausted climber on Creag Meagaidh, was abandoned in the mountains north of Loch Laggan after being grounded in zero visibility; the crew were themselves pulled out by Kinloss MRT (Mountain Rescue Team) and flown to Fort William bv a Wessex from RAF Valley in Anglesey, to be joined by the RN Sea King crew from Prestwick. A Whirlwind crew from RAF Boulmer in Northumberland, sent to take over standby at Lossiemouth, picked up the remainder of the RAF Regiment expedition from a deserted lodge in the Cairngorms en route, but gave our hard-pressed ground-crew their second ice-wrecked engine of the day. The civilian S-61 was joined by another S-61 and both ended up home in Aberdeen after involvement in various rescues and a Jet Ranger from Inverness which assisted in the derailed trains operation was grounded with us at Wick by impossible night-flying weather. Half the RAF Kinloss MRT was at the Kingshouse Hotel in Glencoe (with no power, water or food) after rescuing 60 skiers with sno-cats borrowed from the police; the other half was at Inverness having rescued 15 people from cars at Invergarry.
The cause of all the chaos was a slow-moving deep depression of 963 millibars out in the North Sea with storm force northerly winds on its north-west flank bringing extremely cold and moisture laden clouds from the Arctic. With temperatures at sea level reported as low as -10C there could only be one result, vast quantities of snow blasting south from the Northern Isles into the north of Scotland and extending as far as the southern Cairngorms. The storm engulfed isolated dwellings, trapped motorists, derailed trains, and put TV transmitters, telephone lines and power cables out of action. There were some spectacular sights: trains and road vehicles were buried in mountainous drifts; farm houses and shooting lodges were buried to chimney pot level and others plastered with snow to resemble iced wedding cakes; electricity pylons lay crumpled like match-sticks and telegraph poles by the hundred were snapped in half. Hundreds of people were placed in dangerous survival situations and regrettably 4 people lost their lives.
As the operation developed on the Sunday, it became apparent to the RCC that the majority of incidents would be dealt with through the Incident Room at Northern Constabulary at Inverness, and helicopter operations were possible from the LZ (Landing Zone) there with refuelling at the nearby Inverness (Dalcross) airport. To speed up helicopter refuelling, RAF Lossiemouth dispatched a bowser to Dalcross for rotors-running refuelling, an operation not cleared for civilian operators. Finally, an experienced helicopter pilot, Sqn Ldr Alex Sneddon, OC 22 (SAR Wessex) Sqn, took on the role of RAF Liaison Officer at the Incident Room early on Monday morning.
During late Sunday and early Monday many more helicopters were deployed northwards from the RN at Prestwick, Search and Rescue Wing at RAF Finningley in Yorkshire, and 72 and 230 SH (Support Helicopter) Squadrons and the Army Air Corps from Hampshire, bringing the total number of helicopters involved to 22.
Over three days the crews of 8 Sqn's Shackletons played an invaluable part in the success of the operation, helping to overcome the many communications problems of low-Ievel helicopter operations; they acted not only as an "Ops Normal" communications link, but relayed tasking instructions, provided collision avoidance information to the many helicopters operating on the A9 and A86, maintained information on drum-fuel stocks at dispersed fuel dumps and advised RCC of helicopters’ night-stop locations.
Where Sunday's operations had been pure Search and Rescue, from Monday onwards crews were involved in an endless variety of tasks; priority was given to road searches for missing motorists and probe teams were ferried to the most severe drifts on the A9 at the Ord of Caithness, Slochd and Dalwhinnie and to Moy on the A86. Many Aero-Medical Evacuations of sick people and pregnant mums were carried out, including one night pick-up at 19:30 with child born in Raigmore Hospital at 20:30, a close call! Doctors were flown on their rounds and urgent medical supplies were flown to hospitals. Engineers and equipment from public utilities (as they were in those days) were flown in to help restore power supplies, telephone communications and TV signals and to clear roads and railways. Finally, food and fodder were delivered to isolated communities.
That’s the story in general but back to the events of early Sunday morning. At 06:50 we received a weather actual showing that the wind was northerly with a surface speed of 40 to 45 knots mean, gusting to 60 to 65 knots, with sleet, snow, hill fog, severe icing and turbulence, cloud base 500 feet but sky obscured at 200 feet in snow. ‘Sky obscured at 200 feet’ means that the snow merges with the sky at that height making it impossible to see the cloud base. At 06:55, the RCC asked us to assist the police if at all possible. At 07:15, I phoned Inverness police headquarters and was told that up to 200 people were estimated to be missing in trains, buses and cars. I explained the problems of starting up in the severe weather conditions and told them that we would have to wait for daylight before looking any further. The problem of starting up a helicopter in strong winds is that there is a serious risk that while the rotors are turning at a slow speed they may be forced downwards and hit either the ground or the tail of the helicopter. We had limits of 45 knots if the wind was steady but if the wind was gusting then the mean would have to be 30 knots. I agreed to ring them as soon as flying was possible. Daylight brought no change in conditions; we kept checking the met until 10:00 hours when the actual weather was wind northerly mean speed 43 knots, gusting to 61 knots, visibility 2,500 metres, 2/8ths cloud at 200 feet, 6/8ths at 300 feet, 8/8ths at 800 feet with no change expected before 18:00 hours.
As a result of this met report at 10:00 hours, we spoke to the flight commander who decided to come in and see for himself. The danger of attempting to start up in such strong winds could have been avoided by starting in the hanger. However the wind was blowing at right angles to the hanger door so that there was a very substantial danger that the helicopter would be blown over when coming out of the hanger and that option was rejected. The Flight Commander decided that he would have the aircraft towed out, itself a tricky operation for the ground-crew in this cross-wind, to try to start up and assess the weather conditions once he was airborne. He succeeded in getting started and was airborne at 10:52 in weather temporarily 70 knots with a 50’ cloud-base in snow showers. At 11:35, we received a further weather forecast for more snow showers and longer periods of snow in the next twenty-four hours above 100 feet above sea level and that night at lower levels also. At 1150 we received a message from Air Traffic Control (ATC) that the Boss’s crew had picked up a family from a car and one body from the snow near Inverness and that the weather was ‘suitable for operations with extreme caution’.
We were the second Lossiemouth helicopter to get airborne at 12:35, originally tasked to go to assist the police at Wick but at the last minute re-tasked to locate several vehicles trapped on the A9 north of Helmsdale, Caithness. Wind on take-off was gusting to over 60 knots meaning ground speed to the search area was only 30 knots, and progress was also slowed by the need to avoid some very heavy snow showers. The search began on the northern outskirts of Helmsdale and produced numerous trapped vehicles on the winding cliff-top road to Berriedale at the Ord of Caithness; the road was in cloud and the 50 knot wind was whipping up powdery snow, forming classic white-out conditions. The pilot hover-taxied the aircraft between fairly recognizable objects; one survivor was winched aboard at 13:25 and we landed to pick up another 14 from a post van, articulated lorries, cars, a bus and a snowplough, delivering them in four runs to a car park in Helmsdale which amazingly was clear of snow. On one of the runs our engine temperature gauge indicated icing of the engine so we shut down at the car park to check; I removed a chunk of ice the size of a small loaf from the intake.
Our final survivor from this stretch of road was the driver of an articulated lorry just standing alone on hard-packed snow which filled a deep cutting recently constructed to straighten the road. He was exhausted and confused in the advanced stages of hypothermia, and gave us an inconsistent story, saying he had come from the vehicles we had just cleared and also claimed that there was nobody else in the vicinity of his vehicle. After we had delivered him to the police at Helmsdale we went back to the area and spotted two roads department sno-cat crews who advised us that they had cleared the road south from Berridale; we then reported to the police officer at Helmsdale and our flight radio room that the road surface was clear from Helmsdale to Berridale but warned that there could be vehicles unseen under deep snow drifts. We had insufficient fuel to reach Wick into 50 knot headwinds so left to go south to refuel at RAF Tain Bombing Range at 14:25; while at Tain we were re-tasked by Inverness Police to locate and evacuate a train with 70 people on board stuck in snow on the Inverness-Wick line on the moors west of Wick between Forsinard and Halkirk.
We left Tain Range at 15:20, routed up the coast to Berriedale then turned inland for Altnabreac Station, the last station the train had passed the night before. Without the snow this was about as bleak an area as you could find in Scotland but now it was just a featureless expanse of the white stuff. At 15:52, as we got further north we came within radio range of Wick ATC who immediately passed on a request from Wick Police to help them with the incident near Helmsdale we had recently left. Comms were very intermittent as we were at low level and getting facts was difficult. Over the next few minutes, we started hearing other call-signs on the frequency which we had not been made aware of and established from them that they were already on the same mission. They were a British Airways Helicopters S-61 and a Bristows Jet Ranger and after we discussed with them the priorities, we all agreed that, with light starting to fade we should all continue to evacuate the train. We had considered the pros and cons; we had specifically been tasked by the Constabulary Incident Room to evacuate the train and would have had to have had very good reason to change our tasking; here we had discovered that there were two trains, the original one which had ditched carriages as they had been derailed leaving all passengers in the last unheated one and a second relief snowplough train with 15 on board which was a mile north of it and also needed evacuation. The derailed train had snow over its roof on the windward side and conveniently snow level with the carriage floor on the leeward side, but the last carriage had had no heating since the diesel engine ran out of fuel at five am. Some passengers had already taken matters into their own hands and had taken the risky option of walking out towards the next station at Scotscalder nearly 5 miles away; none of the passengers had the sort of winter hill-walking gear to undertake such a walk safely in these extreme conditions, they were wearing normal outdoor clothing. To us this was a disaster waiting to happen if these trains were not evacuated and others were enticed into walking out; in view of the current weather and the forecast for the night ahead and the much greater number involved here, we declined further requests from Wick police and continued to get everyone off the trains. We did inform the police, however, that after this job was done we would assist with the Helmsdale incident.
The earlier runs by the other two helicopters had seen passengers taken to Wick but now daylight was fast running out and the S-61 had departed for refuel leaving the Jet Ranger and ourselves to get the last 40 or so off. We intended taking the passengers and train crews to Halkirk about 7 miles away but worked out that we wouldn’t manage the job before last light by going there and instead chose Scotscalder saving several minutes each run. Sunset was timed for 16:37 but we operated to Evening Civil Twilight which is when the whole of the sun is below the horizon and is about 30 minutes after sunset, by which time it’s proper dark. On the return journey from our first run we landed to pick up the 4 walkers who, we were certain, would not make Scotscalder before dark, and eventually cleared the last of the passengers and train crews at 16:59. The people in the last load of each helicopter were in luck as we took them to Wick; we had had no option with the others but to ask the Scotscalder locals to look after the evacuees until the police could collect them.
All through the trains incident the police had been persisting with their request to go down to the Helmsdale area and were still insistent after we landed, but by now we were in a different scenario. The wind had recently been rising again, we had recent snow showers, visibility down to 400 metres between the trains and Wick and severe turbulence. With no change in the forecast the pilot had no option but to say that this was well outside limits for night operations, even for situations such as this. The senior police officer was most unhappy and we could understand the police frustrations; however, sometimes there are too many concurrent incidents and not enough helicopters to go round – some unfortunate person has to prioritise, knowing full well that he is perhaps choosing between life and death for someone. In this case, it was the pilot as aircraft captain whose decision it was and a more horrible experience is hard to imagine. My pilot and I underwent a serious grilling at a Fatal Accident Inquiry at Wick 5 months later (more of a trial than an inquiry, I thought) before the presiding Sheriff agreed that the pilot had made the correct decisions, firstly to continue to evacuate the train and subsequently to decide not to fly down to the Ord of Caithness that night.
We were airborne by first light the next morning and spent nearly two hours flying police and coastguard teams down to the Ord. It transpired that the lone lorry driver had recovered later the previous afternoon and the police were able to establish that his articulated super-market lorry, together with three other vehicles, was buried in the cutting where we had found him. Probes located two cars buried under fifteen feet of snow but unfortunately the three occupants were already dead. (Two days later some distance away a lone driver was dug out of his car alive after 80 hours under the snow. He was a ladies underwear salesman who had used his samples to supplement his clothing thereby saving himself from at worst, death or at least, serious frostbite.) We spent the rest of the morning checking roads and farms in Caithness before being re-tasked to check roads between Carrbridge, Newtonmore and Fort William. As in Caithness it became obvious that Highland people living in remote areas were prepared for such events and most had enough supplies to last them through a reasonable period cut-off. We were still seeing some wonderful sights not least the swirls of snow on the frozen Loch Laggan which had left a beautiful ‘Paisley Pattern’ effect. At Moy we found a sno-cat ditched in a lochan hidden under the snow and took the crew and three policemen to Roy Bridge and Fort William.
On Tuesday, after a night-stop at Fort William, we flew a number of trips to help recover the sno-cat, checked farms and roads west of Fort William and delivered food to a mountain farm in Glen Roy before returning to base at dusk.
‘Operation Whiteout’, as it became known in the RAF, was not stood down till Friday 3rd February, when Northern Constabulary issued statistics for the operation:
- 372 people evacuated from hostile situations
- 85 searches
- 390 checks on isolated homes
- 215 food deliveries
- 12 fuel supply missions
- 10 medical supplies drops
- 10 priority animal fodder drops
- 682 messages logged by the police
- 305 hours of helicopter flying (the RAF made it 329)
- Continuous daylight flying by Shackletons over 3 days
Our Flight's main contribution, apart from further sporadic Medevacs, had ended by Tuesday evening when the remnants of the fleet returned to base with yet another ice-damaged engine and a tail rotor intermediate gearbox beginning to break up. Over the three days our Flight aircrew flew all available daylight hours with a few night sorties in the course of rescuing 48 people and evacuating another 5 to hospital. In all 167 people were rescued by military helicopters and around 60 by MRTs. For the helo crews involved, it was a once-in-a-flying-lifetime's experience which none would have missed, with some "exciting" flying in a wide variety of weather conditions. We were proud to have played our part in a massive operation involving numerous civil and military organisations, members of the public and the broadcast media; it was, even to this date (September 2009), the biggest SAR operation ever mounted in the UK.