Sweating the Metal

by Alex Duncan Frenchie

  Nobody could fly in theatre until they’d done their TQ, which basically meant flying with experienced members of the outgoing Flight. They knew the plot; the routes, procedures, the various Helicopter Landing Sites (HLSs). The TQ was the only opportunity we had to learn from the guys who knew how it all worked in practice. We also had to perform a number of both day and night dust landings in the desert.

  Dust is a real issue in Afghanistan. As well as blighting everybody’s life back at base, because it sticks to absolutely everything, it plays havoc with electronics and machinery. Actually, it’s the enemy of everything. It’s so incredibly fine – more like powder than sand. It’s pervasive, and its micro-fine size means it penetrates into places you wouldn’t believe. It plays hell with engines, so the Chinooks have Engine Air Particle Separators (EAPS) fitted in front of the air intakes. Huge suction pumps remove the sand before it can clog things up. The main issue for us is the dust clouds that are created by the immense downwash from the blades as we land. The cloud can start to build at around 80ft and quickly envelop the cab, giving the pilots up front zero visibility just at the time it’s most needed. It’s known as a brownout.

  I was delighted to learn that I’d be doing my TQ with Tourette’s who, after our gig in the Falkland Islands a few months before, had moved to ‘A’ Flight, 27 Squadron. We chatted amiably as we walked out to our aircraft, which sat glinting in the morning sun. Already the mercury was pushing towards 40°C – just another day in Afghanistan.

  We walked up the ramp to our cab. I said hello to Craig Fairbrother and Graham ‘Jonah’ Jones, two seasoned crewmen who comprised the rest of the crew for the day’s sortie. Aaron and I took our seats in the cockpit – unusually, Aaron, as captain, was flying from the left, so I took my seat on the right. The controls are replicated equally on both sides of the cockpit so the aircraft can be flown from either seat, although most of the navigation and self-defence controls are on the left. The cockpit is divided by a central console that extends from the control panel and along the floor, in much the same way as the transmission tunnel divides the front seats in a car. On the control panel are the engine instruments – temperature, pressure, fuel etc. On the floor console are all the radio, navigation and defence suite controls.

  We were helmeted and strapped in, so all conversation went via the intercom. Aaron called the tower for clearance to start.

  ‘Kandahar Ground, Splinter Two Five, request start.’

  ‘Splinter Two Five you are cleared to start Mike Ramp. Wind two-two-zero at five knots.’

  The EAPS means that start-up procedure is slightly different. I hear a whoosh of air through the intercom when I select the EAPS No.1 – that tells me that it’s working so I can then start the engine. Normal start; I engage the rotors. Then select No.2 EAPS on and repeat the process. All good so far. I advance the throttle on the number one engine and then do the same on the number two. Tourette’s does the arming-up check and engages the Defensive Aids Suite.

  The Chinook is well equipped with defensive aids, which include a Radar Warning Receiver, an Ultraviolet and Doppler Missile Approach Warning System, infrared jammers and chaff and flare dispensers, which can be manually or automatically fired. Then there’s the armament – two M134 six-barrelled Miniguns, one in each front side window, and the M60D machine-gun on the ramp. We’re live now, so the system should start throwing out chaff and flares to defeat any threats detected. Craig and Jonah down the back arm and ready the guns.

  ‘KAF Tower, Splinter Two Five. Holding at Mike Ramp, request taxi to Foxtrot.’

  ‘Splinter Two Five, cleared taxi to Foxtrot.’

  Foxtrot is a taxiway that’s parallel to KAF’s main runway 05/23, and it’s a departure point for all helicopters. We never use the runway. One, we don’t need to, and secondly, it’s just too busy. With around ten thousand movements a month, and aircraft of all types from fast jets to airliners and transports, KAF handles almost half as much traffic as Gatwick and that only handles airliners.

  I lift the collective with my left hand. Gently does it. The Chinook handles sublimely and needs only the merest hint of input. It’s like flying by thinking. I feel the cab straining as the rotors pull it upwards and then the wheels have only the merest contact with the ground. We’re airborne. I push forwards on the cyclic and the nose dips. I fly us forwards at little more than walking pace, then land on at Foxtrot.

  ‘KAF Tower, Splinter Two Five ready for departure, Sector Hotel Low.’

  It’s an unsecure radio so we use different letters randomly to represent whichever sector we want to depart from. This time, ‘Hotel’ means an easterly departure. Low means we’ll be departing at low level.

  ‘Splinter Two Five, Tower, clear take-off. Wind two-two-zero at four knots.’

  ‘Clear above and behind,’ says Craig.

  ‘Clear take-off, Splinter Two Five.’ Into the hover again and we’re away.

  ‘Two good engines, 65% torque, 100% NR maintained, CAP is clear, Ts and Ps are all looking good,’ says Aaron, running through the after-take-off checks.

  65% torque? That’s a product of the hot and high environment that defines Afghanistan. Bearing in mind that we’re empty, it’s the first take-off of the day and we’re carrying normal UK fuel weight, that torque figure means we will be unable to fly on a single engine should one fail.

  I make a left-hand turn maintaining low level and head for a wadi on the edge of the Red Desert. We departed at low level and ran out to the south-west from the runway. It’s a lovely flat run to get to the wadi and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, comes the Red Desert. It’s that sudden; a literal line in the sand. If we’re flying anywhere in Helmand then once we’re over that, away from the eyes and ears of any enemy, we’ll climb. It’s better because it’s a more comfortable ride and it’s cooler at height, both of which make for happier passengers and crew.

  ‘Okay Frenchie,’ says Tourette’s. ‘I want you to set yourself up for a dust landing in the wadi. It’s nice and dry so you should get a good dust cloud there.’

  ‘Okay Aaron, I’m going to set up for a basic one. It’s at least eighteen months since I did them on ops in Iraq, so I’m probably a little rusty.’

  ‘Aye, never worry. You’ll be grand.’

  I start my descent and enter ‘the gate’. I’m at 100ft and flying at 30kts and I know that having maintained that speed and height for a few seconds, Aaron will rebug the RadAlt to 40ft – that will give the crewman an audible alarm at 40ft so he can confirm our altitude by sight. I pick a landing marker through the Perspex floor bubble – a bush. The aim is to keep it beneath my right boot. I trim the aircraft to a six degree nose-up attitude and lower the lever for the descent. If the bush’s position through the windscreen rises, I’m too low; if it falls, I’m too high. I’ve put the aircraft in a six degree decelerative attitude, just as I was taught at Shawbury all those years ago, so the speed will start coming down. I let the aircraft do its thing; I don’t touch the speed. My job is to keep the ‘picture’ – the bush – steady.

  Aaron calls my height and speed: ‘100; 30: 75; 25: 50; 22.’ 50ft and 22kts. At this point, the crewman is leaning out of the side door immediately behind the cockpit so that he’s visual with the ground.

  ‘40; 16,’ Aaron says over the intercom, and simultaneously the RadAlt alarm sounds, confirming what I already know. ‘Cancel, continuing,’ I say, killing the alarm. Jonah starts calling my height and voicing the formation of the dust cloud:

  ‘30… 20… dust cloud forming… 15… at the ramp… 10, 8… centre… 6… at the door; with you…’

  I see the dust cloud enveloping the nose. The ground is obscured from view and I’m entirely reliant on the crewmen. It’s a difficult skill to master, but master it they do. And for us, as pilots, it’s all in the voice; its cadence says almost as much as the words and numbers. It is imperative that he gets it right because if he calls 1ft and I’m at 10ft, I’m going to cushion the aircraft to land with
a bit of run on – except that at 10ft, I’ll go into the hover instead. In the brownout, I’ll have no references, so if I drift, I could hit something and crash. The trust is absolute. I’m relying on him to be accurate; he’s got to have complete faith in me to get us down. It’s a symbiotic relationship.

  ‘3; 2…’ I gently, almost imperceptibly, arrest the collective to cushion the landing. ‘Four wheels on,’ Jonah calls. The rear wheels compress on their suspension as they touch solid ground. I push the cyclic forwards to get the front down and hear ‘Six wheels on.’ We’re down. I push the pedals to arrest our forward movement and we stop; exactly where I wanted us to be. In the back, the dust cloud billows up the ramp and through the cab, temporarily rendering visibility down to zero and coating everything in a fine layer of dust.

  ‘Good!’ says Aaron. ‘Nice one Frenchie. Fancy some pairs landings?’

  Nichol Benzie another mate on the flight, was doing TQ in another cab in the same area, so Aaron called him over the radio and set it up. You take it in turns to do the pairs landing, which is a lot more difficult because you want to stay close but not too close – two rotor spans is near enough. The technique is to follow the lead and watch for the second that he puts the cab in a nose-up attitude. That means he’s started his descent, and it’s important that you get down together because even if there’s the merest hint of lagging, you’re going to get his dust.

  Obviously we have drills to ensure that should either of us have to abort, the right-hand cab will go right or straight ahead and the left-hand one will go left or straight ahead. Whatever happens, the one thing you don’t want to do is cross. Not good at all.

  So that set the pattern for the next couple of hours. A few more dust landings, single, in pairs. Different variables; landing without markers. By the time we were done, the old muscle memory was back and it was all second nature, just the way it should be. Aaron suggested we do some theatre familiarisation and we headed off to Lashkar Gah and Gereshk so he could show me the HLSs and point out what markers to use to get my bearings on the approach. And later that night, I got to do the whole thing again; on NVGs.

  Job done. I was TQ’d and ready for whatever lay ahead.

  8

  THE GOLDEN HOUR

  The morning after my TQ, Craig Wilson and I caught a Hercules down to Camp Bastion to join Nichol Benzie on the IRT. While I’d be flying on the IRT with Nichol, Craig – an experienced squadron pilot – was rostered on to the HRF.

  It’s a great aircraft, the Herc; similar to a Chinook in many ways. You board from a ramp at the rear and the inside can be configured in a host of different ways depending on if it’s carrying pax, cargo or a mix of the two. For the shuttle down to Bastion, it was configured for pax, although the accommodation is about as spartan as it gets. Seats are in four rows – one on each side of the fuselage with a double row running lengthways along the middle, with the seats facing out. Half empty it’s manageable, but full up, the knees of passengers on the central seats touch those of the passengers facing them. Add in kit, weapons, body armour and helmets and it’s almost impossible to get anywhere near a comfortable position – although being good at Twister would be a distinct advantage.

  All the aircraft’s cables, wires and pipes are exposed along the inside of the fuselage and the walls are bare metal. As on the Chinook, the designers have cleverly engineered the aircraft to route the bulk of the noise from its four Allison AE 2100D3 turboprops to the cabin rather than the outside. At least, that’s how it seems. The crewmen issue ear plugs to all pax as they board, so it’s at least bearable.

  It’s a short flight from KAF to Camp Bastion, the main forward base for all British Forces in Helmand Province, and Nichol meets us as we disembark from the Herc with our kit. We walk to a battered Land Rover and climb aboard for the short drive to the JHF (A) tent, which is the forward HQ for the IRT/HRF and the Apache Force, which is permanently based here.

  Camp Bastion is like a small town in the middle of the flat, featureless, dusty lunar landscape that is this corner of Helmand Province. It’s the perfect location for the 2,000 British troops who live and work here – at the sharp end, but removed from it. A perfect paradox.

  The living conditions are more basic than at KAF. ISO freight containers are the de facto choice for storage, and air-conditioned tents are used for all the accommodation – for eating, sleeping, working and downtime. Hesco Bastion blast walls are everywhere. The name Hesco comes from the company that makes them – collapsible wire mesh containers with a heavy-duty fabric liner that are used as semi-permanent barriers against blast and small arms fire.

  I knew a little about Helmand Province and the Taliban from some of the guys who had been out here earlier on Prelim Ops. Plus I’d done a bit of reading up on the area. Eastwards, the Helmand River creates a ribbon of green through arid desolation. Known colloquially as the Green Zone, it’s where the majority of the population in Helmand live. Being where the people and the poppies are, it’s also where the battle for hearts and minds must be won. The Taliban revival is at its strongest here: poppies are the most widely cultivated crop in Helmand Province, and it’s the money from the drugs trade that finances the Taliban resurgence, buys their weapons and allows them to fight. Ultimately, it is why British Forces are here; not to fight the Taliban per se, but to create enough stability for development to take place.

  Helmand Province consists of some fourteen districts, including Nad Ali, Gereshk, Sangin, Musa Qala, Naw Zad and Kajaki, with the provincial capital at Lashkar Gah a short hop from Camp Bastion. The governors for each district live in the District Centres or DCs, and it’s in the DCs that the majority of British troops in Helmand are based, either in Platoon Houses, or Forward Operating Bases (FOBs). You can’t ensure the security of an area and engage with the local population by hiding inside huge defensive garrisons like Bastion, or even the DCs, so the troops mount regular patrols so that they can build relationships with the local elders. Boots on the ground mean that it is harder for the Taliban to exert control.

  It doesn’t stop them trying though, and it’s led to a pretty tough existence for a lot of our troops, who are being shot at and mortared on an almost daily basis while living in spartan conditions. A lot of the Platoon Houses and FOBs are little more than compounds without electricity or water.

  We arrive at the IRT tent and Nichol follows us in as we dump our stuff.

  Our role in theatre is to support the guys on the ground at the FOBs and Platoon Houses, principally through taskings such as those carried out by the task line at KAF – resupplies, moving troops, pax and freight from one place to another.

  The IRT (Incident Response Team) was a UK military initiative born under the aegis of the UN Protection Force in Bosnia in the early 1990s. Its role then was to deliver engineers, medics and support to any situation where they were needed. The role eventually evolved to mimic that of HEMS London, which was the first civilian air ambulance in the UK to ‘transport the hospital to the patient’, rather than simply taking the patient to hospital.

  That concept delivered a senior doctor and paramedic to the scene of major traumas – traffic collisions, shootings, stabbings – where they were able to perform life-saving surgical and medical interventions, stabilising patients for transfer to major trauma centres. It’s well established that the victim’s chances of survival increase markedly if they receive care within a short period of time after a severe injury – the so-called ‘Golden Hour’ of trauma medicine.

  The Chinook is the helicopter of choice for the IRT in Afghanistan due to its capacity to transport people and kit and get them where they are most needed – fast. The IRT team includes the MERT (Medical Emergency Response Team), which consists of up to four paramedics or senior nurses, usually led by a consultant anaesthetist or surgeon. They can be supplemented by two or three members of the resident RAF Fire and Rescue team, equipped with cutting equipment and other heavy-duty hydraulic gear – useful if troops are trappe
d inside the wreckage of vehicles following IED strikes. Finally, on every flight the IRT carries an element of force protection – soldiers from 3 Para whose job is to deploy as soon as the cab is on the ground and protect the aircraft and the medics as they work to get the casualty on board. The IRT is not an air ambulance; it’s a flying, fighting ER.

  It’s a tough environment for the medics to work in – the back of a Chinook in the skies over Afghanistan has to be the most traumatic operating theatre in the world. It’s cramped; it’s dark; it’s hot and noisy. Also, it’s not the most stable of platforms, particularly if we’re flying tactically. Then there’s the prospect of turbulence, and the buffeting of the wind through the side doors and the open rear of the cab. All this, and then the threat from Taliban fighters on the ground firing small arms, heavy machine-guns and RPG rounds at the cab. At 99ft long, it represents a big and potentially valuable target to the Taliban, who will stop at nothing to bring one down; they’re a veritable bull’s-eye in the sky.

  There’s a disconnect on board the Chinooks between us, in the Plexiglass-walled goldfish bowls that serve as the cockpit, and our crewmen in the back of the aircraft. We need to see in front, above, around and below and you can’t armour the glass – it’s too heavy. The fuselage which serves as home to the loadmasters, though, is Kevlar-walled and floored, giving them and their cargo – be it soldiers, medics or kit – a degree of protection. And they need it; they’re there to look after the safety of the passengers and the aircraft.

  If they’re not manning the guns, the crewmen usually assist the medics in trying to stabilise badly wounded casualties. Often they’ll be confronted with a horrific collage of powdery dust, bodies, blood, appalling injuries and piercing screams. Their work environment is loud, dusty, hot, cramped and chaotic. By contrast, we’re screened off by a canvas curtain, cocooned in our glass-encased cockpit, connected to the maelstrom behind us only via the audio in our headphones. Amid this disorder, it’s our job to remain calm and composed, wringing clarity from the confusion so that we can get the cab and everyone in it back to the relative sanctuary of Camp Bastion where the casualties can be attended to by a full surgical team at Nightingale, the ten-million-pound state-of-the-art medical facility with its own HLS (helicopter landing site).