Issue No 22 THE AVIATION HISTORIAN 115
decision of my 30-odd years of flying, based on
someone else’s reports.
The copilot transmitted the international
distress call, ‘Mayday, Mayday, Mayday’ and
informed Lossiemouth air traffic control (ATC)
of our problems. We needed to land as soon as
possible, but we first had to dump fuel because
we had taken off with about 25 tons for the 4hr
flight; far too much weight for the undercarriage.
Having heard the explosion and felt the whole
aircraft shudder, and with reports coming from
the back, I thought the Nimrod was about to
blow up. We were descending at 300kt and I
could see Kinloss in the distance, but in our path
was Lossiemouth, ten miles (16km) closer and
with a north-south runway. Because we were
coming in from a northerly direction, we were
perfectly lined up for an approach into Lossie. I
informed Lossiemouth ATC that we intended to
divert and make an emergency landing there.
Prepare to ditch!
I hadn’t thought about having to ditch the
aircraft and had fully intended to make the
airfield. However, as the minutes passed and we
got closer to land — and closer to the sea — I
began to fear that the wing would collapse and I
would lose control of the Nimrod, so I decided to
tell the crew to prepare for a possible ditching.
Ditching an aircraft, particularly a large aircraft
like the Nimrod, is not an option you take lightly
but, if there is no other way, then ditch you must.
Everything was in our favour to give us as good
a chance of a successful ditching as possible; the
sea was like a millpond and the weather was still
perfect. With the Nimrod’s engines built into the
wings and not underslung like on most large
aircraft, this gave us a better chance, provided I
could keep the wings level, of not somersaulting
once we impacted the water.
In preparation for ditching, at about 1,000ft
(300m) I allowed the aircraft to slow down and
requested 20° flap. Fortunately the hydraulic
lines to the flaps had already gone, with the
result that the flaps failed to lower. I say
fortunately because had they done so we would
have been left with asymmetric flap owing to
the damage sustained. And although again we
didn’t know it at the time, we had no starboard
aileron. The hydraulics to that had also gone.
So I had no option but to go for a flapless-
configuration ditching. Unfortunately nobody
had foreseen this eventuality and therefore
no trials had been conducted; it was not even
practised in the simulator and there were no
speeds written down anywhere. We were
literally going into uncharted waters.
Because of the flat-calm sea state and the
aircraft’s flapless nose-high attitude I found it
extremely difficult to judge my height during the
last 100ft (30m) or so. The radar altimeter helped,
but my eyes were firmly outside to ensure my
wings were level. We finally found the water at
127kt, 2kt higher than I planned. Not bad under
the circumstances, looking back on it!
The engineer described the actual ditching as
the biggest log-flume in the world. Personally I
don’t remember much about the events after we
touched. We bounced twice, I’ve since learned,
and as we slowed we pivoted about 80° around
the port wing and came to rest roughly parallel
to the shore about three miles (5km) off.ABOVE, FROM LEFT On ditching, XW666 broke into
two major sections and, after Art Stacey and his crew
had evacuated the aircraft, began to sink. The forward
fuselage and inner wing sections remained in one
piece and were salvaged (furthest left), as was the
starboard outer wing section (centre). The cockpit
(above) was removed from the fuselage and remains
on display at the South Yorkshire Aircraft Museum at
Aeroventure, near Doncaster.VIA AUTHORx 3