Apache Dawn: Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned - Hardcover

Lewis, Damien

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312593015 ISBN 13: 9780312593018

Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2009

Synopsis

The Apache attack helicopter is one of the world’s most awe - some weapons systems. Deployed for the first time in Afghanistan, it has already passed into legend. The only thing more incre - dible than the Apache itself are the pilots that fly her. For the first time, Apache Dawn tells their story—and their baptism of fire in the unforgiving battle of Helmand Province.

Their call-sign was “Ugly”—and there was no better word for the grueling 100-day deployment they endured. Day after day, four of England’s Army Air Corps’ finest pilots flew right into the heart of battle, testing their aircraft to the very limit. Apache Dawn takes the reader with them on a series of unrelenting and brutally intense combat missions, from daring, edge-ofthe- seat rescues to dramatic close-air support in the white heat of battle.

Bestselling author Damien Lewis has been given unprece - dented access to these heroic aircrews and to the men on the ground whose lives they saved. It is an astounding story of bravery, skill and resilience in the face of unbelievable odds. And it is the story of the Apache itself—the ultimate fighting machine.

About this title

About the Author

DAMIEN LEWIS has spent twenty years reporting from war zones around the world and is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction. His books have been nominated for the Crime Writers Golden Dagger Award and the Charles Whiting Award for Literature. He lives in England.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1: Kush Dragon

15 January 2007, Salisbury Plain, Wiltshire

As the storm of rotor-blown dust settled over Jugroom Fort and a pall of ink-grey smoke drifted into the steel blue of the winter sky, the enemy emerged to gather up their wounded and count their dead. It was barely 1145 hours Afghanistan time, 0630 hours back in the UK, where, on an airfield on Salisbury Plain, a second Apache aircrew stirred.

It was day one of Exercise Kush Dragon, and the four pilots of flight Ugly were about to learn the tough lessons of that morning’s actions at Jugroom Fort. The lithe forms of eight Apache attack helicopters of 662 Squadron, Army Air Corps (AAC), squatted on the runway at Netheravon Airfield, barely visible in the pre-dawn murk, with their rotors sagging earthwards.

Netheravon sits on the eastern border of Salisbury Plain, the largest military range and training area in the UK. Over ninety-four thousand acres of heath and forest provide ground troops and airborne forces with a massive expanse upon which to undertake exercises. Every acre would be needed for Kush Dragon, a brigade-level rehearsal for the forthcoming deployment to Afghanistan.

Along with the Apaches of 662 Squadron, key elements of 12th Mechanised Brigade (12 Mech) had assembled on Salisbury Plain that morning. Come May, the Brigade would be headed for Afghanistan to relieve the battle-fatigued Royal Marines, and the Apache aircrews of 664 and 656 Squadron. After the bitter Afghan winter the enemy would be gearing up for a spring offensive, and the coming May–August deployment was expected to be a far from quiet one.

Kush Dragon was the culmination of months of preparation, and there was a buzz of excitement among the drab green Army vehicles sheathed in camouflage netting, the soldiers billeted under canvas and the Apache aircrew quartered at Netheravon. Prior to setting foot in the war-torn badlands of Helmand, this was the nearest these men would get to testing their mettle, and that of their complex military machines, in battle.

Over the coming week, ground forces of the Royal Anglians (The Vikings), the Worcesters and Foresters, and armoured units of the Light Dragoons would rehearse full-on battle scenarios among the rolling hills of Salisbury Plain. They would pit themselves against an enemy played by TA soldiers wearing typical Taliban dress and using the type of hit-and-run tactics so common in the Afghan deserts and mountains.

 

The war in Afghanistan traces its roots back to the 9/11 terror attacks on America. Terrorists used hijacked airliners to target the Twin Towers and the Pentagon; the driving force behind those attacks was identified as a shadowy organisation based in Afghanistan. For years, Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network had been sheltered and nurtured by the Taliban, who provided a safe haven from which to plan, and prosecute, their attacks.

In the months following 9/11, Operation Enduring Freedom had been launched, a coalition war to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban – and al-Qaeda with it. Since then, the Taliban had been routed and a democratic government voted into power in Afghanistan. Yet the Taliban’s malignant force had endured and a string of al-Qaeda terror attacks had followed in Indonesia, Spain and – in July 2005 – London.

The ongoing war in southern Afghanistan was to drive the Taliban out of their principal refuge, Helmand Province. British forces spearheaded the Helmand campaign as part of a NATO-led coalition that worked to bring peace and security across the wider region. Elsewhere US troops concentrated on hunting down al-Qaeda. Exercise Kush Dragon was but one piece in a larger jigsaw of a coalition of nations at war.

 

On Salisbury Plain that morning, Lynx and Chinook helicopters were preparing to deliver airmobile troops into battle, while Apache and Harrier ground attack aircraft pounded the ‘enemy’ from the air. At Larkhill and Westdown live firing ranges, ground forces would contribute barrages of 81mm mortars and 105mm shells – adding to the nine million large-calibre rounds fired on the Plain since its 1897 inception as a military range.

With Kush Dragon continuing day and night for six days, it promised to be a noisy week for the inhabitants of the villages scattered around the Plain. This was a prospect the local populace seemed to greet with remarkable cheer. Among notices regarding church cleaning and flower arranging rotas, the Chitterne Parish Newsletter contained a small announcement entitled ‘Up on the Plain’.

This gave daily schedules for Kush Dragon, including parachuting, aircraft trials, fast jet activity, live firing and helicopter night flying. Otherwise, the newsletter concluded of Kush Dragon, ‘it should cause little disturbance’.

As Captain Barry ‘Baz’ Hunter headed for his 7.30 a.m. briefing on day one of Kush Dragon, he passed by the ground crews readying the Apache attack helicopters for action. He’d spent many a year doing the same job himself. It is a tradition of the Army Air Corps (‘the Corps’) that any soldier, regardless of rank, can aspire to be a Corps pilot, the elite of whom undoubtedly fly the Apaches.

Baz Hunter was a typical Corps recruit. He’d left school at sixteen with only the barest of qualifications and spent a short period working in a factory. Joining the Army was his route out of that humdrum existence. Accepted into a Junior Leaders regiment, he had raised merry hell and spent more time in the gaol than out of it. At first, there were doubts that he would make the grade as an adult soldier.

‘The gaol had been my second home. Then I got into the Corps and quickly began to grow up and calm down. While I was still a ground crewman, this guy took me on a flight up to Leeds. By the time we landed I knew that I wanted to be a pilot. But when I went for selection I was told I was too fat, plus I failed my maths test.

‘The interviewing officer told me that if I lost the weight, then they’d put me onto a crewman’s course – the first step to becoming a pilot. After three months of living on tomatoes and grapefruit juice, I failed maths again but was thin enough to scrape in, and they said they would take me “on risk”. I ended up as an air observer in Gazelles, doing navigation, and then I became a TOW missile operator on the Lynx. Joining the Army was a decision I would never regret.’

Some thirty years later, Baz was the Regimental Qualified Helicopter Instructor for 3 Regiment, Army Air Corps, and one of the most experienced Apache pilots in the Corps.

As he walked past the main hangar at Netheravon, Baz called out a greeting to the ground crews, hailing those he knew by nickname. Formalities are dispensed with wherever possible, in order to forge the closeness between ground crew and aircrew that is the backbone of the Corps.

He approached the Ops Room and fell into step alongside Steve James, one of his closest mates in the Corps. Steve was a Warrant Officer, and he and Baz had flown together in many theatres of war. Steve was also scheduled to be Baz’s wingman on the coming Afghan posting.

The eight Apaches of 662 Squadron would be deployed to Afghanistan as four flights of two aircraft. Baz would pilot one Apache; Steve the sister aircraft, and that would make up one flight, whose call-sign would be Ugly.

Baz liked to think that their flight had been named after Steve, who, with his squat, bulky form and receding hairline, was certainly no oil painting. A famously light sleeper, Steve looked pasty-faced and knackered whether on active operations or not, with dark panda rings around his eyes. This morning was no exception, and Steve was hardly the archetypal image of what a top-gun Apache pilot was supposed to look like.

Like Baz, Steve was a northerner and a ‘ranker’ – someone who had come up from the junior ranks. He’d joined the Army after doing passably at school, but getting in to ‘more than a bit of trouble.’ For a while he’d tried to handle working in an office, before realising there had to be more to life than that.

He’d decided to try the Army, with the aim of becoming a tank driver. But, two months into his training, he’d seen the Corps’s Blue Eagles display team flying Lynx and Gazelle helicopters during an air day. At that very moment he’d realised that this was his dream job.

Now, some twenty years later, Steve was an ace shot on the Apache and the Gunnery Instructor on 662 Squadron. Word was that he’d be applying for his officer commission any day soon. He was an excellent pilot, having seen action in many of the same theatres as Baz, and often flying alongside his senior Army Air Corps pilot buddy.

‘You’ve got guys from council estates who left school with no qualifications now flying Apaches,’ remarks Steve. ‘And that’s exactly how it should be. The Army is better than society in that it doesn’t write people off – it gives them every chance and allows their qualities to shine. It lends a hand to those who fell foul of the school system, and equally takes graduates from Eton and Cambridge. How many of those guys who went off the rails at school ever thought they’d get a chance to try to be an Apache pilot – let alone achieve it?’

Steve was a self-effacing kind of bloke, with a quiet, grey-man persona. But this belied his innate courage, and the fact that he had a razor-edged sense of humour. He had been awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Bravery, having single-handedly rescued two aircrew from a burning Lynx that had crashed in the Omani desert.

‘The Lynx had taken off, didn’t pull up properly and hit the deck hard. It rolled over and ended up under my aircraft in flames. I climbed up the Lynx that was now lying on its side, jumped down and pulled the two guys out. Dunno...

Edition details

• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0312593015
• ISBN 13: 9780312593018
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304