WHALING - WHERE IT ALL BEGAN.

Introduction.

The Antarctic whaling operations provided some invaluable experience for Alan Bristow himself and for some of his ablest lieutenants, most notably Alan Green who eventually became Sales Director of Bristow Helicopters, Clive Wright who became Regional Manager in the seventies and John Cameron who became Aircrew Appointments Officer.

This article is reproduced from Peter Pugh's unpublished draft manuscript about Bristows and has been tidied up and edited for internet readability.

WHALING.

After a challenging and varied spell with Helicop Air, in France from 1949-1951, Alan Bristow returned to England but did not remain idle for long. Within a short time he received a telephone call from Bill Vincent, a director of the Hiller company, run by Stan Hiller in the USA. He new Bill because he had been helping to sell his helicopters when working for Helicop Air.

" Alan, how would you like to go to the Antarctic for a fellow called Onassis?"

Vincent went on to tell him that Onassis was restarting a whaling company based on the experience of the Sun Deutcshe Vallfangst, a pre-war German whaling company. They were going to convert a T2 tanker into a whaling factory and buy some flower class Corvettes and convert them into whale catchers. All this was already in hand in Kiel. Onassis wanted to use a helicopter both to find whales and direct the catchers to them and also to find ways through the ice-pack.

"How much is he paying?"

" I think you can virtually name your own price. Anyway, go and see Kurt Reiter in Hamburg."

Bristow went to see Reiter who sent him on to a Mr Simon in Paris who in turn
sent him down to see Onassis in Monte Carlo. Bristow remembered it well and obviously with some fondness.

"I met Onassis in his office overlooking the harbour and he took me to some night clubs with topless dancers. He sat there with his dark glasses."

Onassis told Bristow to go to the USA and make sure he found the right helicopter for the job. Bristow flew to New York where he met Onassis's contact there, a Mr Korkinnis. Korkinnis instructed him to visit all the helicopter factories and provided Bristow with a Lincoln Continental. He was to report back in six months. Bristow thus set off to visit all the manufacturers. He visited Frank Baierseckijof in Philadelphia who was in the process of building his "Flying Banana". He went to see Sikorsky where the S51 and S52 were just appearing. Then off to the Bell Helicopter company in Fort Worth and finally Hiller in Paller Alto. Hiller seemed to have the edge on the others, and anyway, Bristow got the impression they had more or less got the order.

Nevertheless Bristow settled down to carry out the technical evaluations and the choice came down to either the Bell 47H, which had just gone into service with Chicago Airways, or the Sikorsky S52 and Hiller 360. A lot of factors had to be taken into account, for example, payload range capability and maintainability, as the aircraft was going to be based on a ship's deck in the Antarctic. The availability of spares also had to be a major consideration. Bristow made the decision after three or four weeks after flying all the aircraft in question. There was very little to choose between the Hiller and the Bell, the Sikorsky was not developed enough and Baiersecki's aircraft was much too big.

Finally, the report was done and Bristow recommended the Hiller 360 although he asked for certain extras to be fitted such as Automatic Direction Finder and safety equipment. The helicopter was to be fitted with permanently inflated rubber floats. He would also require a VHF radio and an HF set which had a trailing aerial which turned out to be extremely difficult to operate. Bristow also wanted a "Gibson Girl" which was a safety pack that RAF Coastal Command had used in the War and provided a second line of survival in the event of a ditching. A mechanic was also requested and Hiller assured Bristow that they would send one.

He drove back to New York and submitted his report only to receive a ticking off from Mr Korkinnis for completing the assignment so quickly and who hoped that Bristow had done his research thoroughly. Bristow assured him that he had. His report was accepted and he flew to Germany to organise the flight deck with Kurt Reiter who had been one of Germany's leading U-boat designers during the War and was now being used by Onassis to redesign ships so that they were suitable for whaling.

Bristow was introduced to the skipper of the factory ship who was a big burly German, a pre-War whaler and who apparently did not really approve of having a helicopter based on his ship. The expedition leader was a Norwegian called Varn Andersen (Varn being Norwegian for Devil).

Bristow made some suggestions about the flight deck (he had operated off the back of a Frigate though in the event this was not to prove of much help) and he was told to wait in England pending further instructions. These eventually came through and he was told to report to Montevideo where he would join up with the promised mechanic. Yet again he had an Onassis contact to report to and yet again was given a Lincoln Continental. He was also booked into the best hotel and as the sister of one of his ex-test pilot friends had married a Uruguayan he found the life of Montevideo congenial as he waited for his aircraft and mechanic.

Eventually the helicopter arrived in crates and so did his mechanic, ( What, in a crate!! ed.) one Joe Soloy, who when Bristow asked what he new about helicopters he replied, "Precious little, sir". It transpired that he was an ex-Marine who had been doing a veteran's course at Hiller and had only been there six weeks before they had asked for a volunteer to go to the Antarctic. As Joe's daughter had just had an expensive operation on one of her feet Joe had volunteered so that he could earn enough to pay off the hospital bills.
"Do you know how to assemble the aircraft?" he was asked.
"No sir", came the honest reply.

There was no alternative but for Bristow to assemble the helicopter himself and he did so as Joe Soloy read out the instructions. They flight tested the aircraft and after a few minor alterations were satisfied enough to call upon the services of a radio man to fit the radios and aerials. The spares situation was not very satisfactory and indeed half of them had not arrived when they set sail for the Antarctic. (I find myself thinking "nothing's changed there then!" often as I type in this article. Ed.

Many of the officers thought that the helicopter was a complete waste of time but the skipper who had originally inclined to this view changed his mind when he discovered what a useful navigational aid it could be. They arrived at the Ross Sea and on the second day ran into pack-ice. Bristow took off, to find a way through and consequently the fleet made it through in record time.

We now jump forward to operating Whirlwinds and the formation of Air Whaling Ltd which is generally seen as the start of Bristow Helicopters'
history.

A year on whaling operations was divided into into three phases. The first was from July to September when the S55 Mk1 Whirlwind helicopters were prepared for the whaling season and when the newly recruited pilots were trained. The second was the whaling season itself which lasted (including the journey to the Antarctic and back) from September to April. Finally there was the two months leave.

The two whaling factory ships used by Christian Salvesen (the Scottish company involved in whaling) were the Southern Harvester and the Southern Venturer. These ships were purpose built for both whaling and operating in the Antarctic and were noisy, smelly, uncomfortable and claustrophobic. Furthermore the flight deck was really too small, certainly for the Whirlwinds.

The route south was via Aruba in the Dutch Antilles, where the ships picked up cheap fuel oil piped from Venezuela. All the European factory ships arrived at about the same time so that for a few days St Nicholas's brothels and bars, the most famous of which was "Charlies Bar", did a roaring trade. From Aruba the ships would proceed south to the Salvesen whaling station on South Georgia in the Falkland Islands. During this part of the voyage further pilot training would take place and it was during one of these training sessions that the only pilot fatality in seven years of Antarctic whaling operations occurred.

After loading and unloading stores and manning the "catchers" with gunners and crews, the factory ships proceeded south past Cape Horn to the ice of the Antarctic. Each Salvesen fleet consisted of the factory, which acted as headquarters, two helicopters and thirteen whale catchers. The factory ships had a displacement of around a hundred thousand tons which was considered large in their day. In essence, the bottom of the ship was a tanker with a factory built on top, on top of which was the flensing deck and built on that level would be the forward bridge structure which also contained officers' cabins, galleys and ship's dining areas. Amidships was a structure which ran across the main flensing deck, containing two sixty ton winches and was known as Hell's Gate. Aft was the main accommodation of three storeys consisting of accommodation for the crew, ship's engineers and helicopter personnel. On top of this accommodation were two funnels, side by side, with the helicopter hangar in between and the helideck aft of this and over the accommodation block at the stern of the ship. From the helideck to the sea was sixty feet and the ship when loaded drew sixty nine feet of water.

The aft accommodation was split by a large tunnel that led up from the sea to the aft flensing deck and it was up this tunnel that the whale carcasses were hauled to be cut up and fed through ports to the factory below. Conditions in the aft accommodation were extremely noisy, as a whale was hauled up every half an hour, and unbelievably smelly, as the whales, used as fenders, began to rot!
John Cameron remembered it vividly, " The smell was so powerful you couldn't even entice an "Airwick" out of its bottle."

The catchers were mainly ex-German navy submarine hunters, part of the reparations from the Second World War. They weighed in at fifteen hundred tons and could steam at seventeen knots and were ideally suited to the job as hunting whales was not dissimilar to hunting submarines. The harpoon gun, invented by a Norwegian during the Second World War was the key to the whaling industry. The gun fired a harpoon which carried an explosive warhead and attached to the harpoon was a rope which ran through shackles and was routed to a clutched winch.

The Salvesen ships mainly hunted Balaena whales and operations were similar to antisubmarine warfare. The corvettes were stretched out to cover the maximum sea area and the helicopters were deployed to search a gap or take over on the wings. Flying would begin at first light and Alan Green recalled being dragged from his bed at six o'clock to hear Alan Bristow booming at him, "Where are you, Green? I've put in three hours flying already this morning. You can't move around here for dead whales."

The day began in darkness, when both pilots and engineers would muster on the helideck to pull the helicopter out of the hangar on to a turntable in the middle of the flight deck. As the hangar was too narrow to take two Whirlwinds with floats fitted, the helicopter was wheeled on a jack-up jury rig. The helicopter would be lashed to the turntable, the floats fitted and the jury rig jacked down and removed. Once the rotor blades were unfolded the pilots went off to get some breakfast while the engineers carried out pre-flight checks and refuelled.

The operational pilots got dressed in their survival suits and started up the aircraft. Performance in accordance with the Flight Manual was not really practical ; the pilots stuffed the aircraft with as much fuel as they thought they could carry often departing 300lbs over max gross weight. If necessary the ship was turned to give a relative wind of 45 degrees port or starboard. On the deck the rotor blades were lower than the level of the life boats and davits, which had to be cleared on lift-off. The technique in these piston engined machines was, after cockpit checks had been completed, reduce rotor RPM to ground idle for a few seconds then increase throttle and power, lift off and go, making as little cyclic and pedal inputs as possible. Having cleared the deck dive toward the sea to build up speed and translational lift and you were on your way.

Once airborne the pilots looked for the "slick" which was the name given to the the give-away circles left by the whales tails as they returned to depth after surfacing to blow.

FLYING IN THE ANTARCTIC.

The blank vastness of the Antarctic tested a pilot's confidence in his instruments. Flying one of the small Hiller helicopters, with an extended endurance due to the additional fuel tanks, pilots were conscious of the fact that a navigational error could mean a forced landing in the sea with the nearest catcher perhaps several hours away. They wore rubberised immersion suits sealed at the wrists, ankle and neck but knew they would not survive long in the freezing waters of the Antarctic. The alternative was landing on an iceberg but the danger here was the overwhelming sheer whiteness of an iceberg as the pilot made his approach. He could easily become disorientated in a sudden whiteout. Alan Bristow once had to put down on an iceberg and reported the sensation of being lowered into a bowl of milk. While he sat in his machine and waited for help to come he could hear the creaking of the iceberg as it prepared to split apart. All he could do was to wait and see if his half would roll over when the break occurred, plunging the helicopter to the bottom of the sea. When the iceberg finally cracked apart, his portion stayed firmly upright and he watched the other half turn a majestic somersault.

Alan Green was to remember Bristow's experience the day he came to the end of a patrol along the edge of the ice pack. He realised that his Automatic Direction Finder (ADF) was showing suspect bearings and was indicating that he should fly into the ice pack to return to the factory ship. He suspected that he might have lost his ADF antenna but to confirm this he would have to put down on the ice and Green was reluctant to do this. If he trusted the instrument he could end up flying 150 miles into the vast whiteness of the ice pack with the risk that he might never be found. Making a glum study of the icebergs below to see if one resembled the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, Green noticed an iceberg near the far horizon which carried two tall glistening spires of ice. The shape of the berg had stuck in his mind having past it on the outbound leg and once he reached the "Cologne Cathedral" iceberg he was able to make out another distinctive ice structure in the distance. By navigating via these ice beacons Green was able to fly back to the ship in contradiction to his ADF, which was later found to have lost its aerial, as he had suspected.

Alan Bristow was horrified by the inhumanity and wastefulness of the way the whales were killed. He still remembers one killing which took six hours and six harpoons with the whale spouting blood constantly fifty feet into the air.
"The most disgusting and inhumane thing I've ever seen in my life", he says.

By 1954 he had formed Air Whaling Limited with himself as Managing Director, Alan Green as the chief and only pilot, George Fry as part time financial manager and Jack Woolley as technical director. The next season he went with Green to the Antarctic again supervising newly trained two man crews of four Westland S55 Whirlwind helicopters bought by the Scottish whaling company, Christian Salvesen. It was not a successful season even with four long range machines out looking for whales. By this time Bristow was more convinced than ever that helicopters should have their own harpoons and not be used just for spotting.

He also asked Flight Refuelling of Wimborne, Dorset, if it could evolve a method by which, to increase the search time, a spotter helicopter could be refuelled in flight from one of the small whale catchers instead of having to return to the factory ship at the return of every patrol. Flight Refuelling, at its own expense, developed a technique which though never used in the whaling industry has since been widely used in a military and naval capacity.

Jack Woolley set out to find a method of using an aerial weapon. One idea was to use a gun firing a harpoon loaded with curare, the deadly poison used by the blowpipe natives of South America. They estimated how much curare would be needed to kill a ninety ton whale but then realised that the blood circulation of the whale was so slow it would have time to swim several miles before expiring. They then thought of electrocution but the snag here was developing a generator light enough to be carried on the helicopter but still powerful enough to kill a whale.

Their main problem was lack of funds for development but Bristow was impatient to prove the viability of the idea so he contacted a Colonel Blacker who had invented the PIAT gun, the personal infantry antitank missile, and went down to see him at his home in Petersfield. Bristow remembered lying in a field with Blacker and his son blazing away with this gun.

Following this visit they carried out some tests with a fixed target on Bristow's airfield at Henstridge. By July, 1955, the team were ready to demonstrate their ideas to the whaling industry and to this end Bristow brought five representatives of a Dutch whaling company to Weymouth Bay. Bristow piloted the helicopter, Colonel Blacker manned the gun and Alan Green took the five Dutchmen into the bay in a rowing boat. He explained to them how a missile fired from an airborne whaler's gun would electrocute the whale on impact. Death would be instantaneous and virtually painless. The whale would then be inflated by a cartridge of compressed gas contained within the body of the missile, and left floating on the surface to be collected by the tow boats and brought to the factory ship at their convenience. The men in the boat heard a muffled explosion from the helicopter as Blacker fired and them came a clanging impact from behind the boat as the missile tore a hole in the target, an oil drum, which was being towed by a motor boat. The helicopter hovered and Blacker fired nine more missiles which resulted in six hits and three near misses the last impact knocking the drum from its mounting and into the sea.

Back at Henstridge, Bristow could hardly contain himself, "Gentlemen, if that oil drum had been a whale you would have been £2000 richer after the first shot, followed by six more kills in the next ten minutes. All that from two men and one helicopter. Think of the results you would get from sending a whole fleet of helicopters into the Antarctic all using guns like this. They would kill more whales than all the world's whaling ships put together."

Bristow asked the Dutchmen for their financial backing so that the airborne gun could be perfected. The Dutchmen left promising to give their verdict in due course. When it came Bristow could hardly believe it. They turned down his idea explaining that with the whaling industry in recession they could not afford the capital required for development and in any case they feared for employment in the whaling industry if such a method of killing whales became the norm. Alan Bristow is not a man who gives up easily and he went from whaling company to whaling company but met with no success however as the whaling community was conservative and close-knit and none of them were prepared to back him. The final nail in the coffin of the airborne idea came when the International Whaling Commission announced that helicopters being used for killing whales would be classified as catchers and companies using these helicopters would have to reduce their fleets accordingly. No company would be prepared to take the risk with such an unproven method.

"Frustration, frustration, frustration!" Alan Bristow exclaimed to his colleagues. "We have a company, we have an organisation, we have ideas. All we need is some business"

It was Alan's wife Mrs Jean Bristow who came to the rescue. She suggested that he turn from the whale oil to hydrocarbon oil industry. It was the best idea anyone in the company ever had.

END

See History/Fifties for how things panned out.