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SEA OF SHADOWS 235
“What if we don’t launch it?” the Operations Officer asked. “If we’re
in the mood to be tricky, why don’t we leave the helo on deck, lights out,
and rotors not turning? The flight crew can sit in the helo and monitor the
buoys in the dark, right from the flight deck. If they keep their engines
spun up for a rapid launch, they could still be at Ready-Five.”
“Yeah,” said the CHENG, “but they’ll be burning fuel the whole time
they sit there. What if we have to launch, and the helo’s nearly out of
gas?”
“We could hot-pump the helo,” Ensign Cooper said. Hot-pumping was
a method of refueling helicopters on deck, with their engines running and
their rotors still turning. It was a technique most often used when a helo
needed to land, take on fuel, and get back into the air as quickly as
possible. “The rotors are usually spinning when we hot-pump a helo,” he
said, “but there’s no reason that they have to be.”
“Good point,” the captain said. “We’ll keep their tanks topped off
constantly. If we do have to launch, they’ll have a full bag of fuel.”
The discussion continued for another fifteen minutes before it became
clear that they were rehashing the same ideas. The captain looked around
the table. “Anybody see any good reasons why this plan won’t work?”
No one said a word.
“Does anyone have a better idea, or a refinement that we haven’t
discussed?”
Again, no one had anything to say.
The captain stood up. “All right, then. I’ll run through this with the
COs of Benfold and Ingraham, and give them a chance to poke holes in it.
But unless one of them thinks of something that we missed entirely, this is
the plan we run with.”