Alex Duncan - Sweating the Metal

Robinson and Inkerman are near Sangin, and the two bases are very close together. Instead of us each having two loads – one each for Robinson and Inkerman – Hannah takes my load for Inkerman and I take hers for Robinson. That means we won’t be risking two cabs by us both dropping a load at each base. Hannah has completed her drop at Inkerman and I am at Robinson; I’ve got my passengers off and am waiting for the pax that I have to pick up. Bob Ruffles is getting excited – he gets impatient after about two minutes on the ground; although in fairness, I do too.

‘Wankers!’ he says. ‘If they can’t get their fucking act together, we should just fuck off and leave them. It’s not fucking difficult, is it? Maybe they’ll be ready next time then!’ Fuck me, his Det Tourette’s is getting worse by the day!

‘Got the painters in, Bob?’ asks Coops.

‘Ha fucking ha.’

‘Must admit, I’m a bit fucked off myself,’ I say. But I have a well-tested plan to calm the tensions in the air.

I dig out a dog-eared copy of FHM’s 100 High Street Honeys that Alison gave me before I left for this Det. It’s well thumbed and quite knackered, bearing the battle scars of a hundred pairs of mitts pawing over its pages.

‘Okay boys, pick a number between one and a hundred,’ I say.

‘Five!’ from Bob.

‘Fifty-six!’ – Coops.

‘Twenty-two!’ from Alex.

‘Okay, and I’ll go with ninety-five,’ I say, writing them all down on my kneeboard. Now for the hard part.

I flick through and see who has picked the fittest girl of the lot. It’s a bit like playing Top Trumps for High Street Honeys, except we make up the scores and rip the piss out of each other – and I’m judge, jury and executioner!

Bob and Coops lean in to the cockpit through the gangway as I turn to each girl in the magazine.

‘Fucking hell! You fancy her?’ says Bob as I turn to No.56. Her name is Kayleigh and she’s the girl who corresponds to the number Coops picked at random. ‘She looks like the Loch Ness Munter!’

I turn to Alex’s ‘choice’ – Donna, No.2. ‘Hmm,’ we all say. ‘Not ba—’

The radio bursts into life and we freeze as we hear the words that all aircrew dread, signalling that an aircraft is in grave and imminent danger and requires immediate assistance.

‘Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Ugly Five One Mayday!’

Alex and I look at one another and almost simultaneously, we both say, ‘What the fuck?!’

‘Daybreaker Two One, Ugly Five One, we have an engine on fire. We are going to land at Robinson.’

‘Ugly Five One, Daybreaker Two Zero, stay where you are. We’ll intercept your location for a visual inspection,’ cuts in Hannah.

The Apache is in a slow orbit at about 2,000ft, so Hannah quickly pulls in the power and climbs straight up so that she’s visual with the AH. It might sound daft, but aircraft warning systems aren’t immune from the odd gremlin, so it’s possible that it’s just the Apache’s fire-warning circuit that’s gone nuclear rather than its engine.

It takes Hannah about two seconds to confirm the crew’s worst fears.

‘Ugly, Daybreaker Two Zero, confirm smoke from your engine,’ she says.

‘Daybreaker Two One, Ugly Five One, we are landing where you are now, repeat, we are landing now at your location.’

Bear in mind we’re sat forward in the cockpit some 60ft ahead of the ramp and in my mind, all this is going on above and behind us. I wouldn’t say I was panicking… but I can visualise the Apache literally directly above us, with one engine out and he’s coming down fast. The laws of physics don’t allow for two solid objects to occupy the same space and he’s landing right where we are. We need to get the hell out of there… and fast!

‘Bob, get everyone off or everyone on, or fuck them, just get the fucking ramp up. We’re going NOW!’ I scream. Maybe not the most eloquent or articulate I’ve ever been, but I think it conveyed the urgency of our situation clearly enough.

He sprints for the ramp and, literally within a second, I hear him on the radio with a reply.

He doesn’t even finish his sentence. I hear the words ‘Clear above and…’ and I’m pulling the collective, demanding every inch of power the two engines can spare. The gearboxes whine in protest and the blades fight a battle that the air can’t win. I push the cyclic hard forward to get the nose down and hear the engine note rise as we lift and propel forward, gaining speed.

‘…behind’ comes the rest of Bob’s sentence, as I shout over the radio, ‘Daybreaker Two Zero is clear of the area.’

Arse. My voice isn’t usually that high. I’m going to pay for that later.

Despite me pulling full power it feels like we’re travelling at half-speed, but I guess that’s as good an example as I’ll find of perception distortion. It’s quite common when you’re stressed or under threat, and that’s exactly how we feel. I am literally waiting for the AH to attempt to perform an unnatural coupling with our Chinook, an unnatural coupling which is only going to end one way… badly!

I’m bracing myself for impact but it doesn’t come. I pull a sharp left and look… which is when I see that the Apache is still at about 1,500ft!

It must have seemed bizarre to everyone but us – the urgency in my voice, the panicked lift off with the ramp barely up, the hardcore nose-down turn. We were lifting up and away like the ground was opening up beneath us, and all the while the AH is almost leisurely descending from altitude. Hannah’s up there with a bird’s-eye view of the whole thing from 2,000ft and she’s doubtless thinking, ‘What the fuck is up with Frenchie? He seems a little stressed!’

I had to pull something out of the hat, so I got on the radio and said, ‘Ugly Five One, Daybreaker Two One, I’ll position behind you and shepherd you in. If you have any problems, we’ll be right there to lift you.’

It’s unlikely, but there’s still a possibility of the AH landing badly and slamming into the HLS. An AH is like a flying tank. They’re armoured, literally bullet-proof, and carry enough armament and firepower to prosecute a small war on their own; but all that comes at a cost – weight. With one engine out, they wouldn’t have enough power to hover and there would be no opportunity to go around or run on if they get the landing wrong. It has to be right first time or not at all. And if the worst happens, I want us in a position where we could be on the ground within seconds to pull them from the wreckage and extract them if need be. I want them to know we’ve got their backs.

‘Daybreaker Two One, Ugly Five One thank you.’

And with that, the pilot brings the aircraft down in a textbook one-engine landing; it’s perfection. She settles on to the ground, her pilot shuts the remaining engine down and that’s it – job done!

It’s such a difficult thing to do, because with only one engine, when you start pulling power, there’s only so much it can give to the NR. The impulse then is to increase the pitch to get more lift, but the engine is already maxed out and has no more to give so the NR will actually slow down. When the rotor slows down, lift decreases, and that means you accelerate towards the ground faster. When you’re in that position, normally, the collective will be up somewhere near your armpit and with the NR dropping, you have to lower the lever, which is completely counter-intuitive – it’s utterly alien to every pilot. But the AH pilot does it beautifully. The Apache just wafts down to the ground and it’s almost graceful.

I think the pilot got a Green Endorsement for that, and quite right too, because he only had a small area to get down onto and he popped it bang in the middle. Also, the aircraft was fine – the engineers performed an engine change in situ and it was eventually flown out.