The Making of A Chopper Pilot
By
Rick Blackmon
Copyright Rick Blackmon 2013
All Rights Reserved.
Chapter 1
The summer after high school graduation
Greg Michaels, Jake Wilson, and Beth Chalmers had been friends since kindergarten. Today, they were in Greg's kitchen having a snack when Greg's mother walked into the room carrying a large envelope. "This came for you today, Greg," she said.
Greg grabbed the envelope and ripped it open. The cover letter was a notification he had been accepted into the US Military Academy at West Point. He immediately grabbed his mother and said with a lot of emotion, "I got it, Mom, I got it. I'm going to West Point." Unabashedly, he hugged Jake and Beth. They danced around the kitchen, with Greg waving the certificate of acceptance.
Beth was headed to Southern Methodist in the fall and Jake was going to the University of Texas at Arlington. Greg had assumed he'd probably attend UTA with Jake but this changed everything. Since he was a little boy he'd wanted to go to West Point. When he was a sophomore in high school, he began preparing for his dream by taking all of the advanced level classes offered. His mother helped him write their congressmen and senators asking for the pre-candidate questionnaire, and to be considered for their academy appointment.
Greg was valedictorian of the senior class at Bedford, Texas. While his academic record was outstanding, admission to the United States Military Academy at West Point is highly competitive. Each year, 12,000 young men and women apply for admission to West Point. About 1,200 are accepted. West Point is among the nation's top academic institutions offering almost 30 academic majors in both sciences and humanities. West Point cadets also undergo a rigorous, mandatory physical training, leadership development and ethical training to develop the attributes necessary to become a leader of high character. Upon graduation from West Point, Second Lieutenant Greg Michaels will become an officer of the U.S. Army.
* * *
For the rest of the summer, Greg worked hard on his physical conditioning. He had played football and baseball in high school so he was in good shape. He knew there was a vigorous regimen at the academy and he wanted to be ready for it.
Cadet candidates must attend a preparatory training program lasting about six weeks prior to the start of the plebe year. This session is commonly called Beast or Beast Barracks.
His excellent physical condition stood Greg in good stead during Beast, and he surpassed all requirements and was ready for the start of his freshman or plebe year.
In addition to the military aspect of the academy, the academics were grueling and Greg spent most of his spare time studying. It was his intent to graduate in the top ten percentile.
* * *
Branch night is the time when West Point Cadets select the branch of the Army in which they would like to serve, such as armor, infantry, air cavalry. Greg had decided long ago he would like aviation or air cavalry and he made that choice on Branch Night.
* * *
His dream came true after he finished number five in his class. and was sent to Fort Rucker Aviation Center of Excellence at Fort Rucker, Alabama where he would enter basic helicopter training, lasting about one year and then advanced training of about six months, based on the machines he would be flying, in his case the Apache.
Chapter 2
Greg found you didn't really need three hands and two feet to fly a chopper; however, the third hand would have been very helpful. Flying a helicopter involves great coordination and fortunately Greg was blessed with this coordination. He completed all of the training at or near the top in all phases. In other words, he was a natural.
About three months after the completion of his training, Greg was sent to Afghanistan and was flying the Apache in combat.
* * *
Greg's first assignment in Afghanistan was flying support in search and rescue missions. The insurgents had developed the tactic of lying in wait for a rescue effort following a downed US aircraft. They withheld fire until the rescue chopper came in, slowed or hovered near the downed crew. Then, armed with rocket propelled grenades they would bring heavy, murderous fire on the rescue team. The support chopper crews were alert to this and would frequently rake the surrounding area with fire from their chain gun. They would also use their rockets to take out heavy weapons such as anti-aircraft guns and vehicles.
That said, any mission that involves flying troops in enemy territory is dangerous. Helicopters are a much safer way to move troops around in Taliban infested areas of Afghanistan than road vehicles, however they are unreliable machines that often crash or fail even without any enemy intervention. Any downed machine is going to be brought under observation by Taliban forces. No slick (Unarmed helicopter) is sent in alone in a rescue attempt.
Radio contact with the downed crew was almost always possible. Approaching the area of a downed Chinook, Greg's call sign was Red Eagle 4. He contacted the surrounded soldiers using his radio.
"Cherokee 6, Cherokee 6, this is Red Eagle 4, this is Red Eagle 4, do you read me, over?"
"Roger, Red Eagle 4, this is Cherokee 6, read you five by over. Popping blue smoke. Enemy is around the LZ."
Immediately, smoke began pouring forth just northwest of the downed Chinook. "Cherokee 6, I have your smoke. I'll hit everything but the smoke, over."
"Roger that Red Eagle 4. Give'em hell."
Greg's gunner in the forward cockpit began raking the area with fire as Greg walked the chopper away from the smoke. He then swung around in the other direction, the other support chopper, Red Eagle 5 began doing the same thing on the other side of the downed Chinook. After two passes, the slicks came in and the first hovered beside the smoke.
Greg could see the crew from the down Chinook running is a crouched position toward the transport chopper. He could see men, some obviously wounded and being dragged toward the opened door. He spotted activity moving toward the crew. He pointed the nose toward this movement and the gunner opened fire on them. The first slick revved up and rose a few feet. The pilot lowered the nose to gain speed and moved off quickly.
The second rescue craft is more vulnerable because the Taliban could see it coming. Seeing more movement toward the LZ, Greg opened up and hit the area with fire from his 7.62mm nose gun while the gunner hit the area with the chain gun. The rescue craft came in to pick up the remainder of the downed crew. It took a hit, wobbled a bit but the pilot managed to stabilize the aircraft and they were able to get up and away.
"This is Red Eagle leader, time to get out of Dodge. Let's take'em home."
Greg made one more pass and launched a hellfire missile at the downed Chinook, which now had Taliban crawling in and out. Huge columns of fire bloomed, reaching for the sky. There was a secondary explosion as the fuel tanks ruptured on the Chinook.
After a job well done, the four choppers headed back toward base where the wounded could be treated.
Chapter 3
Many of the assigned missions were far more intense than the first one. Greg told his friend Jake, he had nightmares of events in one such mission. He had told Jake he had rolled in on a 'danger close' situation to begin a strafing run on the insurgents who were mounting an attack on the American forces.
"I could see a guy standing there with an RPG launcher to his shoulder. It was so vivid I could see the hairs in his beard. I jinked and the grenade went right over the cockpit, without hitting anything. A foot to the right and it would've knocked out my engine, a couple of feet higher it would've gotten the rotor. Lower, it gets me. I know there were other close calls but that's the one that gives me nightmares. You dust yourself off, refuel, rearm and go back again."
Greg w
as awarded the Silver Star for his actions on that mission.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates clipped the Silver Star onto the 28-year-old Army helicopter pilot's desert camouflage uniform in Afghanistan.. The young 1st Lieutenant earned the military's third-highest decoration for his actions in August when he and his fellow pilots came to the aid of U.S. soldiers who'd been ambushed while working to clear bombs from a road outside Kandahar in southern Afghanistan.
Michaels returned home from the yearlong deployment in February, but he didn't say much about the battles that led to the Silver Star as well as two Distinguished Flying Crosses and an Army Commendation Medal with Valor.
"He's not one to talk about this," his longtime friend, Jake Wilson said. "He will tell you that it's definitely a team effort, it's not just one person doing this, and if they didn't all have each other's back, it wouldn't be happening."
The official description of Michaels's actions on November 3rd covers more than two single-spaced pages. About 30 U.S. ground troops faced about company strength enemy insurgents armed with heavy machine guns, small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades.
The document tells how Michaels, flying a Kiowa helicopter, led several other helicopters, after their flight leader was downed by an RPG in the six-hour battle against a well-disguised enemy operating from lush grape fields and thick-walled, earthen buildings.
Twice, Michaels's team of two helicopters refueled, re-armed and returned to the fight.
Twice, Michaels stayed in the fight even after running out of rockets and .50-caliber ammunition for the chopper's forward machine gun. As lead pilot, he and a trailing Kiowa made two additional passes directly over the insurgents, drawing fire away from the ground forces. Their only weapons at that point: the M4 rifles the co-pilots fired out of the cockpit.
An interview for CNN, Capt. Dale Anthony who served as Michaels's wingman that day, said he was attempting to provide cover for Michaels's chopper.
He had spent three months as Michaels's co-pilot, so he knew that his friend would be relentless as long as coalition forces were in danger.
"Col. Bagby, our skipper had made it known to everybody in our whole task force that we were there to support the ground forces. We were to do everything in our power to help them, regardless of how dangerous the situation became for us," Anthony said.
Four soldiers - members of the 4th Engineers - were pinned down in a ditch about 20 meters away from an enemy machine gun emplacement, getting pounded.
Kiowa Warriors don't have laser-guided rockets or computer systems that tell pilots where to shoot. Instead, they sight-in their weapons by putting a grease-pencil mark on the windshield, then line up their target with the mark. ("It's like gun fighting in the street with a six-shooter," Michaels said. "It's very old school, but it works every time when you need it the most.")
Anthony said no one in the task force was better than Michaels at hitting difficult targets when it counted most.
He watched Michaels come in "danger close" - a term pilots use when a wrong move could cause friendly fire or collateral damage - and level the emplacements.
"Only the best pilots will take danger-close shots. He hit that machine gun nest square with two rockets," Anthony said.
On any given mission, an Army helicopter may face any of several types of weapons in use by the insurgents. They may include small-arms fire, ubiquitous rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, very rare leftover Russian antiaircraft guns like the Zsu-23-4 and guided shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, or SAMs. The latter weapons system had been used to great effect by the mujahedeen in their war with the Soviet Union 30 years ago, and the insurgents' ability to shoot down helicopters decisively impacted the course of the Afghan rebels' war against a foreign force. During his thirteen month tour, Greg had encountered small arms fire, RPGs and an occasional shoulder fired missile, most of which did not employ the modern technology.
Chapter 4
Like most helicopter pilots, Greg Michaels was averse to hovering. A stationary target such as a hovering helicopter is an easy target to hit. Since most weapons used by the Taliban are unguided, the chopper pilots rarely hovered making it a bit more problematical for the insurgents to accurately direct fire on them.
A typical schedule had the pilots working nine days flying missions and one day off. There is a saying among helicopters to the effect of "if it hasn't happened yet, it will." Helicopters are intricately designed machines with many moving parts. More choppers are downed by equipment failure than by enemy fire. It was that way with Greg.
He had been on a support mission to suppress ground fire and was returning to base when his engine failed. He did not have a lot of altitude when this happened and didn't have much choice in a landing spot. When he auto-rotated down, one of the skids crumpled and the aircraft rolled on its side. Greg retrieved his knife from his belt and cut himself loose and fell heavily to the side of the chopper, which was now the bottom, blocking that exit. He managed to scramble out the top (Other side) of the bird and put some distance between himself and his broken bird. A fire broke out, the fuel tanks ruptured and caught fire and then exploded, becoming a giant arrow in the sky pointing directly at his chopper and nearly to him. His co-pilot or gunner had gotten out the same way and joined him in the rocks trying to stay out of sight of any insurgents in the area to investigate what was at the base of the flaming arrow in the sky.
All pilots carry a small hand-held radio used to contact ground forces or rescue forces. On this day, Greg used his to contact his fellow aviators to let them know he was down, the condition of his bird, himself and his co-pilot. Since they had no idea of the time they would be down, they used only one of their radios just in case. Greg's call sign on this day was Sierra 3. Using his hand held PRC-90 survival radio, Greg called Sierra Leader to tell him Sierra 3 was down, the bird burned and his copilot was okay. He gave them the coordinates.
Having been told it would be dark before the rescue birds would get there, Greg and his copilot settled in, taking shifts as guard. On or off guard, neither slept much. Finally dawn arrived and with it the flucketa-flucketa sound of inbound choppers. The mountain walls were too close for the Chinook to land, so they lowered a hook to pick up the aircrew one man at a time. With the heavily armed Apache choppers moving and looking for targets, Greg and his co-pilots were extracted and were soon on their way back to base.
A combat helicopter pilot will fly from one to five missions the days he is on the flying schedule, the primary factor that keeps them going out is the knowledge they will be rescued if they go down. Their unofficial motto is "Leave no man behind." On this day they didn't leave anyone.
The mechanical failure was the only time during his first tour that Greg had a broken bird. He was considered a lucky pilot and it had held up on this day.
The balance of Greg's first tour in Afghanistan was mostly routine missions, it you can call flying into unfamiliar areas containing people that want to kill you routine. 1st Lieutenant Greg Michaels was promoted to the rank of Captain prior to his rotation back the US.
He was assigned to the Army Aviation Center, Fort Rucker, Alabama as a pilot instructor.
Chapter 5
Combat tours are normally twelve to fifteen months, and then two years in a non-combat zone. Upon Greg's return from Afghanistan, he took a thirty day leave. On leave, he visited friends in California. He also purchased a BMW 550. He intended to drive the Beemer to Fort Rucker, his new assignment. Enroute, he was going to spend time with Jake and Beth Wilson, in Flower Mound, a suburb north east of the sprawling DFW complex.
He was really looking forward to this visit. Beth and Jake were the closest he had to family since his parent's death in the auto accident in La Jolla, California. His father had been an executive with a large company with headquarters in San Diego. They left a sizable insurance policy and the fully paid for home in La Jolla. In addition, there had been a lawsuit against the drunken driver that caused the death of
his parents. He settlement had left him a multi-millionaire. Greg Michaels was a wealthy man, who loved the Army and had no intention of taking a discharge.
Beth Wilson had been the first girl Greg had kissed, at the ripe old age of seven. The romantic event happened in the playhouse in Beth's backyard. It was Jake who won Beth's heart and they were married following their college graduation. Greg was best man that their wedding.
When the Beemer rolled to a stop in front of their home in the Wellington sub-division of Flower Mound, the front door flew open and Beth ran out and jumped into Greg's opened arms. In any group of women, Beth would likely be the most attractive and most intelligent woman there. She had a true beauty both inner and outer. "I'm so glad to see you. I've missed you. Greg held her aloft and spun her around. I'm glad to see you too, little Sis. There had never been a romantic attraction between the two and they regarded each other as brother and sister.
"Jake not home from work yet?" asked Greg.
"No, he called and said he was running a bit late, but would be here by six."
"We planned to go out for dinner in Grapevine tonight. Is that okay with you or are you too tired?"
"No, that sounds great. I'll just need to clean up and I'll be good to go."
"Come on in. I've fixed up your usual room, so let's get your stuff inside."
"I've got it", Greg said. "I had most of my uniforms shipped on to Rucker so I don't have to mess with it."
True to his word, Jake arrived shortly before six and was greeted with a bear hug and a firm handshake from Greg. Beth settled for a kiss.
Reservations had been made at Dino's Steak and Claw House in Grapevine. They had been there before and it had always been a good experience topped off with excellent food and service.