Aircrew Association - Scottish Saltire Branch
Library Reference Number: 146
How Now Brown Cow?
When I joined the UK Search and Rescue force at A Flight 22 Squadron RAF Chivenor in North Devon in 1966 I received a comprehensive briefing on how to deal with the media. At the end of it I was told not to be surprised if the most difficult or hazardous job got little or no coverage. Much depended on when the job was done in relation to media deadlines; no 24 hour news in those days; and what else was or was not hitting the headlines. However, one should expect any amount of interest if a job involved women, children or animals!
And so it proved on a sunny Sunday in July 1968 when farmer Allan Bray of Bucks Barton Farm near Bideford asked for RAF help in retrieving a 14-month-old pedigree shorthorn heifer which had fallen 300 feet down a 500-foot cliff. Dense trees covering the steep slope had prevented rescue by the Fire Service. We went off initially to do a recce of the situation and found the cow and a group of firemen in a very awkward situation just a few feet away from a steep buttress. The pilot, Flt Lt Calum Young was ex army support, and thought we could retrieve the cow as an underslung load but before we went off to get the appropriate kit we first had to do a dummy run to see if we could get to the overhead. The vertical buttress was free of trees except for the odd saplings jutting out of crevices. We winched out the winchman, Flt Sgt Bill Cox, on a full 60 feet of cable while I talked Calum slowly towards the overhead, both of us watching a sapling about 6 feet above the rotor. We had just enough clearance from the cliff to get Bill right over the cow but just as we arrived on top there was a ripping noise with leaves and twigs flying everywhere! The blasted sapling had, without warning, been bent double by the suction of the rotor downwash and the last 2 feet of it had trashed the aluminium blade tips.
We returned to base, which for the next hour was a hive of activity. While the airframes mechs got to work beating out the dents in the removable blade tips, Calum got the leckies to work fitting and wiring up the underslung load hook. In later years, SAR Flights would have underslung load lifting (USL) as part of their repertoire with all the requisite kit and operating procedures but not at this stage. Bill Cox and I found a variety of odd bits of chain, wire rope and shackles lying around the hangar and managed to put 50 feet together. When all was ready Calum gave us a 5-minute course on USL procedures and off we went.
When we arrived back on scene the cow had been tranquillised and harnessed for lifting by a local vet. Keeping well clear of the recalcitrant sapling this time, we got the cow hooked on and in a straightforward lift hauled her up to the farmer and vet waiting in a cliff-top field. Half an hour later the cow got up and walked back to the farm.>/p>
Nice little job helping the local community, nothing much to it really, maybe a bit gash by later standards. Next day, however, came widespread coverage in local and national newspapers, `Copter rescues Daisy the corn'(Daily Mirror), 'It's ups-a-Daisy for flying cow' (Daily Express) and in the Coastal Command Flight Safety magazine, under the heading `How Now Brown Cow?' a large cartoon of `A Flight Dairies' helicopter and dangling cow with winchman alongside on stool milking her! They added a poem to the cartoon along the lines of `good job cows can't fly'.
A couple of days later we received a thank-you letter from the vet, Mr E W Whitney DFC! He enclosed a £1 note for us to have a beer on him, and in those days you could get three good pints for under a quid! The letter went on, 'This is the second time the RAF Rescue Service has helped me - the first being on June 6th 1942 - picking me up from a dinghy in the North Sea after ditching a Stirling bomber of 149 Squadron Lakenheath. Once again, thanks a lot for your help, if you ever get around here I will gladly treat you to another noggin. As Devon farmers say 'it was a proper job!"
P.S. I also had a lovely telegram from an ancient wizened retired winchman, Vic Hooper. The telegram was delivered to my focal village Post Office in Braunton, where they probably had a good laugh, then it went to the RAF Comm.Cen where they also probably did the same, before it was delivered to me at the Flight, or rather it was posted on the Flight notice board for all to see. It read `I see you still pick up any old cow!'