[00:00] Fletcher Brown: Everybody accounted for? Nope. One guy missing the captain. Where’s the captain? The last time we saw him he was trying to get to the raft and the raft was blowing away from him. So we went to the position where the raft was and started a search upwind from the raft and there he was in the water, he was face down.

[00:23] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Welcome to another episode of Success for the Athletic Minded Man. Real talk on harnessing your athletic drive for clarity, consistency, and focus in business and life. This is your host, Jim Harshaw Jr. And today I bring you Fletcher Brown. Fletcher Brown is a retired U. S. Coast Guard rescue pilot. What you’re about to hear are some of the most incredible stories you’ve ever heard in your life, and you’re going to hear them firsthand from a guy who was at the helm, he was the pilot during these rescues that you’re about to hear about.

[00:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Now, one really critical thing that he wanted me to point out is that there are hundreds of pilots all across the United States, all across the world. Doing these kinds of things every day. So he really didn’t want to be singled out for his heroism and all the rescues and the lives that he saved because he said there’s so many others doing the same thing.

[01:12] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And the stories you’re about to hear are incredible. I mean, this is a guy who’s been through some of the things that you would never even think of in terms of what a, uh, a coast guard rescue pilot does and how they go about their business. And he’s just a fascinating storyteller. And there’s actually one other unique thing about him.

[01:26] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And I revealed reveal that right at the very end of the episode. So make sure you listen to the end. You’re going to hear something really unique, really interesting about this guest. All right here, let’s get into it with my interview with Fletcher Brown, retired U. S. Coast Guard rescue pilot.

[01:43] Fletcher Brown: Fletcher, welcome to the show.

[01:46] Fletcher Brown: Jim is great to be here. I mean, I’ve been following your podcast for a long time. And the people you have had on, you’ve had incredible guests. So I’m just wondering why you’ve lowered your standards and you’re having me on today, but hey, it’s your

[02:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: decision. Well, the listeners are about to find out why I’m having you on because this is going to be a pretty incredible episode.

[02:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I’m, I’m super excited to have you on. I’m looking forward to it. Yeah. Likewise. So you have a long, Legacy. Your family has a long legacy in the Coast Guard. If the listener Googles your name, Fletcher Webster Brown, what are they going to find?

[02:22] Fletcher Brown: Well, that’s a good question. If they Google Fletcher Webster Brown, they’re probably going to come up with my grandfather and I’ll go into that and they might come with my father, they might come with me cause I’m the third.

[02:32] Fletcher Brown: So let’s, let’s go back a little bit to the beginning. First of all, let’s talk about the Coast Guard. Okay. Founded in 1870. George Washington signed the Tariffs Act and Congress then approved funds to build 10 cutters, the revenue cutters, and it was called the Revenue Cutter Service, and their original intent was to stop piracy and smuggling of goods and tariffs coming into the, into the U.

[02:58] Fletcher Brown: S. So that was the beginning. And then later, in 1915, they joined together with the U. S. Life Saving Service to form what we call today the Coast Guard. And subsequently they joined with the Maritime Inspection Bureau and with the Lighthouse Service. So those four entities joined together to form what we call the Coast Guard today.

[03:19] Fletcher Brown: So my grandfather really goes back to before it was even called the Coast Guard. He was in what we now call the Coast Guard. I mean, a class of 1913. So it’s back ways. And in the morning, he told me those guys would row out to a sailing ship on the Thames River in Connecticut, and they would have classes and come back ashore at night.

[03:37] Fletcher Brown: So my grandfather, by the way, if you Google him, he was in World War I. He served a board, US Coast Guard Cutter, Seneca, and if you wanna Google him, you’ll find some incredible stories about rescue efforts that my grandfather was central in core to. So World War I, the Coast Guard was involved. Absolutely.

[03:56] Fletcher Brown: The Coast Guard has been involved in every war. It’s one of their three missions, and I’ll get to that a little bit later. But military readiness is a core component of the Coast Guard, and they have been involved in every war from World War I on up until the present time.

[04:11] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Wow. Yeah.

[04:12] Fletcher Brown: Let’s go back to my great grandfather for a minute.

[04:15] Fletcher Brown: He was a James Brown, not with the famous flames, the different one. And, uh, he, when he was 14 years old, he ran away from home, lied about his age, joined the Civil War. And he was out of Brockton, Massachusetts. He was a drummer boy in the civil war, and he’d beat drums through nearly every one of the major battles you’ve heard.

[04:33] Fletcher Brown: And his commanding officer was a guy named Fletcher Webster, relative of Daniel Webster. And my grandfather, out of total respect for his commanding officer, named his son My grandfather, Fletcher Webster Brown, and then it was passed down. My dad is Fletcher Webster Jr. And I’m the third. So both my grandfather served an entire career in U.

[04:54] Fletcher Brown: S. Coast Guard. My father served nearly 30 years in the U. S. Coast Guard as both a, uh, a shipboard guy and an aviator. And then I spent 21 years in the Coast Guard. Interestingly, neither my grandfather, my father ever once. Why don’t you think about going to the Coast Guard? You know, family legacy thing? No, never did it.

[05:15] Fletcher Brown: I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be an engineer. So I went to college, be an engineer, decided I don’t really want to be an engineer. Thought, God, you know, my dad, whatever he did, it seemed pretty good. I think I’m going to give that a try. So I joined the Coast Guard. I was fortunate enough to be able to be accepted to Navy Flight School.

[05:32] Fletcher Brown: Uh, that’s a year long program. And after that I was commissioned as a Coast Guard officer and a pilot. That’s it. And, uh, 21 years later, I retired never having read a single minute that I spent in the Coast Guard. Wow. Fabulous organization. Fabulous career. Very fortunate.

[05:48] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So your grandfather and your father, what were their roles?

[05:53] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Like what were their jobs in the Coast Guard?

[05:55] Fletcher Brown: Yeah. So my grandfather, because they didn’t have airplanes when he joined, he was on a ship. And he was a shipboard captain. He became a captain of a Coast Guard ship and toured mostly around the world, spent time in the Pacific, time in Alaska. But during World War I, he was a junior lieutenant on a Coast Guard Cutter Seneca, and was involved in some very heroic rescues.

[06:19] Fletcher Brown: Interesting side story here, my grandfather’s roommate at the U. S. Coast Guard Academy in 1913 was a guy named Elmer Stone. And Elmer Stone, everybody in Coast Guard Aviation knows Elmer O. Stone, first Coast Guard aviator. Elmer Stone was actually one of the first human beings to cross the Atlantic Ocean.

[06:41] Fletcher Brown: So we’ve all heard of Charles Lindbergh, right? 1928. I think he flew across the Atlantic, and most people will say Lindbergh was the first to fly across the Atlantic. Not really. So in 1919, Elmer Stone as a Coast Guard pilot and five other Navy men flew on an aircraft called the NC four, A bi wing held together with wires.

[07:06] Fletcher Brown: Canvas wings, the bow of it had an open hole and up through the top of that would sit the navigation lookout with the goggles on. They flew from New York and they went up to Newfoundland and then the Azores and finally to Europe, but it was quite a long adventure for them. So they were the first Coast Guard aviator, one of the pilots first to cross the Atlantic.

[07:27] Fletcher Brown: So, uh, yeah, pretty interesting. So my dad joined the Coast Guard. He went to the Coast Guard Academy class of 1941. And my dad. Always wanted to be a Coast Guard pilot. That’s all he ever wanted to do since he was a little boy. And so he took the national exam to be in the Coast Guard and he placed number one in the country, went to New London to join his class, failed the eye test, oh boy, XF40, the eyes point out a little bit, so they gave him a year eye exercises to do, strengthened his eyes.

[07:57] Fletcher Brown: In the meantime, he got a scholarship to MIT, quit MIT, went back to the Coast Guard Academy and spent a nearly 30 year career in the Coast Guard as an aviator. So I kind of followed in his footsteps, but I had never intended to do it.

[08:13] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Quick interruption. Hey, if you like what you’re hearing, be sure to get the notes, quotes, and links in the action plan from this episode.

[08:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Just go to jimharshojr. com slash action. dot com slash action to get your free copy of the action plan. Now back to the show. You went into the Coast Guard and you got accepted into Naval Flight School. What was that like?

[08:37] Fletcher Brown: Navy Flight School was pretty intense. So the first, I don’t know, six or eight weeks is just nothing but physical training, marching.

[08:45] Fletcher Brown: I’ll tell you a little side story that’s kind of interesting. You check in, they give you a sheet of paper, here’s your instructions, here’s your locker. You read the instructions. Okay. You’re allowed to have six t shirts, six pair of underwear. Fold the underwear five inches by four inches and the t shirts nine inches by eight and a quarter inches.

[09:01] Fletcher Brown: Put them here in your locker. Okay. Here’s another sheet of paper on how to set up your medicine cabinet. So you get all done with that. They come in to inspect, they go through with a measuring tape and they measure your underwear. Your underwear did not follow the spec. Okay, they tear your locker apart, you got to do it all over again, and you just, you just left, you lost your first Saturday Liberty.

[09:25] Fletcher Brown: Your medicine cabinet, you open your medicine cabinet going, the seam on your brass soak and was supposed to polish your belt buckle a certain direction. It wasn’t pointing the right direction, it was 10 degrees off. We opened the can of the Brasso and the inside of the top was not cleaned. We opened your razor and took out the razor blade and it had some water marks on it.

[09:48] Fletcher Brown: You just lost again. A lot of people say, that’s just so ridiculous. Why do they harass people like that and whatnot? It’s a lesson I learned and I’ve never forgotten. They do it for a reason. Attention to detail. If you can’t keep your medicine cabin in order, how are you going to jump into a cockpit in the middle of the night, do a wipeout with no checklist, and put a hundred switches in the proper position before you head out across the ocean?

[10:15] Fletcher Brown: So it’s a lesson. It takes people and teaches them detail is important. Pay attention to the details. So flight school after that, you go through a syllabus of flights. You start out in a, uh, at that time it was called the T28 trainer. You do all your normal takeoff stuff. You go to classes during the day, meteorology, uh, aerodynamics, mechanical systems, engine systems.

[10:38] Fletcher Brown: You fly a syllabus of flights ending up with acrobatics and whatnot. Then you graduate to the next type of aircraft, which in my case was something called the T28. A beast of an airplane. Giant R1820 engine in the front. Little stubby airframe that was just a beast. Heck of an airplane. Lots and lots of power.

[10:58] Fletcher Brown: Once you get through that second phase, you then either go fixed wing or helicopter. And in the Coast Guard you had your choice. Navy pilots, some had their choice, some did not. So I wanted to go helicopter, because in the Coast Guard with the rescue mission, that’s where I thought the action was. So I went the helicopter route and spent about another nine months flying, uh, helicopters, uh, finally graduate.

[11:22] Fletcher Brown: Uh, interesting when I graduated flight school, I didn’t have enough hours to get my Navy flight wings. You need a total of 200 hours. And I hadn’t had many downs where you had to repeat a flight. I did pretty good at that. So I was below the minimum amount of flight hours. What I mean, this guy sent me to an aircraft carrier, and I spent a couple of weeks on an aircraft carrier, Navy aircraft carrier, flying what they call plane guard mission.

[11:47] Fletcher Brown: Really boring. Right hand circles off the side of the ship for four hours in case somebody had an accident or went in the water. But after that, off to my first Coast Guard air station, San Juan, Puerto Rico. That time flying what’s called an H 52 helicopter. Within a year, I have set my designation as an aircraft commander, and 20 years, flying rescue missions primarily for the Coast Guard in both the H 52 helicopter and later, a much larger helicopter called the H 3, both of which are amphibious.

[12:18] Fletcher Brown: They’re designed to be landed on the water, a platform can be extended, and you can pick people up out of the water onto the platform. So the only service that had amphibious aircraft, they’re all gone now. The Coast Guard replacement helicopters are no longer amphibious. That was an era gone by.

[12:35] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So how many rescue missions do you think you went on?

[12:38] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Do you know the number, ballpark? No, I

[12:40] Fletcher Brown: don’t know the number,

[12:41] Jim Harshaw Jr.: but it’s, it’s in the hundreds. I’m going to

[12:43] Fletcher Brown: say 200. 200. 200. 200.

[12:45] Jim Harshaw Jr.: 200. 200. How many of those do you feel like were going out in, so I imagine sometimes you would go out and sometimes people would just get themselves into a mess and the weather was fine and other times it was you were going out when everybody was coming in or people didn’t even go out when you were going.

[13:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You were going out.

[13:01] Fletcher Brown: Yeah, I don’t have a breakdown in that, Jim, but a lot of it was bad weather flying because that’s when people get in trouble. Their, you know, their sailboats don’t capsize, a guy doesn’t lose his balance and fall into a machine on a fishing boat. People don’t get lost in a storm when it’s bright, calm and sunny out.

[13:19] Fletcher Brown: So a lot of it is bad weather flying. So in the Coast Guard, you’re taught bad weather flying, and you’re the only service that teaches pilots. So let’s say you do an engine failure. You’re 10 miles offshore. It’s at night. You’ve had an engine failure. Single engine helicopter, you’re not going to fly home.

[13:36] Fletcher Brown: So there’s something called an autorotation, whereas the helicopter drops, you use the velocity of the air coming up over the rotor system to keep it turning. And as you approach the ground, just at the right time, you have to raise the nose, which slows you down, pitch over, and pull the collective up to cushion the landing at the bottom.

[13:56] Fletcher Brown: So the Coast Guard teaches our pilots to do that. At night on instrument conditions without ever looking outside. And you’re trained to do that. And I’ve done it many times. You start with an instructor pilot, but you’ll be flying. You have a hood on, so you can only see the instrument panel and the, the instructor pilot will shut the engine, turn, then actually shut it off, but he closes the throttle, so there’s no power.

[14:21] Fletcher Brown: And you must immediately push the collective down, go by the numbers. Everything’s by the numbers. You know, what airspeed you should be at, what altitude you should be at. And then at the bottom, I can remember 40 feet, you raise your nose, 20 feet, push over, pull the collective up, touchdown in the water.

[14:38] Fletcher Brown: Wow. If we get into that, that saved my life one time.

[14:40] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. So let’s talk about some of your more memorable. Rescues. Can there any that really stand out in terms of, you know, danger or fear or, or just sort of, I

[14:52] Fletcher Brown: mean, there’s a, there’s a number of them and some of them are rewarding. I mean, really personally rewarding to you and your crew.

[14:58] Fletcher Brown: And there was one that was interesting. I picked up 23 people and five dogs off of a sinking vessel. That one was only memorable because of the number of people that were jammed into the back of the helicopter, but it was a safe mission. It was a rough sea, but it was a big ship and it was breaking up.

[15:13] Fletcher Brown: And it was, uh, in daylight, not a problem for the pilots or the crew, but memorable in that regard. How many people were supposed

[15:21] Jim Harshaw Jr.: to be on that helicopter? He said 23 people and five dogs.

[15:24] Fletcher Brown: Normally on that helicopter, you have a crew of four and normally there’s seats for four more. So we had people piled in the helicopter on top of each other.

[15:34] Fletcher Brown: And I’ve got a great photograph that, uh, the whole crew and the, and the people

[15:38] Jim Harshaw Jr.: rescued standing outside of the helicopter. For the listener, we’ll get a picture of that and put it in the action plan. So if you want to see a picture of that, we’ll get that. So.

[15:47] Fletcher Brown: As a matter of fact, uh, the ops officer where I was, I was still fairly junior pilot and, and he called all the people together a couple of weeks later.

[15:55] Fletcher Brown: And he said, I’ve got something to report here. Fletcher and Rick, Rick Hochschild was my co pilot. They went out on a mission and they, they picked up 23 PILO 5 dogs and we did our research and they’ve set a new record. The very most number of dogs ever saved in one rescue. Everybody, yeah. Okay. Let’s go into one that’s a little more harrowing.

[16:14] Fletcher Brown: Okay, this happened in Puerto Rico, probably around 1969, would be my guess. Horrible thunderstorms. Deluge of rain. We got a call that there was two boys that had been riding their horses in a river bed and a flash flood came down, washed the horses away. They were gone. The boys were going down the river and they grabbed onto a thicket of bamboo.

[16:38] Fletcher Brown: So here’s two young Puerto Rican boys, nine, ten years old, hanging on for dear life on a thicket of bamboo in a raging river. Nobody can get to them. So we got called a Navy helicopter and gone out ahead of time and couldn’t get in. Couldn’t get in because why? What do you mean? The weather and they had a much larger helicopter and there may be a training issue and flying in really severe conditions.

[17:03] Fletcher Brown: So I will never forget this. I remember my crewman like it was yesterday. Scotty McDowell was a co pilot. And the guy named John Luther, Petty Officer John Luther, was my crewman. That was a single engine helicopter, pilot and co pilot, one crewman aft as a waste operator. We got up on scene raining like crazy.

[17:23] Fletcher Brown: So you’ve driven a car, you look into the headlights and all you see is rain coming at you, you really can’t see. Well, the helicopter had what’s called a night sun, well it had a headlight and then a light that would point down. But when you turned your light on, the rain just prevented you seeing anything.

[17:39] Fletcher Brown: So I got on the radio, there was a sheriff or police officer helicopter that arrived on scene. It’s dark now. It’s pitch dark at night. The Navy helicopter is up there circling around. I got them on the radio. And I’ll talk about teamwork later, and I could see when the Sheriff’s helicopter was flying along, his bright, he couldn’t see anything either, but his light pointing down, I could see from behind him what he was illuminating.

[18:05] Fletcher Brown: So I got the Navy helicopter to circle around up with the broad light on. The sheriff’s helicopter, I said, I’m going to follow you and I followed him and I could see what he was seeing down there and I saw the boys on the bamboo and I told him, hold your position, hold your position. So I made a circle around.

[18:23] Fletcher Brown: He backed up. He kept them in when I came down and went in to land on the river, but it was too rough. So we held position on the river, but we couldn’t get to the boys because it’s big bamboo. So here’s what happened. I get choked up sometimes thinking about this. John Luther, Betty Officer says, I got it boss.

[18:43] Fletcher Brown: Has a life jacket on. We tie a line on him. He jumps in the water. The water is just raging. Logs coming down the river. I move the helicopter and blowing him. Under the bamboo. Yeah. He grabbed one of the boys, the co pilot guy went back, pulled the rope, pulled John back to the helicopter, went back in the water again, got the second guy, now we’re in the water and we got to get back up again.

[19:10] Fletcher Brown: When you say you’re in the water, the helicopter’s not right. That you’re above. Just touching the water. If we couldn’t, you couldn’t sit down, just touching the water. And then if a big log, this guy says log or something, you’d come out of the log and go, bye. And I said, okay, Scottie, you look outside, I’m going up on instruments.

[19:26] Fletcher Brown: You go on the instruments, pull collective, fly up out of there. We took out some bamboo on the way up, flew back to San Diego. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Wow. So, uh, as an aside to that, John Luther, who was an enlisted petty officer, uh, he later, he was a really sharp guy. He later, uh, was promoted to chief warrant officer.

[19:51] Fletcher Brown: Then he went into a warrant officer to officer program. He retired at Coast Guard headquarters as a command.

[19:57] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Wow. Good for him. He earned it. Yeah.

[20:00] Fletcher Brown: Awesome. Awesome story.

[20:02] Jim Harshaw Jr.: It gives me chills listening to it.

[20:03] Fletcher Brown: So, you know, we talked about teamwork, right? So we had a team in our helicopter. You don’t get anything done with that team in this life.

[20:09] Fletcher Brown: Okay. You got to have people you can rely on, people who back you up. You back up other people. That time we had a Navy helicopter providing. Top cover. We had a sheriff’s helicopter and we had our helicopter, and we didn’t need to have a 30 minute dialogue with each other to know what you need to do. A few words will do it.

[20:29] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. You didn’t know each other. You didn’t train together. These are three different departments, three different units coming together and they’re a common cause.

[20:38] Fletcher Brown: But everybody’s got the exact same goal in mind. They understand what their position is on the team there and they, and everybody did it flawlessly.

[20:46] Fletcher Brown: So that was probably my most memorable. Uh, Rescue. That’s absolutely

[20:52] Jim Harshaw Jr.: fascinating. Yeah, that was pretty awesome. So, you know, you think about going out in those kinds of conditions. I mean, just, just what you described, there’s just bonkers. Like I’ve, I couldn’t even imagine being out in those conditions, let alone, you know, being the boys on the bamboo, being the, the helicopter pilot, like you were flying into that when nobody else will go into something like that.

[21:16] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And then John Luther dropping down and to get those boys and you’re blowing him in with your, your, your wash to push them in. And like, all of that is just beyond comprehension. And there was a time in, I think, 1972 when things didn’t go as well as that one. I believe the helicopters are supposed to return home.

[21:36] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Sounds like you had an incident that the helicopter didn’t come back with you, right?

[21:40] Fletcher Brown: I thought you were going to use the C word, the crash word. I prefer to call it an unscheduled water landing. Sure. Yeah, there we go. I had two unscheduled water landings. The first one was, we’d been out of, uh, Elizabeth city, North Carolina, and we’ve been flying three times that night, big storms out there.

[21:58] Fletcher Brown: I remember when we went up to Chesapeake Bay and there was some duck hunters in trouble, there was another one, I don’t remember. We’d just gotten back to bed at like two in the morning and the gong goes off and it says a ship is breaking up offshore, 80 miles offshore. So we jump on a helicopter. This is a big helicopter, you know, twin engine, 20, 000 pound, H3 helicopter.

[22:18] Fletcher Brown: Twin, uh, GE T58 engines on it, a lot of power. So we flew out to on scene out there. We got to where the position was. And by the way, in those days, no GPS, no Loran. You did it with a piece of paper, a map and a pencil line. And you would check your drift against land, uh, items to kind of calculate where you need to go.

[22:40] Fletcher Brown: So we got out on scene, there’s nothing out there. So we dropped a smoke in the water, started doing an expanding square search. Uh, one of the crewmen called out, he could see a raft. We went there. Yep. There’s a 20 man raft in the water. The vessel had sunk and had broken up and sunk. So there are people in the raft.

[22:55] Fletcher Brown: And as we pull up near the raft, we’re off to the side, making our plan on exactly what we’re going to do to get these people. And generally what you do in that case is you’re going to drift the line across the raft. They’re going to hold the line, and then you’re going to move off to the side and lower the rescue basket and have the raft people pull the basket over, get in and pull the people up.

[23:17] Fletcher Brown: So as we’re discussing what we’re going to do, the people on the raft, which I discovered later, they thought that we wanted them to jump in the water. This is the North Atlantic and it was winter time. So, the eight guys jumped in the water. And now they’re all in the water and we have no way to easily get them.

[23:36] Fletcher Brown: So I said, rig the platform. So we would pull up and watch the waves come up and down and just bam, hit the water, crewman would grab somebody, pull them in the helicopter, lift up again. Did that eight times successfully. Got the eighth guy in, got them on the ICS, everybody accounted for. Nope. One guy missing the captain.

[23:58] Fletcher Brown: Where’s the captain? The last time we saw him, he was trying to get to the raft and the raft was blowing away from him. So we went to the position where the raft was and started to search upwind from the raft and there he was in the water, he was facedown. So he had probably passed away by that time, but there’s a phenomenon called cold water drowning.

[24:19] Fletcher Brown: I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of that or not before. When somebody drowns in cold water, generally below 60 degrees or so, They can live for as long. There’s been examples of 30 to 40 minutes, particularly with children who have been submerged in water and can be revived. Their whole system shuts down and they can be revived.

[24:38] Fletcher Brown: So you don’t give up. So we tried three or four times to get a platform pickup to pick the guy up. He couldn’t help us because he’s motionless. And I turned the helicopter. Got on the water and saw a big wave coming. And as I was pulling up out of the water, later people said it was a rogue wave. Yeah, it was a big wave, whether it was rogue or not, I don’t know.

[24:58] Fletcher Brown: But it took out the tail rotor. So without a tail rotor and a helicopter. Maybe if you’re at a really high altitude you can drop it and you can get enough speed to where the wind might blow the tail around a little bit. So you can at least get back to the beach. So the only way out of that situation is either the helicopter is going to spin around until it goes out of control or you’re going to shut the power off.

[25:23] Fletcher Brown: So I let go of the controls, I shut both engines off, you have speed selectors here, the helicopter dropped in the water, and now we’re riding up and down on these waves in the water, thinking it’s going to turn over. Miraculously, it did not. Fishing boat got out on scene, put a raft on a rope. Had the raft come in, the rotor blades are slamming the water.

[25:43] Fletcher Brown: We got everybody off of the helicopter and back to the fishing boat. And, uh, the, we never saw the captain of the boat again, but the eight people survived and, and we survived.

[25:54] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah. So crash landed and still everybody survived.

[26:00] Fletcher Brown: I stayed out on scene for four or five days. To salvage the helicopter. First time one had been salvaged from an open water situation without overturning.

[26:10] Fletcher Brown: Say that again. That was the first time. That a helicopter, Coast Guard helicopter that had gone into the water in a bad situation had been recovered without flipping over. And they’re very, very top heavy. They want to be upside down. When they’re flying too, they like to be upside down. So let me talk about this.

[26:28] Fletcher Brown: After being on that helicopter for like a half hour of riding these waves up and down, not fear, worry, concern, stress. Are we going to get these people off of this thing okay? I’m not worried about myself, I’ve got a poopy suit on, cold weather suit. I know how to get out of an upside down helicopter at night.

[26:47] Fletcher Brown: You train for that. They don’t. So we got everybody off the helicopter first. When I finally got to the fishing boat, it was a big boat. I was so sick. I was hanging over the chart table and I was so sick I couldn’t move. I was seasick. I was stress sick. And I heard all this noise and then I feel somebody shaking my shoulder.

[27:09] Fletcher Brown: Fletcher, Fletcher, you okay? It’s a guy named John Simmons, postcard moor officer. He and a guy named Randy Phillips came out, got lowered down to the boat and stayed with me on that boat until we got the helicopter back to shore four days later. Fabulous, fabulous people. Yeah. So that one was, that was an interesting evolution there.

[27:32] Fletcher Brown: And, uh, the other unscheduled water landing is we’d been up to Maine, somewhere up in Maine. There’d been a big storm up there and we’re coming back. We’d picked up some people, we had refueled in Brunswick Naval Air Station. We’re coming back. We’re flying by Boston. I remember we are above a cloud layer and below another cloud layer.

[27:51] Fletcher Brown: So you can’t see anything above you or anything below you. And you’re on instruments because it’s pitch dark at night and there’s no horizon. As we’re flying along, the co pilot, a guy named Jim Pennington, he’s actually flying the aircraft. He’s got the controls. He said, Fletcher, something’s not right. I said, what?

[28:11] Fletcher Brown: He said, I don’t know, it’s just something feels, and all of a sudden the helicopter just, Went nuts. Pitching up 60 degrees, 90 degrees rolling. And I grabbed the controls. I got it. It was fighting the controls by the helicopters all over the sky. All over. And then it would just stop. Everything stopped. And I can remember we’re descending.

[28:33] Fletcher Brown: We’re like maybe a 30 degree crab descending. And all of a sudden it took off and it went crazy again. So it would roll up and I would move the controls full the other way, and it would eventually respond, then it would flip around different ways. So that’s when I went on the gauges and I yelled to Jim, tell me if you can see the water.

[28:53] Fletcher Brown: And there was a hole in the lower layer, and he said, over here. By that time we’d kind of stabilized. I touched the rudder to turn over there and it started all

[29:00] Jim Harshaw Jr.: over again. How long is this going on? Is this, is this like 10 seconds or is this like 10 minutes? Like how long is this? Oh no, this is a minute.

[29:07] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Okay. Okay.

[29:09] Fletcher Brown: Might as well have been 10 hours.

[29:10] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah, sure. You know,

[29:11] Fletcher Brown: because at that time you’re sure you’re not going to make it, but you still, you know, what happens is training, right? Training kicks in and so you do what you’re supposed to do. Never seen this situation before. I go through the hole in the clouds, go right on the gauges.

[29:27] Fletcher Brown: Can’t see anything. We’re back in the clouds again. Can’t see the water. Can’t see anything. Remember those auto rotations at night on instruments? That’s the condition. Engines were still working. We still had power, but I was going into an auto rotation and I can remember going through 200 feet, thinking I’m fast, trying to hold the nose up, going through different altitudes, helicopters rocking around, going through 40 feet, pushing the nose over, going a little bit fast, pull up on the collective.

[29:55] Fletcher Brown: Whap! Hit the water. Pretty good hit. Next thing we know, we’re back up in the air again. The collect cast solid power. Hit the water and boom, back up in the air. The helicopter rolled probably 60 degrees. Okay, I pulled both engines off. Pushed left, we hit the water again. Very exciting. Aft ramp came down.

[30:15] Fletcher Brown: There’s water floating in and out of the helicopter. Just incredible. So, but, and I can remember us all sitting there just looking at each other going, I want to say what we actually said. Holy crow. That’s the crow part. Yeah. Geez. And I remember Jim Penn said, Fletcher, I’m going to send you a Christmas card every year for the rest of the crew, the crews back there.

[30:37] Fletcher Brown: Yeah. Very exciting. Yeah, so we, uh, we spent, yeah, we spent a couple hours out there, flat calm water, uh, at that time. So you, you land it, you’re safe, you’re alive. We’re sitting there, yeah, there’s water coming in out of the helicopter, been floating, and a Coast Guard 40 footer out of, uh, Plymouth, uh, Uh, Massachusetts came out, put a line on us, and towed us back to shore.

[30:59] Fletcher Brown: Did you stay in the helicopter when you got towed back, or did you

[31:01] Jim Harshaw Jr.: jump in a boat?

[31:02] Fletcher Brown: No, after we got, uh, the helicopter righted, we put some flotation gear out on it and whatnot, and got towed back in. But here’s something interesting that I don’t remember. So, the next day, I go into the base, and they’re like, how are you going to be?

[31:17] Fletcher Brown: I’m ready to go flying again. You know, it’s like, get back on the horse. And they said, how did you do all the radios? I had no idea what they’re talking about. So I found out later that while we are descending, I got a Mayday out. Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, helicopter 142, approximate position, where we are. I got a, uh, uh, a Mayday out on UHF radio.

[31:38] Fletcher Brown: I shifted to VHF radio. Went over to the HF, which is a different control panel over here and got out of Mayday on two HF frequencies. I don’t remember any of it. Wow.

[31:50] Jim Harshaw Jr.: You’re just responding in the moment.

[31:52] Fletcher Brown: Responding in the moment. So they say pilots make, just like anybody else, bad decisions, original decisions in critical situations.

[32:00] Fletcher Brown: That’s what training is. And repetition is all about. And when you’re not on a mission, you’re training, you’re training your whole life. There’s muscle memory. There’s the same type of thing going on with flying. You’ve, you go through a simulator, you simulate emergencies. You’ve seen it over and over and you just react.

[32:17] Fletcher Brown: You know what to do. So that’s, that’s, uh, you know, value of training that kicks in. So

[32:22] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I know some of the training that you’ve done was in the, what’s, what’s it called? The dunker. There’s something.

[32:28] Fletcher Brown: Oh yeah. The Dilbert dunker. Yeah. Yeah. So that, and. When I went through flight school originally, that was 1960, late 66, 67, through Navy Flight School in Pensacola, Florida.

[32:40] Fletcher Brown: Fabulous training. What an organization. At that time they had something called the Dilbert Dunker, and they taught you how to get out of a cockpit of an airplane should you go in the water and turn over. So you went down to the pool and you put on all your gear. And then you got in this cockpit and it was on a railing and it went down into the pool and when it hit, it was on the hinge and it would just flip upside down and you’d unstrap and you’d pull the canopy back and you’d get out and come up and get out of the pool.

[33:08] Fletcher Brown: So it wasn’t that difficult, but you’re a little anxious about it the first time you do it. You have to, you have to do it, you know, half a dozen times. Later, they changed that. They upgraded the whole system. They now have for helicopter guys, an entire H 60 helicopter fuselage. Cabin, Pilots, Compartment, Seats.

[33:28] Fletcher Brown: You get in that and you go through that thing. I don’t know how many times, I’m going to say six or eight times. Every time it’s more difficult. That whole thing is on some kind of rig where it comes out over the water and it drops in the water and it may start to roll this way and then it may roll, flip over the other way and start to sink.

[33:45] Fletcher Brown: They can control that. And now you have to get out and they teach you how to get out. And once you learn how to get out, it’s not as bad as you might think. There’s certain techniques that you use. Never lose a reference point. Be calm. Know exactly what you’re doing before you ever take your seat belt off and you let go of anything, X to helicopter.

[34:04] Fletcher Brown: Then they do it with all the lights off. So now it’s night, it’s pitch dark. You’re going in, you’re rolling. You don’t know whether you’re right side up or upside down. You get out of the helicopter. For the pilots, you go out of the helicopter by releasing the side windows and going out the window. Piece of cake, after you’ve done it a couple of times.

[34:19] Fletcher Brown: Okay, so we’re gonna do it again. Okay, wait a minute. The window’s jammed. Because one of the divers is down there and they’ve locked the window shut. So now you’ve got to change plan and you’ve got to reverse and go out through the rear of the helicopter. Again, all for good reason. For training, for safety.

[34:34] Fletcher Brown: Once you’re in that situation, you react. You don’t think about, geez, what am I gonna do? You know what to do because you’ve done it before. So that’s, that’s the value of the training.

[34:43] Jim Harshaw Jr.: So fascinating stories. I could keep prodding you for more and more stories. What can less the listener take away from this?

[34:51] Jim Harshaw Jr.: The listener who, you know, they’re, you know, success for the athletic minded man, they’re athletic minded men, they’re competitive. They want to succeed in life. They want to succeed in everything they do. They’re goal oriented. I mean, what can they take away from this? What can they learn to implement in their own lives?

[35:06] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Yeah,

[35:09] Fletcher Brown: but before I answer that, let me hit that I’ve laid out over 21 years, some pretty exciting times. Every day is not exciting. Okay. As somebody say, there’s hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of stark terror. So most of it is you’re on training missions, you’re flying, you’re doing logistics at the lighthouses, you’re doing some rescue missions.

[35:30] Fletcher Brown: Occasionally you get one that’s pretty hairy, but lessons learned. That’s a pretty broad question. You know, what lessons did you learn over a period of 21 years? And then I had another career. What lessons did you learn over your life? And I think that the lessons learned probably apply to pretty much everything.

[35:47] Fletcher Brown: So here’s what I think. I don’t care whether you’re talking about your life, or a business plan, or your family, or a vacation. The first thing you gotta have is you gotta have a goal. And if you don’t have a goal, where are you headed? You’re a ship without a rudder. So have a goal. Have many goals. And once you got a goal, you gotta have a plan to get there.

[36:09] Fletcher Brown: And if you’ve got a plan, you’ve got to measure your progress on the plan, or how do you know when you’ve arrived? And, along this plan, you’re going to be thinking about what are some of the critical factors that could steer me off course on this plan? And we’ve all, we’ve all heard the old cliche that, uh, you know, no plan survives initial contact with the enemy.

[36:29] Fletcher Brown: The enemy is time, it’s weather, it’s events in your life. It’s all kinds of different things, but you need to measure your progress on the plan. You need to look ahead and see what critical factors may impact you on this plan. And some of the factors may be critical in your plan, or some of them may be things just pop up that, okay, kind of steer around.

[36:49] Fletcher Brown: You know, you go into a 4th of July picnic and you run out of gas in your car. Okay, what happens? You know, the hamburgers are gone and the coleslaw is gone when you get there, okay? You don’t plan well and you run out of gas in your helicopter while you’re trying to get back to the beach and, uh, you know, you end up in the water with an upside down helicopter and your crew paddling around in a raft.

[37:10] Fletcher Brown: So some things are critical, some things are less critical. Really pay attention to the critical ones. And I, and I think that we learn these lessons over and over and over and over again. Hopefully we learn the lessons. And after every mission in the Coast Guard, you’re going to have a debrief. What did we do right?

[37:28] Fletcher Brown: What did we do wrong? What could we have improved on? The real key to success is, because you’re going to have failures and lessons on anything you attempt to do. Did you learn from those lessons? And in the future, did you apply the solutions that you figured out would help that situation?

[37:47] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Right. The listener, like if you’ve been listening to the podcast for any amount of time, you know, the productive pause, this concept that, that I’ve identified that is just the single thread that is in common with nearly all of my world class performers who’ve been guests on the show.

[38:03] Jim Harshaw Jr.: The definition is it’s a short period of focused reflection around specific questions. That leads to clarity of action and peace of mind. And this is what Fletcher is talking about right now is the pause, the after action review, the debrief, right? And you can do this daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, uh, after a sales presentation, shoot, after a vacation with your family, like what went well?

[38:24] Jim Harshaw Jr.: What did not go well? What can I learn to do differently next time? If you do that, then you do better next time. You grow, you learn, you get better. Amen.

[38:34] Fletcher Brown: That’s exactly what I’m saying. Applies to anything. I don’t care what your job is, what your goals are in life. So here’s the cherry on top. You have a career goal.

[38:44] Fletcher Brown: Mine was to be a pilot in the Coast Guard. You work hard at it. You train and you train and you train some more and you learn by your failures and you apply the lessons you’ve learned and you do it better next time and you keep doing that. And then the dark night comes. It’s you and the other guys that have done the same thing.

[39:04] Fletcher Brown: And it’s the guys in the Navy helicopter. And it’s the guys in the Sheriff’s helicopter who are all doing the same thing. And now you’re a team, and you’ve pulled together. And it’s the team that makes that whole thing work. So those two kids, I don’t even know what their names are. The two Puerto Rican boys that we pulled out of the Bamboo.

[39:19] Fletcher Brown: I don’t know their names, doesn’t even matter. The cherry on top is when that all comes together. If what you did resulted in saving somebody’s life, or even significantly improving their life, you got all the reward you’re ever gonna need. First responders, firemen, police, EMTs, doctors, nurses, that’s a whole category of people who are somehow mentally driven to help other people, not for their own benefit.

[39:46] Fletcher Brown: But you get benefit out of it by, by seeing the results of all your training and your work and your teamwork. So there you go. Semper Paratus. Coast Guard motto, be prepared, always ready.

[39:57] Jim Harshaw Jr.: And for the listener, if you’re not in one of those professions, like how are you impacting the world? Like at the end of the day, are you making a difference?

[40:03] Jim Harshaw Jr.: I read something recently, like you’ll spend more time on your own block, more time in your own block, wherever you live than anywhere else in the world. in the world, you know, you can start right there, right? With your neighbor, helping a neighbor out. Um, you know, your, your own family, et cetera. So Fletcher, thank you so much for making time to come on the show.

[40:20] Jim Harshaw Jr.: The one thing that we didn’t share with, with the guests is, and I told them there was a surprise that I was going to reveal at the end. And for the listener, I have heard these stories. several times. I could listen. I was sitting here on the edge of my seat, getting chills listening to them again.

[40:36] Jim Harshaw Jr.: Fletcher is my father in law. So I’m so, so grateful that you’re my father in law. So grateful to get to hear your stories and learn your lessons. And so grateful that I got to have you on the show.

[40:47] Fletcher Brown: Yeah, well, Jim, that goes both ways. This guy, I could not have a better son in law. My daughter and my grandchildren are blessed to have you as a provider and a role model in their lives.

[41:00] Fletcher Brown: Yeah. So, uh, hey, go look at your neighbor and see what you can do to help. That’s right. All right. Pleasure. Thank you. Okay, Jim. Enjoy it.

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