Free Apache by Ed Macy Page A

and continued to climb.
    Six seconds to takeoff.
    Eighty metres down the runway, the tail wheel lifted off it. At thirty-five knots she wanted to fly, but I held her down with a tiny reduction of power and a shift of the cyclic. It wasn’t time yet.
    Two seconds to takeoff.
    I was watching Carl’s disc intently … Now … It tipped forward and I raised the collective again and the main wheels left the ground. We lifted in perfect unison. Good. I was pleased I’d got it spot on. If you set the right tone at the start of a mission you’d remain accurate throughout.
    ‘Your ASE, Boss.’
    The Boss armed the aircraft’s Aircraft Survival Equipment (ASE) to protect us against SAMs.
    ‘Okay, countermeasures set; ASE is on semi-automatic.’
    ‘Zero Charlie this is Ugly Five Zero and Ugly Five One. Wheels off at your location as fragged, over.’
    ‘Zero Charlie, Roger. Out.’
    I pulled up the navigation page on the left hand MPD andselected the pre-planned route heading for Sangin, the first stop on our tour. A glance through the monocle confirmed: ‘Eighteen minutes to arrival.’
    We were seventy-five feet above the desert floor and heading north-east, the camp’s perimeter fence two hundred metres behind us. A quick trim with the right thumb and we accelerated to a cruising speed of 120 knots. The Boss selected automatic on the ASE. The Apache would, we hoped, keep us safe from surface-to-air missiles. SAMs were the greatest threat to us at the heights we operated.
    Billy and Carl were a safe distance in front of us to avoid collision. Billy came on the radio.
    ‘Ugly Five One, this is Ugly Five Zero. High-high, five-five and six-zero.’
    ‘High-high, five-five, six-zero copied.’
    Billy wanted us to climb high. Him to 5,500 feet and us to 6,000 feet – always a small difference in height too, for safety. The Boss glanced up through the canopy’s bulletproof window.
    ‘Clear above.’
    ‘Copied. Climbing.’
    I pulled back on the cyclic and hard on the collective while depressing my left pedal. We lost our stomachs and soared.
    Despite its gargantuan combat weight, the Apache’s mighty Rolls Royce engines made it just as agile and manoeuvrable as any chopper the army had ever had. Turning at up to 38,300 rpm, they pumped out an incredible 2,240 shaft horse power – making the Apache twenty-two times more powerful than a Porsche 911.
    The Apache could climb in excess of 5,000 feet a minute, including a one-off, ninety-degree, nose-up vertical climb of 1,000 feet. And it could do a 360-degree loop, barrel roll or a wing over nosedive – every stunt manoeuvre in the book. Not moves I’ve ever carried out, of course; heaven forbid – especially with Sky Cop as my wingman.
    Sixty seconds or so later, we were at Billy’s nominated cruising altitude. It was a terrific feeling to be up there again, over that menacingly beautiful landscape, and in that extraordinary machine. Ten minutes into the flight, I felt as confident at the controls as I had on the day I left in August. I was right back in the zone again.
    Despite the years of training, it had still taken me a good six weeks of hard fighting on the first tour before I really felt the exhilaration of being at one with the machine.
    When you drive a new car, you’re slow and cautious. You need to think about every action, from where the indicators are to how far you are from the gatepost. After you’ve driven it for a while, you don’t have to think; you just end up at home without having thought of driving once.
    It was the same with the Apache, but on a grander scale. Halfway through the first tour, whatever I wanted to do in the aircraft, I did. From that moment onwards I didn’t need to think how to fly and shoot because my fingers, arms and legs were already working in perfect harmony with my mind. I was no longer strapped to the Apache; the Apache was strapped to me.
    Almost all of the pilots were there by the end of the tour. But none of that