The FARP
Food and water were available there in modest quality. Also provided by the Creator himself was a great expanse of land at the FARP for relieving oneself between sorties. The turnaround time at the FARP was approximately five minutes, with all the rearm and refit work being done in some cases by the pilots themselves. Let me tell you something about pilots back in the States: back in the States, you’re lucky if you can get them to load their own luggage on their aircraft, let alone arm and fit an attack helicopter — there is dirt and grease on those things like you wouldn’t believe!!
Attack helo pilots from the Night Stalkers 160th Special Air Operations Regiment fly using just two techniques for a strike. Those techniques are “hard” and “again.” They hit their targets hard, and then they hit them again and again:
“We don’t believe in over-complicating assault plans with diagrams with bunches of circles, Xs, and arrows,” one AH-6 pilot was (probably) heard saying somewhere at some time, “we just have a proclivity to dive in and hit the enemy really really hard… and then we have a penchant for circling around and hitting then again — a whole bunch of times!”
Night Stalkers only fly during pristine weather conditions, too, like the pilots in the States — said nobody ever. The night of the attack on Lynx, the weather offered nothing but low ceilings and strong winds that kicked up dust that choked off visibility and lowered the already feeble illumination even more. All of those things summed up the worst aspect of the whole situation: there was no visible reference horizon! That left the already taxed pilots to depend on instruments to keep from augering their gunships into the ground and leaving the Rangers in the fight with their heads virtually cut off.
Out at the FARP, the Crew Chiefs and ammo slingers worked like the best NASCAR pit crews in existence. In NASCAR, the pit crews operate by the mantra: “We want to win the game!” while crews at the FARP operate by the mantra: “We don’t want to die!” You can decide for yourselves which is the more proficient crew. Turnaround times were as low as three minutes.
“Well, NASCAR crews can pit is as low as 11 seconds.”
Yeah, but screw them; screw NASCAR pit crews because you know why? Because they are playing a game back home, FARP crews are going in balls-to-walls to kill or get killed.
Chief Greg Coker’s Little Birds were so laden with ammunition that they had almost zero hover time; that is, they were either going or coming but had to keep moving in order to have lift. I liken them to how sharks must keep moving to keep oxygenated water flowing through their gills. Aside from the basic loads for his rocket pods and Gatling guns, the Chief and his copilot had M4 assault rifles with ten magazines (300 rounds 5.56 x 45mm) and M-67 fragmentation grenades stuffed in every conducive crevice of the cockpit.
I conservatively concluded that were his helo ever to ignite; it would put us all in mind of the Hindenburg disaster.
Objective Lynx
At Lynx the Rangers had stormed and secured the dam as planned and on schedule. Delta Force breachers moved through the dam infrastructure to clear it of any explosive devices. The Rangers set up blocking positions on the east and west ends of the dam to protect entry. SFC Mo Morris and six Rangers were positioned in the blocking position on the western end of the dam.
As Greg’s team raced off from the FARP to the fight at Serpent, they struggled with the horrid flight conditions the night had cursed them with. They fought with multiple radios and networks, trying to cobble together a semblance of situational awareness. The absence of any identifiable horizon threatened to cut short their flight at any moment. Control was so ponderous as to limit each man’s control of the flight to roughly one minute, whereby he would relent control to the other pilot for the next minute.
En Route to Mo
Chief Coker finally did make contact with “Mo,” his Ranger point of contact on the ground, who was responsible for directing the fire missions of the gunships. But he was horrified to hear the sound of very heavy gunfire in the background of Mo’s transmission. Mo’s concern was for the gunships’ arrival time (Time on Target — Tot), which at the time was about 14 minutes.
A continued harrowing struggle, with the radios trying to re-establish comms with Mo, made Greg curse the notion that a man standing on the Moon could make comms with Houston, Texas, 240,000 miles away, but Chief couldn’t talk to Mo less than 25 miles away.
As Greg finally made contact with Mo again, using a satellite radio network, he took immediate note of the high level of stress in Mo’s voice. Mo indicated that they were only minutes away from being overrun by a vastly superior force. With roughly three minutes left in his transit to reach the dam, Chief “pulled the guts” out of his airframe to shave as many seconds as possible off of the flight to the dam.
(to be Continued in part II)
By Almighty God and with honor,
geo sends
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Editor’s Note: Let’s all do Geo a solid. Go out and buy his book and visit his website. I promise it’s all good stuff. — GDM
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