Hellfire (15 page)

Basically, your right eye stared at a small glass plate less than an inch from your cornea. Your left eye, meanwhile, was looking at the real world-which could stretch from your cockpit instruments to infinity. Bringing either the left or right image into focus was fairly straightforward, but trying to see both clearly at the same time seemed impossible.

Ever tried it? Which one wins?

The fact was: neither did. Each eye fought the other for supremacy in the brain, threatening to split my head apart. But then, one day, the headaches stopped; my eyes and brain had discovered how to work together. Slowly, I was becoming a part of the machine.

I learned how to do field circuits, hovering, navigation, autorotation and running takeoffs and landings. I then found out how the Apache performed on limited power-i.e. with one engine out. I practised manoeuvring in and out of confined areas-much trickier in this big machine than it had been in the Gazelle-and how to land on a slope; again, not easy in a large helicopter that had narrow wheels for an undercarriage rather than skids.

Finally, I was taught quick-stops, wingovers and high-g turns at max power and performance; how to get to height fast, how to get down fast and how to turn hard.

Then, as 2003 became 2004, it was into the part-task trainers and the simulator again to continue learning how to turn our knowledge into practice. The position and function of every switch and button was supposed to be intuitive by now; as natural as drawing breath. The instructors drilled us hard on this point. The simulator had very little light during this phase and we soon found out why. Everything we’d done had just been a prelude to flying ‘in the bag’.

Flying in the bag did not equate to anything I’d ever done before. During my early sorties in the Apache, I’d noticed Velcro strips around the interior of the cockpit. It turned out that they were to hold big black PVC panels over the clear perspex canopy for ‘bag flights’-flights in which the student pilot was immersed in darkness. With the PVC panels in place no light entered the rear cockpit. Our only reference to the external world would be via the monocle and the feed from the instruments; the FLIR and the PNVS would be turned off. The thought of flying in the bag terrified me.

It didn’t matter what we’d achieved up till then, if we failed the bag, we’d be out.

With the PVC panels in place the rear cockpit door came down and I was plunged into total darkness for my first bag flight. Scottie flew us out to a disused military camp on Salisbury Plain-somewhere we couldn’t bump into anything, he told me reassuringly. The Pinvis was switched off and the engines were at full pelt. We were parked on a concrete square, around 100 feet by 100.

‘I can do this blindfolded!’ Reminding me of what I’d said time and time again over the past eleven years, Scottie continued to mock me. ‘Now you are. So let’s see, eh?’

I stared at the symbology on my monocle-the only help I was going to get. Scottie wanted me to lift the aircraft ten feet into the air and hold it there. It sounded simple, but I had to do so without the tail weather-cocking and without drifting forwards, backwards, left or right. If I did drift, I had to correct it and reposition the helicopter over my takeoff point.

The symbology would tell me if I was drifting. Instead of the normal crosshair, what I got now was a small circle. This represented the cyclic stick position. Sitting in the centre as it was now meant I wasn’t moving. If a line-a velocity vector-started to grow towards the top of the monocle, I was drifting forwards; to the right
and I was heading to the right. All I had to do was move the cyclic between my legs in the opposite direction to the velocity line and it would return to its starting point; we would stop drifting. No rocket science there.

In the meantime, the ticker-tape at the top of the monocle gave me my heading-something I could control with the pedals. Pushing down on the right pedal while allowing the left one out would spin me left, and vice versa. A scale running up the right-hand side of the monocle would let me know my rate of climb or descent and my height above the ground.

Today was my first practice, but uppermost in my mind was the bag test we’d have to take in a few weeks’ time and the rules were the rules. If we drifted from the takeoff point, I’d fail. If I went above or below ten feet, I’d fail. If my heading changed, I’d fail. I had to go straight up, keep the Apache there and activate the position and height holds.

‘Bloody hell,’ I said to no one in particular, ‘how am I supposed to do all this on one eye?’

‘I guarantee you, as soon as you take off, the aircraft will go forwards or backwards, right or left and you’ll instantly adjust the stick in the other direction,’ Scottie said. ‘At this point you’ll drift the other way. Don’t worry about it-it’s natural. You won’t be able to keep it at ten feet and you won’t be able to keep it pointing in the same direction either. Prepare for sensory overload, Ed. You’ll drift all over the place. But when it comes to the test you’ll be able to do this-you’ll go straight up, hit ten feet and hover and you won’t move a millimetre. Remember, it’s not scary for me; only for you. I can see out. So, relax, don’t overcontrol, and try to take in as much as you can. Are you ready?’

As ready as I’d ever be, I told him.

‘Okay, do not fly by your senses, use your symbology. Here goes. Maintaining three six zero degrees and the same position
over the ground, I want you to climb to ten feet and put the holds in.’

I raised the collective lever, applying power, and we began to lift clear of the ground. My right eye flicked between the circle at the centre of the monocle, the ticker-tape above it and my height on the right. I could see nothing else. It was like sitting on a hill in a car with a blindfold on and releasing the handbrake and not knowing what the fuck was coming at you…

All three wheels left the ground and the line started to grow out from the centre, towards the right-hand edge of the monocle. I tilted the cyclic as gently as I could in the opposite direction. Too much. Fuck. The line shot out of the other side of the circle. So I overcompensated again. Then I realised my heading was off. I tried to correct with the pedals.

I was stick-stirring and the aircraft felt like it was going all over the place.

Between fits of laughter Scottie told me to put the holds in. I flicked the button on the cyclic in opposite directions engaging position and height hold as quickly as I could and the aircraft became rock steady.

‘Okay, Ed. Other than being at forty feet and facing north-east, where do you think we are?’

‘I’ve no idea.’ I felt drained. I’d probably only been airborne twenty seconds, but it felt like a lifetime.

‘How far do you think we are from the concrete?’

‘I don’t know. Somewhere near the top right-hand corner, maybe?’

‘Is that all?’

My heart sank. It was worse than I thought. ‘Okay then, somewhere just
off
the top right-hand corner?’

‘How many feet from it?’

I was getting bored with this game-and faintly irritated by it. What did Scottie want me to say? I’m a shit pilot? I’m not cut
out for the Apache? ‘I don’t know Scottie-fifty feet, maybe. More…?’

‘Okay, Ed, switch on your Pinvis.’

I did as I was told and the outside world suddenly flickered into life in my right eye.

Jesus. I’d hardly moved. I had hardly
moved
.

‘We may not have moved,’ Scottie said. ‘But what were you doing wrong?’

‘Flying on instinct,’ I told him. Exactly what he’d told me not to do. When you flew by the seat of your pants, using all of your senses, you ended up all over the fucking shop.

‘When the velocity vector moves to the edge of your monocle, Ed, it means you’re only moving at six knots-that’s all.’ He paused. ‘Now I want you to use your bob-up box.’

The bob-up box, another piece of symbology, would give me unbelievable situational awareness in my black void. It always stayed in exactly the same place in relation to the real world. It represented my initial position over the ground and would move accordingly; it gave me a point of reference-something I’d not had during my first foray into oblivion.

He told me to switch off the PNVS and try it again.

This time when I took off and the line drifted out from the centre I could see that the bob-up box had hardly shifted at all. Moving the bob-up box to the edge of the monocle represented a real-world shift of only six feet.

‘The lesson of the bag, Ed, is trust your symbology, not your instincts. If you end up with no vision, in the shit, with nothing else to rely on except what’s in your monocle, it’s symbology that will save your life-not your skills as a three-thousand-hour seasoned seat-of-the-pants aviator.’

I heard what Scottie said, but could not envisage any situation a helicopter pilot might encounter that would emulate the condi
tions I’d just experienced in the bag: total blackout with no picture at all.

On that score, however, I would be proved utterly wrong.

Seven months down the line, with my bag test flight behind me, I was back at Dishforth. Sixteen out of the twenty of us earmarked for 656 Squadron who’d gone to Middle Wallop were in the briefing room; 9 Regiment had its first Apache Squadron.

It had been a long, hard road. Wives, girlfriends, children and friends were all happy to welcome us back. The army had expected everyone to pass CTT1-it was just a conversion course, after all-but the Apache had proved a very difficult beast to master. The lads that failed each had over 2,000 military flying hours-and worse still, we’d lost our QHI.

The rest of us knew all too well that all we had done was learn how to keep the thing airborne and make sure it was pointing in the right direction when it fired its weapons. We were now about to embark on an even more punishing course: CTR-Conversion to Role.

We’d be spending many more weeks away training. Even in barracks the average day lasted fourteen hours. To work a long day was one thing; to be in an aircraft or simulator as complex as the Apache was quite another.

During one night sortie, my front-seater and I were working so hard we became target-fixated. The red mist came down because the target vehicle, a recce car, was moving so unpredictably. Pat was doing everything he could to get a steady crosshair on it, but it was proving incredibly tough. Our cannon rounds always landed just in front of the vehicle. Just as we fired, the bloody thing changed direction. By the time the rounds had flown to the predicted position the vehicle wasn’t there.

Eventually, we closed to within a thousand metres. Then we heard a huge bang and the seat punched up into the small of my back.

The aircraft lurched dangerously and plunged nose-down. The world was spinning at such a rate I couldn’t make sense of the swirling green; attempting to pull out was proving more difficult than I’d anticipated. The nose started to come up but the Gs were getting worse; the Apache began to spin within its own circumference. I’d lost tail rotor authority; I was out of control. There was only one outcome to this and I prayed we would survive it.

As the Apache passed through 500 feet, the low height warner started beeping loudly and the lamps in front of me glowed bright. The airframe was vibrating so badly I couldn’t focus.

Then the monocle went black.

It was dark outside the cockpit. I glanced down at the MPD to see we were passing through 200 feet with a 4,800ft per minute rate of descent. Eighty feet per second with enough ammunition on board to win a small war. The MPDs cut out as we lost all electrics. I was now totally blind. I didn’t know which way was up. I knew we were coming up for impact so I grabbed the coaming to brace myself and prayed.

The seat crunched into my spine and the windows bloomed bright red.

Total silence…

The silence was broken by a voice in my headset: ‘Ed, Pat, that will be a re-fly. See you both in the debriefing room in ten.’

Thank fuck we’d been in a simulator.

The instructor debriefed us on our performance. We had become so engrossed in trying to kill the recce car that we had flown too close to the enemy. A guy with a shoulder-launched SAM-7 had shot us down. The missile had hit us just aft of the engines and taken out the tail rotor. The blast had pitched us
forward and the loss of tail rotor authority had given us the spin. Keeping the speed on could have helped us regain control, but it was hard to want to keep flying fast when you were only a thousand feet up, and pointing straight at mother earth. Pulling up had slowed the aircraft’s speed, but then I’d lost the tail altogether.

My only saving grace was that I had managed to level the aircraft before impact.

Would I have survived?

Yes, but not without some back surgery-and I didn’t want to go there again. Had we crashed at or less than 3,660 feet per second I could have walked away unscathed. The Apache was the most survivable helicopter in the world. Pilots had crashed at multiple G levels and walked away without injury. The cockpits were guaranteed to maintain 85 per cent of their original shape in an impact.

Would my front-seater have survived?

Probably not. Pat’s face would have ploughed into the ORT, the metal tube that jutted out of the coaming in front of him.

I felt embarrassed. Both of us should have been aware of the proximity of threat. I was working so hard just flying the aircraft aggressively to keep us on target I’d had no spare mental capacity. I’d become saturated and then I’d drowned in what they called my ‘ability reservoir’-a reservoir I was beginning to realise was more of a puddle.

Pat had been trying so hard to hit the vehicle with the cannon that he’d been unable to process any other information. We’d both had classic target fixation and the direct result had been loss of situational awareness.

So, we had failed the sortie-a sortie that had been flown in a simulator. Strike one on CTR. What was interesting about this, when I managed to get past the humiliation, was that I’d grabbed the coaming in a bid to diminish the impact of…well, nothing; it was just a simulator.

I found out later I was not alone. The Apache simulator was so good that you forgot where you were within seconds of taking off. When you were in it, you really did think it was the real thing.