Posted on 01/15/2005 3:04:59 PM PST by Thebaddog
TAJI, Iraq - (KRT) - The Black Hawk helicopter flew low and fast over the bright lights north of Baghdad, then suddenly the lights were gone. In the darkened cockpit, the two pilots could make out an expanse of date palms through their night-vision goggles.
"Two-point-five kilometers to LZ. Tell him to start the buzz saw," said 28-year-old Capt. Jeremy Loeb, of Hamburg, Pa.
In a clearing 50 feet below, an infantry soldier began twirling a chemical light - mimicking a glowing circular saw - to signal his unit's position to the helicopter.
Within seconds, the 10-ton airship hit the ground with a dull thud. Twelve soldiers who'd been huddling in the darkness sprinted toward it and climbed in one by one. Three minutes later, the Black Hawk took off with an enormous whoosh of dust and soared away, engines whining, giant rotors slapping the air. One of the soldiers, having walked and slept on the cold ground for two days in a hunt for insurgents, let out a whoop of joy.
"This is what it's all about - picking up cold, tired soldiers and bringing them back for hot chow and a shower," said the second pilot, Warrant Officer Josh Muehlendorf, 29, of Houston.
The Black Hawk's four-person crew from the 1st Cavalry Division had just completed a nighttime extraction, a routine mission in one of the unheralded corners of the Iraq war. Attack and transport helicopters are being used in Iraq with greater frequency and intensity than at any time since Vietnam.
Over the last nine months in Iraq, 1st Cavalry aviators have had to adapt their tactics to a guerrilla war in urban areas with no front lines. Their predecessor unit saw almost no combat, but as the insurgency spread in 2004 the Cav fought hundreds of air-to-ground gun battles. It's flown more hours in the last nine months than it would in four or five years during peacetime.
It's killed hundreds if not thousands of insurgents, and an unknown number of civilians.
The 54-foot-long Black Hawks, armed with manned machine guns on each door, are used to taxi troops, supplies, civilians and VIPs, and to quickly insert or remove soldiers for raids or assaults. The smaller, nimbler Apache Longbows and Kiowa Warriors, bristling with high-tech rockets and cannons, are in the air 24 hours a day to protect and sometimes rescue ground troops.
Medevac helicopters have evacuated thousands of Americans and Iraqis alike, saving countless lives. The soldiers of the aviation unit at this sprawling base a few miles north of Baghdad love to tell little-publicized tales of medal-winning valor - "real hero stuff," in the words of Col. James McConville, the Quincy, Mass., native who commands 1st Cav's 4th Brigade, the aviation unit:
_In October, one pilot of a two-seat Apache, Capt. Ryan Welch, 30, of Lebanon, N.H., landed to retrieve two downed comrades, then strapped himself to the outside of the aircraft so that a wounded man could fly inside - a move so dangerous it's almost never done.
_In April, two pilots used hand signals to stop an Iraqi train that was about to hit a huge bomb planted on the tracks - one flying sideways so the engineer could see his face.
_That same month, two others, both shot in the arm, steered a hard landing with their knees and evaded capture.
_Two aviators, Chief Warrant Officers Wesley "Chuck" Fortenberry of Texas and Shane Colton of Oklahoma, died April 11 after their Apache was hit by a missile while they were fighting to protect a Humvee patrol and a fuel-transport convoy that were under attack, and outnumbered, on the highway. Fathers of young children, the two were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, one of the nation's highest military honors.
Bump from a former helicopter pilot's daughter..
Bump from the father of a Blackhawk air ambulance pilot (whose day job is as a pilot for Alaska Airlines) that has saved several lives as a result of extraction under combat fire!
Wish him well for me. I hope he comes back to you in one piece.
Thanks for the link. That is quite a story, very brave men.
Thank you
I believe there would be another pilot onboard.
yes, you're right. The gunner has controls in his cockpit area.
Sounds like the injured chopper pilots flew the craft.
He's just that talented! The US military is the best!
The link that Dumbgrunt posted may/ must contain the answer. The injured comrades were oh-58 pilots.
I should know better than to trust news stories verbatim.
I was an UH-60 crew-chief/mechanic for 10 years - not to take anything away from the drivers, but there's a lot of unsung maintenance guys who work miracles on a daily basis to keep 'em flying. And with acft like the Black Hawk they fly with the birds whereever they go...
You got that right. As I recall, the average ratio of maintenance hour to flying hour is about 9:1, at least for the Apache. Maintainers work their butts off, as do the FARP bunnies.
I'll second your remarks. As aircrew on HH-3/HH-53 it continually amazed me how quickly the ground crews were able to turn the aircraft. Especially considering the condition that it was given to them. As you know, even without battle damage, a chopper is simply a bunch of parts flying in loose formation.
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