by Eric

-Azerbaijan, 16th mission -

-Squad - Dustdevils / Lead Pilot- Buckaroo-

Situation: Enemy armor offensive, possible counter attack as we had made a push the previous mission. 1 radar longbow (at FARP 1) left for the whole squad, and only I'm the only one with hellfires at FARP 4. Me and wing in non radar LBs.

I was pretty tense about this one, I had been flying out of Farp 1, but this Farp had been taking a beating from the start, they lost a Kiowa the first night. So I decided to fly outta there and help out. No radar LBs and no radar hellfires were hurting. We were cleared for take off, and headed for our waypoint.

We were supposed to find a arty position, and kill it. We make it to the FEBA and stop to kill some AAA(in a narrow valley running perpendicular to our path, with 3 canyons emptying out here). It was just light enough, I didn't use my PNVS. I was busy making those PFZ boxes to hand off targets to my wingman, in fact I just sent them, when copilot says "Enemy helicopters 2 o'clock!". I run through the weapons and stingers are hot, got a lock and... whoa these guys were close, Hokums! Launched 2 stingers as fast as I could switch targets. 1 went in right away, but the other engaged me, I took a few hits and dumped collective as I swung around, I finally remembered to release my wingman and together we hosed the last copter to death. (This whole time the radio net is full of calls from the grunts, other squad helos, my wing man and command).

Ok time to reorient, set to hover so I can..... what the hell?!.. here's 12 tanks and BMPs, and a couple ZSUs, rapidly moving up, lead tanks had already got within 1800 meters, yikes. I call for artillery, then set a PFZ and hand off targets to wing and start shooting myself. I have never seen so many missles in the air at once between the tanks on both sides firing and the artillery and us 2 Apaches, it was almost as bright as daylight.

Tanks are burning everywhere, I'm outa targets, so I tell wingy to button up and join. The smoke was pretty thick but starting to drift off. Wow, we only lost 2 and we killed at least 14, plus 2 copters. I was still jacked though so we headed for our primary.

It was boring compared to what we just went through, but wanting to live to tell the story I took the time to setup and surprise the enemy arty and killed them, although I took some more hits from the ZSU I missed when I targeted everything.

Then we RTB'ed and landed.

When I stood up to go get something to drink, man I was tired! Now that is a flight sim!