Will Laidlaw: Apache over Libya

The original aim of the Royal Navy’s lending instructors to us was to get the Apache working at sea, but Afghanistan had changed all that. Navy, Royal Marine or RAF, if they were on exchange with us they flew in Afghanistan regardless of their background. Little Shippers had completed flying training just ahead of me in the late 1990s, joined the Commando Helicopter Force and quickly became an instructor on the Sea King. He had already spent five years on the Apache, including a year in Afghanistan. He knew the sea, he knew the Apache and he knew combat. Back in Helmand he had once had to land an Apache after the tail rotor controls had become jammed having been shot by a 12.7mm Taliban bullet. The bullet buckled the armour just beneath his right foot, thumping his leg against the cockpit and seizing the tail rotor controls at the same time. Little Shippers realized he had no control over the tail and had to exit the fight and return to Camp Bastion. Losing the tail rotor is problematic in a helicopter and can often result in an uncontrolled tumble when it comes to landing. He ran the aircraft on to the runway fast like an aeroplane to keep it in a straight line, and the aircraft and the crew sustained no further damage or injury. Fighting and dealing with emergencies at the same time is a high skill; we would all be tested on this in Libya.

Part of reminding one another of how to fly the Apache at sea was demonstrating how to cope with a single engine failure at the worst moment. The aircraft has two engines; if one fails the other can keep it going only if the aircraft has enough airspeed. A single engine failure at low airspeed is a potentially fatal moment at sea. The Shippers had to practise together and then teach us all.

On their first outing, Big Shippers at the controls, they lifted from the flight deck into the 70ft hover on the port side over the sea. With Little Shippers ready, hand on the canopy jettison switch, he demonstrated the single engine flyaway technique.

‘Practice single engine failure… Go!’

Big Shippers immediately pushed the cyclic lever forward to dive the aircraft, trying to gain airspeed, while lowering the collective lever to preserve the remaining engine and maintain rotor speed. I watched from Flyco as the aircraft dropped rapidly below the flight deck, nose first, toward the sea. A dive is the only way to gain the speed needed to fly away, but the risk is that an inaccurate pilot might not be bold enough and too slow to throw the aircraft seaward. Over land, if this technique is mishandled the aircrew can convert a badly managed engine failure into a run-on landing. Over the sea it can only be converted into a crash, with all the attendant sub-surface dramas already described. Out of sight, beneath the line of the flight deck, Big Shippers gained speed, levelled at about 20ft above the waves and flew away, slowly climbing back into the port circuit. The margins for error are tight at sea.

Safely downwind in the circuit, he then demonstrated the singleengine landing back on to the ship. To maintain straight and level flight the Shippers needed to keep the aircraft airspeed above 40 knots. With the ship heading into wind, and of course moving herself, they could land at a lower relative speed, but this was still much quicker than Ark was expecting. As the aircraft approached, the usual yellow-coated flight deck marshallers were ready and, looking aft, getting nervous. The Apache was coming in fast. At a quarter of a mile and about twenty seconds until landing the flight deck teams realized what was about to happen. Big Shippers threw the aircraft on to the flight deck at 25 knots groundspeed, landing on the aft end and using half the deck length to slow down. The sailors on the flight deck, who were expecting a gentle Sea King-like drop on to the deck and a slow walking pace run-on, had to throw themselves out of the way to avoid being mown down. The Shippers kept the aircraft level, brought it to a halt and Big Shippers calmly announced on the radio to Flyco, ‘All’s well. Can we do that one again to consolidate the technique? No need for marshallers on landing though…’

The technical challenges on deck were dealt with in a cautious manner. The most time-consuming and complex skills faced the engineers in adapting their trade, refined by years in Afghanistan, where big open spaces and plentiful spares supported their now extensive corporate knowledge of the aircraft. In a ship there are no large spaces, very few medium-sized spaces and just enough spaces that are almost big enough. The positioning of aircraft in a hangar is a complex jigsaw puzzle, and the scheduling of maintenance must take into account the movement of several aircraft, in addition to those of other aircraft fleets which share the same hangar space. This may appear simple, but a comparison of land and maritime procedures is a useful illustration.

On land it takes five minutes to tow an aircraft from the flight line to the hangar and begin work. At sea it takes up to 45 minutes to fold blades, another 10 minutes to manoeuvre the aircraft on the flight deck and a further 10 minutes to place it on the lift and get it down from the flight deck into the hangar. If the work requires a crane, the other aircraft in the hangar must be moved to make space, taking perhaps another 15 or 20 minutes. Then, after about an hour or so, work can begin. Of course, that assumes that your aircraft move is the priority; if not, you’ll have to wait and shift out of the way of the others. The process is then followed in reverse to return the aircraft to the flight deck for use. This requires eight engineers and eight soldiers to complete, with the aircraft being lashed down every time it is not being manoeuvred. While the number of hours flown will likely be lower at sea than on land, the level of preparatory activity will always be higher, with soldiers and engineers working longer in an unfamiliar and unforgiving environment to get an aircraft ready to fly. It just takes more people, and more time. Mistakes can be very costly, either in damage to an aircraft or injury to personnel. With this in mind, and having seen the procedures in action, I needed the right balance of manpower to ensure safe and efficient operations even if the resultant tempo of flying was low. This raised some jeers from the pessimists, who cited my manning needs as a further drain on finite and stretched resources which, of course, should only be used to support Afghanistan.

The Ark Royal embarkation was the critical de-risking activity of the Apache maritime story. The work was hard, soldiers had to get used to the confines of the ship, old procedures had to be relearned, new ones had to be developed.

Ark Royal came alongside in Portsmouth at the end of October and we stepped ashore. We had relearned the ‘how to fly it’ and ‘how to maintain it’ lessons first trialled in 2005. We had fired over 6,000 rounds of 30mm ammunition on the ranges at Cape Wrath, flown many hours at sea at night in formation with and without lights. We had engineered, lived and built our relationship with the Royal Navy. The foundations were strong. I was quietly optimistic that, having proved the machine worked at sea, we could gather some momentum and get some support from the sceptics.

However, just two weeks later Ark Royal was decommissioned. The Harriers went too. There would be no jets at sea for at least a decade, and the Royal Navy had just HMS Illustrious and HMS Ocean left as helicopter carriers. With our maritime future uncertain, Big Shippers and I went to Helmand as guests of 654 Squadron, taking up some of the strain on the aircrew constantly going through the Afghanistan cycle. As guests we were just line-pilots with no other work to do. This was perfect. We spent hours planning what we could do the following year. We knew HMS Ocean would have us on board and that we would have almost six weeks at sea if we could get the blessings and the resources. In the meantime, wintering in Helmand with another 4 Regiment squadron was just right for us.