Apache

^{Camp Bastion in the early days. It was a military camp like none of us had ever seen: two square kilometres of khaki tents, mess halls and vehicle parks in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Surrounding the camps was one of the most inhospitable landscapes in Afghanistan.}

^{Photo credit: Unknown}

^{Rockets being fired from the Apache’s four CRV7 rocket pods on the weapons pylons, hung from the wings of the aircraft. A maximum of seventy-six rockets can be loaded into four pods.}

^{Photo credit: L/Cpl Hambly}

^{Lance Corporal Si Hambly loading Hellfire missiles on to the Westland Apache AH Mk 1. The Semi-Active Laser Hellfire air-to-ground missile is the Apache’s main anti-tank weapon, designed to kill fast-moving armour and adapted to take out thick-walled buildings. Up to sixteen missiles can be carried on board the aircraft, mounted on to four rails beneath the wings. Able to defeat all known armour, the 20-lb high explosive warhead packs a 5 million-lb-per-square-inch punch on impact and is laser guided from the cockpit for pinpoint accuracy.}

^{Photo credit: L/Cpl Hambly}

^{The 30-mm M230 cannon fires ten High Explosive Dual Purpose rounds a second to an accuracy of within three metres. Their armour-piercing tips make light work of Armoured Personnel Carriers, vehicles and buildings. The magazine packs up to 1,160 of them, fired in bursts of 10, 20, 50, 100 – or all of them.}

^{Photo credit: WO1 Ed Macy}

^{There are two types of rockets: the Flechette, an anti-personnel/vehicle weapon, containing 80 5-inch-long Tungsten darts; and the HEISAP for buildings, vehicles or ships.}

^{Photo credit: Sgt Nick C}

^{Despite the vast extent of checks, double-checks and repairs, things can still go wrong – as this Rolls Royce Apache engine with a hydraulic leak shows. Requiring eighteen four-ton trucks for parts and ammunition, seven articulated lorries, five fuel tankers, three forklift trucks, two motorcycles, five technician vans, one eight-ton engineers’ lorry and one fire engine, an Apache is hugely labour intensive at the best of times. But Afghanistan is the harshest place on earth for these machines, and every hour in the air necessitates thirty-two man hours of maintenance on the ground.}