Alex Duncan - Sweating the Metal

‘RPG!’ shouts Bob as another one streaks past us, fire streaming from its tail. It misses us by a matter of feet. I can almost feel its heat.

The whole cockpit is shaking like a food processor on its fastest setting.

‘How’re the Ts and Ps?’ Bob asks, but I barely register the question; it’s taking everything I have to fly the aircraft and I have no spare capacity. Alex, though, is doing a brilliant job of handling everything else.

‘Yep, they’re fine,’ he tells Bob.

‘Guys, I think we’re going to be alright. She’s a bitch to fly but she’s hanging in,’ I tell the crew, sounding more confident than I feel.

‘Coops is securing our pax, mate. They’re obviously a bit shaken up,’ says Bob.

I see FOB Edinburgh on the nose and for the first time since we got hit, I start to believe that we might actually make it.

‘I’m going to go for a baby basic dust landing at the LS,’ I say. ‘It’s dusty as fuck at Edinburgh, so I’m not going to fuck around and try to put it anywhere specific – just right in the middle.’

I need to minimise my input on the controls; I don’t want to damage the blade further. We’ll try for a zero-speed landing.

I call the Forward Air Controller at Edinburgh to let him know we’re inbound.

‘Widow Seven Five, this is Black Cat Two Two. We are inbound, your location in figures two.’

‘Black Cat Two Two, you’re cleared straight in. Site is clear and secure.’ I thank him and mouth a silent apology for the fact that we’re just about to block his HLS.

‘Okay, pre-landing checks please Alex,’ I say.

‘Holds out, CAP shows No.2 hydraulics and AFCS secured, otherwise clear; Ts and Ps are good, brakes are off, swivel switch is locked. Bug at 40ft on my side.’

I flare us for the descent, scrubbing off speed. ‘50ft and 22kts, you’re in the gate,’ says Alex. ‘40; 16.’

Simultaneously, the RadAlt warning sounds.

‘Cancel, continuing,’ I say, killing the alarm.

Bob and Coops start calling my height: ‘30… 20… dust cloud forming… 15… at the ramp… 10, 8… centre… 6… at the door; with you…’

I see the dust cloud enveloping the nose.

‘4… 3… 2… 1, two wheels on,’ says Bob as the rear wheels touch. I lower the collective to get the nose down. ‘Six wheels on,’ he continues, as a huge, swirling cloud of grit and fine, powdery sand envelops the cab, coating everyone in it. We’re down.

‘Fuck me, Frenchie, that was an awesome bit of flying mate,’ says Alex.

‘Guys, I think we can all give ourselves a good old pat on the back,’ I tell the crew. ‘That was a real team effort. Well done!’

Coops shepherds our pax to safety. Then a thought occurs to me: ‘Guys, we can’t shut down here, it’ll block the FOB and nobody will be able to get in. We may need the space to land another aircraft full of engineers and spares to repair her. The cab’s got us this far, so I don’t think it’s going to give up on us now.’

‘Passengers are all off,’ says Coops raising the ramp. ‘Clear above and behind.’

I pull power and lift us no more than 2ft off the ground, push the cyclic right and forward, and we crab to the far corner of the base where I land on again.

‘Stabs are secured, brakes are on, EAPS off, clear APU,’ says Alex as we start to shut down the cab.

I reach up to the overhead panel and flick the switch to engage the Auxiliary Power Unit. The APU supplies power to the cab with the engines off. I move my hand to the twin engine control levers (ECLs) – and pull them out of the ‘Flight’ position and into the gate marked ‘Stop’. With the power cut, the blades immediately begin to slow.

‘DAS and nav kit off,’ says Alex.

‘Engaging rotor brake,’ I say as I pull on the huge handle that stops the rotors spinning. As they come to a halt, I switch off the APU and silence descends.

I unbuckle my chin strap and remove my flying helmet, placing it on the centre console. I run my hand through my matted hair. All I can hear is the ticking sound of the engines cooling.

It’s over.

Alex and I look at one another across the cockpit. ‘Mate, you look fucked!’ he tells me. I smile. I don’t care how I look – I’m alive!

‘You’re not exactly going to make the cover of Vogue yourself mate!’ I retort. ‘How fucking lucky were we, though? Two RPGs nearly hit us! I guess we were lucky that we were only hit by small arms, although I reckon it must have been a .50 cal to take out the blade like that.’

The two of us unstrap ourselves from the machine that almost took us to our deaths, and walk through the cab and down the ramp. Coops and Bob are standing there looking at the aft disc.

‘Fucking hell, Frenchie, look at the twist on that blade,’ says Coops and I look up to see a massive chunk of it missing. The whole outer end of one of the blades has ceased to exist.

‘How the fuck could a .50 cal do that?’ I ask.

‘That was no .50 cal,’ says Coops. ‘We’ve been hit by an RPG!’

I look at Alex and all the colour has drained from his face. He looks like he’s in shock. Bob’s laughing, but then Bob’s always laughing. I think it’s nervous laughter now though.

I look at the aft pylon and there are huge football-sized, RPG-shaped holes through both sides of it, and that’s when my blood runs cold; it feels like it’s turned to ice in my veins.

‘We’ve been hit by a fucking RPG,’ I think. But it’s too big – I can’t get my mind around it. The thought repeats like a mantra, over and over. My brain’s working overtime, trying to figure it out. It can’t have armed – if it had, it would have taken the cab out in a huge fireball and there’d be nothing left. It’s hit the aft head in an upward trajectory, passed clean through both sides of the aft pylon and travelled up and through the blades.

I walk around the cab and when I take in the extent of the damage, I can’t conceive of how we stayed aloft after the incident. We’ve been hit by three separate weapons systems: as well as the RPG passing through the pylon and taking out part of the aft rotor, we’ve taken a significant degree of shrapnel damage, seven or eight rounds of .50 cal and some 7.62mm. In total there are thirty-four holes in the aircraft.

The thoughts are coming thick and fast as I play it back in my mind. I saw a Toyota Hilux and jinked the aircraft left suddenly, a second before we were hit… I shiver as I realise that that probably saved our lives, because the RPG would have hit us square on otherwise. The angle at which it hit means it didn’t arm; it struck us more of a glancing blow.

We learn much later that the RPG was identified as being first generation – investigators were able to tell via cut marks on the rotor that showed the round as having four fins. One of the problems of the first-generation RPG is that it needs to hit a target square-on. If it doesn’t, the fuse fails to detonate and it remains inert. That’s the only reason it didn’t explode when it hit us.

The head of the RPG went through the pylon, then it deviated into the blade, which disintegrated under the force. Boeing, the Chinook’s manufacturers, told us that the blade whipped it back round, so we were effectively hit a second time by the RPG; some of the shrapnel damage we took was caused by its outer casing coming in. It was that which nicked a hydraulic pipe – just the tiniest bit. But the hydraulic system is pressurised to 3,000psi, so we lost the lot within a second; there you are, no hydraulics, just to make life a bit more interesting. One of the .50 cal rounds hit the gearbox, but it struck a big round nut and didn’t go in – it just bounced off and disappeared. If it had hit straight on, it would have jammed the gearbox and destroyed it.