End: Iwo Jima Airbase, Iwo Jima, Japan, (RJAW), N E

Transcription

1 Leg 13: Saipan to Iwo Jima Start: Francisco C. Ada/Saipan International Airport, Saipan, United States Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (PGSN), N E End: Iwo Jima Airbase, Iwo Jima, Japan, (RJAW), N E Start Date: (Sim Time): 13/11/2010 6:29am (flight on same day in real life, but not same time) Flight Duration: 3.8 hours (day), 2.7 hours on instruments. Flight Distance: 724 miles (629 nautical miles) Estimated Fuel Burn (burn estimated by FSX when setting up flight plan): 126 gallons. Actual Fuel Burn: 96 gallons. The great thing about flight sims is that if you what to have a realistic flight experience, you often can (I won't go into the X-Plane versus FSX debate and the almost religious fervor that it can invoke amongst the devoted). However, you also get to do things that real pilots would not attempt, such as going to places that are forbidden, or flying in conditions that no sane pilot would ever attempt. I think I touch on both of these aspects in this entry. First, the forbidden aspect. Iwo Jima is almost halfway between Japan and Saipan and is not a place that you causally visit. If you don't work at the island, you need special permission to 1 / 5

2 travel there. The reason is very simple. Iwo Jima is a special, almost sacred place. I don't mean that in the religious sense of the word. I mean sacred in the sense of a place that has seen so much sacrifice and death that people that wish to travel there don't do so to merely sight-see. Most visitors are there to pay respects to those who fell in one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific Theatre of WWII. For over a month starting in February 1945, US troops invaded this small island and fought over Japanese defenders. The Japanese defenders were well entrenched and very determined to defend the island as vigorously as possible. They had built an extensive system of tunnels under the island to protect themselves from the frequent Allied bombing raids and naval bombardment over the previous year. The island was not only a key airbase for intercepting Allied bombing raids, it also served as a base for attacks on Allied interests further south and a key part of the early warning system that allowed Japan to prepare defences against Allied bombers. On top of all this, this was not a Japanese colonial possession. This was part of Japan. The Japanese soldiers were defending their homeland. The defenders knew that holding out against the US indefinitely was not an option, but they hoped to inflict such heavy losses on the invading force that an invasion of the main islands of Japan would seem untenable to the Allies. On the other side, the Allies wanted to neutralise the threat posed by the base on the island and gain an airbase much closer to the Japanese mainland than any they currently held. At the end of the 36 day campaign, only 216 Japanese soldiers were captured alive. More than had either been killed or taken their own lives. The US forces lost almost 7000 men with over men wounded. The "Medal of Honor" is the highest award bestowed by the US military (similar to the "Victoria Cross" awarded to Commonwealth soldiers). Of all the Medals of Honor awarded to US Marines in WWII, 28% were awarded for actions on Iwo Jima. This attests to how bad conditions at Iwo Jima were. Prior to the war, a small population of 1000 people lived on the island, however before the battle, these civilians were relocated to the mainland. They were never able to return to their island. In 1968, the US returned sovereignty of the island to Japan and a base of the Japan Self Defence Force (JSDF) is currently located on the island. JSDF forces are the only permanent 2 / 5

3 residents of Iwo Jima, however officials of the Japan Meteorological Agency and special visitors from the US and Japan attending memorial services are allowed to visit. In recent times, Iwo Jima has been mentioned as one of the places in Japan were US forces may have stored nuclear weapons. If these allegations are true this would be a direct violation of the Japanese policy of not allowing the storage of nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. Given Japan's history with nuclear attack, people are understandably sensitive to this issue. This leg is the longest run of the trip so far. According to FSX when I planned the flight, the Baron was estimated to use 126 of it's 144 gallons of fuel to make the trip. I have been monitoring fuel consumption, and have found that at a cruise altitude of 8000' feet, with the mixture properly leaned, I can get fuel consumption down to as little as gallons per hour per engine. This means that if FSX's prediction was correct, I should have less than half an hour of fuel once I arrived at the island. This is much lower than that recommended for actual civilian aviation. I believe that the correct amount of reserve should be at least 45 mins on arrival. In my defence, I have been monitoring fuel during the trip carefully and have noticed that FSX consistently over-estimates the fuel consumption by about 20%. So I expected to arrive with only gallons used, which should give me over an hour to bring the plane down. The big problem on this leg is not fuel, but the lack of an alternate airport. Once I arrive at Iwo Jima, no other airport is within range of the Baron even with my more accurate fuel estimate. On top of all this, I couldn't find instrument approach charts for Iwo Jima (not surprising as it is a military base), and there is no ILS either. If the weather is too bad at the island, I risked having a big problem. Basically, on this leg, if I wasn't able to land at Iwo Jima, then it would be the Pacific Ocean. I don't think that real pilots would ever attempt this flight in this aircraft, as there is no margin for error. However, the only other route to Japan would be to continue west to the Philippines and then north via Taiwan, which would be too much of a diversion for my liking. I decided to be unrealistic and take the risk. I took off from Saipan into fairly good weather, but north of Saipan things got cloudy pretty quickly. Of the 3.8 hour journey, 2.7 hours were spent in clouds. Although I didn't take any screenshots, the flying through the clouds made for more interesting "scenery" compared to just the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean that I would have seen if the weather had been clear. The down side of this was that by the time I arrived at Iwo Jima and descended to around 3000' it was clear that there was plenty of low level cloud. Technically this was an instrument flight rules (IFR) situation, but I wasn't prepared and the FSX automatic Air Traffic Control insisted on vectoring me toward a visual approach to runway 07. I could barely see the island through the clouds and things looked increasingly grim. I had no choice but to see if I could spot the runway before I needed to go around. I don't think that real pilots would ever be so silly as to attempt something like this unless it was an emergency. Fortunately, I passed through the cloud obscuring my view of the island with still enough distance to attempt a landing. However, 3 / 5

4 another big problem "appeared" and this one was not of my making. Check out this screen shot I took after the flight (I was a bit distracted during the actual trip): Looks pretty right? Lovely airport on an island with lots of trees. Spotted the problem yet? Notice the white and red glideslope indicator lights on the left of the runway. I've got two white and two red lights, basically I'm right on the correct glideslope to make a perfect landing, although it's a bit difficult to tell in this shot, as a tree seems to be in the way. Got it yet? If a tree obscures the glideslope indicator and you are on the right glideslope, then that means that that tree is in the path between you and the runway. In fact there are plenty of trees, way too close to the airport. The next screen shot shows the problem a little more clearly. This is a problem I've seen with other FSX airports, trees and buildings placed way too close to the end of the runway to be realistic. It can be quite annoying at times. I managed to land by basically going between a gap in the trees and landing a little long on the runway. There was a slight crosswind, but it didn't present a major problem and I managed to get down safely. After all that, I felt pretty lucky to have made it to Iwo Jima in one piece! TSA-PTPN-PTKK-PGUM-PGSN-RJAW 4 / 5

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