We were now in complete brown-out conditions. It looked like the windows had been the target of a dirty protest.
‘Takeoff 1335 hours,’ Billy said.
SUNDAY, 4 JUNE 2006
1355 hours local
‘Symbology…symbology…symbology…’ I kept repeating it to myself, over and over again, like a tribal mantra to appease the helicopter god.
The heading tape was stationary in my right eye. We weren’t turning or spinning. The velocity vector was centred. We weren’t drifting into Taff’s ammo.
The torque nudged past 96 per cent. I checked our height reading: thirty feet-just enough to be clear of obstacles. Our big problem was that we weren’t climbing any higher.
My arse was telling my brain I was drifting right, towards Taff’s fireworks store, but the symbology was perfect.
Trust the symbology
…
‘You happy with me transitioning out of this on symbology, Billy? I have no external references, but we’re clear of obstacles and I have her under control.’
Billy came back cautiously: ‘Just don’t over-torque it.’
That was what I wanted to hear. ‘Going for it.’
With no outside references at all, the Apache was being flown solely by the symbology beamed into my right eye. With a gentle
push forward and a trim, the velocity vector indicated that we were drifting forwards and not sideways-so far, so good.
Symbology…symbology…symbology…
Suddenly the radar altimeter began to count down. I couldn’t see the desert floor but I knew we were heading towards it. I topped up the power with the collective until we were at maximum torque. I had nothing left to pull and we were still dropping.
The powerful, precision-built Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322 engines were coping easily, but the torque they generated would rip the Apache apart if I demanded more of them.
Billy called out height and speed. ‘Twenty-five feet, four knots…twenty-three feet, five knots…twenty-one feet, eight knots…Watch your torque, Ed.’
‘I am.’
Billy must have been unnerved as we got dangerously close to over-torquing the aircraft. We should have been getting some translational lift by now to stop the descent and reduce the power required to fly.
‘Nineteen feet, still eight knots, Ed.’
‘Come on, come on-fly!’
‘Twelve feet, nine knots.’
We were now below the height of the berm that had been 100 metres in front of us.
The chant continued in my head:
Please fly…symbology…symbology…symbology…please fly…please…
There was a small waver in the tail and I knew we were passing translational lift. I had no idea how far from the berm we were. All I knew was we were forward of our takeoff point by some considerable distance.
Billy called, ‘Eleven feet, eleven knots.’
The torque dropped off 5 per cent as the blades caught the cleaner airflow in front of us.
‘Got it, Billy. She’s flying.’
As I topped up the torque back to maximum, Billy called, ‘Fifteen feet, fifteen knots…sixteen feet, eighteen knots…nineteen feet, twenty-two knots…’
With the most gentle of corrections aft on the cyclic, the speed was maintained and the aircraft started to climb.
Just as Billy finished saying, ‘Twenty-nine feet, twenty-eight knots’, we popped out of the front of the dust cloud into a deep azure sky.
‘Well done, Ed. Have you got them? I’m blind.’
‘Not yet…yes, got them-right one o’clock, 250 metres, same level.’
‘Visual.’
‘Your ASE, Billy,’ I prompted.
A touch of the right thumb set the trims in place then I flicked the radio button. ‘Saxon Ops, this is Wildman Five One. Five Zero and Five One wheels off your location now, over.’
‘Saxon Ops, roger, out.’
Ops now knew exactly what time we’d taken off; they could predict what time we might need replacing if we got into a fight, and more importantly what time to start overdue proceedings if we hadn’t called them or landed when we reached our endurance point.
Billy set up the Aircraft Survival Equipment so we were protected against surface-to-air missiles.
‘Okay, Ed, CMDS armed.’
The ASE CMDS indicator lamp shone bright yellow.
‘Armed in the rear,’ I replied. ‘Bring on the SAMS.’
The Apache’s Counter Measures Dispensing System was now armed, its chaff and flares ready to frustrate an incoming missile.
‘CMDS set to semi-automatic, your button pushes,’ Billy said.
‘My button pushes, ignoring everything from the camp, buddy.’
If a missile was launched against us, Bitchin’ Betty would be straight on the case, telling me what it was and where it was coming from. Her voice had supposedly been chosen for its combination of firmness and reassurance, but she sounded to us like a cross between a dominatrix and a vindictive ex-wife.
In this mode, my already-busy right thumb repositioned itself over the recessed button to punch off flares if the Bitch sparked up. I’d elected to ignore the camp because each flare burnt at in excess of 1,200°C, to have her drop a fistful onto a collection of tents and fuel stores wouldn’t have won us any popularity contests. I also didn’t want to use up valuable kit I might need later.
We were now seventy-five feet above the desert floor, in trail with the Apache in front and the perimeter fence of Camp Bastion 200 metres behind and to our right.
‘CMDS now set to automatic, Ed.’
‘CMDS auto-thanks, buddy.’
A quick trim with the right thumb and we were accelerating to 120 knots, offset slightly to the right and about 500 metres behind Wildman Five Zero. If a missile came at us now, the Bitch would both alert me and pump out flares. With a bit of luck and no misfires, the greater heat source would lure it into exploding harmlessly once it had passed through the flare, leaving me free to spin the beast on her heels and take out the foolish man with the launcher on his shoulder.
I accessed the navigation page with three button pushes on my left MPD, then route information and route review. It was set up for Now Zad and my monocle display told me that-at this speed-we had eighteen minutes to arrival.
Nick called Pat to let him know.
Pat was quick to respond that he was breaking off in a few minutes because they were both fuel critical.
A picture paints a thousands words, so a Relief In Place should be conducted over the battleground and include sufficient time for every significant factor of the battle to be described and understood by the replacement crews. Most important of all was to exactly identify the locations of all friendly forces. As one pair of Apaches ceased firing, the relieving pair should be taking over the baton and engaging; a seamless transition maintained the tempo of the battle.
No chance of that now. We just had to get to Now Zad as soon as we possibly could.
Jon transmitted: ‘Wildman Five One, this is Wildman Five Zero, high-high, five-five, and six-zero.’
‘High-high, five-five, six-zero,’ I replied.
The lead aircraft wanted us to climb to 6,000 feet. We should be okay at this height as the Chinooks had returned to base, and having them 500 feet below us should eliminate the risk of air-to-air collisions if we lost a visual lock on each other during a fight.
Billy glanced up from punching grids into the computer. ‘Clear above.’
I hit a button on my left MPD and brought up the weapons page, then selected the pilot’s helmet sight as my acquisition source. I could now command the Longbow Fire Control Radar to search for targets wherever I turned my head.
As we left the general flying environment and entered the battle phase, my left hand moved to the upper part of the collective, the mission grip.
My left thumb selected the FCR as my chosen sensor then switched it into radar mapping mode. The Apache began to climb. I looked to the right and pulled down on a rocker switch.
Eight feet above and four feet behind my head, the Longbow radar suddenly kicked into life. The large, Edam cheese-shaped dome began to sweep back and forth, scanning the ground along
the line I was looking, searching for anything unnatural in shape up to eight kilometres away. If it detected any object that was trying to hide or didn’t match the terrain it would classify it, prioritise it, and display it on my MPD and in my eye.
The unusual objects I was interested in were mopeds, cars and trucks.
The average local owned a donkey and, if they were lucky, a tractor. If he owned a car it would be a very old sedan-and he’d have been off his rocker to attempt a crossing.
There weren’t that many all-terrain vehicles in this neck of the woods. To own a 4x4 or a good pick-up required money, of which only drug tsars and the Taliban weren’t short.
A horizontal ticker tape appeared next to my torque reading, warning me I was reaching an engine limitation. I reduced collective power a tad to avoid buggering up the engines before I got a chance to investigate.
I adjusted the collective with my left hand to ensure I didn’t blow up an engine while my right pulled the cyclic towards my groin to initiate a steeper climb. I could see Jon doing the same about 1,500 metres away. The airspeed was washing off; as it passed sixty knots I pulled the cyclic to the left. The Apache banked and changed direction.
Billy didn’t look up. The front seater’s primary job was to fight the aircraft. It was my job to defend it. It was no use being able to kill the enemy if we got shot down in the process.
If there was a gunner out there ready to shoot, he’d be having problems now. It may have been sixteen and a half years ago but Captain Mainwaring’s words of wisdom echoed in my mind. To have any chance of hitting us, he needed to aim in front of the aircraft. If his range was correct and he estimated that his shells would take four seconds to reach us, he needed to be able to predict where we were going to be. Reducing my speed just after he fired
should mean they’d pass in front of us. Climbing faster just after he fired should mean them passing below.
I’d increased the rate of ascent but slowed the Apache down. I couldn’t keep slowing without becoming an easier target. He’d only have to lead me fractionally to score a direct hit. The minute I flew a constant speed, rate of climb or in the same direction, we were fucked.
I pushed forward on the stick and eased it to the right. The Apache rolled and accelerated. As the speed increased the rate of ascent decreased, but we were still climbing nicely. The distance between me and any potential gunner should be changing too, sparing me Billy’s wrath as we tumbled to an almost certain conclusion with full military honours.
I swung my head rapidly from left to right, searching for gunners and SAM operators and suspicious vehicles; anyone or anything that might take a shot at us.
I was also keeping my distance from Jon. Too close together and a missile would be spoilt for choice. The Bitch would spring into action, but if the missile was fitted with a proximity fuse, it didn’t even need to hit us; it would explode when it got within its prescribed distance and blow shrapnel into our airframe, blades and cockpits.
As it was, the SAM operator would be able to target only one of us. The other would be able to engage and kill him before he loosed off any more missiles.
That was the theory, anyway.
Though the Apache had a particularly low heat signature and was thus very hard to lock-on, the threat of a SAMbush-two or more operators working together-was always on my mind when we climbed or descended through their threat band.
We levelled off at 6,000 feet. I pulled in what remaining power we had until the Power Margin Indicator (PMI) warned me that I was within 10 per cent of an engine limit.
I selected the engine page on my MPD. The Number One engine on the port side was eating vigorously into its sixty-minute timer at this torque setting and Number Two on the starboard side was taking regular nibbles. Neither could be reset until we landed. Once I’d used up all sixty minutes, that power setting would not be accessible again without damaging the engines.
Did I keep the speed on and have nothing left for later? The decision was fairly straightforward on this sortie; the transit time to Now Zad was now fourteen minutes. Once there, I’d be slowing down and using less than half of what the engines could produce. For the return journey I would be a lot lighter-most of the fuel would have been burnt off-so as long as I saved twenty of my sixty-minute timers I could travel back at max chat. If they needed us somewhere else at short notice, I’d have to think again…
Fuck it. It was a no-brainer. We were going to Now Zad because our lads were being badly shot up. Nothing else in Helmand was going to be a higher priority. Not in the next few hours, anyway.
Watching the engine page like a hawk, I called, ‘Head’s in.’
Billy acknowledged. ‘My head’s out.’
Last thing we wanted was both of us looking in at the same time; that was how mid-air collisions and smacks into terra firma were triggered.
I pulled through gradually until the five-minute timers kicked off.
We couldn’t eat into these without fear of retribution. If we lost an engine, we’d need the five-minute margin to touch down and save the good engine for another day. To use it up now could mean trashing the thing on landing. Not something I fancied explaining to the brass, even in an emergency.
I backed off a fraction on the collective. I was now coaxing this puppy for all it could give without going into the red.
The Apache was cruising at 132 knots fully laden with munitions and fuel at 6,000 feet when Billy called, ‘Twelve minutes to run.’
North of Camp Bastion lay a huge expanse of nothingness we called the GAFA. The Great Afghan Fuck All was an ancient, rocky sea bed with a thick covering of salty sand as fine as talcum powder, saturated by the rains the last time there had been a wet season several years ago and now set solid. It was as flat as a pancake until it approached Now Zad, where the mountains began.
Nothing grew in this harsh terrain save the odd bush that had miraculously survived floods, sandstorms and salt. There was no shelter from the elements, no reason to live here even if you could. Only the nomads set up their temporary shelters here in the winter to feed the goats on the meagre green stubby bushes that popped up when the rains came. But now, in the height of summer, even the masters of survival found this place inhospitable.