Episode 46: The Div Commander: Commanding 1 Canadian Air Division as it prepares for the future and flying the CH-146 Griffon and CH-147 Chinook Part 1 - Chris McKenna

What is it like to deploy to Kandahar City, Afghanistan with JTF2 as a young officer in the RCAF? What about to return flying the CH-147D Chinook? Major-General Chris McKenna has over 2600 flying hours and is currently the Commander of 1 Canadian Air Division, or 1 CAD. In this episode we'll talk about his early flight training, his deployments to Afghanistan, as well as his time as the Commanding Officer of 450 Tactical Helicopter Squadron flying the CH-147F Chinook. Tune in today!

Episode Transcript

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Bryan (00:28):
Hey, everybody. This is your host, Brian Morrison, with
a quick note. We have decided tostart adding a blanket
disclaimer for any episode wherewe interview a high level
officer from the RCAF. We livein a twenty four hour news
cycle, and comments can beovertaken by events very
quickly. So to put a time frameon things, this interview was
made in late February.

(01:17):
Alright. We're ready fordeparture here at the pilot
project podcast, the best sourcefor stories and advice from RCAF
and mission aviation pilotsbrought to you by Sky's
Magazine. I'm your host, BrianMorrison. With me today is major
general Chris McKenna, a pilotin the RCAF and current
commander of one Canadian AirDivision or one CAD. Chris,
welcome to the show.
We're excited to have you heretoday.

Chris (01:37):
Hey. Thanks very much, Brian. Really excited to do this
today.

Bryan (01:40):
Today for part one of our chat with Chris, we are going to
talk about his early career, hisdeployments to Afghanistan, and
his time as CEO of four fiftyTactical Helicopter Squadron.
But before we get into any ofthat, let's go through Chris's
bio. Chris McKenna joined theCanadian Armed Forces in 1994
initially as an army reservistand then attended the Royal
Military College of Canadareceiving his degree in chemical

(02:01):
and materials engineering in1999. He also holds a master's
degree in defense studies fromthe Royal Military College of
Canada, which he attained in02/2013. Chris earned his RCAF
pilot wings in 02/2002 andserved as a rotary wing tactical
aviation and special operationsaviation pilot in the RCAF.
He has commanded at the flight,squadron, wing, and task force

(02:23):
level and has served in avariety of command and staff
positions, including postings inCanadian Special Operations
Forces Command or CANSOFCOMunits, RCAF HQ, and in the
Canadian Joint OperationsCommand or CJOC HQ. Chris
deployed twice to Bosnia in02/2004 as part of NATO
stabilization force and twice toAfghanistan with KANSOVCOM in

(02:43):
02/2005, '2 thousand '6 and asofficer commanding or OC
Chinooks in 02/2011 flying insupport of Canada's combat
mission. In 02/2019, he deployedto Africa as the commander of
Canada's Air Task Force or ATFas part of the UN's
multidimensional integratedstabilization mission in Mali.
Chris commanded four fiftytactical helicopter squadron

(03:05):
from 02/2014 to 02/2016 flyingthe CH one forty seven f
Chinook, and he commanded onewing, the RCAF's tactical
aviation wing from 2020 to 2021.From 2021 to 2024, he served as
the RCAF's director general ofAir and Space Force development,
working to set the requirementsand coordinate the acquisition
for several key new RCAFcapabilities such as the CC

(03:26):
three thirty Husky multiroletanker transport or MRTT, the
P8A Poseidon, and the MQ9Bremotely piloted aircraft system
or RPAS.
Chris has over twenty sixhundred flying hours in both
special operations andconventional rotary wing
aircraft. He is a graduate ofthe Canadian Army Command and
Staff College, the Joint Commandand Staff Program or JCSP, the

(03:47):
National Security Program orNSP, and he has earned US Army
senior aviator wings. Chris isan officer of the order of
military merit and has beenawarded the Meritorious Service
Cross and the MeritoriousService Medal. Chris was
promoted to his current rank ofmajor general in 02/2024 and
currently fills the role ofcommander of one CAD, commander
of Canadian NORAD region, jointforce air component commander,

(04:09):
commander of search and rescueregion Trenton, and also
operational airworthinessauthority. He is married to a
retired Canadian Army HealthServices officer, and they have
two lovely young girls.
So let's talk about Chris'scareer, we'll start with his
early days. Chris, you joinedthe CAF in 1994 as infantry in
the reserves serving with theCanadian Grenadier Guards. What

(04:30):
motivated you to join the CAF?

Chris (04:32):
Yeah. Thanks, Brian. I appreciate the intro. And, yeah,
I think I joined because of myfamily linkage to, service. So I
had a grandfather who was in theinfantry in World War two and
landed on d day.
And he lived to be a hundred. SoI actually got to know him
really well. He only passed awayabout ten or twelve years ago.
And I think he was a big sort ofmotivator in my life in terms of

(04:53):
serving Canada and serving inour armed forces. And I I joined
into the infantry probablybecause of him, and I spent
about eighteen months as aninfantry reservist, in Montreal.

Bryan (05:04):
Okay. So you attended RMC and received your degree in
chemical and materialsengineering. What made you
pursue this field of study?

Chris (05:12):
Yeah. I, well, I wanted to be an engineer, in in terms
of a degree program, and Iwanted to I was sort of really
interested in STEM. I'd gonethrough high school in in Quebec
and Montreal, and I'd I'd doneSageup for two years there at a
civilian Sageup before I appliedto RMC. And I was really sort of
more inclined towards thescience and engineering. You

(05:35):
don't get selected really forwhat engineering you're going to
take until after your firstyear.
And the subjects that were sortof offered, they did not have an
aeronautical program actuallywhen I went for RMC. I think I
would have taken that had I hadone. I guess the normal
surrogate would have beenmechanical, but I was much more
interested in some of the work,the aviation linked work that
chemical was doing. They didneutron radiography on the

(05:56):
horizontal stabs from feighteens. They're looking at
some interesting nondestructivetesting things.
That kinda really kind ofinspired me to to study in that
engineering field. And to behonest, I loved it. It was an
absolutely great program.

Bryan (06:07):
Yeah. That sounds actually really interesting. I
wouldn't have thought they wouldbe doing some of that kind of,
stuff at RMC, be honest.

Chris (06:13):
Yeah. There's a small reactor there called the
Slowpoke that, that is used forfor sort of science and for
engineering. And I I ended updoing my thesis in nuclear
things. So it was just really itjust interested me personally. I
didn't think it would havemassive application into a
flying career, but it Icertainly have benefited from
spending some time in inengineering.

Bryan (06:33):
Yeah, that sounds really cool. At this point, you were
enrolled as a pilot in theregular forces. What started
your passion for aviation andwhy did you pursue it in the
CAF?

Chris (06:42):
Kind of probably a funny story, Brian. I think my I loved
serving in the CAF. Like Ireally liked being in the army,
but I had done about a year anda half of this and I was on my
infantry, basic course. And nearthe end of it, you do this long
concentration of sort ofoffensive operations since we're
doing, like, attack after attackas company as a company. And, we

(07:04):
were supported by f eighteens ona particular attack.
And I can remember sitting therefreezing cold in my little,
shell scrape that I had to dig,thinking that there was probably
a better way to serve Canada,and that F eighteen pilot's role
looked a heck of a lot betterthan my current role. And in in
that summer as well, we alsohad, Kiwis come and support F
City air assault operations. Soit really piqued my interest to

(07:25):
be a tachel pilot as I spent myfirst ride in a military
helicopter, in a militaryaircraft was actually in a RCF
UE.

Bryan (07:32):
So how did you end up applying to be a pilot then?
Cause at that time you were inthe reserves, right?

Chris (07:37):
I was, yeah. You could do a component transfer at the time
and that's pretty much what Idid. I conducted my, they took
some of my, I guess, CFADscoring, etcetera. And I went to
the recruiting center, did myapplication for OTP. And they
offered me the opportunity tobecome a pilot.
They basically said, you know,here's the things that your
scores will allow you to applyfor. What are you interested in?

(07:57):
An Axiopilot wasn't my firstchoice, believe it or not. It
was like a second or third. Andthen they sent me off for a crew
selection and it obviously wentwell and ended up as a pilot.

Bryan (08:07):
What was your first choice out of curiosity?

Chris (08:10):
It was actually infantry, which is weird. So maybe this is
why I steered down the pathtowards attack aviation, but I
was actually really interestedin that. I think it would have
been a really interestingcareer, but I'm I'm really happy
with the choice that I made.

Bryan (08:22):
Yeah. For sure. It's crazy to think that you put
infantry as your first choiceand they even bothered to send
you to aircrew selection becauseI had always heard when I was
joining anyways, like, okay. Ifyou're interested in combat
arms, that's great. Maybe put itdown from one of your backup
options.
But if you put that as numberone, that's where you're going.

Chris (08:38):
I'm not sure how it's right now, Brian, but certainly
at the time, I mean, I had thescores, I guess, to go into the
to aviation. And it's funny. Ilook at so many of my friends
and colleagues who I wentthrough flight training with. So
many of them were air crew wereair cadets. So many of them had
like just a passion for aviationfrom like age four, you know,
they saw their first airplane.
I didn't have that actually. I II sort of was inspired by my lot

(08:58):
in life in the army and decidedI there was something better.

Bryan (09:02):
So you earned your pilot's wings in 02/2002. What
were your initial impressionsconducting flight training in
the RCAF?

Chris (09:08):
I mean, they were really positive. Like I I did my, I was
on the Slingsby Firefly in '97,did my, my initial, sort of the
basic flying training course.And it was it was a really good
course. I had a really tightteam, but there was a really
high failure rate on it. We lostabout fifty percent of our
people on that course, for avariety of reasons, air sickness
or just, just skill set,etcetera.

(09:28):
So I, it was a bit of a nerveracking thing. It was a good
introduction as we all have gonethrough that. Those of us who
have wings, it was a goodintroduction of what was coming
in Moose Jaw. And then I was thesecond, I think, course on the
Harvard two. And so I was rightat the tipping point between the
tutor and the Harvard.

Bryan (09:47):
Okay.

Chris (09:47):
And so we sort of showed up and it was a little bit
disorganized still, right? Therewere still some courseware
challenges to work through,etcetera. And some growing pains
on the aircraft that had a bitof an incident on the aircraft
with an oil coolers. So was abit of a delay in my course. But
other than that, the actualtraining itself was extremely
professionally delivered.
It was very challenging for me.Like I had done a lot of time,

(10:08):
in engineering and all that kindof stuff, but I had not done a
lot of flying. And so I hadcolleagues left in front of me
who had had a pretty goodbackground as either glider
pilots or, or fixed wing pilotsin the cadets. And they
certainly I looked to them to tohelp me along. I was not the
strongest pilot on my pilot car,so I'll be honest.

Bryan (10:25):
Did you have any particular challenges?

Chris (10:27):
I think for me, the instrument flying, like the rate
the dealing with the rate ofspeed with the instrument,
aspects, which definitelysteered me towards helicopter in
the end. I was on course with abunch of great folks, including
Jeremy Hansen, our astronautright now. Oh Jeremy is a, was a
class of mine at RMC and he wasa coursemate of mine and was
clearly the best pilot oncourse. I'm gonna, I'm not gonna

(10:47):
mince words about that. But he,he helped a lot of us.
Like he really did reach out andmentor a lot of us in a way that
is just just Jeremy'spersonality.

Bryan (10:56):
That's awesome.

Chris (10:57):
So we had a very tight team and we and we brought each
other through the course. Ithink we had just one failure
actually on the course. So itactually worked out pretty well.

Bryan (11:04):
Well, flight training is definitely a team sport. Right?
I mean, it should be anyways,especially on these courses.
Like, there's obviously gonna bethe individual effort that you
have to put in, but it's a way,way better experience. We have a
tight course that helps eachother.

Chris (11:17):
100%.

Bryan (11:18):
Yeah. So you guys were one of the first courses on the
Harvard two. Were you excited tofly the new aircraft, or were
you, like, bummed out that youhad missed out on the jet time?

Chris (11:28):
You know, it's you know, it's funny. I I'd actually had
four, five, five rides in theTudor. So I'd done an OJT in
Winnipeg. And, if you're gonnalaugh at this, but lieutenant
Kenny, so general Kenny aslieutenant Ken, was on OJT
waiting for his f 18 course atthe time. And I was this random
officer cadet just sort ofhanging out ops.
I do it on my on the jobtraining. And and general Kenny,

(11:51):
I guess, took pity on me orsomething, but he he took me
flying. I've I've reminded himabout this a few years ago that
my first number of flights onthe on the tutor were with him.
As you know, introduction toaerobatics, introduction to more
G than I'd experienced to date.And then, but I was really
excited to be one of the firstfolks on the T6 on the Harvard.

(12:11):
And so, and it was, they werepretty shiny and new. They had
like dozens of hours on themwhen I started flying them. And
that was awesome. And wecertainly, I don't know. We said
we had a great it was a greatvibe in Moose Jaw because things
were all brand new and and a lotof fun.

Bryan (12:23):
Yeah. They're really cool aircraft. I've said that many
times, but I love the Harvard.

Chris (12:28):
Me too.

Bryan (12:30):
So when you were selected Hilo, was that what you were
hoping to go?

Chris (12:34):
Yeah. So I I was probably the most popular guy on my, on
my phase two course. Becauselike from day one, when they ask
you what you wanna fly, I was, Ihad done OJT at four zero eight
Squadron in Edmonton for likealmost two years because we had
to wait a long time for ourcourse, because of the
transition between fleets. Andso I was sure that I wanted to
fly tac aviation. And so I putmy hand up day one saying

(12:57):
helicopters, please.
And so I think that for those inthe course who are looking for a
fighter slot or a rotor or amulti engine slot, you sort of
become non dangerous to them,which is good. So I was I was
pretty sure of what I wanted todo. And I'll be honest, I'm
really happy with the choice Imade. I I've had a great career
flying helicopters.

Bryan (13:15):
Yeah. We've kinda talked about that, that that was
something you've been inspiredto do since your infantry days.
So that's, that's awesome.

Chris (13:21):
Yeah. Absolutely.

Bryan (13:24):
So let's talk about your time in Bosnia. You'd applied to
Bosnia as a copilot for NATOpeacekeeping missions as part of
NATO stabilization force in thearea. Those missions were
notorious for puttingpeacekeepers in difficult
situations. What were yourexperiences like there?

Chris (13:38):
It was it was a great mission, for a young copilot. So
I had gotten my wings, in02/2002, and then I I pretty
rapidly got my Griffinqualification after I got posted
to four zero eight Squadron. Andthey were on the hook to ramp up
and go to Bosnia. And we weredoing fifty six day tours there.
So two month tours and rotatingthrough.
And so I did two of those. Andit was in the 'three, 'four

(14:00):
timeframe. So theater was quitestable, would say relatively
safe. A lot of mines obviouslyon the ground.

Bryan (14:06):
Yeah.

Chris (14:06):
But very little kinetic anything. It was like kind of
like being a cop in a bad town.It's would be my best way to
describe it. And really thethings we're focused on from an
aviation point of view werehuman smuggling, and there was a
fair bit of that. We spent a lotof time on the border, moving
along, like flying at night onNVG with the searchlight, just
looking to see if there was anysmuggling and be able to cue
ground forces to go and dealwith that.

(14:27):
And then weirdly, and this wasnot intuitive, illegal logging.
So I spent a lot of time lookingfor logging operations that
weren't permitted. And thenyou'd get over top of it and be
like, I can't see if they have apermit. You'd sort of call it in
and figure out how the groundcall signs can go in and
investigate it. But there was alot of crime, a lot of, like a
lack of judiciary and a lack ofconstabulary in the country.

(14:49):
And so you were sort of fillingthat void as a peacekeeper at
that point in the in themission. The the biggest thing
for me from an aviation point ofview was, like, I learned a lot
about weather, in in Bosnia. Itwas extremely challenging. Like,
the weather stations were not,were not really good. You didn't
have great, weather products toplan off of.
And you spend a lot of time inthe low level environment on low

(15:10):
level transit routes thatsometimes puts you, very, very
close to the ground. And thatthat country is is highly
industrialized, full of wires.And so it is sort of graduate
level decision making. And I wasa copilot, so I watched my
aircraft captain sort of movethrough that. And I got great
mentorship as a young person ina really difficult operating
environment from just aviationweather and aviation risk point

(15:32):
of view, which I think is anawesome place to start.

Bryan (15:35):
Yeah. I mean, those are the building blocks of decision
making. Right? Like, those areyour that's your bread and
butter as a pilot is being ableto make good decisions around
weather conditions and obstaclesand all those kinds of things.
Right?
So it kind of sounds like it wasconsolidating some of the
training you would have receivedearlier.

Chris (15:52):
Yeah. It was huge. Absolutely. And there were some
hallmark events that occurred,like big visits of British
royalty to a sort of hallmarkproject that were occurring. So
we did do some security sort ofevent type stuff, sort of flying
overwatch when I believe it wasPrince Philip was visiting.
So it was actually really quitefun and exhilarating kind of

(16:13):
work. And fifty six days you'rein and out and then you get to
come back and do it again. So Ihad two different sort of
climactic sort of seasons that Iwas able to experience there.
And I I just got a lot out ofit. I think it accelerated my
upgrade aircraft captain justthat those those five months in
theater, four and a half months.

Bryan (16:32):
Yeah. Yeah. Deploying as a young FO is a really great
opportunity for that as well toreally accelerate your on the
job training, get your OJTmoving along quickly. And you
just get a lot of experience ina compressed amount of time.

Chris (16:46):
100%. The other thing on the Griffin, it's always been
maligned a little bit asunderpowered. And, many of the
LZs we were going in and out ofwere very vertical. And so you'd
have the power management of,and the finesse required to make
sure that you could get in andout of these places with the
passenger loads you had. Like,it really was an instructive
thing for me as a young pilot beable to sort of manage the power

(17:08):
on the Griffin and figure outsome techniques to get in and
out of these these tightconfined areas.

Bryan (17:13):
Which I imagine probably served you well throughout your
your career in, tac hell,especially on the Griffin.

Chris (17:18):
Yeah. A %. Absolutely.

Bryan (17:21):
Next, started to make your way into the soft world.
You applied and then tried outfor b flight of four two seven
special operations aviationsquadron in early two thousand
five. What was that selectionprocess like for you?

Chris (17:33):
It was, pretty exhilarating actually. I'd never
worked with Kansoff before. Andjust for context, at that point,
forty seven as a squadron hadn'tmoved across to become a special
operations squadron. So all thatreally existed in terms of
aviation support for JTF two waswas B Flight four twenty seven,
and four twenty seven Squadronwas still considered a normal

(17:53):
tachel squadron.

Bryan (17:54):
Okay.

Chris (17:55):
About one year later, it flipped over. One Feb of twenty
six is when the squadron becamea soft squadron, and everyone
else had to sort of, you know,up their game into that mission
set. And it's taken quite awhile to consolidate that, but
they're in a very differentplace now than we were back
then. So it was a tryout andthey only had a couple of spots
per year, probably not unlikewhat the snowbirds do. Know,

(18:15):
they have two or three folks whorotate out a year.
And so they offered to fly meout to, I believe it was
Victoria. And we were, they weredoing maritime counter terror,
that is to say insertingassaulters onto ships, moving or
stationary ships to do noncompliant boardings. And so very
challenging mission set. Itcertainly made me appreciate our

(18:39):
brothers and sisters who fly thecyclone. It's a really
unforgiving environment.
So they were doing that as alarge training evolution for
about six weeks. And theybrought out two new pilots,
myself and another friend ofmine, who was actually already
at four twenty seven but not notin the soft flight. And they,
the way they evaluated us wasrudimentary, I guess, based on

(19:00):
what they do now, it was a muchmore rigorous process now. But
they essentially went through abunch of their lesson plans on
how you do dynamic insertextract with the Griffin and
what the techniques are. Andit's a very different hands and
feet and power management thing.
And so we walked through it inslow time with a lot of
lectures. And then we did a verybrief sort of familial, like a

(19:20):
demo. And then we launched outand we set up and they conducted
a demo, to a ship at anchor. Andso they had the HMCS Annapolis
along the FDU Pacific jetty inExuenalt. And so the evaluator
who was one of the standardsguys from the flight showed me

(19:41):
what a dynamic insert profilelooked like.
And then, and then said, Anyquestions? And then he handed me
control and like the doors wereoff and I'm flying on. I'm in an
emergency for the first time. Soall super uncomfortable. I'd
never had to fly like that,before.
And then he said, Okay, show meone of those. So we did that for
about an hour. And so just tosee, and it was really an

(20:02):
instructional trip. They wantedto see I think that you could
learn something new and that youcould adapt to sort of new
techniques for power management,to make sure that you could be
dynamic in the insert phase. I Ididn't feel like I did super
well, I'll be honest, Praia, butI think I did well enough.

Bryan (20:17):
Yeah. Was there any form of special forces selection
after that at that time, or wasthat not part of the process
yet?

Chris (20:24):
So at the time there was an interview with the flight
commander, which I had done. Andthere was that, that evaluation
period. And we actually stayedout there for longer than that.
I had that one flight. And thenwe stayed out there for about a
week, just to sort of see whatthe exercise was like and they
got a sense of who we were.
And then they said, yeah, we'regoing to, at the end of the

(20:44):
week, we're going to take youinto the flight so you can
expect to post in the summer.And then obviously move my
family and we posted intoPetalawa. And then I conducted
my course in the summer of'five. And so I think at the
time it was about 12 or 15 ALPs,Air Lesson Plans. And so we did
that course throughout thatsummer.
And then I was qualified as a,so I went from aircraft captain

(21:05):
as a tech help pilot. I steppeddown now as a co pilot for
special operations aviation. Asyou learn all the different
other things other than justhands and feet of insert, it's
all the roles and missions youhave to be expected to do.

Bryan (21:18):
So what would you say was the biggest change as you
transitioned from conventionaltactical helicopter aviation to
special operations?

Chris (21:25):
I think the expectation of readiness, was the first one.
So you're on a very short noticeto move and once you're
qualified and you've got, you'veclosed the experience gap with
the key mission sets, you'reexpected to hold standby. And,
and it's a very short noticething. Like you were certainly
not having a beer when you're onthat. And you were certainly not
very far from home or the basewhen that is occurring.

Bryan (21:47):
Okay.

Chris (21:47):
And so you really have to adapt your lifestyle. It's like
being a star pilot, in manyregards, you're just ready to go
all the time. And that changesthe way you live your life quite
honestly. And I think peopledon't really understand that
until they're in that. Theyrealize, okay, I have some non
discretionary things in my lifenow that I can't really give up.
And then just the way you thinkabout where all your kit is, how

(22:08):
it's placed, how you can shaveseconds off of being in the air.
It's really all about gettingpeople onto the target to do
something like a domesticcounter terror mission. And
really that was the focus of theflight back then. It wasn't so
much international. They hadn'tdone anything in Afghanistan or
overseas.
They were really focused onhostage rescue and domestic
counterterror events.

Bryan (22:27):
Okay. Speaking Afghanistan, after your
conversion to SOF aviation inthe February, you were deployed
to Kandahar with Joint TaskForce two or JTF two for seven
months as an aviation plannerand liaison officer. This was
for the JTF two based SpecialOperations Task Force or SOTF
that was based in Kandahar Cityin a compound downtown, not at

(22:48):
the airfield. What was the taskforce mission at the time and
what did your job involve there?

Chris (22:53):
Yeah, was a bit of a baptism by fire. I had gotten
qualified and then they were,the special operations task
forces into Kandahar had beengoing since about 02/2005. And
there was a rotation coming upthat they were gonna, they
decided they needed, once theydid their first rotation there,
that they needed more aviationplanning expertise. And they

(23:14):
needed someone who was dedicatedto that role because they
couldn't really do it from wherethey were. So while the task
force itself based in the citywas really going after insurgent
networks, both in the provinceand outside the province, in
Kandahar Province.
And they had a bit of a focus onthe city. As you might recall,
the Canadian conventional taskforce was coming in and they

(23:36):
were coming down from Kabul justafter Christmas of 'five and
into 'six. And they were gonnaestablish themselves in
Kandahar. And they were gonnaoperate in Zari Panchay and in
Kandahar City and establish areally big footprint of three
ish thousand Canadians who weregonna be operating there. And
the insurance policy to that washaving software.
So they could go after, youcould imagine, IED manufacturing

(24:00):
cells, you can go afterinsurgent leadership. And that
was their role. And my role inthat was when they would launch
into an operational planningcycle, I was expected to go and
source rover wing aviation,fixed wing aviation, any,
intelligence surveillancereconnaissance assets needed to
support that mission. And thenfires assets. So fighters or

(24:20):
like an AC-one 30 gunship, thatkind of thing.
Wow. And so I spent all of mytime, actually I lived at the
airfield, but I would go backand forth all the time to
finalize the planning. And someof these missions would come
together quite honestly from atrigger to like I think four or
five hours later, they would berolling out and they needed that
support really fast.

Bryan (24:38):
That's intense.

Chris (24:38):
It was quite a dynamic job.

Bryan (24:40):
Yeah. No kidding. What was it like to work on the
ground with JTF two as a youngair force officer?

Chris (24:46):
Yeah. I wanna be clear. I wasn't on the ground in the
sense I wasn't, like on the onthe X or whatever with them. I
was in a support role. So I waseither downtown at the main
operating, at the Fort operatingbase that they occupied, or I
was at the airfield.
From my point of view is Ireally had to up my game in
terms of detail. The expectationof a a carefully choreographed,

(25:07):
raid on a bad guy compoundrequires, you know, unbelievable
precision, and you need a lot ofenablers to make that happen.
Very specifically, ISR,intelligence surveillance
reconnaissance assets. That isto say like a like an like an a
remotely piloted aircraft in thesky with a camera looking at
looking at the the target area.And it required, FIRE's

(25:28):
platforms and rotary wingplatforms to either do, like an
assault role to move someoneonto a target or to provide fire
support.
And so I spent a lot of time inthe deep details of every plan
to make sure that not just theplan itself was serviced, but
all of the branches and sequelsthat could occur if something
went wrong just because there'sso much at stake. Mhmm.
Typically, these were very highrisk missions that our guys are

(25:50):
going to execute on behalf ofCanada, and they deserved and
needed, really responsive, airand aviation support. So that
was a, that was a real life.

Bryan (26:00):
So this was a pretty violent tour. What challenges
and formative experiences didyou have as a result of this?

Chris (26:08):
I would say fatigue management was the first one.
It's an extremely intenseexperience and there was no
leave in the middle of it oranything. I was just straight
seven months in a combat job.And I was one of one. I lived on
Counter Airfield.
I had a certain major thatworked with me, a master warrant
officer who was the other sortof liaison officer for the

(26:29):
ground side of things fromJTF-two. And Kim and I would
coordinate all of these aspects,but we couldn't really spell
each other off. Like I couldn'treally speak ground maneuver in
the way that he could, and hecouldn't really speak air
maneuver and fires and ISR andall that stuff the way I could.
We did our best, but I'll tellyou, like, just managing the
tempo and the speed. And thenthe second one would be
flexibility.
Like, you'd be down a pathplanning for, like, six or eight

(26:52):
hours. Like, you have you'repretty much ready to execute.
You get pretty emotionallywedded to that plan. And then
the entire op environment was sodynamic that it could change 90
degrees the target you're goingafter, the operational area, the
assets you had at your hands, itwould shift. And you had to just
sort of park that emotionallyand just move and pivot and
execute.
So to me, that was the two bigones, fatigue management, and

(27:15):
being flexible in your in yourexecution.

Bryan (27:17):
Yeah. And I imagine learning about that flexibility
and execution really served youwell as you move forward with
your career in tacticalaviation.

Chris (27:24):
Yeah. Absolutely, it did.

Bryan (27:26):
Yeah. So you've alluded to this a little bit, but you
were living on the airfield. Youwere working in Kandahar City.
So a unique experience you hadfor a young pilot was spending
lots of time in convoys inKandahar City, which as you have
put it, could get spicy. Did youhave any particularly tense
stories from being in theseconvoys?

Chris (27:44):
Yeah. They're all a bit tense, think. And I, you know, I
I don't know, if you play acontact sport, Brian, but I
played rugby. I played rugby asa as a younger guy. A lot of a
lot of Canadians played hockey.
There's a sort of feeling youget before you go and play like
a pretty big hockey game orrugby game. Like you get that
feeling when you get into theconvoy, because there's a couple
of things as an Air Forceofficer, it's not your normal
operating environment, right? Soyou were sort of going into a

(28:08):
domain that is not your comfortzone. And so there's a bunch of
skill sets that we don'tnecessarily have. Like I'll tell
you that the training that wasprovided to me from a shoot
move, communicate point of viewprior to going is probably the
best training I've received inmy entire career in the CAF.
It was exceptional. It wasintense, and it was perfect. But
it doesn't give you theexperiential aspects really to

(28:29):
bridge the gaps. You you knowwhat the academic answer is for
a

intro (28:32):
Mhmm.

Chris (28:33):
Ambush left or ambush right. But until you're until
you're sort of thrust into it.So I will say every time you get
ready to go on these convoys,you'd have that. And I'm sure
every one of our army colleaguesfeels that or felt that when
they were in in the in the city.And so it's a bit of a risk
scenario trying to work throughwhat the SOPs are in the convoy.
Everyone had a role. Like youweren't ever just a passenger.

(28:53):
You had to be able to get yourgun up and defend yourself. And
that obviously plays out, theway you sort of approach the
mission set. It's verydeliberate sort of movement
through the city.
And I, you know, I did have acouple of incidents that were,
that were really interesting. I,it got my training and the
training of the guys around megot me through, got me through.
And so, I will just say it'sgood to pay attention to the

(29:16):
things that aren't traditionallyair force skill sets, when
you're on the ground like thatbecause you are going to be a
liability unless you've paidattention to how to use your
weapon, how to use your comms,how to move tactically. Yeah,
I'll maybe leave it at that.

Bryan (29:29):
Yeah. Wow. That sounds really intense. So we've talked
about this skill set that fourtwenty seven used but at four
twenty seven, you qualified as amarine counter terrorism
aircraft captain. You've sort ofdescribed the task, but what did
this involve and how difficultwas the training?

Chris (29:46):
Yeah. I think it's the hardest it's probably the
hardest mission set that fourtwenty seven does, for a variety
of reasons. The first of whichis the operational environment
is entirely unforgiving. Themaritime domain is something I
really took for granted, that mycolleagues on the Cyclone or the
Sea King before that, they areliving in a very contested
degraded environment, just froman environmental point of view.
And so for tech aviation in ahelicopter that does not have a

(30:09):
fourth axis autopilot, that doesnot have a radar, you're at a
pretty significant disadvantagein that operational environment.
And the mission set was reallyanchored on the Vancouver
Olympics, although it's apervasive, we hold this mission
set to this day or they do. Butwe were really focused on
getting ready for the Olympicsand being the force of last
resort. There'd be a maritimethreat that presented itself in

(30:32):
the Straits Of Georgia or inVancouver Harbor. And if there
was indicators and warning thatthere was something coming, we
could preempt it by gettingpeople on the deck of that ship.
And so really the mission setwas up to six ship, low level,
out to sea, to go and intercept,track, and then conduct a
combined surface and helicopterassault, a non compliant

(30:54):
boarding on a vessel ofinterest.
And that's what we had had spentall of our time doing, and it's
it's an interesting mathproblem. It's like a train
leaves train leaves Calgary,train leaves Toronto kind of
thing, where you gotta figureout where you're gonna meet and
where that ship is gonna be inthe future. And then there's
just a hands and feet aspect of,dynamically decelerating your
aircraft to get on top of a of arope down point and then hold it

(31:17):
to put eight or more assaultersdown the ropes and onto the deck
of the moving vessel. Mhmm. Youknow, you're you're monitoring
power on that moment.
You're monitoring where yourwingman are, because there's
typically up to maybe four ofthem who are inserting
simultaneously on a big vessel.And you're monitoring where your
where the sniper overwatchaircraft might be. And so you
start with just trying to justtrying to figure out how to how

(31:38):
to not kill yourself in that inthat environment and how to be
value added and not a liability,and you work your way up to be a
lead for that. And that takes acouple years. Certainly it takes
a lot of experience and it's areally perishable skill set.
And all of that on goggles,obviously, at at night.

Bryan (31:53):
Oh, wow. I didn't even think about that. I was
picturing this all during theday. That's crazy.

Chris (31:58):
Yeah. Tricky. And I'll be honest, the worst part of most
of these mission set was not theactual insert. It was transiting
thirty, forty miles offshore ina type six ship, low to the
water, and very lowillumination. The with the ship,
what it appeared, to be honest,was a relief because it usually
had some lights on it and youcould your goggles would would
work better over top of theship.

Bryan (32:17):
If you guys had no radar on board, how were you guys
getting were you getting connedonto the ship or how does that
work?

Chris (32:23):
Yeah. We would typically work with a CP one forty or any
sort of aircraft that might havea radar that would give us the
information we needed from thatradar to get in behind the
vessel. I think hopefully goingforward, if we look at a new
aircraft for that mission set,having your own radar would be a
very big deal to be able tooperate the maritime
environment, Not just from asurface search point of view,

(32:46):
but also from a weather point ofview. It would be really useful.

Bryan (32:48):
Yeah. For sure. You mentioned this is still a
mission that four twenty sevendoes. Do you know, has it
changed much since you did it?

Chris (32:55):
I think, it has changed in the sense that we had such a
small cadre of folks that had tohold standby for that, prior to
the, changeover to a fullspecial operations aviation
squadron. Then through obviouslya huge professionalization of
how they deliver their training,how they qualify their crew, how
they keep them current, Thefunding levels in the unit now
allow us to obviously allow themto do a lot more of it. I would

(33:18):
say the depth of pool that hasto, that is available to support
that mission set is much higherthan it was when I went through
it. And the trainingopportunities are likely higher.
Okay.
You can imagine we did a lot oftraining focusing on the
Olympics very specifically. Andthen I think it zoomed out a
little bit now with a bit moreoptionality. So it has changed
in the sense that I think it'smore professionalized. Not to

(33:39):
say that we weren't, it's justthat's what we had at the time.

Bryan (33:41):
Oh yeah. I mean, I was in four hundred squadron in the
year of the Vancouver Olympicsand they were I believe they
were coordinating most of thedomestic operations surrounding
the Olympics for Tack Hell andthe training surrounding that, I
mean, was probably most of thatyear at least was devoted to
that. Absolutely. I felt like Icould vote

Chris (33:58):
in British Columbia by the end of the the workouts.

Bryan (34:01):
Just for listeners who are interested in hearing a
little bit about that switchfrom conventional tactical
helicopter operations to specialoperations for 04/27. We do
touch on that a little bit withour interview with colonel Dan
Coots.

Chris (34:16):
Yeah. Why not?

Bryan (34:18):
So after Afghanistan, you served as the executive
assistant or EA to the deputycommander of the RCAF, but you
quickly tired of this andvolunteered to go back to
Afghanistan on the CH 47 dChinook. Canada took a unique
approach to training our pilotsto fly the Chinooks to
Afghanistan. Can you tell usabout that?

Chris (34:33):
Yeah, Brian. Sure. I I love your characterization that
I tired of being an I will justsay it was a really good
experience. And certainly my CEOthought it was gonna be really
good for me. I learned a tonabout the air force that I did
not know about, quite honestly,all the other capabilities.
So I spent about eighteen monthsin that. And then an opportunity
came up as we startedoperationalizing the Chinook in
Afghanistan. I thought thatwould just be such an

(34:55):
interesting place to serve. AndI, you know, I had really
enjoyed my tour in Afghanistan.I first wanted, I thought this
would be kind of a neat way tocontinue to serve.
Was really comfortable there bythe end of it. And so what had
happened is there was a reportthat was issued essentially into
many of the deaths that Canadahad sustained in IED. And what
are the enablers that Canadashould be looking at for

(35:18):
Afghanistan? And one of thosewas to introduce heavy lift
helicopters. And so veryinteresting.
So the government essentiallybought or agreed to procure FMS
for military sale through the USgovernment as is, whereas. So
they bought helicopters thatwere already in Afghanistan.
They bought six of them,CH-forty seven Delta
helicopters, US Army. They wereup in Bagram and they had them

(35:41):
essentially prepped, painted andthen shipped down to Kandahar.
And so right around the end of'eight is when the first
helicopter showed up.
And we started putting crewsinto that in the fall or the
February. And so the trainingscheme was interesting. So we
took experienced TAC aviationpilots like me, and then we
invested them down into Fort,it's called Fort Rock here at

(36:02):
the time. It's now called FortNovicell in Alabama. And they
put them through CH-forty sevenDelta Aircraft Qualification
Course or AQC.
And so about a four monthcourse, with a month of ground
school, three months of flying,I would say about forty hours
total on that course to fly. Andreally good instruction,

(36:22):
honestly, like a tremendousinstruction. Like the ground
school is the best I everreceived in my career, if I'm
being honest. The US army does areally good job on making you
deeply understand the airplane,the the mechanics of it, which
was good. It served me well inAfghanistan.
And then the flight training wasa bit more limited than I was
used to in the sense that it wasreally the aircraft handling and

(36:42):
find areas as emergencies, runon landings, sort of emergency
procedure stuff, off levellandings, etcetera. So all the
little bits and pieces that wewould look at in a standard
maneuver manual, tasks sort ofassembled, You do a day check
ride, night check ride, and anIFR check ride. And then you pop
out with forty hours on theairplane, but you haven't really

(37:03):
had to operationally employ it.And so that was the challenge is
that we had to bridge that gap alittle bit. We did it in two
ways.
One was we sent all of our crewsto The UK and we did our a five
simulator a five day simulatorconcentration that was
tactically focused. And so theBrits tried to imprint upon us
how they tactically employedtheir Chinook. And that's that's

(37:23):
all well and good, but thecockpit is different. Mhmm. And
so you you were executing thesethese sort of air assaults in a
different cockpit where thingswere in different places, so
that was tricky.
And then they also added on whatwe called seasoning. So they
would take us and put us at USArmy National Guard units, and
you'd fly there for two weeks.And And it was real hit or miss.
I went to the California Guardin Stockton, California. I spent

(37:44):
two weeks with them.
And it was a bunch of sort ofolder Chief Officer 4s. And in
the US Army, Chief ForeignOfficers fly. And so it's a it's
a different story. They're likeyour, I would say like senior
captains on your unit. And so aChief Foreign Officer four is a
very experienced public rate,probably twenty five, one
hundred, three thousand hours.
And they would just get theirarms around you. And to be
honest, it was amazing. That wasthe juice of this program, was

(38:07):
them training us. Because theywould take you and say, okay, I
know you're gonna be in Kanaharin a month and a half. So let's
just do night aerosol dust ballsto off levels.
So you have to land on a on, youknow, 10 degree pitch or 15
degree pitch, and just repeatover and over and over again. So
I just, that's all I did reallywas air assault landings with
them. And then they took us intothe mountains. So we went into

(38:28):
the Marine Corps Mount WarfareTraining Center in Bridgeport,
California. It's at like 8,000feet.
And we're assaulting up into10,000, and using US Marines to
do it. And so just theexperience was unbelievable from
a power management and a handsand feet point of view. I don't
think we would have succeededwithout that.

Bryan (38:46):
Yeah. And I just wanna translate a couple helicopter
terms there, and you can let meknow if I get these right. Sure.
So air assault I'm assuming anair assault landing is just like
a very large group ofhelicopters landing together to
offload troops. Off level islanding on a, as you said, a
pitched ground.
So keeping the helicopter itselfis level. Right? And you're

(39:07):
landing on a on a off levelterrain.

Chris (39:10):
Correct.

Bryan (39:11):
And then a dust ball is as a helicopter comes into a
very dusty environment.Obviously, anyone who's seen a
video of it, a ton of dust blowsup and you lose visual
references and you have to stillbe able to land in that.

Chris (39:22):
Yeah. Exactly right on all on all three counts.

Bryan (39:25):
Right on. So you said you came out with about forty hours
of experience plus your timewith the National Guard. That's
not a ton of experience on typeto deploy to Afghanistan with.
How did you feel about thisapproach?

Chris (39:36):
Very, very nervous, Brian. Have to be honest, like,
by the time I got there, therehad been two rotations, two six
months rotations on thehelicopter in theater. So the
first OC was a guy by the nameof Major John Knoll. He stood it
all up on the Chinook and thatwas probably the riskiest point
we had. The aircraft deliveredkind of in o eight.

(39:57):
And then it transitioned to aguy named Darryl Adams, who's
now a colonel, and then a guynamed Jeff Wedman, who I took
over from in the summer of,twenty ten. Because of the
Vancouver Olympics, the sixmonth tours went away and we
actually did nine and a half,ten month tours. We extended two
of them, sort of took the middletour out and gave that to the
Olympics. And so it was almost ayear long, tour that we do. And

(40:21):
so, we got into theater, thetraining system had been sort of
set.
The teams had figured out whatworked and what didn't. And so
they, I arrived in theaterprobably with about fifty, fifty
five, fifty three hours on theairplane, no more than that for
sure. And I hadn't really usedany of the defensive stores on
the aircraft. I hadn't reallyused the secure communications.
I hadn't really flown with guns,ever or conducted aerial

(40:43):
gunnery.
It's all the things you wouldexpect you do in workup
training. And so the trainingpackage really focused on that.
So you did about fifteen ishhours, fifteen to eighteen hours
through a series of ALPs. It wasproficiency based. If you got it
quicker, you did it quicker.
But it was really focused ondust landings, gunnery, and then
the tactics, the specifictactics of flying very, very low

(41:06):
or conducting tacticaltransitions from that very low
environment of 35 feet abovehighest optical up to above a
threat band. So getting abovesmall arms fire, essentially.
And so the tactical, the thingsyou would have gotten on an OTU
in Canada were sort of jammedinto like eighteen hours, thrown
at you intensively, day, night,and sort of wrapped all around
with a familiarization of theentire area of operation. So you

(41:28):
saw at least one forwardoperating base, like at least
once before you went in there,like in anger. But I was an
aircraft captain.
And so I was, I did my checkright as an AC and then right
into it and right into it as a,an operational aircraft captain
and ended up leading airassaults within, you know, two
or three weeks of beingqualified on the line.

Bryan (41:47):
That's wild. So you led the Canadian helicopter forces
in Afghanistan or CHFA Chinookflight from July 2010 to April
2011. What was your role inthat?

Chris (41:57):
Yeah, I was a flight commander for, so it was like a
normal flight commander job. Soyou were in charge of
essentially all of the air crew.We didn't have command and
control of the maintenanceelement that was under our
Samuel or our maintenanceofficer. So I had, about six
crews in theater any given time.And the way that we worked it is
the, flight warrant officer andmyself, we did the ten month

(42:20):
tour.
But my crews would rotate in sixmonth blocks but they were all
staggered. So every month or so,I had two crews arriving, two
crews leaving. It was like thatfor the entire tour. So we
managed and held all of theChinook capability, for the ten
month period, under theleadership of myself and my,
flight warrant officer.

Bryan (42:39):
Okay. And I guess with that rotation system kind of
ensures that you never have,like, you know, all of your
Chinook pilots at once don'thave experience in country?

Chris (42:48):
Yeah. It was I'll be honest. That was designed as the
mitigation against the fact thatyou couldn't do theater mission
specific training collectivelybefore deploying as, like, a
task force as you would expectwe would do for other missions.
Because it was such a newcapability that we didn't have
any Chinooks in Canada to flyon. That was the only way to do
it safely.
And to be honest, it did carrythe day. We did bring everyone
home on the Chinook, although wehad a couple of

Bryan (43:10):
weeks

Chris (43:10):
to talk about later.

Bryan (43:11):
Yeah. For sure. So how had things changed in
Afghanistan from your firsttour?

Chris (43:16):
I'll say really significantly, in a way that was
far more kinetics or far moreviolent on my second tour. If
you recall in 02/2005, when Iwent there for my first tour,
Afghanistan was like the secondtier show. The US had invested
deeply in Iraq. They had most oftheir key forces deployed in

(43:37):
Iraq and Afghanistan was kind ofwhat they would call an economy
of effort operation where theyonly had about, I would say
about 30,000 troops in theatertotal. It sounds like a lot, it
is, but it's a very big country.
Mhmm. And by the time, by thetime I came back in 2010, I
think there was about a hundredand hundred thousand troops. And
Kandahar as an airfield explodedin terms of its size. So my

(43:59):
first tour, there was just thestuff, the the area south of the
runway that we would be livingin. There's a whole new complex
to the north when I got thereand that's where we flew out of,
on the north side of, CanadaAirfield.
And so the operating base hadexpanded quite significantly.
The context had changed becausethere was way more density of
troops, which meant there wasway more violence because they
were in contact with the enemy.

Bryan (44:20):
So the has more than a few hands and feet gotchas. Can
you tell us about a few of thesequirks?

Chris (44:25):
Yeah. The the Chinook is an amazing aircraft to fly, and
I'm I am now emotionallyattached to it for the rest of
my life. I, I truly and fullylove that airplane. It is it was
a beautiful design thatpersists, you know, from 1962 to
today. But there's a fewgotchas.
I I guess the first from myhands and feet point of view is
that, cyclic isn't cyclic. Sothat's your that's your, yeah,

(44:46):
your control stick. So normally,in a in a one disc helicopter,
if you push the the stickforward, the whole disc tilts
forward and your the theresultant vector pushes you
forward. In the Chinook, it'sdifferential collective pitch.
So if you push the cyclicforward, the forward rotor
reduces collective pitch and theoff rotor increases collective
pitch and allows you totransition forward.
And so there's some littlegotchas that go with that. But

(45:08):
the big one is, the cyclicposition on the ground because
of that, because of the, if youpush forward on the cyclic, the
off roader lifts off the groundmore. It's a very dangerous
aircraft, if you add a bunch offorward cyclic when you land.
And so in a Griffin, if I was toland a Griffin on a run on
landing, I put a bunch offorward cyclic in, all I would

(45:29):
do is the aircraft would justwould just run on a bit longer
or faster. There'd be no dangerreally.
In the Chinook, as you land, ifyou put forward cyclic in, the
aft wheels will come off theground and you will kneel the
aircraft. Like, put a wholebunch of pressure on the front
oleos, and this is a conditionwhere the aircraft can flip can
flip over very, very easily. Andso in the checklist for the

(45:50):
Chinook, there is a cyclic,neutral sort of call you have to
make as you land. Flightcontrol's neutral is the call.
And so I, as my, in my, one ofmy first missions, was actually
tasked to fly our defenseminister to Masungar.
It was like 45 degrees Celsius,very, spicy day, lots of
shooting going on in the area.So I went out there with the

(46:10):
Griffins, and I landed, inMasengarde, did a nice dynamic
landing, landed it, put it onthe ground, and I did not pay
attention where my cyclic was.And sure enough, I kneeled it.
And they as the defense ministerwas walking off the ramp, the
ramp came up off the ground. Hesort of stumbled And I was like,
oh my god, like day one, I'mgonna get fired.

Bryan (46:27):
Oh, no.

Chris (46:28):
No one got hurt obviously. And I learned like my
aircraft sort of my copilot whowas a bit more experienced than
me at this point was like, hey,maybe center the cyclic and
don't hurt your defenseminister. So it was kind of a
moment.

Bryan (46:40):
Oh, man. I think most of us either have or will have one
of those experiences. I hadgeneral Huddleston on board when
he was our wing commander when Iwas flying as a new FO on the
Aurora out in Hawaii. And wealso had on board our previous
American exchange pilot whohappened to be in Hawaii at the

(47:01):
time. We brought him up for aflight.
So we're all sitting in theback, and it's my turn to land.
And I get called up, and theAmerican turns to me and says,
don't f it up. And I laughed, ofcourse, and I had had no issues
really in in on the Aurora. And,of course, I brought it in for
the hardest landing I had on myentire career on the Aurora,
really thumped it in with mywing commander on board and

(47:23):
everything. So I think we've allhad had one of those.

Chris (47:26):
We have. Yeah. There's a few little gotchas with the
airplane. And I guess the othergotcha is the dust landing. It's
just a it's a real techniquething on the Chinook in
Afghanistan.
It's like fine, talcum powder.And it just builds and builds
and builds and you go to zerovis very quick. So you have to
fly a very specific prescriptiveapproach through windows, like
gates. And, it takes a littlewhile to get used to that. And

(47:50):
so if you don't do it right, youcan end up flipping the aircraft
over because you'll have lateraldrift in the terminal stages of
the approach.
You'll just shear the gear offand flip over. Mhmm. So there's
a lot of risk. And as a Chinookpilot in Afghanistan, I think I
probably did over a thousandDust Bowl landings, so you end
up doing a lot of them.

Bryan (48:05):
Wow. So this is something we eventually intend to do a
full episode on with the copilotof the aircraft. On 08/05/2010,
Blowtorch '6 '1, a CH 47 dChinook was shot down in
Afghanistan. Can you take usthrough that day from your
perspective?

Chris (48:22):
Yeah, sure. Brian, it was a tough day and it still sort of
sits burned into my brain. Iwill say the outcome was really
good. Everyone got home safe. SoI'll spoil the end to begin
with, which I think why we cantalk about it so easily.

Bryan (48:37):
Yeah, for sure.

Chris (48:38):
That day was an interesting day where I was not
flying. I flew a lot inAfghanistan. I flew about five
hundred hours in ten months,there. So I was flying almost
every day and it would be, itwas rare that I wasn't flying
and when I wasn't flying, I wasdoing some sort of painful
administration thing. And thisday, my crews would rotate, so
was writing their PERs.

Bryan (48:54):
And for the listeners, the dreaded PER is the old
evaluation system. It stands forpersonnel evaluation report. It
has been replaced by the PACEsystem, and they were written
annually as well as fordeployments.

Chris (49:05):
And I was in my office and someone came in to grab me.
They bring me down to the opscenter. They said, you just got,
and I asked them what for? Andthey said, like, just come to
the ops center right now. So,you know, walk in there.
We had a feed from the predator,UAV in there so you could watch
things live that would occur intheater. And I literally walked
into the image of one of myChinooks that was now crashed on
the ground on fire. You can seethe flames all around it and you

(49:29):
can see my people, like crawlingor running away from it. And so
I'll tell you, like, don't thinkI've, it was like a gut punch.
Like I don't think I was readyfor that No kidding.
Moment emotionally, because it'stough, right? To manage your own
emotions and then realize yougot to do something. You got to
do something about this. Thisis, this is going to be bad.
That particular crew had had anormal day, a normal tasking

(49:50):
day, and they weren't doinganything, abnormal for the for
the theater.
So they had been tasked to whatwe call a ring route. So you
would just sort of move peopleand stuff all around theater,
sort of bouncing between forwardoperating bases. And our
planners would have pulledtogether probably 50 or 60
requests for movement into thiscohesive plan. They did that
every day for the next day. Andso these guys went way up to the

(50:11):
North Of Kandahar, up to a USsoft base and did some insert
stuff there, and they had to dosome slinging up there.
And so because of the slinging,they had an extra crew member
because one of our crew membershad to go into the hole. There's
a trapdoor. We can look at theload that's on the hook. So when
the flood engineer did that, wehad to put another person on
their gun. So we had a sixperson crew instead of a five

(50:32):
person crew.
And so they went into Masungar,which was a forward operating
base about, 25 kilometers or so,west of Canahar City. And it's a
Canadian forces base, likemassive, like a company, a
company plus size base. So verybig tanks there, a lot of labs
there, so pretty safe. And theylanded in there and they

(50:54):
offloaded all their passengersand loaded on a bunch of new
ones. And the ones that theyloaded on were, it was actually
a recce from the tour that wascoming to replace the guys who
were there.
So they had sort of leadershipin the back. They had majors and
sergeant majors from theoutgoing and incoming tour
together in the back, and then awhole sort of flotsamajetsam of

(51:15):
Americans and aid agency people,etcetera, because we moved
everyone around the theater.They took off out of there and,
when you interview, the copilot, he'll probably tell you
the story, hands and feet storyof it, so I won't ruin it all.
But they took off out of there,dropped down low level and they
were going to a prettyproximate, a little Fort

(51:35):
operating location, which is thePansway District Center was
their next stop. And it's likefour or five kilometers away,
but you're always trying to mixup your routes in and out.
And so they went a certainroute, they went down to low
levels. They were probably atabout 50 feet, at a 120 knots
and they had their Griffins intow. And then they got hit with

(51:55):
what we believe was a wholebunch of machine gun fire from
the bottom. And what we believewas a rocket propelled grenade
that hit their left main fueltank Wow. And caused it to
explode.
So you can imagine that momentin in the sky. And then a big
fireball, obviously from allthat gas exploding, the airplane
stayed together, which tells youeverything you need to know
about the Chinook. And then itwrapped that fireball wrapped

(52:17):
around the back of the airplane.And just the way the airflow
goes in the Chinook is it allcame into the cabin. And so you
end up with, like, a ton ofsmoke and everything just
pouring from back to front inthe cabin.
And so flames and smoke. So theramp you can imagine the ramp
flight engineer is sitting on aseat on his gun facing aft and
got pretty much enveloped inthat and was wearing all his So,

(52:38):
so I'll tell you like, Nomex isa thing and definitely respect
Nomex. It's really good. Savedeverybody.

Bryan (52:44):
No kidding.

Chris (52:45):
But then you can imagine the chaos. Right? Like the
airplane's shuttering now, it'sstarting to come apart, big
chunk of it's falling off. Andthen between the pilot and co
pilot, co pilot was flying Ibelieve when the RPG hit and the
pilot took control, the AC tookcontrol and this is where I
credit him with an enormousamount of foresight or courage

(53:05):
because you want to continue toa safe place, right? And in
front of them about probably1,800, 15 hundred meters away
was the Ford operating base.
Or we could take it and put iton the ground right then and
there because it's definitely acritical emergency, but they'd
just been shot at, so you got tothink there's bad guys on the
ground. They had to make areally tough call. And I think

(53:25):
personally I would have beenlulled into the maybe I can just
make it. Yeah. Right?
Maybe I can just make that pub.But Bill took control and just
said, Nope, right to ground andjust leveled it and took it
right into a field straightahead. And weirdly, was a report
that it was a hard landing, buteveryone, from the thing, from
the incident are like, No, itwasn't a hard landing actually

(53:45):
at all. You put it down onto thefield and then they conducted an
evacuation. And there's justsome really interesting moments
in there where, as an example, alot of our gunners were army
reservists.
And, so these are inexperiencedyoung corporals and they had
some incredible foresight. Oneof them took the pin out of the
C6, the door gun, the left door,and he threw it out. So it

(54:07):
opened another opening forpeople to get out because that
normally you would not be ableto get over that gun. And about
five or six people got out inthat that exit. And I think if
they hadn't had that, they mightnot have lived.

Bryan (54:17):
Wow.

Chris (54:17):
But everyone got out of the airplane and they kind of
got behind a wall, between, theyput a wall between themselves
and the airplane, but theairplane started burning and, we
carried like 7,000 rounds ofammunition on the airplane. So
it started cooking off and allthe flares were cooking off. So
they initially started on theairplane side of the wall and I
think they jumped over figuring,I think I'd rather face the

(54:38):
enemy than the blowing upaircraft. And they did that. And
then, I mean, there's a storythat goes with that that I'll
let the copilot tell you.
But the quick reaction forcefrom Asimgar saw this occur, it
was about two or three clicksaway and they were already
dressed. They just come in fromanother incident. So they just
got in their labs and they droveand they were there within about
ten minutes. And so the guys hada short little exchange, not an

(55:01):
exchange of fire, were gettingshot at. But the army guys on
the ground who were thepassengers, that's their
environment.
My earlier point, they kind oftook over a little bit and said,
okay, we're going to set up aperimeter fence and they were
coordinating with the aircraftcaptain and the crew. And then
obviously back in the talk, wewere trying to work through,
hey, how do we de risk this? Ihave to launch on a rescue
mission now. So we ended up,getting together on my end, a

(55:23):
crew. There was just, I had justenough of a crew to assemble a
Shinnek crew on that side of theairfield.
And there was a couple ofGriffins that come back for
another mission. We all got out.I gave a hasty brief. We got a,
the aviation battalion commandertold me to go outside and get
started and get ready to go dothe evacuation of these guys
from the shoot down point. Wethought we were going have to
do.
Of course, Chinook I starteddidn't have much of gas in it.

(55:44):
So I took the Chinook and thetwo Griffins out to the FARP,
where are we refueling point toget gas? I rapidly got a bunch
of gas and then we launched atwhich point my, the op center
called me back and said, okay,it's sorted now. There's a QRF
on the ground, but stay, comeback here, stay running just in
case. So I dismounted thenbrought it back, dismounted,
went into the operation centerand it was kind of sitting there

(56:06):
fully kitted for a couple ofhours while we figured out what
the best course of action was.
And then we went and got themthat evening. And so the folks
on the ground, they'll put intoa lab, they got driven back to
the Fort Operating Base. Andthen I flew out there and picked
them up. And the best thing Iheard all day was Bill's voice
on the intercom. He put hishelmet in and he got in the

(56:27):
airplane.
I'm like, Hey buddy, how areyou? He's like, I thought a bit
of a hard day, you know? So wehad a chat all the way back to
Canada. We purposely did it,went down to the desert where
there was no threat. It did atransition up high and we came
back high level.
So it was just chill. There wasno reason to smash the aircraft
around or fly tactically. And Idid like a normal approach back

(56:47):
into Kanahar and we broughtthose guys right to the
hospital. Yep. Just to make sureyou never know, right?
We want make sure that everyonegot checked out by the flight
surge. So, not just the aircrew, but all the passengers
were looked after. The air crewkind of got a, got a look at,
from the air crew medical side.And then we all would sort of
reconvene that night in ourbarracks.

Bryan (57:05):
Yeah. I it's funny. I I remember that day. So Bill was
in my squadron. Right?
He was from four hundredsquadron. Yeah. And I remember
working I was I believe I wasworking in ops that day or
whenever the news hit anyways.I'm I'm not sure how long it
took for the news to get back toCanada, but we were working in
in squadron ops at four hundredsquadron when this all happened.
So I remember that day quitewell.

Chris (57:26):
Yeah. It was tough.

Bryan (57:27):
Yeah. Yeah. So I'd imagine there was considerable
fear to get back in the cockpitafter that incident. How did you
manage this apprehension amongstthe crews?

Chris (57:36):
Yeah. It was I'll tell you, Brian. It was tough. Like,
all of us, me included, had someapprehension about going back
out. I think that's natural forany one of us, but

Bryan (57:45):
For sure.

Chris (57:45):
The discussion I had with my standard, officer, the
discussions I had with my CO,and I had an awesome, flight
warrant officer by the name ofJake Boucher, ended up becoming
the one cat chief. Jake is justan inspirational guy and and
just a great singer and COO. Sohim and I had a lot of talks
about how we approach this,tonight. You know, in the end,
the analogy, quite honestly, isthe way the army deals with a

(58:07):
mobility kill on one of theirvehicles. So they would hit an
IED, the vehicle would be hurt,the crew would be unhurt,
vehicle would be extracted, thecrew would go back, have a day
or so to reset, but they'd beexpected to get back into a new
lab and go do their job.
And so that was the challengethat night, was trying to
convince everyone, like, we'regonna take a pause, like a one
day pause, take a breath, lookat our tactics to make sure that

(58:30):
what we were doing wasn'treckless, and have a look at the
incident rapidly. What do weneed to tweak to make sure we're
still doing this safely? One ofthe decisions at that point was,
well, we're gonna flip this tonights. So we're going to do
even the mundane things we'regoing do at night, which
dramatically increased the handsand feet risk and the
environmental risk, but itreduced the operational get
shoot down, get shot down risk.

intro (58:50):
Right.

Chris (58:51):
Because they just can't see you. And so that was a
pivot. And then we sort of hadlike a lot of talks as a team,
like, so tomorrow, you know,we're, we're in combat. The
ground force, they need us backin the air tomorrow. They need
the Griffins in the air over topof them to protect them and they
need us flying them out to thefog because I I don't wanna have
our hesitancy result in them nowdoing more convoys and getting

(59:12):
blown up.
So the the conveyance or theargument I made to the team was
like, really need us and wecan't give in at this moment.
This is a super important we getback on the horse. And so that's
what we did. We did, a one daypause, looked at tactics and we
did a check ride, not a checkride, a stands ride for each one
of the air crew. So they got achance to go up and just do an

(59:33):
easy trip.
So we went out, we went outinto, the desert, we got to do
some shooting. They did a littlebit of dust landing practice.
They did some approaches to theairfield. It was very, very low
intensity, just to make themsort of comfortable back in the
airplane. And then we did a bitof another check-in where we
asked them, okay, so are yougood to go tomorrow?

(59:54):
I think, I think, I think we'regood. And everyone typically on
the surface says yes. And then Iwill just say it's a real
journey because as a, as aleader for both myself and with
Jake Boucher, we had to spend alot of individual time with
people and in different ways.Yeah. Just adapting who's the
best guy to talk to that person.
So sometimes it was Jake,sometimes it was me, sometimes
it was Padre or a buddy. So justmanaging who the person is that

(01:00:16):
needs to talk to that person andget them through it, And then
just staying like staying close,like checking in with them
routinely. So I flew with Billafterwards for a bunch of
admissions, just because, well,when we got along really well,
he's a friend of mine and it wascomfortable. So, but not
everyone had the easy path. Sosome folks flew for a little
while and just said like, andthey're rotating out and they're

(01:00:38):
like, you know, this actuallywasn't great.
I'm not in a great place. Andthere's some folks who actually
ended up really one of them whodidn't end up flying again.

Bryan (01:00:45):
Okay.

Chris (01:00:45):
And so it was tough, but you really had to sort of apply
a lot of empathy to the problemand just work through it. Yeah.

Bryan (01:00:52):
Yeah. We saw that on the Aurora fleet when aircraft 103
went off the runway inGreenwood. You know, it takes
time. Everybody reacts indifferent ways, and it takes
time sometimes for thosereactions to surface. And you'd
think, okay, this was quite awhile ago, and then all of a
sudden you'd realize, like, thisperson still needs reassurance
or yeah.

(01:01:13):
Like you said, it takes apersonal approach.

Chris (01:01:15):
Yeah. And some injuries from, I mean, it's still a,
still a really traumatic eventand some injuries from that
don't really manifest for anumber of weeks. It's just one
of those leadership momentswhere as a flight supervisor,
get to spend a lot, a lot oftime walking the line, talking
to your people. Then just behonest, being in the cockpit
flying with them. Yeah.
Be it a flight engineer, agunner or a pilot. Yeah.

Bryan (01:01:36):
Yeah. So next you were the CEO of four fifty Tactical
Helicopter Squadron in Petawawa,Ontario. You were only the
second CEO of the squadron andyou had to receive and
operationalize the new CH 47 FChinooks. What new capabilities
did these new aircraft bringwith them?

Chris (01:01:51):
Yeah. So I guess, first of all, it was a Chinook in
Canada, so which we hadn't hadyet. So, obviously, we were we
were, you the demolishedChinooks we flew in Afghanistan
ended up in a boneyard. Theyended up going down to Davis
Monthan and getting wrapped up.One of them went to the Air
Force Museum.
So they were not flying whenthey came home. There was a
discussion about that and thatwas sort of, that was rejected.
The infrastructure in theaircraft kind of arrived

(01:02:14):
coincidentally. I think therewas about a six month period
where we had to host a couple ofaircraft over at 427, but they
built this unbelievablybeautiful, if you haven't been
to 450, really encourage it,infrastructure for the new Cape.
And then all the simulatorsobviously installed there.
So a big training focus. But theCape, the aircraft itself was a
whole step level more capablethan the D model Chinook. So the

(01:02:38):
first was it had a dual digitalautomatic flight control system.
So it gave you a fourth axisautopilot. So with the fourth
axis autopilot, this aircraftoffered us the ability to do a
lot more automation.
And then you didn't have to dothe things like we did in
Afghanistan, where you had tosort of fly through gates and
conduct a procedural landing,which is a little bit risky. In

(01:02:58):
this case, the dual digitalautomatic flight control system,
a couple of flex of the buttonand the aircraft will just sit
in the hover and you canmaneuver it left, right,
forward, aft in one footincrements with a click of a
button, or you can move it upand down in one foot increments.
So you could be fully envelopedin a dust ball. You have a
Doppler based or an Eggie basedembedded GPSINS based hover
display, and you could land andtake off like that if you needed

(01:03:19):
to. So that was the big one.
It really de risked degradedvisual environment, that is to
say snow or dust. So forCanada's context, super
important. Yeah. And then thesecond was it had 30
modifications from a normal USarmy Chinook. Some of them are
small, some of them are large.
We were, we were going to beputting that counter missile
system on it that was a veryadvanced and we did. That

(01:03:41):
required a lot of power. Sothat's a big power redesign for
the aircraft and a bigger APU.It had bigger generators on the
engines. And it had things likea power down ramp cause the
Chinook itself is just ofgravity.
It just falls with gravity, thatramp. You had deep snow. You
need to have a hydraulic ramp topush that ramp down through
steep snow, things like that.And then the biggest one for us,
for the Arctic context is it hasfat tanks. So we call it so

(01:04:04):
pretty much double the fuelcapacity.

Bryan (01:04:06):
Okay.

Chris (01:04:06):
So an F model Chinook is at 13,400 pounds of fuel. And so
that allows you to do about 600miles in the aircraft, which is
pretty good for a helicopter.

Bryan (01:04:17):
So from a flying and maintenance perspective, what
challenges had to be faced interms of bringing this new
aircraft online?

Chris (01:04:23):
Yeah, Brian. It was it was, it was like starting
something brand new fromscratch. And I think we all
underestimate every one of ourfleets that we bring on how much
work that actually is. So to geta maintenance, an accredited
maintenance organization up andrunning, trained, and then have
a quality management program upand running, have a supply chain

(01:04:45):
that's linked in to the way yourecord keep for maintenance.
Like we just, we all come onsquadron and that's there,
right?
So when you start something newand this was not like even, you
know, out with the old and withthe new, there was nothing
before. And we're starting fromthe ground zero. Building
relationships with our, the OEMwith Boeing who had a big office
in the building and buildingrelationships with our training

(01:05:06):
partner from CAE. And so therewas a lot of storming going on,
right? Trying to figure out therelationships and trying to
figure everything out.
And the biggest takeaway for mewas how dedicated people were to
make it work because they wereboth civilian and military,
Boeing CAE and the CAF and theRCF. But then it put a lot more
stress on the mid level. Like Iwould say the A level C releaser

(01:05:29):
in the maintenance world, supplytechs, master corporal
corporals, we're just gettingpushed to their limit because
there's not that many of them.And then, you know, you're just
carrying a lot of risk in termsof the procedures aren't fully
gelled yet. So you're justcarrying risk and everything
you're doing.
And as you mature the aircraftand go through its test and
eval, it's getting better andbetter and better. But that
first chunk of time, you'reputting a lot on the shoulders

(01:05:52):
of really junior people and theyfeel it. They get stressed out
and burnt out. And it's notbecause I'm, hopefully it's not
because I'm pushing them toohard. They're just super
professionally want to get itdone and they put a lot of
pressure on themselves as well.
There's only so much that youcan control.

Bryan (01:06:08):
Yeah. This time in your career must have been
exceptionally challenging. Howdid you feel by the end of it
and what strategies did you useto push through?

Chris (01:06:15):
So the fatigue management piece walks in. I mean, got
qualified pretty quickly on theairplane. I was actually allowed
to go out to the squadron beforeI took command and do my course.
So I was actually qualifiedpretty much when I took command
within a couple of weeks and Ihad to fly a lot to generate
more aircrew. And so it was oneof those double edged swords
where you're doing the thing youlove more than anything in the

(01:06:36):
world, which is flying.
But as a CEO, you know thatevery hour you spend on the
airplane is an hour you're tohave to also spend back in the
office because you should havebeen there doing CO stuff. And
so you end up with these very,very long days as a CO. And
actually, I mean, everyone wasdoing that, but I think it's
sort of acute for the CO. And sofatigue management, trying to
make sure that you have, you'resurrounded by good people and
you actually, you download trustand you download authority to

(01:06:58):
your people to allow them tooperate a bit more autonomously
than maybe in other squadrons.And then just really monitoring
your people.
Cause there was times whenpeople would just, you know, be
really emotional about somethingor they would act out of
character and you're like, thisis probably because they're
exhausted because they're tryingand working so hard to get this
thing off the ground. Yeah. Ithink being compassionate,
empathetic, even though it'spressure on us to get this thing

(01:07:20):
off the road, you gotta do itsafely and effectively, and
that's the hard part as a CO isnavigating that.

Bryan (01:07:25):
Yeah. I can only imagine. Okay, Chris. That's gonna wrap
up part one of our chat. Thanksfor telling us about your early
days, your deployments toAfghanistan, as well as your
time as CO of four fiftySquadron.
I'm really looking forward tositting down again for the next
one. Thank you.

Chris (01:07:39):
Alright. Thanks a lot, Brian. What a pleasure to talk
to you.

intro (01:07:42):
Alright. That wraps up our chat on the early days of
major general Chris McKenna'scareer. Tune in to

Bryan (01:07:48):
our next episode to hear about his time in Maui as the
task force commander, hiscommand positions,

intro (01:07:55):
as well as the beginning of our chat on

Bryan (01:07:57):
the modernization of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the
new aircraft we are bringingonline. Do you have any
questions or comments aboutanything you've heard

intro (01:08:04):
in this show? Would you or someone you

Bryan (01:08:06):
know make a great guest, or do you have a great idea for
a show? You can reach out to usat the
[e-mail] oron all social media at at pod
pilot project. And be sure tocheck out that social media for
lots of great videos of our RCAFaircraft. As always, we'd like
to thank you for tuning in andask for your help with the big
three. That's like and follow uson social media, share with your

(01:08:27):
friends, and follow and rate usfive stars wherever you get your
podcasts.
That's all for now. Thanks forlistening. Keep the blue side
up. See you.

intro (01:08:37):
Engineer, shut down all four. Shutting down all four
engines.