The Boss and I kept up a constant dialogue as we worked. Our rotor blades thundered menacingly above the eight man arming team. Three … two … one … ten minutes to lift.
‘Ugly Five One on one.’ I flicked to the second radio. ‘On two.’ Flicked to the third. ‘On three.’ Flicked to the last, our data radio, and sent our digital position.
Billy replied, ‘Ugly Five Zero on one … on two … on three.’ An icon appeared on the MPD showing the position of his Apache.
‘Good Data. Ready.’ All four radios and data were working.
Billy replied with a ‘click-click’ over the radio, shorthand for affirmative.
Pushing the APU button again switched it off. ‘APU off; pins, cords and chocks please, Simon.’
His team prepared the aircraft for moving and I opened my door to receive the arming pin. The flares and weapons were now armed and we were ready to go.
‘Have a good trip, sirs.’ Simon disconnected from the right wing and his team moved to the missile and rocket racks. For the first time since we’d arrived, we owned the Apache.
‘Your lead, Billy.’
Another double click.
Two minutes and thirty seconds to takeoff.
My left hand moved down the collective to the flying grip. Looking straight ahead as my right eye focused on the flight symbology projected into the monocle, I gave the flying grip a single twist to the right, removing the collective’s friction lock. The torque – the measurement of engine power output in helicopter flight – indicated 21 per cent. That was the norm while stationary on the ground, rotor blades flat – the minimum angle of pitch.
My feet pressed on the very top of both directional foot pedals at the same time until I heard a light thud.
‘Parking brake off? Tail wheel locked?’
The final two questions on the Boss’s checklist. I did my visual check. ‘The parking brake is off, the handle is in, tail wheel is locked and the light is out.’
My right eye focused on the torque and my left watched Billy and Carl’s aircraft pull out of the loading bay beside us and taxi away. My left hand was poised to pull up the collective, my right wrapped firmly around the cyclic, ready to push forward.
Thirty seconds to takeoff.
With fifty metres between us and Billy, I lifted the collective and depressed my left pedal to increase power to the tail rotor and balance us up against the increased force of the turning rotor blades. Left unchecked, the main blades would try to turn our nose to the right, leaning the Apache dangerously over to one side. The torque climbed to 35 per cent.
With a gentle push of the cyclic control stick away from my body the main blades tipped and pulled the machine slowly forward. A touch on the toe brakes at the top of the pedals to test the brakes then we taxied onto our miniature runway for a running takeoff.
Heat and altitude both reduced the amount of power a helicopter engine could generate. Camp Bastion was long on both. We could lift vertically, but it was a major struggle if we carried a full load of ammunition and fuel. Taking a run at it gave us translational lift, the kind fixed-wing aircraft used.
Fifteen seconds to takeoff.
I pointed our nose straight down the runway, with Billy and Carl still fifty metres ahead of us, and pulled a little more pitch. The machine picked up pace nicely. Once the torque hit 65 per cent, I pushed the trim button to hold the collective and cyclic in place. It was sufficient power to get us up. The speed symbol in my right eye hit twenty knots and continued to climb.
Six seconds to takeoff.
Eighty metres down the runway, the tail wheel lifted off it. At thirty-five knots she wanted to fly, but I held her down with a tiny reduction of power and a shift of the cyclic. It wasn’t time yet.
Two seconds to takeoff.
I was watching Carl’s disc intently … Now … It tipped forward and I raised the collective again and the main wheels left the ground. We lifted in perfect unison. Good. I was pleased I’d got it spot on. If you set the right tone at the start of a mission you’d remain accurate throughout.
‘Your ASE, Boss.’
The Boss armed the aircraft’s Aircraft Survival Equipment (ASE) to protect us against SAMs.
‘Okay, countermeasures set; ASE is on semi-automatic.’
‘Zero Charlie this is Ugly Five Zero and Ugly Five One. Wheels off at your location as fragged, over.’
‘Zero Charlie, Roger. Out.’
I pulled up the navigation page on the left hand MPD and selected the pre-planned route heading for Sangin, the first stop on our tour. A glance through the monocle confirmed: ‘Eighteen minutes to arrival.’
We were seventy-five feet above the desert floor and heading north-east, the camp’s perimeter fence two hundred metres behind us. A quick trim with the right thumb and we accelerated to a cruising speed of 120 knots. The Boss selected automatic on the ASE. The Apache would, we hoped, keep us safe from surface-to-air missiles. SAMs were the greatest threat to us at the heights we operated.
Billy and Carl were a safe distance in front of us to avoid collision. Billy came on the radio.
‘Ugly Five One, this is Ugly Five Zero. High-high, five-five and six-zero.’
‘High-high, five-five, six-zero copied.’
Billy wanted us to climb high. Him to 5,500 feet and us to 6,000 feet – always a small difference in height too, for safety. The Boss glanced up through the canopy’s bulletproof window.
‘Clear above.’
‘Copied. Climbing.’
I pulled back on the cyclic and hard on the collective while depressing my left pedal. We lost our stomachs and soared.
Despite its gargantuan combat weight, the Apache’s mighty Rolls Royce engines made it just as agile and manoeuvrable as any chopper the army had ever had. Turning at up to 38,300 rpm, they pumped out an incredible 2,240 shaft horse power – making the Apache twenty-two times more powerful than a Porsche 911.
The Apache could climb in excess of 5,000 feet a minute, including a one-off, ninety-degree, nose-up vertical climb of 1,000 feet. And it could do a 360-degree loop, barrel roll or a wing over nose dive – every stunt manoeuvre in the book. Not moves I’ve ever carried out, of course; heaven forbid – especially with Sky Cop as my wingman.
Sixty seconds or so later, we were at Billy’s nominated cruising altitude. It was a terrific feeling to be up there again, over that menacingly beautiful landscape, and in that extraordinary machine. Ten minutes into the flight, I felt as confident at the controls as I had on the day I left in August. I was right back in the zone again.
Despite the years of training, it had still taken me a good six weeks of hard fighting on the first tour before I really felt the exhilaration of being at one with the machine.
When you drive a new car, you’re slow and cautious. You need to think about every action, from where the indicators are to how far you are from the gatepost. After you’ve driven it for a while, you don’t have to think; you just end up at home without having thought of driving once.
It was the same with the Apache, but on a grander scale. Halfway through the first tour, whatever I wanted to do in the aircraft, I did. From that moment onwards I didn’t need to think how to fly and shoot because my fingers, arms and legs were already working in perfect harmony with my mind. I was no longer strapped to the Apache; the Apache was strapped to me.
Almost all of the pilots were there by the end of the tour. But none of that meant that we had lost respect for the daunting reality of having so much firepower at our finger tips. Not