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Advert for the Bell 47G-2.

The morning of the 5th of February, 1968, found me in a joyous mood - because it was “break day.”

     For the past three months I had been based on Delta Platform in block Ship Shoal #154.  It was one of the first production platforms, built in the early ‘50s by Gulf Oil, and was close to 150 miles offshore. 

     The Gulf of Mexico is divided up into “Blocks.”  The red X marks platform Delta’s location.

     It held a block of living quarters, and oil storage tanks being filled under gas pressure by wells already drilled.  A tugboat would visit the platform once a week and off-load the oil into a barge, then tow it back to shore for refining.

          Platform Delta and its living quarters.

     Three of us PHI pilots lived on this platform for five days at a crack, and were given five days off; in other words we worked a “five & five.”  Our job was to operate three Bell 47G-2&4s (a three-place bubble Bell with naked tube-construction fuselage) hauling engineers out to other smaller, satellite production platforms, where they managed the flow of oil into their own storage tanks.

     Bell 47G-4.

  Bell 47G-4’s instrument panel was in the center, the pilot sat in the left seat.    

     My daily routine was mind numbing: Had breakfast at the crack of dawn, launched with my engineer at sunrise, flew thirty miles to the satellite platform, sat all day with the helicopter, flew the engineer back to Delta Platform at sunset, had supper, played Ping-Pong or went fishing, shaved and showered, then went to bed in a three-tiered bunk.

     The satellite platform and the engineer.

          I kid you not, dear reader, after three months of this, seeing only sky and ocean when I flew - plus the same old run-down roughneck faces - I was within a red cunt-hair of giving up flying altogether; I was so bored out of my tiny.

      The upside of flying this far from the Mississippi’s pollution – the gulf was always a deep blue.

     Nonetheless, occasionally, something odd would occur that gratefully broke up the monotony.  Like the day I flew an engineer out to one of the many older well heads that seldom got visited. 

     The older well head.

These had a wooden helipad that barely accommodated a single helicopter, and were bleached white from the mob of defecating seagulls that claimed “squatter’s rights.”  The Louisiana seagull, however, has to be the ugliest bird I’ve ever laid eyes on.  It is two to three sizes larger than the California gull, and instead of being mostly all white, it’s a dirty, mottled grey. 

Louisiana seagull

California Seagull

     On this particular day, as I lined up into the wind and started my final approach, seventy-five percent of the seagulls took off; the diehards remaining, wanting to make certain I was definitely going to land, before vacating their rest area. 

     As I drew closer, ultimately another twenty percent took off.  Finally, as I approached the lip of the helipad, and began ruffling feathers with my rotor wash, the remaining gulls took to the air - except one.  As I gently touched down on my humongous, rubber, sausage-shaped pontoons, scarcely leaving enough room for this solitary gull, it commenced violently flapping its wings and running back and forth in front of the Plexiglas chin of my helicopter.  Obviously it was attempting to get airborne, but for some reason couldn’t achieve liftoff. 

     Reducing power to cool the engine, I friction locked my cyclic and collective, and found myself fascinated by this bird’s antics, as was my passenger.  We simply sat there, dumbly watching this gull run back and forth – flapping madly.

     At length, it abruptly slammed on the brakes - stopping less than a yard from my feet resting on the foot pedals – and proceeded to regurgitate a large fish.  Then it continued more running and flapping back and forth – stopped again and up-chucked another whole fish.  After leaving a pile of five semi-digested fish in front of my feet, the gull at last got airborne and flew off into the sunset.

     That’s the day, dear reader, I learned a very interesting fact: Just like airplanes and helicopters, birds can also be over-grossed - exceeding their maximum takeoff weight - preventing them from getting airborne.   

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