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Welcome to The Pilot Project Podcast, your premier source for stories and insights from pilots in the RCAF and mission aviation - brought to you by Skies Magazine! Whether you're an aspiring aviator, navigating flight training, or simply fascinated by the world of military and mission aviation, this podcast is your guide. We sit down with pilots and aviation professionals to hear their thrilling experiences, lessons learned, and expert advice on resilience, training, and the skills needed to succeed in this exciting field. Strap in - we’re ready for departure!
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Bryan:Alright. We're ready for departure here at The Pilot Project Podcast, the best source for stories and advice from RCAF and Mission Aviation Pilots brought to you by Sky's Magazine. I'm your host, Brian Morrison, and here with me today for part two of our discussion on tactical aviation and special operations aviation in Canada is colonel Todd O'Malley, the current director air and space at Canadian Special Operations Forces Command or HandsOFCOM. Todd, thank you once again for being here today. I'm, really looking forward to continuing our chat.
Todd:Hold on. Thank you, Brian.
Bryan:Listeners can check out part one to hear about Todd's early years flying twin Hueys as well as his flight training experiences. Today, we will be going through his early deployments to the Sinai Desert, Honduras, as well as Somalia. We'll also be going through some of the changing culture within 04/27, and we'll jump into the pioneering years of adopting NVGs or night vision goggles in tactical aviation in Canada. So at this time, you're flying the Twin Huey.
Todd:Yep.
Bryan:You arrive at 04/27. You're a brand new Twin Huey pilot. And then within months, as you've said, you're deploying to the Sinai Desert. Yeah. What do you remember about arriving there as a young pilot and what was your mission there?
Todd:Yeah. I mean, remember we flew in, we landed at night. So I still remember we we got into the compound at night and the next morning, you're in these barracks, it was weird barracks and you didn't really see the camp that night, they had a welcome function I'll call it, but I remember waking up and I remember wherever you looked, you're in the middle of the desert like we literally were this compound in the middle of the desert. And for some reason, I remember the barbed wire fence around it was facing inwards, like not letting you out, not not keeping others from getting in. And I always thought that was a very odd thing.
Todd:When I go for a run, I looked and I'm like, why is that keeping me in? But the mission really was they obviously way back, they they had had the Egyptian Israeli war, and there was a lot of combat in the Sinai Peninsula. And we were the multinational force and observer. So you had Americans down south at South Camp and then you had us at Al Gore. And our job was to fly these observers down the border between Israel and Egypt, even seeing if there was activity, maybe one was crossing the other, and they would take their notes.
Todd:They would they had certain areas they wanted to look at. And then we had Fijians and Colombians from a combat arms perspective, and they had outposts. And we would be resupplying them, moving some of the folks there or bringing them food. And they lived out there at these outposts, again, monitoring any activity. And this went on for quite a few serials.
Todd:I only did the one rotation, but that was the second time I think 04/27 was going back.
Bryan:Okay.
Todd:Well, found I mean, it was, you know, you're flying around the desert landing on some of these little, pinnacles where the Fijians are or the Colombians. It was just really cool flying and in a very unique part of the world that I would never have visited. Mhmm. Right? Did six months there.
Bryan:Yeah. And people now, you know, we're growing up in this era of GPS, moving maps, constant connectivity, aviators now, student pilots, you know, they're they're using ForeFlight and all these different things. Right? Like but you are flying in the desert in the late nineteen eighties, and it's basically paper maps. So what what did that look like?
Todd:Yeah, it was. It was literally, it was a paper map, one of the very not only do we not have goggles for night work, but I still remember when we showed up, you had to go build your map. So there was like a whole process of putting these big maps together and everybody had a map that covered almost, I wanna say almost the whole Sinai Peninsula, and you would mark on it, grease pencil, and then build your track of where you're trying to go. And if you were doing a border patrol between, like right on the Israeli border, it was a really, really big thing if you cross that border, and if you think about it, back in the 80s, they knew if you crossed it even by 10 feet, Like, they were tracking you. So you're trying to navigate, micro navigate on this map to keep to make sure you kept, let's say, your aircraft captain out of harm's way if you're on the map, and it was, I found it very challenging, but no more challenging than flying in Gaugetown on a map and they used to do a test on you on your course where they give you a snow map they called it, And really what it was is just contours.
Todd:They they removed almost everything else from the map and you just had to fly low level by reading the contours of the ground and staying on time and bringing your instructor to whatever grid he asked you to bring them to. And I remember that being probably one of the most challenging exercises we had to do in Gagetown to pass the course. No kidding. Oh yeah. And so going, you know, just recently graduating that course and then going over to the Sinai, you actually had a fair bit of information on the map, the biggest issue was you were over the desert for most of it.
Todd:So you might see like a wadi sort of like where the water might run-in a rainy season and it would have a bit of an outline and then your map would have that outline very specific. So you could read the ground. It was just quite challenging in some areas to know exactly where you were.
Bryan:And deserts change from place to place. You know, the Sahara is different from Sinai and is different from Iraq and all these places. Can can you paint us a bit of a picture of what the terrain was like there?
Todd:Yeah. 100%. So I would say it was rocky, in essence, in some areas, and you even had areas where you had you had some small valleys, but in the valleys might be tank traps where they put massive cement blocks as during the war, they were stopping tanks from maybe using these valleys. So you could actually see in some of the valleys when it rained. I want to say it would grow watermelons.
Todd:For some reason I can see some of the areas grew like greenery and it would be on the map sort of like showing you these little crevices and creeks that would outline and depending on what what time of the year you were flying, they might have some water in them. They might have some greenery in them, but I would say it wasn't a talcum powder like desert for the most part. Yes, it was a desert, but it had some relief to it. It had some hills, it had some terrain where you could actually kind of read the terrain, it just didn't have any grass on them for the most part.
Bryan:Okay.
Todd:You know, like rocks and the like. I would say that it was more of a rugged desert, a lot of rock in it, is what I recall.
Bryan:I think people, myself included, you think desert and you think of, like, an expanse of sand, basically. Yeah. This is more of like a I don't know. Like, Arizona, not that color of red, but, like, rocks and
Todd:Yes. That's what in my head, that's what I can see, and even some of the areas we would go land were just they were quite rocky in the relief, so you would have you wouldn't have these zero zero brownout dust balls that we had in Somalia, for example. But you certainly have sand blowing around, but as long as you got your right hover references, would be overall, you'd be good in the Sinai. Probably a good place to start my career learning how to fly in that type of, you know, in a in a desert, but not a pure sand talcum powder desert.
Bryan:Yeah. Another thing you've talked about in this mission is flying night instrument approaches into sketchy lighting in the desert. And at the time, as we've said, you're using paper maps and experience. How unforgiving is that?
Todd:Yeah. I think we were lucky on a couple nights. So the way it I mean, it was pitch black. So we had, I believe we had Omega, was the antiquated GPS on board, which really was a, I think a naval navigation system, I think it was called Omega, it worked really really well when the weather was beautiful, and then when the weather was dicey, it didn't work so well.
Bryan:Oh, perfect.
Todd:So you were really on that map, but at night, yeah, didn't have goggles back then, weren't even introduced yet. So they had instrument approaches to these pinnacles where the Fijians or Colombians, let's say lived. And they would have rocks around the LZ and they would have maybe some lighting on it. But as you're doing your approaches, you've also got the Bedouin, a lot of people living out in the desert, they have their little fires going, and you're trying to determine is the fire on approaching an actual fire or is it actually the lighting around the landing zone because you have nothing else around? And I still remember, I feel I was probably the guy on the map as a new guy and we went below the minimum.
Todd:So let's say we were supposed to be landing on top of a ridge line pitch black, we went below it because the lights we picked were actually a bunch of families in the middle of the desert pitch black with their fire pits, and it's only when we went below the minimum that we realized, hey, I don't know where our landing zone is, but it isn't what we're shooting at. Wow. Yep, and I remember as we kind of overshot, we looked over and then you could see the little circle of lights on this hill. I mean, were, you know, we were lucky. I don't know any others that had those experiences, but I remember thinking, woof, this is an unforgiving landscape out here at night.
Todd:We didn't do tremendous amount of night flying because it was so pitch black, it was so unforgiving, but I believe maybe it was either practice or a medevac that forced us out to do that. But again, was great lesson to learn. You know, I I use probably one of the nine lives of the cats,
Bryan:but right?
Todd:But you learn from it and you're like, like, jumping. You just got sucked in.
Bryan:Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's moments in everybody's career where they can look back and be like, wow. That that was a close one.
Todd:Like 100%.
Bryan:I can think of a couple myself and it still gives you chills to look back and think like, you were close there.
Todd:Oh, yeah. I I mean, we you know, I look back and I you know, people ask me now, do you miss flying? And I I I do on certain days when the weather's beautiful, it's a nice warm fall day, the colors, doors are all off and somebody in pets says, hey, you wanna go flying? I'm all in. But I really have done a lot and I don't really need to go flying.
Todd:I'd like this, I've I've got that check mark now, and if I can help others get their check mark, I'd rather do that. Mhmm. But I remember there, I'm like, okay. This is pretty early in your career. That is a big lesson you just learned.
Todd:Oh, yeah. Yep.
Bryan:A serious event that you went through on that tour, and this is early in your career to be witnessing something like this. You saw a helicopter crash during a VIP mission, and after that, you, helped work with the Israeli military to save a life. Can you tell us that story?
Todd:Yeah. I I sure can. So I recall and I looked it up today in the logbook, I wanted to see who I was flying with. It was Jim McAleese I was flying with at the time. I think there was two two ship VIPs were going out.
Todd:So what was happening that day, a lot of VIPs were gonna be on this little knoll, this little hill, very close to the Israeli Egyptian border. And what was gonna happen there was the Israelis were gonna sling, you know, underneath the helicopter. They were moving a massive cement border marker that was going to have this plaque on it, and they were gonna put it on the hill, bunch of people witnessing it, kind of like a next step in the piece of that region. And Jim and I were in the air circling as this helicopter was making its approach and all the VIPs now are on this little hill, like they're basically at the bottom of the hill watching this thing come in. And an incident occurred where if I can see it, recall it correctly in my head, the slung load started to be dragged up the side of the hill by by the stallion, the the massive helicopter.
Todd:Oh, no. Yep. And there is a there is a video from somebody on the ground. I've seen it. Somebody on the ground was filming the tail of this helicopter because it started to vibrate violently, but what you saw is the tail detached from the helicopter, it literally flew right by the cockpit.
Todd:Oh my goodness. Like it just, it came off, yep. And in an instant, what you see is every, all the VIPs on the hill, they start running for their lives. This helicopter crashes on the border marker on the hill, explodes, fire, all bad. And in our brain, we're like, there's gotta be VIPs, we hurt and killed.
Todd:There's the crew, everybody. So anyway, we fly down and it turns out that no VIPs got injured. The crew, everybody perished except one pilot. And they drag this pilot out. This thing's still, you know, blowing things up and we're we're we're pretty close to it, like we're very close to it.
Todd:They bring this pilot over to us and he is not in good condition at all. And they put him in the back of our helicopter. And I recall looking back, I want to say I was left seat. So I looked back at the flight engineer in the back and this guy is, you know, he's bleeding a lot. And all we have is a one bandage, like one.
Todd:And he looks at me, I'm like, dude, like you got to do what you can. Like, we don't know where we're going with him yet, probably back to our camp, which is pretty far. Anyway, we take off and as soon as we take off, this Israeli perfect English voice comes over the radio. So they had been tracking us this whole time. And he says, listen, you're going to be going to an Israeli hospital because I'm going give you directions now, you're going to turn east, fly, you know, let's say fly due east.
Todd:So we start flying and I still recall, he says, listen, you're going to have a road come up here and at the end of the road, there's going to be a bunch of school buses you're gonna turn left at that road. So sure enough, we see school buses turn left and he says on your right, you know, maybe a kilometer down on your right is gonna be a hospital and I'll walk you right onto it. So he does, we land, there's a medical team waiting for this gentleman. They take them and Israelis turn us west to cross back over their border because it was a very big thing to cross their border. So as soon as we crossed the border, the guy said, you know, thank you very much, very much appreciated, you're now out of Israeli airspace and do not enter again.
Todd:You know, it's very thank you, but now we're back to the way it should be. Yeah. And then we flew home and it was about two months later we found out that he lived and they sent a plaque that, I don't know, maybe to this day it's in the mess at the, you know, in the camp there. But they sent a plaque saying thank you. And and but I remember there's, you know, surreal as it's happening.
Todd:And I remember sitting on the ground waiting for the survivor to be loaded, and you can kinda witness what's happening in front of you, but you're not putting it in, like it's compartmentalized for now, I guess is the best way to put it. And it's only when you got back to camp where like, holy Jesus, like that is something else, know? And I, you know, I'm glad he survived. It's sad that others didn't, but sometimes that's the nature of flying and sometimes there's dangerous things that happen, sometimes stuff happens, but, yeah, we were pretty I was pretty new in my career to see that and to kinda be part of it.
Bryan:Yeah. That must have been pretty intense as a young guy to witness somebody that you know, first of all, to witness a catastrophic accident of a helicopter Yeah. Which is, you know, any pilot right away is gonna think, wow, that could happen to me. And then you see up close the aftermath of the shape that that person was in. That must have given you a Pause.
Bryan:Yeah. For sure. A pause. Yeah.
Todd:You know, it did because and I remember the next day, Rick Finley, he was my CEO at the time. Excellent, you know, he was excellent to work for. I remember flying back out there, we had to bring probably investigators back out there, and then we land and now it's just this weird smoldering mess. And that's probably when it hit more is you're sitting there kind of just looking at the aftermath of everything and sort of what that one event, probably how many lives that would have changed around the squadron, the families, everybody that was there as a VIP witnessing it, like it's just, that was surreal to me, sitting there that day, the next day was like, oh man. Like Yeah.
Todd:This is something that's there.
Bryan:You had just entered recently a unit that was going through that same grieving process.
Todd:You're absolutely right. And and that probably didn't connect right away, but you're absolutely right. It was almost like, does this follow us? Yeah. You know, when you look at it?
Todd:Yeah. But yeah, it was, I would say it was almost another growing up point where this is aviation. This can be the, you know, the the bad side of aviation.
Bryan:Mhmm. Right? Not long after Sinai, you found yourself deployed to Honduras. You've joked it basically started with someone asking, what are you doing Friday? What's the story behind that?
Todd:Yeah. I was only back a few months and, Doug Moody was my flight commander at the time. And I remember I wanna say I came in on a Monday and and some of the folks had already deployed. Maybe we had Kiowas, and then we eventually, I think, brought Jet Rangers down there.
Bryan:Okay.
Todd:And they were looking at Huey's, but I wasn't really locked on that I was part of maybe the deployment process. But I remember Doug Moody says to me, hey, what are you doing Friday? And I'm like, I don't know. What am I doing Friday? He goes, Honduras, six months.
Todd:I'm like, 100%, let's do it. And I was living in the barracks at the time, so by Friday, basically, I've, yeah, room packed up. We're in Ottawa for their shots, and I think I was in Ottawa shortly thereafter for the briefings that you get. And then off I am to to Gucci Yelpa, Honduras for six months on the Twin Aoies. It was a that's a whole other that's a whole other style of flying over there in in in Honduras or Central America, I guess, really, in where we were.
Bryan:Yeah. And there was so much there was so much going on during, like, during the Cold War, during the eighties in Central And South America. Tons of different political intrigues and, you know, there were uprisings and coups and all kinds of different things. What was the actual mission in Honduras for the Canadians?
Todd:Yeah. It was an United Nations mission, and I would argue that you had the San Denise's, you had the Contras, you had guerrilla warfare going on, and it was kind of settling out where we were almost there as a peace keeping observation team again on the UN, go out, meet folks. So we flew in Honduras, we flew in Nicaragua, and you would go meet various leaders or, you know, guerrilla leaders or village leaders. And part of it that I recall is we were also collecting arms. We were trying to reduce the amount of weapons that were that.
Todd:Clearly had been part of this guerrilla warfare.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:And I feel it was I'm not saying a I think they wanted to kind of reduce, but when you started to see what weapons were being, turned in, it was sort of like somebody had gone to a scrap yard, found some weapons, and then turned those in so they could keep the real weapons.
Bryan:Okay.
Todd:So there was a little bit of a game going on, but really we were just trying to fly observers around that whole area to meet with different entities to keep peace and to try to really stabilize the region, through the UN.
Bryan:Okay. So you were living what we tend to refer to as on the economy, in the military, which means that you're not living in barracks, and it's a pretty unstable region during a tense geopolitical period. What was that like day to day?
Todd:Yeah. You're right. Like, if I go back, like, the Sinai when I was deployed there, we were really in a traditional base, traditional barracks, and a mess. In Honduras, Taguchi Yelpa, the city of Taguchi, basically rented houses on the economy. So there's five other air crew and myself that rented this massive house, the chief pilot of the airline down there, he literally moved out of his house to rent it to us while we were there.
Todd:So you're living literally on the economy, eating on the economy, the social activities in the evenings, the weekends, you're right downtown into Gooch, some of the bars and the like. So it was a very, very different deployment. It's sort of like, and I never felt uneasy there. Like, you had to watch yourself, like anywhere, kind of like any city, but you were always with a group of Canadians for the most part. So you were yeah, we lived on the economy for six months, which is really kind of surreal in its own way from a deployment.
Todd:I always say that at the end of your career, the military tries to get everything they can, and then you're trying to kind of get everything you can as far as courses and experiences, and you hope at the end of it, it kind of equaled out. So I remember thinking I'm kind of one up on the system when I went to Honduras, like it was a great go, it was awesome flying, Great region to see because I had never been in that area. You know, it had its own challenges, like the like the flying there was jungle flying, like trying to navigate again with maps over a jungle canopy, which that has its own, you know, the own challenges. But, yeah, we lived on the economy for six months.
Bryan:What do you think was harder, flying over desert with a paper map or jungle?
Todd:I think, jungle, in my opinion.
Bryan:Less features, basically?
Todd:Less features. Like, you know, you would look at the map and I would see, like, a 100 foot relief, maybe 200 foot, maybe of a whole of a hill like 15 miles, and that's supposed to be my turn point. So I would say, man, we got to get low like we would try to get as low as we can so I could see this little elevation down the road here. And then we'd fly to that elevation. It was really.
Todd:Difficult to be accurate, especially when you're trying to find. Let's say you're trying to find a gorilla leader that lives in the canopy, like under the canopy in the jungle, and they're not wanting to be found like they you're supposed to have a meeting with them, or at least the observers that we were flying around and you're trying to find this cut out of the jungle that they have cut the trees so you could land. And it's, you know, maybe X amount of half a mile from one of these knolls that's maybe a 100 foot relief and you're trying to navigate there. And we didn't fly at night, we weren't allowed to be in the air at night. The the rule there was by eighteen hundred, you will be on the ground, or I'm not gonna say you were fair game, but you were not going to be considered a United Nations asset in the air after eighteen hundred local after 06:00.
Todd:Wow. You had to be on the ground. That was the rule. Like, you're on the ground till morning. So we really just flew during the day.
Bryan:So listeners maybe who are unfamiliar with kind of what it's like to fly at low level, they might hear a 100 feet elevation and think like, well, that's that's a pretty good jump. Like, what's the scale of that like when you're flying? How hard is that to notice?
Todd:I would say it's extremely hard. It's almost like blends in if you're at 500 feet and above. Mhmm. You're not actually gonna see that relief at all. It's just gonna look like one big massive canopy of jungle.
Todd:So you probably have to get down at least lower than 100 feet to see the 100 foot elevation. And you know, we wouldn't do that often, if you could fly point to point and you could see a town that you were going to, okay, you could stay up and fly to the town and go, but if you were trying to pinpoint a hole in the jungle and the reference was maybe this 100 foot, you know, 100 foot, 200 foot knoll of jungle, you had to get lower than it to be able to find it and then walk yourself from it to the landing zone.
Bryan:Wow, that sounds really challenging.
Todd:It was, I mean, was another, you know what, but I remember thinking it, all that snow map in Gagetown and learning on that map that just had contours, that is exactly what it was for, something like that.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:Right? You because you kinda knew what to look for.
Bryan:Totally. Yeah. And I think at that time, a lot of the training was based on Vietnam experiences.
Todd:100%.
Bryan:And, you know, thankfully for you guys, Honduras, probably sort of similar to flying over a jungle in Vietnam.
Todd:Yeah. It was it it again, it was a pretty sporty area, you know, high humidity, you know, high humidity, unforgiving a bit, and thunderstorms and not good nav maps and jungle.
Bryan:Mhmm. One of the things you mentioned about that tour is playing cat and mouse with a three letter company operating in Nicaragua. So without getting yourself into trouble, what kind of atmosphere were you flying in down there?
Todd:Yeah. It was a pretty interesting atmosphere because we weren't although we are UN, we weren't what I would say, we were not working alongside the Americans. They were there doing their own thing.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:But what would happen is, you know, we would fly out of Nicaragua, and another helicopter would take off shortly behind us. And what they wanted to do is see where you were going to go to land because they were probably they were also trying to find certain guerrilla leaders, either in Honduras or near the borders. Where they were, they had their own agenda.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:And so this company that we we all know, they had their own helicopter fleet down there. They would follow you, and during the day, it was kind of like that cartoon where the sheepdog protects the sheep during the day from, let's say, wolf, and then at the end of the day, they do the punch card, and they were like, hey man, it was a great day. It's exactly how it played out. And I remember that once one of them was in Honduras and I remember going to a dummy LZ. So a dummy LZ is like, there was another area cut out close to where we wanted to go.
Todd:I land there. I have more fuel on board than they did. So I waited for them to have to leave, then I started back up, flew to where we were actually gonna go have the meeting, and then flew home. And I remember at the end of the day, not every day, but probably on the Friday, you would meet at this joint bar, the joint mess we had, and these guys would show up and one of them comes over to me, laughs, he goes, hey, that was pretty funny that day, he goes, took us to the dummy LZ, and I'm like, well, you know, hey, just trying to do my job. So they we all knew everybody was there and doing their own agenda.
Todd:But you you know, you were going to play a bit of that cat and mouse game just to try to not give up where and who you were meeting with.
Bryan:That's funny.
Todd:Yeah, yeah, it was a very unique experience in deployment because you had all kinds of cultures, had certainly people that didn't like each other along the borders and you were meeting with whomever. Like, you were flying your observers around. So it it you were kinda, you know, protected by the blue the blue beret of the UN, and you were just trying to stay impartial and do your job. Mhmm.
Bryan:So I wanna shift gears and talk about tactical aviation culture in the eighties. Sure. It was a very different culture in that era from what exists today. How would you describe 10 tag or 10 tactical air group culture in the late eighties and early nineties?
Todd:Yeah. It it certainly had it certainly was its its own culture. It I would say it really wanted, and a lot of folks that were in it really wanted to be actually an integral part of the Army. Like they really wanted to be supporting the Army, part of the Army. They didn't feel like part of the air force because the air force was very fighter centric at that time.
Todd:So you were trying to find almost, like you were trying to find a gang to belong to, like a group to belong to. And I feel like that's where Tackhill at the time was very much trying to out grunt the grunts. I remember kind of thinking as I was a young guy in it, really having that same thought of it, you know, if the army was staying in, you know, a mod tent, like a bigger tent, we would wanna stay in a worse tent. If they were staying in a worse tent, we wanted to be in a ditch. It was kinda like this, we want to be accepted by them.
Todd:But I feel a lot of folks, although the flying is probably some of the best, if not the best flying that you can do in the military, I feel a lot of folks wanted to leave Tentag, like go maybe back to Moose Jaw, go fly something else, kind of be in the air force.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:But the opportunities weren't there as often. They were very, very rare. And so you sometimes had the feeling like, hey, I didn't get a chance to go. You're not getting a chance to go. So once you feel that, you kind of feel like you can't escape, like you're this is where you're going to be.
Todd:And I don't know, it's not like that at all. And I think as we look back and I look back on it and reflect, it's just how the mentality was at the time, You know, that's just the way it was. Yeah. Or that's just the way I it felt. Maybe, you know, a lot of folks have loved it.
Todd:They wouldn't leave it no matter what you offered them. But I think at the time, before I started doing any of the special ops stuff, if I had gotten an opportunity to go somewhere, I would have taken it in a heartbeat to go do something different.
Bryan:Yeah. But this kind of be the era where people used to joke and say there's there's no hell like tack hell?
Todd:100%. Yeah. 100%. And I give my hats off to guys like Herm, Herm Harrison, Rick Finley, and a lot of guys still to this day that I know and I flew with and I had awesome experiences in that environment. And it's probably because of a lot of those folks that I've mentioned, but I always felt at the time that it was very hard to maybe break out and go somewhere else.
Todd:Like Mhmm. This was your destiny, and I I thought, is this something I can do for thirty years Mhmm. At the time?
Bryan:Yeah. You know, I've mentioned I've mentioned a few times that my OJT was done at four hundred squadron in Borden when they were still a active unit, not just a maintenance squadron.
Todd:Okay.
Bryan:And at the time, I was pretty interested. I I joined the air force wanting to fly tac hell. And and I I really enjoyed the few flights I went on with them. And I told them though, I'm kind of torn between, you know, tac hell and maybe, like, Herx or something like that.
Todd:Right.
Bryan:And they said, you know, you should go fixed wing first then go multi, and then you can switch to helicopters later. Because if you go helicopters, you're not getting out. So I think that was still I don't think it's as true now. No. I think at the time, though, a lot of those people had grown up in tac hell with that being the truth.
Todd:Yeah. And and it was to the point even in Moose Jaw, you didn't even whisper helicopters, you didn't put it down as a choice ever, because if you got sent helicopters, that's what you were going to be doing. Yeah, and that's just, that's the flavor of the back in those days, it really to support the army, which I get, it makes total sense, that's what we do even today in one wing, but but it had a different flavor to it back then, I'll say.
Bryan:Mhmm.
Todd:Almost more because of the Cold War, but almost like a a follow on from the Vietnam era Mhmm. You could kind of feel it was very similar to some of the folks. You know? That's how I saw it.
Bryan:Yeah. I mean, that was the biggest kind of cultural influence that Western militaries had experienced
Todd:Right.
Bryan:In decades and and definitely where helicopter like tactical helicopter aviation was basically developed around that the needs of that conflict. Right?
Todd:Yep. 100%.
Bryan:Yep. Yeah. So another big thing that was changing at the time for you folks was you started working with night vision goggles or NVGs, and you became the first NVG specialist at four two seven. You've said that tactical aviation effectively went from an eight hour capability to a twenty four hour capability almost overnight. How how revolutionary did that feel at the time?
Todd:Yeah. You you you know, we probably didn't realize what we were signing up for at the time. Like, when you think about it, before goggles, I'm not saying every day, but you could almost count on going flying in the morning, going flying in the afternoon. Like it kinda had a two hour tank on it, so you might plan attack to have in the morning, go low level flying around for an hour and a half, come back, do some hands and feet work, maybe do the same in the afternoon, and then your day was kind of done by, let's say, 04:00. And if yeah.
Todd:You had to keep your night minimums and your night work, but that was that was almost like planned. Maybe this week we're going to do night flying instead of the day and you do night flying. But then we started to get into goggles and, you know, I can talk about the initial part of getting into them, but what I mean by the twenty four hour is now, like nighttime is kind of like daytime now, like you can effectively go out and support a customer 20 fourseven And below level, you can do pretty much everything you do in the day now at night on goggles. So I think that was one of the biggest culture changes we had to chew on is you kind of go from an eight, ten hour a day to twenty four, you could be working nights, weeks at a time, if that's what your shifts were, and just not, you'd be sleeping during the day. It was a very big piece to have to change over time that the whole day was open to you now.
Bryan:Yeah, that's a big shift.
Todd:It is, it was really a big shift, we weren't really good at it because, initially, because again, if you go on exercise with the Army, you might fly during the night. And some of the missions we did, we fly like, maybe I was on from, I don't know, let's say, eleven at night to five in the morning was my shift to fly. And now you're in a mod tent, big a big tent middle of the summer out in Wainwright, trying to sleep from six in the morning to X and people are still flying and guns are going off and and you're like, hey, man, I gotta sleep. And we didn't really figure out early on how do we get night crews? Do we put them in barracks?
Todd:Because they need to sleep. And that started to become a bit of a point of the night crews being treated differently than the day crews because maybe some are in barracks, some are in tents. So it kinda opened a whole piece that we had to resolve and work through.
Bryan:Yeah. And crew rest is so essential to safe operation. But at the same time, if you're not from the air force, if you're not aircrew, a lot of people don't really understand its importance.
Todd:And Right.
Bryan:You know, you'll hear people from the army say, well, you know, I drive a truck full of people on, like, zero hours of sleep for forty hours. Yep. How come you need, you know, twelve hours of rest? Like, what's the difference?
Todd:Yeah. A 100%. And you you I would say you almost get into those discussions even now. You do. Yep.
Todd:You do. And the funny part is, I think when the weather gets super sketchy and you're down at 50 feet on goggles and you're in the middle or leading, you know, a multi ship somewhere, everybody in the back gets quiet. So I'm like, this is why right here where, like, you need me not to have an issue right now where you need me to be as awake as I would be at ten in the morning, after a full night's sleep, because we're low level, we're trying to do something with other rotor systems near you, and we're all trying to put you in a precision landing at exactly the right time, and the weather isn't 100%. Like, that's why. And it's only maybe when you get folks in a scenario where they are in the back on a very uncomfortable mission that they go, okay.
Todd:You get all the sleep you need. You take whatever you need. I'm good with it.
Bryan:Yeah. There's there's more to this than I thought.
Todd:Yeah. Yeah. A 100%.
Bryan:Yep. You're talking about leading multi ship formations with NVGs. You led one of the first 12 ship NVG formations in Canadian tactical aviation. Did that feel like a big deal at the time?
Todd:Well, it didn't. I mean, I think back now, it was RV 92, I believe, and we had Kai was now on goggles, so they were trying to work. The Kai O guys were extremely good on nav, with the observers in the left seat, pilots flying. They were very good at leading us into our LZ. And that's kind of how they were used a lot for us.
Todd:But when we were all on goggles now, we almost started to navigate on our own far more than needing the Kiowa guys, so there was this, I'm not gonna say friction, but there was probably an initial friction at something like RV ninety two, where we're almost trying to not work with the Kiowa guys, because now you got two different fleets Mhmm. Fairly new on goggles trying to figure it out. But I remember, yeah, we were I was leading this thing and and I if I'm not mistaken, we were low level, so we're at 50 feet with a 12 ship. And somewhere in there, we probably got a little split. And I remember I want to say it was like eight, nine, nine, ten, eleven and twelve.
Todd:And we come around a corner and all of a sudden I see like a four ship go around another hill. And I'm like, I think that's the tail end of my 12 ship, you know? And sure enough, somewhere in there, either I took the wrong hill and I was making us back onto course or they did, but eventually we all hooked up again, but we realized, holy jumping, like your situational awareness at night is so much more reduced when you're looking through these tubes and everything else is kind of pitch black. And all of a sudden you see some lights and you're like, hey, nine or whatever I call them, maybe the third element, Hey, is that you I just saw going around a hill to my, yeah, yeah, it's us, we're coming back around and sure enough, you know, we worked it out, but the debriefs you had to go, hey man, like we're learning as we were going because you're like, okay, we got to figure out how to safely do this and have loaches, the Kaya was maybe upfront waiting for you, to lead you in. Like it was it was pretty interesting at the time to be very honest, but I never thought of it like that.
Todd:It was just the natural progression that here we are, and we're about to try this. And then, you know, it worked out, I guess, is the way to way to look at it. But
Bryan:I have one last question about NVGs. As as a helicopter pilot and as somebody who was there when the NVG era started for Canada, how is your neck?
Todd:Yeah. So I never I'm gonna knock on wood even. I never had an issue with my neck, and I did a lot of goggle flying, not nearly as what guys are doing now, but I don't I'll tell you the one thing I think helped me more than anything because I was one of the very first guys and they sent me to the medical folks in Toronto that did the aircrew selection, those folks, they sent me with my helmet and they perfectly fitted my helmet with a counterweight in the back that was the exact balance to goggles. And nobody was allowed to inspect my helmet, there was only one guy cleared to look at it. Because I wore them so often at that time, it was just a perfectly balanced helmet.
Todd:And I feel like that actually saved my neck. You know, you didn't know it at the time because let's be honest, helicopters shake and especially with some of the special ops stuff where you've got your head hanging out the door looking down at a reference, none of that can be good. No. But I never had neck issues, I certainly had back issues, like back spasm issues from flying choppers, but I was really fortunate compared to some. And, you know, I quick story, I may, when we were learning goggles and pet, you know, the way we started to learn them is Doug Moody, again, commander turns to a buddy of mine, Lou Whitaker and I and says, hey, you two grab a Jeep, one of you wear goggles, one of you don't, and then just go driving and see what these goggles are about.
Todd:And we went off the road and we're like, so you can't really get depth perception really, really good with these goggles, but we would initially, we were sending, when we sent pilots flying with them, we would send the safety pilot without goggles, and the other guy flying with goggles, so your safety guy can't see anything that you know, your non safety guy can see on goggles. Like, it was some pretty interesting early days.
Bryan:Yeah. As you were developing SOPs and stuff.
Todd:Yeah. 100%. Yes.
Bryan:Okay, Todd. That is gonna wrap up part two of our chat. It was super interesting to hear about your early operational days in 04/27 and just sort of hear about those early twin Huey days and how that kinda looked back in the eighties. So thank you so much for being here today. We really appreciate it.
Todd:Hey. Thanks, Brian. I really appreciate it. It was truly enjoyable talking with you. Thank you again.
Bryan:Yeah. Alright. That wraps up part two of our series on the early days of four two seven special operations aviation squadron. Next week's episode, I think, might be the most interesting one of this four part series. We're going to go through the history of four two seven in terms of it evolving from a tac hill squadron to the special operations aviation squadron that it is today.
Bryan:It is so interesting, and Todd has a very rare and unique set of experiences within that evolution. So tune in. You don't wanna miss this one. Do you have any questions or comments about anything you've heard in this show? Would you or someone you know make a great guest, or do you have a great idea for a show?
Bryan:You can reach out to us at the pilotprojectpodcast@Gmail.com or on all social media at at pod pilot project. And be sure to check out that social media for lots of great videos of our RCAF and Mission Aviation aircraft. As always, we'd like to thank you for tuning in and ask for your help with the big three. That's like and follow us on social media, share with your friends, and follow and rate us five stars wherever you get your podcasts. That's all for now.
Bryan:Thanks for listening. Keep the blue side up. See you. Engineer, shut down all four. Shutting down all four engines.