Apache Over Libya

Will Laidlaw

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Aviation
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781473867642
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military Biographies
• Index: History

In this military memoir, an Army Air Corps pilot recounts his experience flying Apache helicopters behind enemy lines in the First Libyan Civil War. In May 2011, after a routine exercise in the Mediterranean, HMS Ocean and her fleet of Apache attack helicopters were about to head home. But the civil war in Libya and the resulting NATO air campaign intervened. Soon the author and his fellow Apache pilots were flying at night over hostile territory. Despite Libya's cutting-edge defense systems and land-to-air weapons, the Apaches made nightly raids at ultra low-level behind enemy lines. They had to fight their way into Libya and complete their mission before the hazardous return to Ocean. Apache Over Libya describes the experiences of eight Army and two Royal Navy pilots who played a significant role in the NATO-led campaign. Despite fighting the best armed enemy British aircrew have faced in generations, they defied the odds and survived. Thrilling firsthand action accounts vividly convey what it means to fly the Apache in combat at sea and over enemy-held terrain. This unforgettable account gives a rare insight into attack helicopter operations in war.

Chapter 1

A New War

‘Missile launch, 3 o’clock! … Flares! Flares! Flares! …
It’s coming at us …’

Libya, 9 June 2011

Rapid tension. Dry mouth. High voice. A new terror, searing fear. The possibility of being shot down over Libya by the most lethal Russian-made anti-helicopter weapon in existence was now a reality. Travelling at 800m per second, the missile was just three seconds from impact.

It was almost midnight and over the Libyan coast, not far from Misrata, two Apache attack helicopters raced in towards their target – a Command and Control node used by Khamis Gaddafi, the dictator’s favoured son. As soon as the pair crossed the coast an SA-24 heat-seeking missile was launched from the cover of the sand dunes. Even the most modern military helicopter should not be able to survive an SA-24 hit.

Again, ‘Flares! Flares! Flares! … Still coming at us …’

We had one second left in life. Everything was done, we had strained every sinew to survive, and now, in that last fragment of time, we stared in petrified astonishment as death raced at us. Then a chance was offered. The missile swerved, seduced by our final set of flares, and self-destructed in shards of bright white and orange shrapnel in front of my cockpit. I flinched and instinctively ducked at the explosion.

‘Whoa! That doesn’t give up does it’? I shouted to Staff Sergeant John Blackwell, my rear seat pilot.

Simultaneously, from the wing aircraft, ‘That’s not an RPG! Looks high end, I have the launch point, I can see the shooter, ready to suppress.’ This was Mark Hall, my wingman, weapons man, Operations Warrant Officer, general expert and now companion in a fight for our lives, coming over the inter-aircraft frequency.

John Blackwell, calm, hands on the controls, kept us heading for our target. His voice cut through the chaos: ‘Boss, you’re ten seconds from a good launch profile …’

Pressing the transmission switch with my left foot, I issued the new plan: ‘I have the C2 node, you have the missile firing point, back with you in 45 seconds!’

Only seconds from the firing on the C2 node the surface-to-air missile had interrupted, now I was determined to get the job done, while Mark Hall and his rear-seater, Charlie Tollbrooke, protected the flank. Within 30 seconds I had put two Hellfire missiles into the C2 node and observed a few seconds of panic on the ground, before John brought our Apache hard round to the right.

I transmitted to Mark Hall, ‘Targets destroyed, lining up on your right, observing your fall of shot …’, and we manoeuvred to serve as protection for him as he tipped in, his 30mm disgorging three 20-round bursts to deal with the SA-24 man. It was 9 June 2011, only our third mission into Libya; we had two more months of this.

Chapter 2

Forming the Team

Consider this: the aircraft is done in, no longer flyable; you are over the sea at night and just a second from going in. Now, ribs cracking on impact, face thrashed against the controls, teeth smashed and jaw broken, but you’re lucky, somehow the canopy was off before you went in and you are conscious. Flesh-ripping ingress of water tears off your flying helmet and fills your mouth. Without air, now submerged, you choke. Entombed in darkness, you are cold-shocked, gasping involuntarily, upside down. In the time it takes to read these words, time has almost run out. All you have left is three seconds to locate your harness and release, undo the three cables still attached to the flying helmet that is hanging off your head, find the hole where the canopy was and force your body, armour, ammunition and weapon through the gap. You could take out the short-term air supply bottle and get another breath, but that would waste time. You’ve only been under fifteen seconds. You get out. The sinking aircraft is now too deep, you are negatively buoyant. It’s too late. You try to swim up, but you can’t. You pull the toggle to inflate your lifejacket; the water pressure denies its function. You sink. You’re waiting to drown.

*

At the start of this enterprise there were four of us: me, Little Shippers, Big Shippers and Mark Hall. We needed six more pilots to fly the Apache at sea. It wasn’t a popular choice. The sea is a brutal place and survival there demands time and luck, neither of which are predictable or likely to be in your favour. Time is measured in seconds, luck controls how badly injured you are, how heavy the aircraft is, how cold the water is, the scores of things that could trap a limb in the cockpit, the chances of getting the doors off before hitting the water. Luck fills the space planning cannot.

The Apache helicopter was designed in the 1970s to replace the Bell AH-1 Cobra that had seen service in Vietnam. It is fundamentally a land-based helicopter. In the early days the boffins at Hughes played with a maritime design but found it was not required, so stuck to the land project. The original AH64 A model Apache saw its first United States Army service in 1986, two years after Hughes became part of McDonnell Douglas. Notable success in Panama and the first Gulf War followed. In the mid-1990s the British Ministry of Defence ran a commercial competition with the aim of procuring ninety-eight Attack Helicopters for the Army and Royal Navy. With an ever-decreasing Defence budget a compromise was reached, but not on the capability of the platform. Eventually, sixty-seven of the upgraded AH64 D model Apaches were purchased, all with the highly capable Longbow Fire Control Radar. We have even strapped two enormous Rolls Royce engines to the side to give them more power. Since 1997 the Boeing Company has been the firm behind the Apache. The UK procured the aircraft via Augusta Westland, and through this conduit we have the finest attack helicopter in the world. Back in the late ’90s there were not enough of these new and highly complex aircraft to spread across two Services, so the Army got the lot, with a promise to train one of its squadrons to fly at sea. The challenge from the start was that the Apache was not designed to operate at sea.

But the British way is to disregard convention and make things work. The earliest embarked trials were carried out in 2004 and 2005, and it fell to 656 Squadron to do the work. They did. The aircraft could land and take off safely; the engineering could be done; the base level concept was proved. Then along came the conflict in Afghanistan. The Squadron put the maritime work on the shelf and became the first British Apache squadron to deploy to Afghanistan, adding another operation to its tally. From 2006 everything the British Army did was about succeeding there. All our training was about Afghanistan, all our equipment was optimized for the arid, talcum sand environment and all our people were brought up to think counter-insurgency thoughts. Nobody could doubt the success of the aircraft. It had a phenomenal impact in support of British and Coalition forces in Helmand. This is where it earned its spurs; six squadrons with lineage in the Auster, Sioux, Scout, Gazelle and Lynx were now flying the Apache and rotating one after another through Operation Herrick, the British name for the military mission in Helmand.

The squadron has an extraordinary operational history. From the Second World War, where the only two recipients of the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Military Cross combined flew in 656, to Malaya, Borneo, Rhodesia, the Falklands, the Balkans and Afghanistan, the squadron has fought for soldiers alongside sailors and airmen for over seventy years. This squadron’s heritage comes not from it finding a niche or somehow being ‘the best’; nor is it held in higher regard than any other squadron. It is just because 656 was next on the list to go, and when it did go the squadron performed as any military team would – with determination, spirit and courage, whatever the task and whatever the threat. In the early 2000s the squadron found itself next on the list again and became the first British Army Apache squadron. In 2006, when the UK committed forces to Helmand Province in Afghanistan, the squadron deployed with them. Over the next three years 656 Squadron went there and came back three times, returning for the last time in May 2009. I took command the same month, expecting to deploy with the squadron again the following year.

The scale and importance of the British operation in Afghanistan meant there was no spare capacity for any other activity. Everything was optimized for Helmand, every person, piece of equipment and way of working. Everyone in the Army had to expect to deploy there with only a year or so between coming home and getting on the bus again. The Attack Helicopter Force was no different. Since that first brutal summer with 16 Air Assault Brigade in 2006, its six squadrons had rotated through Helmand, doing five months on the line followed by a year at home, before getting ready to go again. The Apache itself never left. It flew every day and night throughout the province, wherever British soldiers needed its support. Six squadrons worked a well-worn rotation until November 2009, when change was forced upon us. Savings had to be made and we needed to rationalize training and operations, so 656 Squadron was next on the list again. I was training on the firing ranges in Arizona when the CO phoned me.

‘The situation has changed.’ This is military speak for ‘your planning has been overtaken by someone else’s decision, so stand by to re-plan’.

‘You have a challenge; we are changing your role. No more Afghanistan for 656. You will deliver front-line operational training and I want you to reinvigorate a contingent capability with anything you have left.’

We had only trained for Afghanistan, and I had planned accordingly. Now we were going to run the training and develop ideas for a war that might come next. Our first Apache squadron not being on current operations was unthinkable. The first British Apache squadron, the first one into Afghanistan, the one that flew the Jugroom Fort¹ mission, was closing that part of its operational history and could be beginning another.

In a parochial sense I was disappointed not to be part of the Afghanistan cycle. I had always wanted to be in the Apache programme, and selection for command of a front-line squadron came with the assumption that operations in Afghanistan would be part of the tour. But the situation had changed, we had a lot of work to do and, while others could not, we could see the opportunity in this role. Military operations in Afghanistan would not last forever and we needed to be ready for what came next. Although we were not to know it, 656 squadron was once more about to pioneer a new way in military aviation.

By 2010 there was senior military acknowledgement that, while Afghanistan was the top priority, we needed to be ready for whatever came next. For the majority of the Army what came next was another tour of Afghanistan. Encouraging the consideration of a contingent capability beyond our Afghan responsibility was an uphill challenge. As I searched for support for my part in the project it became abundantly clear that the top priority was the only priority and anything else was to be taken at risk.

So effective was the communication that everything must be optimized for success in Afghanistan that my wish to challenge for scant resources was regarded as trivial, or worse, counter-productive. The ‘didn’t you get the memo?’ attitude was extraordinary. ‘What are you doing that for?’ was frequently asked. Preparing for something that was not real, that was not currently on our plate, was going to be painful. To me it seemed we were losing our imagination. I was forced to think new thoughts, to talk about operations other than Afghanistan. There were a number of individuals, many of them senior, who recognized the importance of developing a capability for the future, but at this stage of the Herrick campaign they were considerably outnumbered by those who could not afford to think beyond the next Afghan deployment. They had to train, deploy, fight and come home, then repeat. The Afghanistan rotation had harnessed the energy and, in some cases shackled the thoughts, of many who went there. By 2012 a wholesale military reset for the Army embraced contingent operations, but in 2010 in the Attack Helicopter Force it felt like 656 was on its own.

We had not needed to think about how we could work elsewhere in a different scenario, with a different threat. From an attack helicopter perspective it seemed to me that we had become comfortable operating out of the reach of dangerous weapons, where acting with total freedom was the expectation. We had a generation of aircrew who had spent years in Afghanistan and had grown into very experienced and capable operators in most respects; but due to the tempo and nature of that operation other skills had been allowed to wither. The hard-to-learn and easy-to-lose skills involved in defending and fighting the aircraft in a hostile environment, skills we did not need in an Apache in Afghanistan, had become just ten per cent of the training course. These skills were to become ninety per cent of what we needed over Libya. Being ready for whatever came next was wise. Breaking through the layers of ‘Afghanistan is the only war’ thinking was going to be difficult.

Conflict is unpredictable. It often arrives quietly and by surprise. And all you have to respond with is what comes to hand. You cannot wish more people, planes, ships, helicopters, guns, tanks or whatever out of thin air. Conflict is a come-as-you-are activity. This uncertainty requires agility – warriors in the current war who know that there will be a different war tomorrow. Conflict moves quickly, it is changeable. Conflict finds a new way, a new weapon, a different geography and new recruits. The bellicose persuasion of the human condition will not wait for you to agree with it or realize it needs to be fought. Conflict chooses you. Politicians and soldiers must be ready for it, whatever it may be. When fully committed to one specific conflict there is often little opportunity to consider how to deal with what might come next. In 2010 we had, in a small way, been given the chance to explore this with the Apache and present a case for new and unusual ways of using the aircraft outside its role in Afghanistan.

My priority was training front-line aircrew for Afghanistan. My second task was ‘everything else, if you have anything left’. It was clear that if I had anything left it should be taken to provide for Afghanistan, whether it was needed or not. At times it felt like 656 was regarded as a training provider that must be kept in its place. If the squadron started to do anything other than priority number one it was somehow denying a crucial resource that should be taken and used in Helmand.

Our training task was demanding for soldiers and planners, but not overly complex. It had been running for six years. The resources were known, the standards were understood and it was a question of balancing the number of instructors available to teach, the right number of aircraft to conduct the sorties and the willingness of the Great British weather to allow training to be completed. The Apache combat training course, known as Conversion to Role, or CTR, lasts eight months and is as demanding as the preceding eight months learning to fly the machine. Several years of Afghanistan experience had been reinvested in instructors of exceptional quality, resulting in a CTR syllabus that was Afghanistan-focused and delivered to the highest standard. This is a tough course, but the exacting standards are necessarily high; the ongoing operational context served as a daily reminder of this. Crews in training conducted their planning alongside crews completing their final preparations prior to deploying to Afghanistan. They all attended post-operational conferences together, and the CTR students knew that if they maintained the right standards they too would be in Afghanistan in a matter of months. Combat training has never been better informed or delivered, and the product was well worth the investment.

As long as I did not make too much noise and incur the wrath of the ‘Afghanistan is the only war’ warriors I could quietly develop the maritime use of the Apache. During the summer of 2010, after my own pre-Afghanistan training in Arizona, I spent three weeks at sea gathering the facts and working out the range of our maritime potential. I needed to understand the unique challenges of conducting helicopter operations at sea, as well as exploring the limitations of putting an Apache on a ship. The immediate problems are obvious to a sailor, but not to a soldier. However big your ship, it will never be big enough. There is very little space. What space there is, is shared. The ship moves all the time – up, down, forwards, sideways. The power supply is different. You have to lash down anything that you want to stay on board, including helicopters. A mistake could mean a fire or a flood or a soul lost to the sea. You will knock your head, knees, hips and elbows on hatches and ladders. You share, a lot. It takes at least a week to know your way round a ship. Meals are measured in minutes. Inspections are frequent and standards are high. Discipline is strong. Sailors speak an entirely different language. Rapid assimilation to this environment is needed to get through the culture shock. Survivor’s Jackspeak is essential. If you’ve only done half a ‘dog watch’ or you are ‘Percy Pongo’, you had better learn quickly where to find your port and starboard oars and when it is acceptable to ‘double-duff’ in the Wardroom. More generally, knowing the difference between wanting a ‘goffer’ and getting ‘goffered’ is useful – ‘WAFUs’ are an easy target!

The sea is a ruthless place. It cares not for mistakes and it is a punisher. Throughout history, mariners have developed and refined procedures that ensure, as much as possible, the safety of a ship and her sailors. Transgression from these procedures could result in fire, flood or unscheduled bathing. The rule is simple: ‘the ship you are in is your best life-raft, do everything you can to preserve that.’ The challenge I would face in the coming months was how to convince the operators of such multi-layered safety structures to put in that life-raft an aircraft with a narrow undercarriage, high centre of gravity and tonnes of ammunition. Turning off all the lights and flying to an...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Glossary
• Acknowledgements
• Maps
• Prologue
• Chapter 1: A New War
• Chapter 2: Forming the Team
• Chapter 3: It’s Just an Exercise, Home Soon
• Chapter 4: We’re Not Going to Albania
• Chapter 5: Feet-Dry in the Danger Zone
• Chapter 6: The Seventh Son and the Revolution
• Chapter 7: The Zlitan Raids
• Chapter 8: The Raid on Brega
• Photo Gallery
• Chapter 9: The Turning of the Tide
• Chapter 10: The Week of the 27
• Chapter 11: The Rebel in the Mountains
• Chapter 12: Opening up the Third Front
• Chapter 13: Okba and the 99th Hellfire
• Chapter 14: Finishing with War – Only Two Average Days
• Chapter 15: Six Weeks Later
• Notes