got the front seat today doesn’t mean you’re going to get it on every sortie.’
‘You’re obviously confusing your position as the Weapons Officer with my position as Boss,’ Chris said. ‘Get in and drive.’
It made sense for him to be in the front today so he could concentrate on what was below us while I gave him the guided tour.
Corporal Hambly, the Arming and Loading Point Commander, was waiting for us. He was in charge of the aircraft on the ground. He supervised an eight-man team whose sole job was to get us airborne. Simon Hambly stood by a wing, with an intercom plugged into it so he could speak to us in the cockpit when we started up. Whilst he was plugged in, he owned the Apache – not the Weapons Officer, or even his boss.
‘A Load Charlie for you, isn’t it sir?’
‘Yes thanks, mate. Just sightseeing today.’
Load Alpha was just Hellfire, Load Bravo only rockets. LoadCharlie was our default load – a split weapons load on the pylons: two out of the four on the wings held Hellfire rails, the other two rocket pods. What you took depended on the mission. We weren’t going to put any rounds down today, but we never left base without a full complement just in case.
I did a quick walk around to double check that the protective covers had been removed from the weapons, intakes and exhausts.
‘All okay with the aircraft?’
‘She’s gleaming, sir. Cryptos loaded; be nice to her.’
I clambered up the right side of the Apache’s alloy skin, using the grab bars, and lifted up the back-seater’s heavy canopy door. It clicked open and hung there as I contorted myself onto the high, firm, flat seat. The Boss was already in.
Thirty minutes to takeoff.
The rear seat of an Apache was like a throne, high above the worker bees buzzing around below. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as comfortable. The foam pads on the seat and back were really tasty when we first got the Apaches, but after three years of heavily laden arses they had completely flattened. Anything more than a few hours in the cockpit these days and it felt like you were perched on a bag of golf balls. That was when the arse dance began, moving from one cheek to the other to try to alleviate the pain. Some of the guys resorted to half inflated therma-rest pillows.
The cockpit was like a sauna. The Afghan sun had beaten down on it all morning. Beads of sweat swelled up on my brow. A bank of controls and instruments faced me: buttons, switches and knobs of every shape and size – 227 in total, and every one designed to feel different so you could recognise them in the dark. Most of them were dual-or triple-purpose, which gave them a total of 443 different positions. Every action could require a combination ofbutton pushes, so the number of potential combinations ran into the thousands.
One five-inch-square Multi Purpose Display screen sat each side of the control bank. We could bring up anything we liked on them, from the TV images filmed by the TADS lenses, to the digital script and diagrams of whatever we asked of the on-board computers. There were well over 1,500 different pages – engine pages, fuel pages, comms pages, weapons pages and radar pages. To the far left of the control bank was an alphabetical keyboard for typing data into the computers, or texting messages between Apaches.
A pioneering helicopter pilot of the 1930s would still have recognised the pedals, cyclic stick between my legs (controlling speed and direction – gripped by my right hand) and the collective lever below my left elbow (for height and power – gripped by my left). But that would be about it. He’d be mighty confused by the myriad triggers and buttons on both.
Because there were so many systems to test and configurations to set, achieving takeoff from cold required more than 1,000 button pushes. It took thirty minutes without any snags, fifteen at a mad push. Any quicker and we’d be switching things on in mid-air without knowing if they were going
‘You’re obviously confusing your position as the Weapons Officer with my position as Boss,’ Chris said. ‘Get in and drive.’
It made sense for him to be in the front today so he could concentrate on what was below us while I gave him the guided tour.
Corporal Hambly, the Arming and Loading Point Commander, was waiting for us. He was in charge of the aircraft on the ground. He supervised an eight-man team whose sole job was to get us airborne. Simon Hambly stood by a wing, with an intercom plugged into it so he could speak to us in the cockpit when we started up. Whilst he was plugged in, he owned the Apache – not the Weapons Officer, or even his boss.
‘A Load Charlie for you, isn’t it sir?’
‘Yes thanks, mate. Just sightseeing today.’
Load Alpha was just Hellfire, Load Bravo only rockets. LoadCharlie was our default load – a split weapons load on the pylons: two out of the four on the wings held Hellfire rails, the other two rocket pods. What you took depended on the mission. We weren’t going to put any rounds down today, but we never left base without a full complement just in case.
I did a quick walk around to double check that the protective covers had been removed from the weapons, intakes and exhausts.
‘All okay with the aircraft?’
‘She’s gleaming, sir. Cryptos loaded; be nice to her.’
I clambered up the right side of the Apache’s alloy skin, using the grab bars, and lifted up the back-seater’s heavy canopy door. It clicked open and hung there as I contorted myself onto the high, firm, flat seat. The Boss was already in.
Thirty minutes to takeoff.
The rear seat of an Apache was like a throne, high above the worker bees buzzing around below. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as comfortable. The foam pads on the seat and back were really tasty when we first got the Apaches, but after three years of heavily laden arses they had completely flattened. Anything more than a few hours in the cockpit these days and it felt like you were perched on a bag of golf balls. That was when the arse dance began, moving from one cheek to the other to try to alleviate the pain. Some of the guys resorted to half inflated therma-rest pillows.
The cockpit was like a sauna. The Afghan sun had beaten down on it all morning. Beads of sweat swelled up on my brow. A bank of controls and instruments faced me: buttons, switches and knobs of every shape and size – 227 in total, and every one designed to feel different so you could recognise them in the dark. Most of them were dual-or triple-purpose, which gave them a total of 443 different positions. Every action could require a combination ofbutton pushes, so the number of potential combinations ran into the thousands.
One five-inch-square Multi Purpose Display screen sat each side of the control bank. We could bring up anything we liked on them, from the TV images filmed by the TADS lenses, to the digital script and diagrams of whatever we asked of the on-board computers. There were well over 1,500 different pages – engine pages, fuel pages, comms pages, weapons pages and radar pages. To the far left of the control bank was an alphabetical keyboard for typing data into the computers, or texting messages between Apaches.
A pioneering helicopter pilot of the 1930s would still have recognised the pedals, cyclic stick between my legs (controlling speed and direction – gripped by my right hand) and the collective lever below my left elbow (for height and power – gripped by my left). But that would be about it. He’d be mighty confused by the myriad triggers and buttons on both.
Because there were so many systems to test and configurations to set, achieving takeoff from cold required more than 1,000 button pushes. It took thirty minutes without any snags, fifteen at a mad push. Any quicker and we’d be switching things on in mid-air without knowing if they were going
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