Apache Warrior

: I'm gonna cut to my left a little bit

and pick up Texas and head up Texas.

: Looking for their aircraft too. : Roger.

All right,

we're going two up, one back.

-That means-- Yeah. I've got it.

We'll take left and long, he'll take right and short.

Roger.

16. We're going to way-point four.

Okay, can you get me direction in, please?

Let's go, a little bit further north.

We're ready to roll, baby.

We'll be all right. Okay.

Command, I'm flying with a master gunner,

Desert Storm veteran. You think I'm worried?

We are south of Karbala, heading 2-0-0.

All right, missiles are powered back up.

I've got you inside. I'm going out your right rear.

Roger that.

Sure have a lot of people out

driving around this late at night,

especially when they know an attack is coming.

Apache pilots are a unique breed

of human beings.

Technically proficient, tactically proficient.

Most of us have some serious IQ levels.

I'm pulling 0-5-3 position confidence

on INU 1 and 2 check and no satellites.

Speed up a little bit more, 1-9.

You're in a big hurry to get to this battle, aren't ya?

6-0-6, roger--

What the heck was that?

I don't know.

Maybe a bird.

There are no birds out here.

How many birds have you seen?

But we ask an awful lot of our young officers

when we say we need you to go to this location

and do this and come back.

We've lost all the satellites,

so just maintain-- make sure we're on the route good.

Roger. Continue on, uh, move to contact zone.

All right. Up there to the left is way-point 2-7.

That's where we're gonna initiate the battle handover.

Hey, 1-9. I'm gonna go in

and start slowing up here, slow left-hand turn.

See you at the red rally point.

All right, here's the, uh, battle handover.

Hey, 1-6 and 1-9. You still back there?

Hey, this is 1-6. We're still back here.

We just don't like the fact we have to fly over a goddamn city.

In a perfect world, you go in, you do your mission,

and you get your objective, and you come home.

In a perfect world.

And lights just went out to your left, low.

What'd you say, lights?

Yeah, the city lights to your left went out.

It's back on.

The hell's happening here?

Taking heavy enemy fire.

We need to haul ass out of here, brother.

Okay, we got hit in the fucking tail.

Whoa! That was overhead!

Taking fire. We're taking fire.

We've been hit multiple times, but we're still trying--

I'm hit.

Break. Break. 0-6, 1-9 has been hit.

His front seater has been hit.

But this ain't a perfect world.

The thing about the Apache is

it's a mission, not an aircraft.

Attack is a mindset,

it's about supporting the soldier on the ground.

For that 18-year-old kid on the ground

with a rifle in his hand...

we are there for him.

We knew we were valuable asset to the guys on the ground.

And our role is to go up

and protect them from that attack.

2-3 Alpha. This is 2-6.

We're gonna need some suppression...

Whenever your ready, you're clear.

Firing. Roger.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

It is the most sophisticated

attack helicopter in the world.

And there's a lot of people that don't wanna be

on the receiving end of it.

There's no room for error

when you're putting missiles, rockets, and 30s in close proximity

to soldiers that are maneuvering on the ground.

It means that you got to be a damn good pilot.

...our guys a little bit

and shoot into it.

Once you pull that weapon's trigger

and it goes into a target, that target will die.

And I'm gonna shoot right there.

You have to be prepared to make that decision.

Kill something every day just to maintain proficiency.

Sitting in a Apache helicopter,

it's what we call a tandem configuration.

Front seater's primary goal

is to fire the weapons systems.

Uh, the back seater is the primary pilot

who keeps the aircraft in flight.

You have got to be able to manage everything as a crew.

And you only have nanoseconds in some cases to make it happen.

We try to assign an aircraft to two pilots and a crew chief.

Crew chiefs are some of the hardest working soldiers,

and they have a lot of pressure and stress on them

because they are essentially responsible for making sure

that the aircraft that you and this other pilot

are getting into is gonna come back safe.

It equates to, you know, long days

and hot days.

And the most important thing to us

is making sure that we can put safe aircraft in the air.

It shapes who you are, right there,

the first time you hear everything going on.

When you see it launch, and you're like, "Wow!

That was me!"

Exhilarating and scary at the same time

because you start to think to yourself...

"Did I tighten that pole?

Did I use the torque wrench? Did I drop the torque wrench?

Oh, my God. Was the TI on point that day?

Oh, the pilots are-- Oh, that looks so cool. That looks--

Hope the blades don't fall off."

Udairi was somewhat austere when we got there.

It was obviously still under construction.

Think they had the runway down.

They were still working on the apron.

There was couple of hangars up, and the food was good there.

Until the chow hall burned down.

And there's just black smoke rolling up.

And it's the chow hall. And we're all laughing,

then we realize that's the fucking chow hall.

Waking up to go eat breakfast

and seeing smoke billowing from one of the tents

and it's like, "Well, I'll just go to the other one."

And all of the sudden, that one went up

and it's like, "Uh-oh,

we're not gonna eat anymore."

There were tears shed when the chow hall burned down.

The wind is blowing from my right to my left,

in a westerly direction.

All three chow hall tents burned down

in less than fifteen minutes.

Full standing to nothing, just ash.

And that's kind of like a unifying factor

the original invasion force has,

is anybody was there during those days, you just say,

"Remember when chow hall burned down?"

I think morale took a hit that day.

We knew what it was that we were gonna do

on our first two or three missions.

Some of that was even planned all the way back in Germany

before we even deployed.

And we were busy rehearsing

our-our first mission.

Our plan was to execute a maximum destruction mission.

In other words, we were gonna have all three troops

attack simultaneously.

A lot of our training was derived

from the types of combat operations

that came from the 1991 Desert Storm deep attack.

Our training scenarios, the types of targets.

Party at ten.

Okay, little bit left pedal.

This one's for you, Saddam.

Yes!

I see people running around now.

Burn it.

Go to a certain area,

hover, scan the area,

and shoot some hellfire at it, turn back around and come back.

They lined up. They saw the enemy. They fired on the tanks.

Whoo-hoo. This is all great. We turned around, went back.

Hold her steady.

That mission is solidified, going in deep,

it solidified some of the theories

in how to go in

beyond the forward line of troops

and take the fight to them

without them knowing you're even there

until things start blowing up.

That was all very much

a part of the scenario,

a part of the construct of how you do a deep attack.

So it, it created the framework that we used

in our understanding of how that was done.

We flew it, we rehearsed it.

Uh, we did it during the day

and then we were doing it at night.

We would set up these huge terrain boards

and go through these very in-depth rehearsals.

Um, and they would even include,

you know, the radio communications.

"Hey, you, I'm here." "I've got left. You've got right"

We would go through the entire mission