On Location In The Desert

Julie Knox & Pete Wooldridge

BFBS Reports was given exclusive access to Exercise Crimson Eagle, which readies the Army Air Corps’ Apaches; Lynx manned by 847 Naval Air Squadron; and a detachment of RAF Pumas, for their upcoming deployments.

As Reporter Julie Knox and Cameraman Pete Wooldridge were to discover, half the fun was in getting there…

Three days on a Herc. That’s honestly how long it took to get to Arizona. Not that any of the passengers expected that when we set off from Lyneham. Cameraman Pete’s a Royal Marine, and we were travelling with 847 NAS: they’d all been there, done this mode of travel countless times already. But I’d never had this long or this many stops on a military flight. I found it huge fun - and not just for the first twenty minutes! A wise colleague had loaned me a nifty hammock, which the RAF engineer on board expertly unravelled and strung up above the ramp at the back of the C-130, so I got to swing and sleep and shiver and hope I could make it to the next stop without having to use the portaloo with the drooping curtain round it...

Enroute, we called in at Keflavik, Iceland; then St John’s, Newfoundland for an overnighter; before onward to airfields in Washington and Florida. There was just enough time for an unscheduled trip to the beach, and the local surf shop was besieged with troops buying trunks, as all our luggage was still strapped to a pallet on the aircraft. It was rainy season and the late summer storms weren’t far away; still, setting down in Arizona, at a USAF base, the warm rain and grey surroundings weren’t what the guys on the squadron had expected!

The Army Air Corps is the main unit on the exercise, and has come here for the last three years. The sandy, mountainous terrain is as challenging as Afghanistan, without getting hostile. The sheer space to fire live munitions in, the oppressive temperature and all the dust they stir up combine to make this the best training Apache aircrew can get. And the US facilities they’ve got use of at the Western Army National Guard Aviation Training Site (WAATS) couldn’t be better. The accommodation’s got character: a development of bunglalows decorated in nineteen seventies wood panelling with shaggy brown carpets. The hangars are huge and if the Brits need any extra help or parts, US engineers will lend a hand or get in touch with the Boeing factory down the road at Phoenix. The aircrew get taxied in a golf buggy to their helicopter, so they don’t have to walk across the dispersal in the heat (we persuaded two Lynx crews to do the ‘Top Gun’ style
walk for us just the once - they weren’t hard to convince - and they posed very well!) And the engineers get a tricycle with a toolbox on the back, to pedal out to the point and make their last-minute adjustments before takeoff. One of these soon became the BFBS flightline filming wagon.

656 Squadron was the first unit to take the Apache to Op Herrick, and its personnel flew with Royal Marines strapped to their fuselage, in the rescue of the body of Lance Corporal Matthew Ford from a Taliban fortress, eighteen months ago. Now the unit’s returning, in support of 3 Cdo Bde, and a new intake of pilots and ground crew is getting ‘combat ready’. Supporting them is 847 Naval Air Squadron, with Lynx aircraft performing the casevac role, just as they will in theatre in a matter of weeks. They all have flying missions, dust landings, live firing simulations and maintenance tests to endure, to qualify as ready to deploy. Adjusting to the climate and working with their aircraft when they’re blisteringly hot are also part of the preparation.

It doesn’t come much hotter than Gila Bend. It’s a remote spot in 17 million acres of firing range, quite near the Mexican border. There, the exercise had use of a USAF auxiliary base, with limited facilities. They set up a tented camp and field kitchen (though they still managed to rustle up American pancakes, hash browns and syrup!) All the munitions are stored and loaded from containers there - carefully controlled against the temperature. This is the first time new pilots and those working on the AH will have experienced the Hellfire missile firing live. It costs a bomb and of course there just isn’t the space to let it off safely at home. “Snakepit Ops” is the hut from which the attack missions out on the range are run, with ground crews and engineers getting used to turning round and servicing their helicopters, plus planners co-ordinating their movements; all from this austere forward-point, without the infrastructure or backup they’d have on base.

Gila’s where we saw some awesome weather too. There were tropical depressions; with hurricanes Gustav and Ike swirling not too far off, and the lightning storms around the desert bowl were spectacular. Hailstones like rocks of ice bounced off our vehicle one night, and helos had to be recalled from their missions because it was too risky to be that close to the unpredictable electricity.

Pete and I spent our last few days back where we’d started, Davis Monthan Air Force Base, in Tuscon. Here we hooked up with the Puma detachment, drawn from 33 Sqn at Benson and 230 Sqn, out of Aldergrove. The training these 150 personnel with four Pumas have been doing is similar: hot and high and environmental acclimatisation, but it’s preparing them for their role in the Baghdad heli det, in Iraq. There, they’re a battlefield taxi service: moving troops and supplies, reconfiguring the interior to pick up casualties; flying at low level around the green zone, or sometimes further North. Learning how to do their job when the dust’s flying was another vital curve for the Pumas, and we were shown quite graphically just how much visibility is lost on landing when your blades stir up so much fine sand.

Trusting the last thing you were able to see, what the instruments and your door-gunner tell you, and timing your manoeuvre calmly, make all the difference between a safe set-down and a crash. I certainly came away understanding a bit more of other people’s jobs, and being hugely impressed with the skill and nerve it takes to work in some of the conditions they faced, and can expect to face on Ops. And I don’t fancy the task of hoovering out the cockpit when they get home from the desert!