The Panther Prowls

Yes, I have been busy. Sorry it took so long to get another post on here, but if you check out what I grew on my upper lip I'm sure you'll agree it was well worth the wait. This is me right after a mission. For all the dudes reading, my gear includes aviator body armor with a front plate, and a flight vest with all my survival stuff (radio, first aid kit, pocket knife, ammo for my M-4 and M-9, signaling devices, and an extra strap with carabiners so I can ride on the side of my wingman's helicopter if we have to do a "self-extraction.") I carry my M-9 (Beretta 9 mm) in a shoulder holster, and my M-4 has its own mount in the cockpit. My breakout/survival knife is a Gerber LMF II that Jane got me for my birthday a few years back, and if anyone is looking for a good survival knife, it rocks.


I have a lot of pictures of my living area and office, etc....... but that will be for my next post. This post is about what I am really doing here. This is me flying a combat mission in Iraq (my wingman took the picture). So far I have flown over 20 combat missions and have over 100 hours of combat time. Our missions include convoy security/overwatch, area recons/patrols, route recons, deliberate attacks, base/perimeter security, TIC (troops in contact) response, and anything else that needs to be done. The other day I was pulled off a recon to go cover a US vehicle that was hit by an IED. We escorted them back to base, and relayed radio communications from the vehicle to their command and back. I have also covered a Special Forces team as they conducted a raid for bad guys and enemy weapon caches. That's the kind of stuff we are doing.

We carry and amazing amount of weaponry. Here is a picture of our right pylon. The more discerning of you may notice all three of those Hellfire missiles are different. We have several different types, and they all have their "specialties" so we are prepared for any situation.

Here is our other pylon with the 2.75 inch hydra rockets. Like the missiles, we also have several different types including illumination, point detonating, flechettes, multi-purpose sub munitions, and more. If you think about it when one of our AWTs (Area Weapons Team of 2 Apaches) goes out, we are the most well armed 4 man patrol in the Army. Not only are we fast, but we have a combined firepower of about 6-8 missiles, 28-38 rockets, 600 rounds of high explosive 30mm, 800 rounds of 5.56mm, and 180 rounds of 9mm. Needless to say, we can put fire down range in a hurry.

Usually we fly far enough apart from our wingman to where if he takes fire we can suppress to destroy the attacker, but sometimes we like to see how close we can get---------->

Here I am landing for fuel at one of the FOBs (Forward Operating Base) that we support. These guys got rocketed a few hours before this. While here for fuel I got out to go see the tent that was shredded by the rocket, and I spoke to one of the two wounded soldiers from the attack. The Army has a way of determining the POO (Point Of Origin) site from such rocket attacks, so we went to check it out, but alas no bad dudes were there. It is hard to fight cowards.

Here is a look at what I see in the cockpit while flying. From these MPDs (Multi-Purpose Displays) I can access hundreds of pages of information. This is my Tactical Situational Display. I am the helicopter icon in the middle with a compass rose around me. The red things are targets, and you can see I have my ground track turned on so I can see where I've flown. This is so I don't overfly the same place more than once. We keep our flight paths as random as possible.

This is my flight page. I have it overlayed on the video of my front seater's TADS (Target Acquisition, Designation Sight). This way I can fly from the back seat, while also looking to see what my front seater is looking at on the ground with his super powerful camera. Have I told you the AH-64D is the most advanced helicopter in the world? It is, and I love flying it.

This is our flight line where we stable these beauts between missions. With temps in the 120s the sunshades are a must, or when you climb in to fly the cockpit is in the 140s.

Camp Adder is where I am posted. It is near An Nasiriyah, where Jessica Lynch and others were captured when her Transportation Batallion was ambushed during the 2003 invasion. Just outside our gate is the Great Ziggurat of Ur. We fly by it everyday flying in and out of the base. For those who don't know, Ur is where Abraham was from, and I am right here. Reading The Pearl of Great Price here is pretty cool. I know that some of the Lord's commandments are hard to follow at times, but seeing this place, I doubt Abraham had a problem when the Lord commanded him to leave Ur.
WARNING: JANE AND MOM STOP READING NOW! Another story I have about the ziggurat is about two weeks ago I was doing a test flight on an aircraft up on the north side of the base (right by the ziggurat). The aircraft had an intermitent problem with one of the gearboxes overheating. Problem was we could not fix it when it would come back from missions because on the ground the problem wasn't there. My good friend CW4 Mike Ballagh, and I went out to test fly it. Our goal was to break it hard so the gearbox would still be hot/broken when we landed. On our way out to the aircraft our Technical Inspector SSG Scottie Shumate told us to, "go break that thing good." Well, we went up and flew pretty aggresively trying to get the gearbox to overheat. Right by the ziggurat our #1 engine's Np section oversped, which meant our rotor RPM was being driven up to unsafe speeds (if the rotor spins too fast stuff starts coming off). Mike was on the controls so he started increasing our rotor pitch to slow down the blades, while I simultaneously pulled the #1 power lever back to slow the engine.....................well, we were both too effective in our attempts to slow the rotor, and with our efforts combined the rotor started underspeeding, which is really bad (if the rotor goes too slow you lose all lift and fall out of the sky like a 18,000 lb rock). Luckily Mike is a 4000 hour experienced test pilot, and instinctively let out some of the blade pitch while I brought the power lever back up. We came back and did a roll on landing, and while playing with the power lever on the ground we ended up causing a hard electrical shutdown on the aircraft which messed up a generator and some other components. SSG Shumate scolded us and said he meant to just go break the gearbox. We told him to be more specific next time. All in all we broke close to a million dollars worth of stuff, and never did get the gearbox to overheat. We joke about it now as the day we just about low-rotored into a 3000 year old Iraqi National treasure. Even if we had survived the crash we probably would be in an Iraqi jail for the rest of our lives.

This is me passing my PC (Pilot in Command) checkride (yes the stache was still in effect). For those not familiar with aviation, every multi-pilot aircraft has a pilot in command and a co-pilot. It is a big deal when you become a pilot in command as you are now deemed a good enough pilot that you can fly with the rookies and less experienced pilots. I don't want to brag too much, but I am the first and only Lieutenant that I know, or have heard of to make PC. I flew with another Lieutenant the other day, and one of our senior pilots put a NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) in the base's NOTAM service to warn all other pilots that two Lieutenants would be flying together. It was pretty funny.

Al Asad, Iraq

Well, here I am finally on my way to Iraq. My team and I loaded up on an Air Force C-130 and left Kuwait for Al Asad, Iraq.

Here is a mosque that is on the base at Al Asad. I never saw anyone going in or out, but I heard some of the TCNs (third country nationals) that work on post who are muslim use it. TCNs are usually from the Phillipines, Bangladesh, or other Asian countries. They come here to do work that US soldiers don't do like give haircuts, work in the chow halls serving food, clean the latrines, trash service, etc...

Here is the ramp we used at Al Asad. My unit is based out of and flying in Southern Iraq. Al Asad is in Western Iraq. The reason my team and I came up here is because all of our helicopters were being flown in Air Force cargo jets (C-5s) to here. My job was to pull the helicopters off the C-5s, put them back together, then send them down to our bases in Basra and Tallil. It was a crazy 3 weeks worth of work. There were several days with no sleep, but my longest was 52 hours straight. We had no tools or parts. We had no place to sleep and no transportation. My job was figuring all this stuff out so my guys could fix the helicopters to get them out of Al Asad. I spent a lot of time just driving around the base finding the right person who could help us with the current problem. There was no help directory or 411, and most the base was Marines and Air Force, so they weren't too eager to help the Army guys.........................until they found out who I was. Everyone knew that some Apaches had been dropped off, and when they found out I was the Apache Guy, they bent over backwards to help. I traded tours for favors, and before we knew it we had ice chests with cold water, transportation, etc... I became known around Al Asad as the Apache Guy. Since I didn't have an office there, if anyone from our Battalion or elsewhere wanted to get a hold of me they had to call Base Operations and they would call me on a 2-way radio they gave me. My call sign was "Apache Guy 06." (06 is the number in the Army that signifies command) Besides the tours another reason they wanted to help out was a lot of them had been outside the wire and had been attacked. They knew that when they call for support and the Apaches show up the shooting stops. Most insurgents just stop fighting and run when Apaches show up, and those who choose to keep attacking, don't get the opportunity to do so for long. Several Marines even confided in me that they were way happier when Apaches show up than when their own Marine Super Cobra attack helicopters show up.

This is sort of what the helicopters looked like coming off the C-5s. The main blades were folded and the stablilator and wing store pylons were off. On this one we had already put on the stabilator and pylons. After we unfolded the blades we had to do track and balance test flights. While most of the aircraft "woke up" ok, some had other maintenance issues we had to deal with such as bad gearboxes, hydraulic problems, etc... Again we had no Apache parts or tools due to some logistical issues (our logistic guys are not very squared away), so fixing these problems required cross country coordination with a bunch of other apache units, etc... Like I said, I was pretty busy, but I learned a ton.

Once we got things figured out and started rolling we got hit by a Shamal. It is a sandstorm caused by strong winds. Another type of sandstorm is a Haboob, which is like the one from the movie "The Mummy." You see a huge wall of sand coming your way with heavy winds, but it only lasts a few hours. Shamals can last for days, and this one lasted about 3 days. This was the beginning of it.

When the Shamal gets real bad the whole world turns orange. This is not a special effect from my camera. Behind this helicopter is a hangar and other helicopters, but you can't see any of them. At this point sand gets into everything. You have a rag or balaclava over your face and keep you mouth shut and sand still gets into your teeth. It is miserable. Sand is literally everywhere! You can imagine how dirty the aircraft were after.

This is Spaceman Bob during the Shamal. Before we left Fort Hood a few of us were eating at TGIFs, and they had this little 3 foot astronaut in the restaraunt as decoration. We thought he was awesome so we told the waitress we wanted to take him to Iraq with us. She talked to her manager who called corporate and they called us a few days later and said it had been approved. We are just supposed to take a bunch of pictures so TGIF can document Spaceman Bob's deployment to Iraq. During the Shamal it looked like he was on Mars. We shipped him over sitting in the front seat of one of our Apaches.

Here are the last two Apaches finally leaving Al Asad. It was good to get them out of there. While in Al Asad our motto was "No tools, no parts, no problem." My guys worked very long hours with no break from the 115 degree heat except for a 30 minute lunch break at the chow hall. My best soldier got a rare and cool reward.

Here is the aerial view of Al Asad as I was leaving it in a Blackhawk helicopter. The hawk took me straight down to Tallil where I am currently, and I started flying real missions........finally.