Big Bev’s lifeblood was leaking from her body at a rate that made it almost impossible to get them back to the ship. Seven estimated that at the current rate they would come up about ten miles short of the landing pad on the ship. “Ten miles, we gotta get high and light,” he said to himself. He reached across to Al’s workstation and pulled the lever to the cargo ramp. He then called for Davis.
“We’re leaking fuel, we gotta get light or we ain’t gonna make it, dump anything not tied down out of the cargo hold. I’m taking her high as she’ll go,” Seven told Davis.
“Cap, seems like we should stay low if there’s a chance we go down,” Davis said in a confused tone.
“That ain’t how this shit works; dump the gear and this big bitch will get you home,” Seven said as he pulled the yoke to the rear and pointed Bev towards the night sky.
Seven closed his eyes and recalled his first days of flight training. Oddly enough the first thing the navy teaches all its new pilot recruits is how to crash. It’s called autorotation. The common presumption among non-helicopter pilots is that if your engine fails, the craft falls straight to the ground, but the laws of physics allow a desperate pilot an option and an opportunity to lessen the speed at which a roto-craft descends. Seven knew the procedure well and had practiced it often in the light training craft at the Pensacola Naval Air Station. The problem was that Big Bev was no lightweight training craft. She was a large multi-engine beast, heavier than anything that Seven had ever practiced the technique in.
The trick with autorotation is to disengage the transmission on the blades once the engine fails. This will allow the blades to spin freely. From there Seven knew that he just had to angle the blades in just the right position to allow the airflow from the falling craft to keep the blades spinning, like a pinwheel in a windstorm. This produces some lift and allows the vehicle to maintain some forward movement while slowing the speed of descent. The pilot must find the right angle and then feather the