IN MEMORY OF A TRIP TO FIJI WITH IAN LAURIE
In the 1980s, on one of my earliest trips in the left hand seat on VC10s, I was allowed to venture as far away as Fiji via Hong Kong. Co-piloting for me was Sqn Ldr Ian Laurie. He had more flying hours than I’d had hot dinners and, although having spent less time than me on 10 Sqn, his name was legendary in the transport world. True gentleman that he was, he allowed me to benefit greatly from his vast experience as a transport pilot and senior officer, added to which I soon found him to be the most likeable, honest and kind-hearted of men.
We were scheduled for 33 hours rest in Fiji. Staying in the same hotel as the crew, was an Army major, from the Royal Corps of Transport, on holiday with his wife and children. The family had come down to Fiji on a VC10 from Hong Kong, where they were based, two weeks before on indulgence seats (free if space available). We met by the pool and had drinks whilst some of my crew played with their kids in the water. They were a nice family and it transpired that we would be taking them back to Hong Kong via Guam, on our flight the next day. Almost embarrassed to make such a request the major (I will call him Major Mike) asked me if it would be at all possible for him to sit on the flight-deck jump seat for take-off. He seemed a most likeable chap so I readily agreed.
We climbed away from Nandi Airport en route for Guam. Passing FL 290 (29,000 feet) our flight engineer Master Eng Colin Fielder started, unusually before his first coffee, to get his manuals out, staring, or so we thought, out of the windscreen. Then we all noticed. The centre windscreen was cracking as we watched it...........
Flight Deck windows were laminated into three layers of glass, each about half an inch thick. These layers were now visibly separating into what was known in the ‘checklist’ as a double de-lamination, with the potential of a future de-pressurisation if they cracked and shattered. For a flight across the middle of a lonely Pacific Ocean, this was not a pleasant thought and so, without further ado we turned around, descended, and prepared to jettison fuel to bring the aircraft down to landing weight back at Nandi. Jettisoning would take about half an hour since we had loaded absolutely full tanks for the long flight to Guam.
I then noticed Ian, in the right hand seat, leaning most obviously to his right. He caught my eye, smiled and leaned even further right. - The penny dropped. In his gentle, diplomatic way with me, his rookie captain, he was tactfully suggesting, without needing to speak aloud for all to hear, that it might not be such a good idea for Major Mike to remain on the flight deck. His jump-seat was directly in line with the cracking window. If the window broke completely, he may well have taken the brunt of the thick laminated glass coming into the flight-deck. (To this day I have to confess that I am still unsure whether this would have actually happened. Would the sudden de-pressurisation have sucked the glass outwards or would the forward speed of the aircraft have forced the glass to come in? – ex Engineers- answers on a post-card please.)
I then suggested to the major that the jump seat might not be a suitable seat for our landing and so he went back to the cabin. We landed safely but the window shattered completely as soon as our two ground engineers, C/Ts Chalky White and Brian Mulholland started work to remove it an hour later.
Shattered Window
The replacement would be flown down from Hong Kong via Sydney by civil airline. It would take two days. We resolved to make the best of our delay in the South Seas. Major Mike and family also retraced their steps to the Mokambo Hotel in Nandi. After two days…no window. It had been mislaid by the civil cargo people and somehow had gone to Melbourne, where all traces of it had vanished. A new one would have to come from the UK. It would take a week. Oh no! Not another 7 days in Fiji! It was December in the UK.
Amongst Ian Laurie’s many other talents we found that he could brew up a mean flask of Harvey Wallbanger in his hotel room as well. We had stopped in Guam on the outbound flight and, during the one and a half hour turn-round, we had managed to visit to the BX, (Base Exchange – like a NAAFI) where bottles of Galliano were purchased by the crew. Spending one of the ensuing days of our enforced holiday at Beachcomber Island, we flew as passengers in a light sea-plane aircraft for the short 10 minute hop from Nandi. Ian’s beachbag contained his swimming costume and towel plus a flask of his H-B bevy in large galley flask, borrowed from our grounded VC10. Sitting on the beach we drunk the health of those back home, in a cold UK December.
Day-trip to Beachcomber Island - 2 weeks before Christmas 1983
A day or two later, Ian Laurie quietly told us at breakfast that Major Mike and his wife had expressed their worries to him about running out of money due to their holiday being extended. He then mentioned a few ways in which we might help this charming family. This caring attitude of Ian’s was so typical of him.
Ian wondered if I would care to share a room with him so that they could have his room which was already paid for. I agreed. The rest of the crew then arranged to help out from our hotel meal allowances and when eventually we did reach Hong Kong and said our farewells to Mike and his family they were unstinting in their praise and gratitude. And yes, he had sat on the jump seat; not only for take-off but for the landing into Hong Kong as well. Arrivals into Kai Tak were always a spectacle. Ian’s smooth operation of the approach down the IGS (instrument guidance system – like an ILS) around the ‘Chequer Board’ and his subsequent ‘greaser’ landing onto RW 13 at Kai Tak impressed us all.
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A few years later I was flying into Nairobi from Brize Norton via Palermo, Sicily. The Tens always left UK at night for these exercises to Kenya. After many hours of darkness it was always a joy eventually to see the dawn break over the junctions of the Blue and White Nile River as we passed Khartoum. Flying almost due south always brought the most spectacular sunrises as the event takes longer to achieve than if flying west to east. (Dawns when flying from east to west were almost unnoticeable as the sun was always out of sight behind the aircraft.)
We were expecting descent for Nairobi just after crossing the equator by Nakuru, north of Nairobi, 100 miles out. Since Nairobi is 5,500 ft above sea-level, we had only 31,500 ft to lose from our cruise level of FL370. Mount Kenya was showing its snow-covered summit off to our left in the early African morning sun. Just before ‘top of drop’ the flight engineer leaned across in front of the new-on-the-Squadron, co-pilot and started to draw a chinagraph pencil line around a bubble in the windscreen glass. This was quite normal and allowed the size of the bubble to be monitored in case it grew into a de-lamination. Most engineers would write the date and even their initials next to the bubble.
“What would happen if it does de-laminate?” asked the co-pilot.
“Ask the captain,” replied the Eng. “You had one out of Fiji a couple of years ago. Didn’t you?” (Our eight days in sunny Fiji had not gone un-noticed by the rest of the Squadron and it seemed to Ian and I that we later had many a night-Akrotiri flight allocated to us in, what seemed to us, a penance for our prolonged stay in paradise.)
I briefly recounted the tale of Major Mike and the windscreen failure in Fiji to the crew, as we started our descent into Nairobi.
We walked down the steps into the fresh clean, air of a lovely Kenyan morning. Who was standing at the foot of the steps? ….. Yes, Major Mike….….. on detachment with the RCT for the army exercises in Kenya. - And I had only been speaking about him an hour earlier. - His first words were to ask about Ian Laurie, who had been so helpful to him and his family on that Fiji trip.
“Ian was a true gentleman,” he said. - I had to agree with him.
Dick King
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Ian Laurie sadly passed away on 15 August 2013 aged 85.
He is remembered with admiration and fondess by all who knew and flew with him.
