Lost in the desert

When I was working as the Signal Squadron Commander in the then South West Africa it was requeired from me to visit the commandos. On this particular trip I went down to Luderitz and visit the local commando. We departure from Eros airport with a light aircraft with a young pilot at the helm.

When the inspection/ visit was completed we reported to the airfield to fly back to Eros landing strip just outside Windhoek.

On take off the front window suddenly turned black with oil coming from the engine. The pilot had to brake hard before getting airborne. We were shaken by this incident. What happened was that the oilcap come off for some reason and the oil started to cover the front window.

After refill we did take off.

Now we were flying back to Windhoek but I observed that the pilot were nervous about something and he was looking at the map often. Eventually I realised the he was not sure about where he is flying to.

The end result of this was then that we pointed him to the east and told him to fly until he hit the main road to the north and then he just followed the road.

Eventually we found the main road and turned north. At the first big town we flew low over the buildings and everyone was waving to us. We were actually trying to read the towns name so that we know were we are. It turned out to be Keetmanshoop so we turned north towards Windhoek.

Beacuse of all these little incidents it was getting late and we realised that we will not make Eros airfield in daylight. They did not have landing lights and we had to go to the international airport to land because by the time we will arrive it will be dark.

The problem was that the airport were like 50 km plus from Windhoek and there were no transport to take us to Windhoek. We departure that morning from Eros and had to land there on our return.

On that part of the flight we saw many wild animals like Gemsbok. We also saw the round circles in the sand that some people call the "fairy circles" in the sand.

A safe landing were executed at the international airport. All the lights were switched off and we waited for our transport over an hour.

Eventually we crawled into our beds that night after this eventfull day. I can still feel the vibrations in my bones of that long flight. I still wonder about the fuel situation as the straight trip would have been much shorter.

It later turned out that the pilot were flying there for the first time while he done his tour of duty. He was well trained but just out of pilot training.

I suppose that is how you get experience!