Ed Macy - Hellfire

‘Gun coming right, Taff,’ I warned him before I turned my head. The gun had enough power to jack the Apache completely off its wheels if you looked down with your right eye without the safety in place. If I looked quickly right it could break Taff’s legs.

As I moved the cannon around Taff told me where it was. ‘Fully right…twelve o’clock…fully left.’

As long as it had full movement I could sort out any other possible snags in flight; the rest of the gun checks could wait. The rocket and missile launchers would have to wait until we were airborne too.

My left hand swept round the cockpit checking the switch settings while my right gripped the now much cooler cyclic. I flicked down a rocker button with my right thumb, changing the symbology being projected into my right eye to hover mode.

I repositioned the cyclic and trimmed it so that the velocity vector in my right eye was smack bang in the middle on takeoff. If I could keep it there I wouldn’t need any external references to keep the aircraft over the same point. I didn’t want a repeat of the drift I’d managed on landing here. I needed to trust my symbology, despite the fact that every instinct still recoiled from it.

1333 hours

We were positioned slightly ahead and to the right of Jon and Nick.

We waited for them to lift first.

‘Wildman Five One this is Wildman Five Zero. Ready. Lifting.’

‘Copied. Will lift as soon as your dust clears.’

The blades on their Apache coned upwards and they disappeared into their own dust cloud. The vortex stopped just short of our blade tips, held back by the light wind and our rotor wash.

I watched them emerge into clear air like a giant conjuring trick.

Taff finally unplugged himself, stretched out his arms and took a good look around. Satisfied that we weren’t about to climb straight into any £46 million obstacles, he lifted his arms like a cricket umpire signalling a series of sixes, giving us the signal to lift off.

As my hand moved to the collective lever, I caught the end of a conversation between the aircraft of 3 Flight. They were at chicken fuel. They had to return now or risk landing below the legal limit. I heard myself begging them to eat into it, but knew they couldn’t hold out for more than another five or ten minutes even if they did.

I removed the collective friction lock with a single twist of my left hand. Keeping my head perfectly still, I glanced up at the torque reading: 21 per cent; normal with MPOG-minimum pitch applied on the ground. With my right eye still focusing on the torque reading, I watched a pinker-than-usual Taff with my left.

I raised the collective lever, pushed my left pedal down and allowed my right to come up to prevent the Apache from spinning, left eye glued on Taff and right eye on the torque reading, now counting towards 30 per cent.

I shifted my perspective between the torque and the balance ball bottom centre of the monocle. As the torque passed 31 per cent, the ball was being displaced and my right hand instinctively corrected the roll of the aircraft by adjusting the cyclic so the Apache remained upright. As my right eye tracked the ball heading towards the centre, my left saw the dust cloud beginning to build.

I must trust my symbology …

With my right knee bent high and my left leg nearly straight my feet rotated forward, depressing the tops of both pedals simultaneously until I could hear a light thud. My left eye flicked down to confirm that the parking brake handle had retracted and then back to where Taff was still standing in front of us.

Billy completed the final checks. ‘Tail wheel and parking brake?’

A quick glance at the UFD confirmed the tail wheel lock command had been selected. The green TAIL WHEEL UNLOCKED light was extinguished on the panel by my left hand. Torque was passing 50 per cent.

‘Tail wheel lock selected,’ I replied. ‘Light out. Parking brake off and the handle is in.’

As the torque increased Taff disappeared inside a thick blanket of dust. I knew he’d be leaning forward to prevent himself being bowled over by the colossal downdraught.

Billy sat six feet in front of me and a couple feet lower. I could see straight over his head. His gloved hands took a firm grip on the handles in the roof either side of his head. He wasn’t bracing himself for a bad takeoff. We were about to lose all external references, we’d have very little power, we were thirty feet from a huge stack of live ammunition – so holding tight was the best way to suppress the urge to grab the flying controls.

The torque reading nudged past 85 per cent as the wheels lightened. I couldn’t see a fucking thing outside the cockpit.

My right hand made minute adjustments to the cyclic stick then pushed the trim button when the velocity vector in my right eye was central. My left hand gradually increased the pitch on the collective lever; my feet balanced the pedals, slowly correcting the balance ball and preventing the tail from spinning. My left eye tried to ignore what was happening outside the cockpit.

We were now in complete brown-out conditions. It looked like the windows had been the target of a dirty protest.

‘Takeoff 1335 hours,’ Billy said.

SUNDAY, 4 JUNE 2006

1355 hours local

‘Symbology… symbology… symbology…’ I kept repeating it to myself, over and over again, like a tribal mantra to appease the helicopter god.

The heading tape was stationary in my right eye. We weren’t turning or spinning. The velocity vector was centred. We weren’t drifting into Taff’s ammo.

The torque nudged past 96 per cent. I checked our height reading: thirty feet – just enough to be clear of obstacles. Our big problem was that we weren’t climbing any higher.

My arse was telling my brain I was drifting right, towards Taff’s fireworks store, but the symbology was perfect. Trust the symbology …

‘You happy with me transitioning out of this on symbology, Billy? I have no external references, but we’re clear of obstacles and I have her under control.’

Billy came back cautiously: ‘Just don’t over-torque it.’

That was what I wanted to hear. ‘Going for it.’

With no outside references at all, the Apache was being flown solely by the symbology beamed into my right eye. With a gentle push forward and a trim, the velocity vector indicated that we were drifting forwards and not sideways – so far, so good.

Symbology… symbology… symbology…

Suddenly the radar altimeter began to count down. I couldn’t see the desert floor but I knew we were heading towards it. I topped up the power with the collective until we were at maximum torque. I had nothing left to pull and we were still dropping.

The powerful, precision-built Rolls-Royce Turbomeca RTM322 engines were coping easily, but the torque they generated would rip the Apache apart if I demanded more of them.

Billy called out height and speed. ‘Twenty-five feet, four knots… twenty-three feet, five knots… twenty-one feet, eight knots… Watch your torque, Ed.’

‘I am.’

Billy must have been unnerved as we got dangerously close to over-torquing the aircraft. We should have been getting some translational lift by now to stop the descent and reduce the power required to fly.

‘Nineteen feet, still eight knots, Ed.’

‘Come on, come on-fly!’

‘Twelve feet, nine knots.’

We were now below the height of the berm that had been 100 metres in front of us.

The chant continued in my head: Please fly… symbology… symbology… symbology… please fly… please…

There was a small waver in the tail and I knew we were passing translational lift. I had no idea how far from the berm we were. All I knew was we were forward of our takeoff point by some considerable distance.