Apache

When a missile was fired against you, HIDAS would automatically launch the necessary countermeasure. For a radar-tracking SAM, the Apache threw out clouds of chaff that appeared as large-sized aircraft to confuse the radar. If it was a heat-seeker, it would spray out a shower of flares – hotter than our engines – to divert it. If the missile was being manually laser-guided, Betty would issue a series of rapid (and highly classified) instructions for violent manoeuvre: ‘Break right’, ‘Break left’, ‘Climb’ and ‘Descend’. When we were out of danger, she would say, ‘Lock broken.’ It was the closest she got to a compliment. What a woman.

HIDAS had never really been tested on operations. The boffins had done everything they could in the labs and on the ranges. But until you sent up a couple of guys and fired a ManPAD at them, you wouldn’t know for sure how well it could cope.

‘So what do we do in the meantime?’ I asked.

‘Just trust in the aircraft.’

Just when I’d started to feel a little better…

SAMs weren’t the only threats we faced. HIDAS could do nothing to defeat conventional ‘line of sight’ weapons. We were just as vulnerable to old-fashioned bullets as anyone else. Rifle and RPG fire wasn’t necessarily a big concern for us. An AK47 had an effective range of 800 metres. RPGs were timed to explode at 900 metres or on impact, though they could be doctored to achieve twice the distance. We generally stood 2,000 metres off enemy targets because the power of our weapons and sensors allowed us to.

Higher calibre anti-aircraft guns were a different matter. The Taliban had a lot of them, mostly ex-Soviet stuff. Anti-aircraft guns were single-, double-or quadruple-barrelled and put down a phenomenal rate of fire. Afghans used them as ground weapons, firing them horizontally at each other.

We liked the 14.5-mm Soviet ZPU the least. Each barrel could crack out 600 rounds of ammunition per minute, lethal up to 5,000 feet in the air. Luckily they were prized pieces of equipment, and not in limitless supply.

DShK’s, or Dushkas as they were nicknamed, were more common than ZPU’s. Firing a slightly smaller round, a 12.7-mm, they had a range of 4,000 feet. Every tribal chief normally had access to a Dushka for his tribe’s protection – they were that common. And they caused us a lot of grief. Only good flying – and a sizeable helping of luck – had stopped a British helicopter from being shot out of the Helmand skies thus far.

It was rare for a full day to go by without at least one helicopter getting some incoming. It had been like that ever since we’d arrived in Helmand; the statistics defied belief.

By the time of their departure in September, the Joint Helicopter Force had counted more than fifty close calls from enemy ground fire on Apaches, Chinooks and Lynxes. 16 Air Assault Brigade saw a lot more than we did: rounds had passed through or bounced off all three machines. A Dushka bullet went straight through the tail boom of Darwin’s Apache on his very first combat engagement in May – he hadn’t known until he landed. Another large calibre round had hit a second Apache’s rotor head, bouncing straight off it. If the rotor head had broken, the aircraft would have fallen out of the sky.

During the first month of fighting in June, a Chinook’s fuselage had been riddled with bullets while coming into land to insert Paras north of Sangin, and one of its passengers seriously wounded. And a young female Chinook pilot – on her very first combat sortie – had a bullet enter through her side door and pass through her seat, inches behind her chest.

Nobody had yet been killed by ground fire. That had amazed us on our return. And as the year drew to a close, it was a living miracle that it was still the case.

From the generals in Whitehall who read the damage reports all the way down to the young pilots who just got on with their daily flights, everyone was in full agreement: it was no longer a case of if a helicopter got shot down in Helmand, but when. And now that the Taliban seemed to have got their hands on a shed-load of working SAMs that moment seemed an awful lot closer.

But something was being done to address the Taliban’s ever more proficient supply of men and arms. The brigade had a plan. And it was one hell of a good one.

8. OP GLACIER BEGINS

Smashing the Taliban’s supply chain to smithereens was 3 Commando Brigade’s first objective with Operation Glacier. Five days into December, we had a ringside seat at the second.

Things in Garmsir had gone from bad to worse. The Taliban still believed they could dislodge the Brits, as they had done before. And they were giving it their all. The fighting had deteriorated at times to hand to hand combat; it was like something out of the Zulu War.

The marines’ every movement in or out of the DC compound drew withering sniper fire. The Taliban also launched daily attacks on the commandos’ lookout post on a neighbouring hill to the south.