'We did some quick calculations and realized unless we got a fix of our position we would have to land somewhere before the engine quit.'

'We did some quick calculations and realized unless we got a fix of our position we would have to land somewhere before the engine quit.'

Mike Mahon's reflections about the emergency landing in Bali during the Air race.

Mike Mahon

Trinity College Dublin

1969

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Mike Mahon

Work and Employment

Life Story

Bali

1960s

Next leg was across Saudi Arabia to Bahrain. I had never before seen such a desolate landscape, the Arabs call it,' Rub'al Khali or the empty quarter' and it certainly justifies the name. Quick turn around at Bahrain, little did I know at that time, that in the future I would live and work there with Gulf Air. Onward to Karachi in record time and Nagpur, in India. Here we got a great welcome , but delayed by Indian beaurocracy. Had to go to numerous offices to get 'chitties' stamped by every official in the airport , but all smiled nodding their heads and quoting that famous Indian phrase' No broplem' before we were allowed to proceed. To Calcutta. and Bangkok, all without incidence, but we were soon to be woken from our fat, dumb and happy composure on the next leg to Bali. To reach Bali we would have to fly through the ITCZ ( Inter - Topical Convergency Zone ), this was the boundary, lying East to West where two different air masses converge, or more correctly collide. This gave rise to towering CB's, unlike any seen in Europe, with violent up and down - drafts capable of tearing the wings off a light aircraft. Of course, we did not have the luxury of weather radar to pick our way through the most violent cells, so we decided our best option was to go below the cloud base, but this entailed encountering some very heavy rain. We all felt apprehensive as a solid wall of thunder storms arose before us on the horizon. At least we were VMC (visual met conditions) and could see them, it would have been suicidal to try it at night. We strapped ourselves in tightly and prepared for the worst. Entering under the cloud base was like flying into a waterfall. The noise was ear - shattering and we had to shout to communicate. Suddenly we found ourselves climbing at over 2,000 ft. min. in a violent updraft. We closed the throttle and stuffed the nose down, but to no avail , we continued climbing. Just as suddenly we started to descend towards the sea at a ferocious rate. Again we tried to correct, full power on and nose up, but it made little difference, we were at the mercy of the winds. We just hung on and tried to maintain aircraft attitude and heading. For the next hour or so, it seemed much longer, the ASI (air speed indicator ), VSI ( vertical speed indicator), and altimeter went crazyWe were chewed up and spat out at the far side of the ITCZ into brilliant sunshine and smooth air. The sea was azure blue and dotted with tropical islands. The only problem was we were now unsure of our position. We were out of range of any navigation aids that we had, NDB (non directional beacon ) and VOR (vhf omni - directional radio) and just navigating by DR (dead reckoning ) , basically applying forecast winds to our intended track, allowing for drift and trying to update by visual contact. However, the violent winds of the past hour could have driven us anywhere off track. The islands below us all looked the same and there were dozens of them. Hopefully we tuned in the Bali VOR but to no avail, we were obviously out of range. We now realized we had another problem to contend with. We had used a lot more fuel than planned for and were now running short. We did some quick calculations and realized unless we got a fix of our position we would have to land somewhere before the engine quit. W e were flying over a beautiful tropical island, we knew not where, but it had a nice long sandy beach which we reckoned we could make an emergency landing on. Quick calculation told us we could fly on for a further 20 mins. And if no fix turn back and land. To our enormous relief the VOR needle started to flicker and then settled down pointing to Bali 20 degrees to starboard. We called them on their frequency and much relieved to hear the ATCO's voice informing us the weather at Bali was clear. We landed at 0945Z just 15 mins behind the Aussie Arrow and subsequently learned that the VOR was only switched on when an aircraft was expected!

Irish Research Council for Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences (IRCHSS)

Dr Kathleen McTiernan (Trinity College Dublin)

Dr Deirdre O'Donnell (Trinity College Dublin)