BUSH PILOT HUGH PRYOR
FAT U M A S AYS
NEGATIVE I would like to take you away to a distant and mysterious land, which has come to prominence for all the wrong reasons recently.
I
WAS FLYING A PILATUS PORTER, the iconic Swiss short-field, single-engined, ten passenger bush aircraft, for a French seismic survey company. We were prospecting for oil in South Yemen, based in the rugged, barren desert around the historic canyons of the Hadramaut Sultanate. We had a camp on the floor of a one thousand foot deep canyon called Wadi Mankhar near an ancient little mud brick village called Al Qatn which sheltered under the rock-strewn buttresses of the main Wadi Hadhramaut.
have built their wealth from trading slaves, gold, ivory and cloves from Africa to Europe and the Far East, during the South East monsoon and back from the Far East with spices, tea, gem stones and silk during the North East Monsoon. It was during the North East Monsoon in 1986 that the Yemenis decided to change the President, a procedure which traditionally involves heavy bloodshed in that part of the world; twenty-two thousand dead in Aden alone in this particular instance. While the South Yemeni Military were occupied in trying to get the lid back on the situation, the Saudis decided to take advantage of the distraction to invade the contested border area to the north of the Wadi Hadhramaut. They dropped barrel bombs on Tarim, narrowly missing the tomb of Sultan Balthasar, the biblical 'Wise Man', who took the frankincense to present to baby Jesus in Bethlehem.
The Crew Chief was a bearded Frenchman called Henri.
We lived in trailers with the bunks arranged one up and one down in three tiny compartments in each trailer. The trailers were arranged in a square with two accommodation trailers on two of the sides and the office, the generator, the kitchen, the cold store and the 'Mess' occupying the other two sides.
The Crew Chief was a bearded Frenchman called Henri. His office trailer contained his office equipment, with his computer and the long-range HF radio whose dipole antenna was suspended between two thirty-foot masts across the diagonals of the square. Historically, South Yemen and neighbouring Oman 6
FlightCom: March 2022
As a result of this incursion, the South Yemeni Military declared all their airspace to be closed and would only issue overflight clearances to regular scheduled flights and applicants with a minimum of seventy-two hours notice in writing.
