Now I knew why we’d spent so long flying the bag.
‘That’s right, mate. If you can’t pass the bag, you can’t land blind. Simple as.’
‘And they say the conditions here are a peach, compared to what we’re going to get in Helmand.’
‘Want to give it another go?’ Billy said.
It was one thing to be shot down by the Taliban, quite another to die by my own hand. I didn’t want that on my tombstone; and I didn’t want it on the tombstone of the other guy either-the guy I’d be flying with.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Just to be on the safe side, let’s give it another go. One more for the road…’
We were confident that we could now get safely from the desert floor to altitude and back, but could we operate there?
We fired the cannon and rockets on the ranges outside Thumrait with the FACs so they could get used to calling in Apache fire. We practised firing from altitude instead of low level until we became proficient at the new height.
After each session, I viewed every inch of gun tape and debriefed the crews on every rocket and just about every round they fired. I did this in more detail than they’d ever wanted, but it was worth it; our accuracy improved dramatically. It was all a part of my responsibility as the squadron’s Weapons Officer and it was one I took extremely seriously. After two weeks of nothing but cannon and rocket firing we were hitting targets first time, every time.
The main event, however, was yet to come.
One of the principal reasons for coming to the Oman was to launch the Hellfire. There simply wasn’t enough space on any UK proving ground to accommodate the weapon’s danger-area envelope.
I was very proprietorial about the Hellfire. Call me obsessive or compulsive-which some of my mates were starting to-but I saw it as a make or break. We’d fired rockets and cannon for nearly two years to get to this standard, but we had one shot to get the Hellfire right. We’d trained in the simulator for hours but now we would actually fire it for the first time. And since each weapon cost the equivalent of an Aston Martin or a mid-range Ferrari, I wanted us to get it right.
The Air Manoeuvres Training and Advisory Team oversaw our instruction. AMTAT were a bunch of senior instructors with expertise in multiple disciplines who were there to see that the Apache was worked up to its full fighting potential prior to being declared fully operational. They’d been teaching us since we started CTR and now hovered around us like bees around flowers, keen to collect every bit of data they could from the Omani experience.
When it came to weapons training-and the Hellfire, in particular-they were all over us like a rash. They wanted to make sure that we could do our job, and that the missile did what Lockheed Martin had said on the tin.
The AMTAT opted for the lottery approach. They wrote down every conceivable way of firing the Hellfire on a series of cards that we of 656 Squadron then drew.
Each of us had to fire two missiles apiece and because Billy and I were qualified to fly in both seats-front and back-we were told we would have to swap. It was all about getting ticks in boxes. I had to fire from the front seat and so did Billy.
The cards were spread out on a table. The firings would range from the hover to 140 knots, from low altitudes to extremely high. We would fire autonomously and we would fire remotely; we would fire single missiles and two at a time-two in the air at once, from the same aircraft, at two separate targets. We would also fire some in LOBL Mode, and others using LOAL Direct, LOAL Low and LOAL High. We would go through the whole sequence by day; and to cap it off, we’d repeat it all by night.
This was to be the culmination of two and a half years’ training, two of which were spent under the guidance of the UK’s greatest attack pilots. The stakes were high; no one wanted to miss with an £82,862.08 missile. And the coppers on the end weren’t an accounting error; the bean-counters had worked it all out, down to the last penny.
I drew my cards and was given two missiles to fire and three missions in which to destroy three targets.
My first was a maximum range, high-level, autonomous daytime shoot against a small building with the Apache at maximum speed.
My second was to fire a missile by night as a pair of us ran in at 100 knots with an FAC lasing the target.
My third was to gather another crew’s missile in mid-air and kill an armoured personnel carrier at night while maintaining a high altitude hover. This tactic was straight out of Paul Mason’s weapons lecture, to be employed if I was out of missiles and could detect a target equipped with laser warning receivers. By the time the LWRS alerted the APC crew to the threat, the Hellfire would be one second from impact. Goodnight, Vienna.
Becoming increasingly less popular with the crews, I ran through every engagement technique in detail.
The following morning we flew out of Thumrait Airfield for the weapons range, ninety minutes away. A selection of old vehicle hulks and the odd building-our target ‘sets’ for the next few days-were the only notable features in the otherwise barren landscape.
We set up our tents, cooked some food and sat around under a full moon shooting the shit.
‘You’ve something on the bottom of your shoe, Simon,’ Jake said.
Simon lifted his heel and dropped his shoulder and was instantly embarrassed.
‘Ooh, hello sailor,’ we chorused.
Simon was a navy exchange officer. Being the only matelot among us, he was always getting stick-but dished it back with interest.
‘You’ll all get AIDS, you know,’ he said.
‘But only if you mess around,’ Jake waved an admonishing finger.
We rolled around laughing.
‘He means Apache Induced Divorce Syndrome, Jake,’ Billy said. ‘You catch it from being on operations or exercises for the duration of your flying career.’
‘I’ve nothing to worry about; my wife is used to me being away at sea. But you Pongos are prime candidates,’ Simon said. ‘Not that you need any help from the Apache. You seem to be doing a fine job of it all by yourselves. Isn’t that right, Billy?’
Billy had just been on a romantic holiday with his wife. When they got back his car had been nicked. What upset her was that he’d left his house keys and the address in the glove box. Their insurance wouldn’t pay out for any losses.
I was next in the firing line.
‘I think Ed’s a prime candidate, after his performance at the Mess Christmas ball. What do you reckon, Jonny?’
Being officers, Simon and Jake hadn’t yet heard about this. Jon quivered with excitement at the prospect of a fresh audience.
‘Picture me, Billy, Ed and the wives sat around a large table with wine waiters and silver service waitresses pampering to our every whim…’ He was now positively wriggling with pleasure. ‘Ed, ever the gent, pulls back Emily’s chair just as she goes to sit on it. She falls flat on her back; her legs shoot up above the table and she wallops her head on the wall.’
My cheeks burnt bright red as the hilarity increased. She’d looked like she’d been in a car crash-her dress ripped so high she could have auditioned for Spearmint Rhino.
Jon’s eyes sparkled. ‘I reckon Ed is more likely to get AIDS if he stays home than if he disappears for months on end.’
Jake came to my rescue by telling a story about ‘Bus Stop Jonny’. Jon-being ginger-was always being accused of stinking of piss, hence the nickname.
Which, predictably enough, brought the ribbing straight back in Jake’s direction. He was no stranger to this. As a young lad with a
wife and his first baby on the way, no one got as much stick as Jake-at least partly because he could take it on the chin and chuck it back in buckets. Jake was from an affluent family and was brought up in Antigua; his relaxed Caribbean outlook sometimes made it hard to believe he was legally allowed to vote, let alone fly an attack helicopter. He got the nickname Floppy at Sandhurst, for being a ‘fucking laidback overseas person’-and the piss-taking didn’t stop when he was awarded the Sword of Honour.
As dawn broke, we watched our ground crew load four Hellfires onto our aircraft. Billy and I inspected our missiles and gave the machine a thorough walk around before saddling up.
We picked up the FAC’s transmission as we crossed into the range.
‘Apache, Apache, this is Bravo Two Zero. Firemission, over.’
‘Bravo Two Zero, this is Outlaw One. We are a flight of two Apaches-callsigns Outlaw One and Two-with eight Hellfire missiles on board. Ready for Firemission, over.’
The FAC came back loud and clear. ‘Firemission…Target grid: Four Zero Quebec, Charlie Hotel, Seven Zero Eight, Zero One Eight.’
After a brief pause, he continued: ‘Target elevation: Four Five Eight feet…Target Description: Small building.’
Another pause: ‘Friendly forces: Three thousand seven hundred and twenty-five metres south…
‘Laser code: One, One, One, One…’
And his final call: ‘Read back, over.’
I’d punched the grid and altitude data into the computer with the keyboard on my left as he spoke. When he finished I pressed the ‘slave’ button on the ORT. I found myself staring at a ten-foot square building on the TADS.
I read back the Firemission: ‘Firemission; Four Zero Quebec Charlie Hotel, Seven Zero Eight Zero One Eight, Four Five Eight
feet; small building; friendlies Three Seven Two Five metres south; Laser One One One One. Over.’
‘Correct. Call when visual. Over.’
Bingo. The guy was good.
I’d done this in the simulator loads of times. I replied to his last message immediately. ‘Outlaw One is visual. The target is a small building to the north-west of an east-west track with one building to the south of it and one building to the north of it.’
‘Correct. Your building is the middle one. Call when ready. Over.’
I’d now identified the FAC’s location-in a trench with about fifteen other guys, south of the target.
‘Ready.’ I’d already locked up the target with the Image Auto-Track (IAT). The missile was spun-up and ready on the rail.
I lased the target and the FAC called: ‘Clear hot.’
Distance was 8,225 metres away and counting down fast. We were at 5,000 feet and Billy was doing nearly 140 knots.
The LOBL box appeared in my monocle and I knew that the missile could now see the laser energy reflecting off the target.
‘Outlaw One firing.’
A second later, the missile slipped off the left rail with a barely perceptible whoosh. Our helmets, the two engines, the slipstream and the environmental control system drowned out all other sound.
The Hellfire climbed into the deep blue sky. I lost sight of it after about two miles. My aim was to hit the target by manually tracking it, so I disengaged the IAT and held the crosshair over the centre of the building.
It looked like some kind of dwelling; the sort of thing I imagined peppering the Afghan hinterland in large numbers.
Our run-in was nice and smooth. The Apache was built to attack and this was about as much fun as we could have with our pants on.
The countdown timer on my symbology clocked the final few seconds and then I saw a black needle-a barely distinct smudge-dropping fast from the top of the screen.
The Hellfire. Two seconds…It was creaming down…One second…It was homing onto the crosshairs-bang on my laser energy spot.
There was a big black cloud. Debris and timber spiralled through the air.
‘Outlaw One, this is Bravo Two Zero,’ the FAC called. ‘Delta Hotel, Delta Hotel. End of Firemission.’
Direct hit.
As the dust cleared, we saw that he wasn’t wrong. The building had disintegrated. A black scar on the ground was the only sign it had ever been there. Scattered around the edge of it were wood splinters and nothing else.
‘Outlaw One, Delta Hotel. Target building destroyed. End of mission.’
The remaining Hellfires did exactly what they were supposed to. I collected the statistics and handed them over to the AMTAT. We’d demonstrated that the Hellfire could be fired by day or night in every conceivable way thought out by those devilishly clever people at Boeing and Lockheed Martin. 656 Squadron Army Air Corps was now ready for war.
There was only one question left. Could we do it for real on what we called a ‘two-way range’-firing while being fired at?
The name of this range was Afghanistan. In less than eight weeks, we’d be up close and personal in the Desert of Death.
30 APRIL 2006
Dishforth
An Intelligence Officer (IntO) from 16 Brigade briefed us on what we could expect when we got to Afghanistan-a move, my diary had been telling me for several weeks, which was earmarked for tomorrow. I had to force myself to listen, not because it wasn’t interesting, but because there was a lot going on in my head.
The day before we made our move to Afghanistan happened to be Emily’s birthday, and I was trying to work out what I was going to say to her over dinner.
We had been going out for almost five years. Emily was a nurse-a midwife-Scottish and sassy. She’d be putting on a brave face tonight, and so would I.
Both of us hated goodbyes, but this one was especially poignant. We’d just returned from two weeks’ diving in Egypt, during the course of which I’d spent every waking moment that I wasn’t fifty feet beneath the surface of the Red Sea reading books and journals on Afghanistan and in particular the Mujahideen. Anyone that said we’d be back without a shot being fired was talking bollocks, and she knew that as well as I did.
The worst thing was that I was excited to be going and Emily knew that too. It didn’t make either of us feel particularly good. All in all, she was getting a pretty raw deal-as shitty a birthday present as you could get. This wasn’t what I wanted for our last day together.
I forced myself to concentrate. The IntO had come to the bit about hearts and minds-how we’d be helping the people of southern Afghanistan get back on their feet. Perhaps some of this might come in useful during the awkward silences that we’d try to fill tonight.
‘Our mission-16 Brigade’s mission-is to support the Helmand Provincial Reconstruction Teams. The PRTs will be operating in a triangular area between Camp Bastion, Gereshk and Lashkar Gah.’ He pointed to a section of the map that covered about 150 square miles, 70 per cent of which was open desert.