Apache

‘That stinks.’ The Boss was indignant. ‘I bet he looked under some random panel before the sortie just so he could ask a bone question like that.’

It was exactly what Billy did. Regularly. It would be so obscure we’d never guess it.

‘You have control, I know what’s under it, Mr M.’

The Boss pounded his keyboard with his sausage fingers.

UNDER L330 IT SAYS… SCISSORS… PAPER… RANK… YOU LOSE… BOSS

WRONG… WRONG… WRONG… U2R THE P**S BOYS

‘I’ll make the brews Mr M, don’t worry. I’m the new boy.’

We were five minutes off from Camp Bastion.

‘Five Zero, Five One, we will lead you in.’

‘Copied.’

We crossed the A01 Highway at 3,000 feet.

‘Descending.’

Every descent was tactical. We never knew who was watching us or with what. I pushed the cyclic hard forward and lowered the collective, sinking the aircraft to the ground nose first. We dropped like a brick. With 500 feet to go, I pulled the cyclic back hard to throw the nose up against the wind, slamming a massive brake on the aircraft’s speed.

The runway was a thousand metres directly ahead. Camp Bastion stretched away to our right. I pulled up the Aircraft Page on the MPD; the wind was from the south. We could come straight in. We landed into the wind as it gave more lift, so more control.

I flared the aircraft a fraction to take us down to forty knots then lowered it again, timing our gradual descent with the approaching runway: 400 feet, 200, 100, 50… I stuck the nose forward as we crossed the lip at thirty-five knots and all three wheels hit the metal grids simultaneously. A perfect three-point running landing. It was all about timing.

It was a short taxi past the Chinooks’ parking area and the Apaches’ arming bays. Behind them were the hangars, and behind the hangars stretched the rest of Camp Bastion.

First stop was always the refuelling bay, fifty metres down the taxi lane and left again another fifty. A Groundie directed us into Point One and Billy and Carl joined us in Point Two thirty seconds later. Number Two engine first. Pouring nearly 3,000 lb of fuel into an empty set of tanks took six minutes. We began the lengthy process of closing the aircraft down. Off went the PNVS, the TADS, the FCR – the full start-up checklist in reverse.

The second and final stop was the arming bay, where we would shut down completely once the fresh rounds, rockets and missiles had been loaded. Power needed to be running through the aircraft to load the cannon, and only aircrew could do that.

Rearming was a tricky business. It took thirty minutes on average, longer if there was a lot to slap on. A team of eight guys buzzed around below us.

The cannon’s electrics had to be disconnected first, and then the chain disengaged. The side loader equipment had to be attached and the rounds fed through the chain; and so on. In the meantime, there was always some fine tuning to be done. That afternoon, the technicians needed to sort out Billy’s jam.

We tried as hard as we could to look busy, but there was nothing we could do to escape the attention of Sergeant Kev Blundell. Kev was the squadron’s Ammunition Sergeant. The arming bays and everything that went into them were his kingdom; and he ruled over it like Idi Amin.

King Kev was a giant of a man, as broad as he was tall, and he ate all visiting pilots for breakfast. A gruff Yorkshireman, he took no shit from anyone – up or down the entire chain of command. He had a sinister frown and the demeanour of the world’s most sardonic policeman, and as far as he was concerned, everyone could ‘just fook off’.

As the Weapons Officer, I was the pilot who worked closest with him; which meant I copped the very worst of his abuse.

While his guys beavered away, Kev would zero in on the Apache. He’d do a slow walk round the aircraft, arms folded, head shaking. Finally, he’d plug into the wing.

‘Fired fook all again, I see. You’re supposed to be fooking attack pilots.’

Kev’s greatest hatred in life – and he had many to choose from – was having to box up out-of-date weaponry and send it back to the UK. Hellfires and rockets could only take so much vibration on the wing before they became unstable, and all of them had a limited flight life. Backloading them all the way for inspection and maintenance was a bureaucratic nightmare, so any ammunition that came back from a sortie guaranteed us a mouthful.

‘Fooking useless, like normal.’

‘What do you mean? It’s not that bad, Kev. We were only supposed to be on a famil, and we still got 160 rounds off, plus four Flechettes.’

‘But no fooking Hellfire. You big jessies. Mind you, could be worse. You could be Mr Fly-Boy-Sky-Cop-Tom-fooking-Cruise in Point Two next to you. He only managed fifteen cannon rounds before he went and broke his gun! Makes you wonder why we fooking bother…’

‘What a twat… You won’t believe this Boss.’