On the19th of June 1975 I was serving as a run-of-the-line Sea King Crew Commander on HS423 Squadron in Shearwater NS.
That evening, upon returning to Squadron Ops after a DDH deck landing qualification flight for some new co-pilots, I was intercepted by my Squadron Commander (then- LCol Larry Ashley) who told me that he had just designated me as the HS423 rep on a team that would be responsible for the drafting of a Sea King Replacement (SKR) Statement of Operational Requirements (SOR).
The team he spoke of was led by Major (LCdr) Lance Olmstead, an ex-fish-head-come Sea King pilot who was at that time the only Sea King pilot on the staff of the then-Canadian Forces Maritime Warfare School (later CFMWC) in Halifax.
To make a long story short, the agreed SKR SOR was eventually submitted to MARCOM HQ for onward transmission to the new NDHQ (with an info copy sent to the new infant AIRCOM HQ) in early 1976.
That 1976 draft SOR was the seed that eventually led to the 1987 NSA Contract.
Following the 1986-87 NSA competition and eventual contract award to EHI in late 1987, the NSA Project was sidelined for an extraordinarily long time by the sudden need to add SAR replacement helicopters to the mix. That extended sideline resulted in a revised 1992 combined NSA/NSH procurement contract.
The resultant combined $4.8 billion NSA/NSH project became a federal election issue. Chretien argued that the “Mulroney attack helicopter” money would be better spent on a national childcare program (for which he subsequently never carried through); he nonetheless proved his elected manhood by terminating the NSA/NSH contract within an hour of being sworn in as Prime Minister on 3 November 1993. None of his other “redbook” election promises were kept.
To backstep, within the 1976 original SKR SOR (that continued into the NSA contract) there were three mandatory but very basic naval helicopter performance requirements:
1) The replacement aircraft needed to have gear boxes that could, after sustaining a detected internal failure or loss of lubricant from any cause, be able to continue safe flight for not less than 60 nautical miles,
2) The replacement aircraft needed to have the capability to fly safely in “all weather” conditions including the ability to penetrate severe wet snow and inflight severe icing and to be able to recover aboard a ship in fog conditions with less than 10 yards visibility; and,
3) The replacement aircraft had to possess the capability to hover (i.e. recover aboard ship) in headwinds of 60 knots, crosswinds of 55 knots and tailwinds of 50 knots.
In late 1975, we were visited by a representative of the UK company Westland Helicopters who assured us that our SKR performance requirements were technically very achievable and that Westland had already joined up with Agusta Spa in Italy to develop a naval helicopter for the UK and Italian Navies that would meet or exceed all of our expectations. The marvel that he spoke of in the fall of 1975 was eventually to become known as the EH101… today marketed as the AW101.
What grieves me most is that, on the19th of June 2015, exactly 40 years to the day that my SKR trek began, MND Jason Kenney will be present in Shearwater to accept (on behalf of Canada) four Block 1.0 Cyclone helicopters that are a very very far cry from (and which will never meet) the performance capabilities we had come to expect back in 1975.
