Will Laidlaw - Apache over Libya

Once in the cockpit, straps on, helmet-mounted display over the right eye, door shut, air conditioning taking the edge off the humidity, everything was better.

‘On in the front…’ I was plugged in and able to talk and hear through the intercom.

‘Got you, sir,’ from John in the rear.

‘All good on the wing,’ the Arming and Landing Point Commander added.

‘Any dramas with the aircraft?’ For these missions everything had to be in full working order; we could not carry any faults with us.

From John: ‘All good, just weapons checks to go.’

‘Okay, ready weapon ops checks.’

We cycled through each weapon, with the Arming and Landing Point Commander confirming the gun moved as it should. Each missile was interrogated and confirmed to be responding correctly. After that there was nothing else to do, just wait, listen in to the various mission frequencies that were being flown by the jets and keep to our timings.

‘Forty minutes to launch.’

From John: ‘Roger. All ready for engines when you are.’

I would count down to the last ten minutes. Everything went on a timeline, there was no need to use the radios or a runner. Up in Flyco, Wings knew the timings; on the bridge, the Officer of the Watch knew the timings; down in the Operations Room, the team knew the timings. The ship would turn on to a flying course, and with eight minutes to launch we started the engines. Engine One, then Engine Two, auxiliary power off. I could see my wingman doing the same just a few feet in front of me, his tail-rotor uncomfortably close to my eyes. Perfectly synchronised activity, no words exchanged, perhaps fifty individuals within the ship all performing a function to deliver us to these final few minutes.

John: ‘Ready pre-take off checks.’

I’d go through a list of challenge and response and together we’d set the aircraft ready for launch.

Me: ‘Lashings.’

The team outside untied the lashings that secured us to the deck. I counted each lashing, gave a brief flash of my torch and then looked at the marshaller. He looked up and down the flight deck then pointed at me with both marshalling wands and gave us the signal to lift.

John: ‘Lifting.’

Me: ‘All good. FMC is in, my canopy jettison, your stores jettison.’

This was our final brief on how we’d deal with an engine failure on take-off. When the aircraft is just a few feet above the flight deck all feels safe, but then the handling pilot moves the tremendous 8-tonne beast to port and we go from 5ft above a deck to 70ft above the sea in a hover. The engines would be working hard; if one was to fail this is when it would happen. As soon as we were clear of the flight deck John pitched the nose gently forward and we gained speed as we climbed to circuit height. The second aircraft went through the same procedure, with Mark in the front and Charlie at the controls. This was accurate flying, following a strict procedure of rehearsed heights and speeds close to the sea at night, no lights. The second aircraft had the harder job. They had to catch up, settle into the correct formation position and ‘call in’. This highly perishable skill has to be practised regularly. Regardless of how good or how experienced a pilot you are, low-level formation flying is demanding stuff, and doing it over the sea at night with no lights adds an extra dose of nerves.

Mark called, ‘In’. He could see me and had settled into the prearranged formation.

Me: ‘One hundred, one hundred, head two-two-zero.’ This signalled that I was happy with the formation and that it was time to descend to low level, 100ft, and begin our run into Libya. It was time to charge on into the black. As we did so I made a call to the airborne command and control platform, callsign Matrix, ‘Matrix, this is Prodigy formation, launching as fragged.’

From 36,000ft somewhere over the Med a calm Southern States voice in Matrix replied, ‘Prodigy you are sweet, sweet, continue as fragged.’

Then, a moment later, the calm southern accent again, ‘Prodigy, Matrix, there is still some naval gunfire putting up Starburst in your sector, you need to hold short at this time…’

Me: ‘His timings are a little out, when will the naval gunfire stop?’

Matrix: ‘Just checking that now…’

We had a long way to go to get to the coast, and a longer track over the desert to hook round and attack from the south. We didn’t have the fuel for self-inflicted delays right at the start of the sortie. I got on the radio to the Operations Room in Ocean : ‘NGS on-going. They’re firing Starburst in the target area. Need it to stop so I can proceed.’

Operations Room: ‘Sorting it now…’ A brief pause. ‘Sorted, no more NGS.’ Someone had spoken to Liverpool . She’d overstayed her timings to engage a final target and was in her combat moment. I would have done the same myself. And I would have received the same persuasive telephone call telling me to stop! Liverpool and Ocean both JCHATted the cessation of NGS, and Matrix called me to continue on our way.

Thirty nautical miles of sea-track at 100ft – I was willing the coast to get under us. Soon the familiar desolate shoreline came into sight. There was not much of a beach and the ground rose steeply in the form of small cliffs to a height of about 30ft above the breaking waves. We spread the formation wide to confuse Gaddafi’s scouts and raced across the rocky beach into the hinterland.

Then, quickly on the inter-aircraft net, Mark’s low northern drawl: ‘Being observed, two men, all the right profile, suppressing with 30 mil.’

He fired twenty rounds of 30mm cannon in the vicinity of two insomniacs who appeared to be hiding in the cover of a collection of partly built houses. Watching helicopters from cover; in enemy SF territory; just after midnight – this amounted to compellingly suspicious activity. Mark had seen them watching the skies as we went feet-dry; it added up to the typical precursor to a MANPAD launch. We had expected some interest. With the 30mm landing close by and the message clear, the two scouts leapt, split up and ran for cover.

Mark: ‘They’re on the run, no further engagement, continuing.’

Once clear of the coast we settled on our south-easterly course and kept as low as we could. I had the gun actioned, my left trigger finger close to the trigger guard, my right trigger finger by the laser. The FLIR was slaved to my right eye simultaneously looking out for where the next shot would be coming from, as well as all for wires, masts, pylons, buildings and the like that interfere with helicopters.

With 90 per cent of the population living on the coast, and all the industrial infrastructure of the state there too, there were thousands of pylons, high-tension wires and masts not plotted on our maps. We were flying low, much lower than the wires. Over my left eye I had a single NVG. NVG is an image intensifier, it needs some ambient light to function and it takes that light to present you with a green video image. What you see is what is actually in front of your eye. Over my right eye I had our Apache infrared sight projected from the FLIR mounted on the nose of the aircraft. What you see with this is actually 3ft in front of you and 2ft below you, where the camera is mounted. Infrared doesn’t care how dark it is, it looks for differences in temperature, however minute, and the FLIR converts that heat difference into a video image. So you have two separate images from two separate sources using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. My brain does its best to fuse the images to make one visual scene. All the time I am aware that the FLIR image is the one that my sight and my gun is using, the NVG image is just to find objects that the infrared doesn’t pick out.