changeover of personnel. All the equipment and airframes were staying where they were.
The Apache was a very hungry beast: it chomped through ammunition, fuel and spare parts at an alarming rate. A squadron of eight aircraft needed a massive logistics footprint to support it in the field: eighteen four-ton trucks for parts and ammunition, seven articulated lorries, five fuel tankers, three forklift trucks, two motorcycles, five technician vans, one eight-ton engineers’ lorry and a fire engine.
The machine was hugely labour intensive at the best of times, and Afghanistan was the cruellest place on earth to operate helicopters. It cost £20,000 for every hour in the air and needed thirty-two man hours of maintenance on the ground for every hour flown – and that wasn’t just a couple of hairy-arsed blokes in boiler suits sharing a wrench. Our Apaches needed REME avionics and airframe technicians, armourers, arming and loading teams, drivers, refuellers, signallers, IT specialists, Intelligence officers, clerks and storemen – ninety-eight people in total; more than six of them to every one pilot, and every one of them an expert.
The REME split into two tribal groups, depending on their role. There were the Greenies: the brainboxes, the technicians who worked on the avionics (from the TADS to the defensive aide suite). And there were the Blackies: the grease monkeys, who worked on the airframe – blades, rotors, gearboxes and engines. Each camp considered itself the most vital for the machine, so Greenies and Blackies lived in a state of permanent mutual abuse. ‘What’s the definition of a Blackie?’ was the Greenie refrain. ‘A Greenie, with his brains knocked out.’ In response, the Blackies watched the Greenies crouched in front of their computers, and dismissed them as work-shy, tea-glugging, muscle-dodging skivers.
The truth was, each had a healthy respect for the other and they always worked side by side on the airframes in two mixed shifts. They were an excellent and close-knit team, and they needed to be: the aircraft’s maximum flying hours had been upped again, so our second tour was going to be a whole lot harder than the first. We could now spend eleven and a half hours in the air per day; at the start of our first tour, it had only been six. The Chinook and Lynx’s flying hours had also been extended. As an equally limited resource, the pressure on them was also intense.
I only had one question when Billy told me: ‘So who’s agreed to pay for that?’
Aircraft flying hours is a money thing. The more time we spent in the air, the more replacement parts we’d need, and the more our deployment would cost the MoD. And they’d already forked out £4 billion.
‘There’s no new money. They’re cannibalising the aircraft stored at Shawbury for the spares.’
Now it made sense. ‘Excellent.’ I raised an imaginary glass. ‘Here’s to our glorious future.’
‘Tell me about it. The bet is that combat will have decreased in a few years until the spares chain kicks in.’
‘I think I’ll stick with the horses …’
‘What do you care, anyway?’ he grinned. ‘You’ll be raising a real one of those in your local while I’m pulling up the floorboards for rotor blades. Or maybe not …’
Very funny.
It took all five days of the handover to get everyone in and out on the air bridge from Kandahar and Kabul, where the RAF’s Tristars came in from Brize Norton.
The squadron was divided into four flights – 1, 2, 3 and HQ – with two Apaches in each. On Day Three, happy day, Carl caught up with us. He, Billy, the Boss and I made up HQ Flight. A staff sergeant, Carl was the unit’s Electronic Warfare Officer – the resident expert on the aircraft’s self-defence suite.
‘Bloody Tristar broke down, so there was a two-hour delay at Brize. Then I had to wait ages for my Bergen and weapon, then no one came to meet me … And every CrabAir trolley dolly had a spray-on desert flying suit
The Apache was a very hungry beast: it chomped through ammunition, fuel and spare parts at an alarming rate. A squadron of eight aircraft needed a massive logistics footprint to support it in the field: eighteen four-ton trucks for parts and ammunition, seven articulated lorries, five fuel tankers, three forklift trucks, two motorcycles, five technician vans, one eight-ton engineers’ lorry and a fire engine.
The machine was hugely labour intensive at the best of times, and Afghanistan was the cruellest place on earth to operate helicopters. It cost £20,000 for every hour in the air and needed thirty-two man hours of maintenance on the ground for every hour flown – and that wasn’t just a couple of hairy-arsed blokes in boiler suits sharing a wrench. Our Apaches needed REME avionics and airframe technicians, armourers, arming and loading teams, drivers, refuellers, signallers, IT specialists, Intelligence officers, clerks and storemen – ninety-eight people in total; more than six of them to every one pilot, and every one of them an expert.
The REME split into two tribal groups, depending on their role. There were the Greenies: the brainboxes, the technicians who worked on the avionics (from the TADS to the defensive aide suite). And there were the Blackies: the grease monkeys, who worked on the airframe – blades, rotors, gearboxes and engines. Each camp considered itself the most vital for the machine, so Greenies and Blackies lived in a state of permanent mutual abuse. ‘What’s the definition of a Blackie?’ was the Greenie refrain. ‘A Greenie, with his brains knocked out.’ In response, the Blackies watched the Greenies crouched in front of their computers, and dismissed them as work-shy, tea-glugging, muscle-dodging skivers.
The truth was, each had a healthy respect for the other and they always worked side by side on the airframes in two mixed shifts. They were an excellent and close-knit team, and they needed to be: the aircraft’s maximum flying hours had been upped again, so our second tour was going to be a whole lot harder than the first. We could now spend eleven and a half hours in the air per day; at the start of our first tour, it had only been six. The Chinook and Lynx’s flying hours had also been extended. As an equally limited resource, the pressure on them was also intense.
I only had one question when Billy told me: ‘So who’s agreed to pay for that?’
Aircraft flying hours is a money thing. The more time we spent in the air, the more replacement parts we’d need, and the more our deployment would cost the MoD. And they’d already forked out £4 billion.
‘There’s no new money. They’re cannibalising the aircraft stored at Shawbury for the spares.’
Now it made sense. ‘Excellent.’ I raised an imaginary glass. ‘Here’s to our glorious future.’
‘Tell me about it. The bet is that combat will have decreased in a few years until the spares chain kicks in.’
‘I think I’ll stick with the horses …’
‘What do you care, anyway?’ he grinned. ‘You’ll be raising a real one of those in your local while I’m pulling up the floorboards for rotor blades. Or maybe not …’
Very funny.
It took all five days of the handover to get everyone in and out on the air bridge from Kandahar and Kabul, where the RAF’s Tristars came in from Brize Norton.
The squadron was divided into four flights – 1, 2, 3 and HQ – with two Apaches in each. On Day Three, happy day, Carl caught up with us. He, Billy, the Boss and I made up HQ Flight. A staff sergeant, Carl was the unit’s Electronic Warfare Officer – the resident expert on the aircraft’s self-defence suite.
‘Bloody Tristar broke down, so there was a two-hour delay at Brize. Then I had to wait ages for my Bergen and weapon, then no one came to meet me … And every CrabAir trolley dolly had a spray-on desert flying suit
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