Library Reference Number: 129
Four Helicopters In Our Field
There is nothing an on-coming duty Search and Rescue crew dislikes more than the sight of the off-going crew disappearing on a job minutes before change-over time. On 5 April 1990 I was on the off-going crew with pilot Flt Lt Les Grosvenor and winchman Master Air Loadmaster Paul Dowell when the Rescue Co-ordination Centre (RCC) scrambled us to look for a light aircraft which had gone missing just before daybreak on climb-out from Glasgow Airport. On this occasion though, the on-coming crew were not to be denied because RCC tasked them with deploying the advance guard of the RAF Leuchars Mountain Rescue Team (MRT). Also scrambled was a Sea King from RAF Boulmer in Northumberland.
Radio and radar records suggested that the missing aircraft had failed to clear the Gargunnock Hills north of the airport. We were the first aircraft on scene around 9.3Oam to find the hills shrouded in cloud and fine drizzle. We had not been there long when RCC directed us to a farm in the hills where a lady had some information for us after hearing a radio appeal. We landed in a grass field next to the farmhouse which was at the far corner of a stone-walled copse. Paul Dowell went off to meet the lady and some ten minutes later he came back with a cross marked on his map. The position was some four miles west of the farm on the face of the escarpment. Now we might have expected some clues from the lady like having seen or heard the aircraft but not to receive something as definitive as a grid reference.
Anyway, every bit of information has to be checked out and as the weather was so bad and the Sea King crew had just arrived in the area we passed the grid reference to them and off they went. Just a few minutes later there came a very succinct message from the Sea King "Crash Site Located". "Request position", we replied. "At the given grid reference", came the answer. Hairs rise on back of neck! "Roger!". Lengthy silence on the radio as everyone took this in.
As this was happening our other Wessex arrived with the MRT and a Strathclyde Police Helicopter arrived from Glasgow. Both landed in the field beside us. We had a conference over the radio and decided in view of the weather to let the Sea King return and pick up the MRT and a police officer and take them to the crash site. A few seconds later the Sea King landed beside us, four helicopters in the field.
After the Sea King departed to the crash site our curiosity got the better of us and Paul went back to the farm to quiz the lady of the house. Minutes later a rather bemused PD returned. The lady had told him she 'just knew the crash position' when she heard the appeal for information on the radio, but it was what the husband had to say that finally spooked us. "That's not all", he said. "Three months ago she shook me awake in the middle of the night. She was sat bolt upright in bed and said to me, "Jim! Jim! There are four helicopters in our field!"