PILOT OF THE YEAR For outstanding achievement as a helicopter pilot
Lt. Cdr. Robert McCabe US Coast Guard Air Station Cape Cod, Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts, USA
US Coast Guard (USCG) Lt. Cdr. Robert McCabe didn’t set out to be a helicopter pilot. He joined the Coast Guard with a desire to be actively involved in humanitarian and search-and-rescue work. While assigned to a ship in Astoria, Oregon, he was inspired watching the MH-60T Jayhawks perform multiple harrowing rescues. He changed his focus and attended flight school after his first USCG tour.
McCabe returned to Astoria in 2012
as an MH-60T pilot. After that tour, he was stationed in Sitka, Alaska, before his current assignment at USCG Air Station Cape Cod. Today, McCabe conducts missions across New England, having accumulated more than 2,700 helicopter hours and countless successful rescue missions. In addition to being a pilot-in-command, he is an instructor pilot and flight examiner. On the evening of Nov. 24, 2019,
Lt. Cdr. Robert McCabe
his skills and experience were put to the test. Te fishing vessel Leonardo
had suddenly and unexpectedly capsized 24 miles southwest of Martha’s Vineyard, throwing all four crew members into the 50-degree water. Once on scene, McCabe’s crew found a lone survivor in a life raft among the debris field in 10-ft. waves and 30-kt winds.
Te severely hypothermic survivor was hoisted aboard and successfully stabilized. During the rescue, the sun set and a squall with sleet came in, reducing visibility to a quarter mile and raising the seas to 15-ft. waves. Rather than a typical search altitude of 300 ft., McCabe directed the other pilot to fly a low, 80-ft. air taxi to continue
searching the debris field for remaining Leonardo crew members. With their focus mostly outside the aircraft, searching the rough water with spotlights in flying sleet, both pilots became disoriented. Te aircraft started to bank 40 degrees, simultaneously pitching more than 14 degrees nose up and rapidly slowing while descending. “Te visual inputs we were getting were inconsistent,” McCabe says. “Te sleet gave that Star Wars warp-speed illusion
in the searchlight beam, making us feel like we were flying at 50 kt. Te waves gave us the sensation we were drifting right. Neither was right. I soon realized we had ‘the leans.’ ” Within 10 seconds of becoming disoriented, McCabe announced the aircraft’s state and coached the flying pilot through
an instrument transition to stable flight. McCabe’s situational awareness and decisiveness were crucial to avoiding a near- catastrophe. “Admitting disorientation, then transitioning to correction is very, very difficult,” he recalls. “It’s extremely difficult to convince yourself to trust your instruments and make the correct inputs. Tat experience really brought home that we as a community need to fess up and do everything we can to learn from our mistakes.” Upon his return, McCabe described the event in detail to the air station’s safety department, and information from the
flight data monitoring system was used to create an animation of the flight for training. Tis effort resulted in USCG-wide policy recommendations, including standardizing training in night-vision goggle illusions, developing a manual addressing aeromedical factors of flight, and adding a discussion of spatial disorientation to every annual checkride.
52 ROTOR MARCH 2021
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