For those who don't understand helicopters as well as airplanes, the main rotor blades of helicopters are the airfoils on the aircraft that gives it the lift necessary to fly. When we use our engines to turn the blades we provide high speed wind over the airfoil, creating lift. When the helicopters are on the ground during a tornado, the tornado provides the high speed wind. Thus, during the storm the blades kept flapping up and down violently. This caused a lot of damage to the feather bearings where the blades attach to the main rotor hub. We had to replace 9 feather bearings, which meant removing the blades, then replacing the bearings, then reinstalling the blades. The problem was that the Battalion wanted all the aircraft ready for missions in about 3 days. It was crazy, but we worked our tails off to make it happen.
Here are some of my troops pulling off a blade to replace a feather bearing.
Here are the first three helicopters that were ready. Since our entire base at Brownwood was destroyed we moved to Camp Bowie. These were the first ones repositioning over to Camp Bowie up onto "Heartbreak Ridge." Heartbreak is where we continued our missions from.
This was my problem child. Tail number 96-05010. It was the 10th Longbow ever made. We managed to get all the other helicopters out of Brownwood and had this one left. We had replaced one of the hydraulic servo actuators (the thing that converts my control inputs on the controls to the main rotor to actually move the helicopter). We did a test flight and during the flight our primary hydraulic psi read 6000 psi. Normal is 3000 psi. That was not good, so we landed and replaced the primary hydraulic manifold. We did the test flight, and everything was normal. We told the crewchiefs that if it was good we would land, give them a thumbs up and then take off for Heartbreak Ridge. That would let them know they could pack up their tools and drive back to Camp Bowie. Well, we landed and taxied over near to them, I gave them a thumbs up and literally two seconds later we got an "engine chips" light and advisory in our #2 engine. For everyone but Darin (who already knows what that means), that meant that our engine was eating itself internally and chunks of metal were being collected at our chip detector. The crewchiefs were confused when we had to perform an emergency shutdown as we had just given them the thumbs up, and couldn't believe it when we told them they had to replace an engine now.
Here are the guys replacing the engine. It took a few days as most of our equipment was at Camp Bowie, and every night the guys had to go back to Bowie. I stayed with one other soldier every night at the hangar to keep an eye on our baby. I just slept on a cot beside the helicopter. One morning I was awoken by the local High School field trip to the airport. The teachers heard there was an Apache at the airport so they made a field trip to see it. Finally after several days 010 (we call them by the last three digits of their tail number) was ready for another test flight. This time we told the crewchiefs that if everything was good on the test flight we would do a high speed, low pass over the airfield followed by cyclic climb push over break maneuver. That would be their sign to pack up and go. Well, the test flight went well, and when we came in for our low pass I looked over at the mechanics and noticed two hispanic and one very white moon next to the hangar (sorry, no pictures available.) We were later told that the moons were for the aircraft, not the pilots.
While we were fixing 010, the rest of the Battalion was continuing to fly missions against the "bad guys," also known as OPFOR (Opposition Force). They are other soldiers who are pretending to be the enemy. As soon as I finally got over to Camp Bowie I was sent out as the OIC (Officer In Charge) of the maintenance contact and downed aircraft recovery team to the FARP (Forward Armament and Refuel Point). The Apache can stay airborne in a combat environment for about 3 hours max, so if our base is an hour away from the enemy we would only be able to be on station fighting the enemy for about 40 minutes (one hour out, one hour back and a 20 minute reserve = 40 minutes to fight.) To solve this problem the we set up FARPs which are a lot closer to the enemy where we have fuel and ammo for the aircraft so 10 minutes to the FARP + 10 minutes from the FARP to the enemy + 20 minutes reserve = more than two hours on target. Each FARP has a maintenance contact team to fix maint. problems that occur and a DART (Downed Aircraft Recovery Team). I am the DART commander so my place is at the FARP when we have one. If an aircraft is shot down or goes down in bad guy country we launch our DART to the crash site to assess if we can do a quick repair on the aircraft and fly it back to base for permanent repairs, or if we should call the Air Force to drop a 2000 bomb on it before the enemy capture it. The above picture are some aircraft coming in to the FARP for fuel and ammo. Below is my maint. team's sleeping area.
The picture below is one of the reasons I love the Army. We encounter strange situations where leaders need to be flexible to find solutions to keep the mission going. When we were setting up the FARP there we two port-a-potties in the middle of the field we wanted to use as the landing area for the aircraft. There was a big sign on them that said if anybody moved them they would be charged with larceny, etc.... I called the number on the sign and told the owner that a bunch of Apaches were coming into that field and we needed them moved. He told me he was 200 miles away, but I could move them to the side of the field if I wanted. There is no Army manual that tells you how to move port-a-potties across an uneven field 500 yards. As I was pondering the best way to move them one of my privates said, "Sir, we could just put them on the HMMWV's hood and driver them off the field." With no better idea I got four volunteers and myself, and we lifted the port-a-potties onto the hood and sure enough, it worked and not one of us got "dirty."
