things with these little aircraft.
“We landed the aircraft in degraded
modes day and night on the deck,” he
said.
“We did things like hydraulics-out
landings, emergency low visibility
approaches, manual fuel landings.
We would simulate ship deck and
aircraft emergencies day and night.
We literally were able to transition
the Navy from one which had not
seriously seen any small ship flight
operations to being competent on
warships to an amazing depth.”
He said the Squirrel was a delight
to fly and a great aircraft on which to
learn to fly.
“It taught you all the right things
about helicopters that you needed to
know. It had limitations which you
needed to understand and work to and
it also had a great deal of character,”
he said.
Di Pietro said the Squirrel featured
an elastomeric rotor head and very
good control setup.
“Such was the control setup that
you could put the thing on the deck in
pretty serious weather conditions and
do it safely,” he said.
And then came Gulf War 1, with
Australia dispatching a naval group
to join the US-led coalition to evict
Saddam Hussein’s army from Kuwait.
Saddam’s troops occupied Kuwait
on August 2 1990 and the three ships
of the Australian task force sailed for
the Gulf just over a week later.
At that time, the Navy had a mature
helicopter capability in the Squirrels
but which was never intended for
maritime let alone operational use.
And it also had a new capability, the
Seahawks, intended for just that role
but not yet fully accepted into service.
It was decided to send both to the
Gulf, with two Seahawks and three
Squirrels embarked on the three ships.
“So we put in a GPS system (on
the Squirrel), EW (electronic warfare)
system, nothing too flash, and put a
gun on the side of the helicopter and it
went away in support of operations in
the Gulf, particularly working with the
S-70B-2s also deployed to Gulf War 1,”
CDRE Smallhorn said.
And so was born the ‘Battle Budgie’.
“It was doing things like top cover
missions for boarding operations while
Navy was enforcing the UN sanctions
on Iraq.”So, as well as its central role in pilot
training, Squirrels also served in war
and warlike environments.
Those initial Seahawk deployments
to the Middle East were the first of
many to come which continues to
this day under what’s now called
Operation Manitou.
CDRE Smallhorn said the Navy’s
816 Squadron has had assets deployed
to this region almost continuously
since 1990.
He said he could think of no other
unit in Australian military history
which had assets deployed for greater
than a quarter century.
“In all of those operations, in the
terribly unforgiving environment of
maritime aviation and to still have the
same 16 airframes that we purchased,
is an extraordinary story. We are very
proud of that record,” he said.
“It is easy to hear stories like
that and to think that what we do
is easy. It’s not easy. It’s hard. It’s a
tough grind to make sure that our
airworthiness and safety is retained
while we still are as lethal as we can be
as a warfighting organisation.”
The Squirrels have also played
a central role in development of
the Navy pilot and aircrew training
regimes, organisation and practices
which have produced such a
commendable safety regime.
CDRE Smallhorn said the Navy’s
Aircraft Maintenance and Flight Trials
Unit (AMAFTU) and their instructor‘And so
was born
the ‘Battle
Budgie’.’
A Seahawk jettisons flares during
a Fleet Air Arm event in October
2014.DEFENCEKeeping watch from a
Seahawk’s door-mounted
MAG-58 machine gun during a
November 2011 mission in the
Middle East Area of Operations.
DEFENCEBravo Zulu