I also passed the controller the height we intended to climb to.
‘Recoil Four Five, roger. No ATC restrictions in place, circuit clear, and no light civilian traffic in the vicinity.’
‘Light civilian traffic’ meant Predator and Reaper UAVs, which were undeniably light but hardly ‘civilian’ in the normal sense of the word. And, after the other night’s near-miss, I was particularly aware of the dangers posed by crowded skies. From where I was sitting, no light civilian traffic, I thought, was good news.
Then, pushing forward with my left hand, I increased the throttle setting, released the brakes and began the long taxi from the dispersal to the active runway. On the way out I checked that my pistol was snug in its holster – I hoped I’d never have to use it, but having it was a comfort – and glanced over at that old wreck of a hangar for what would be the last time on this detachment.
We were taking off on the easterly runway, so we had a long way to go – a couple of miles – to reach the take-off position, and it was a journey that always had the potential to turn into a Demolition Derby. C-130s would suddenly back out of their dispersals and parking slots; Russian aircraft doing God knows what and, probably, talking to nobody, would appear in front of us; fire engines, force protection vehicles, road sweepers, and trucks and vans of every type would be driving all over the place and speeding up and down the taxiways. Helicopters would appear, air-taxiing to and from their parking areas, and we really had to watch those, because some of the bigger ones, like the Chinook and the Halo, created a massive downwash from their rotors and could easily blow huge amounts of FOD around, which the cavernous intakes of the Harrier’s Pegasus engine would be only too pleased to ingest, with expensive and disastrous results.
There were working parties all over the place, usually composed of Indians or Pakistanis, but sometimes including local nationals, building things, fixing things, pouring concrete, repairing lights, moving stuff and carrying out a host of other tasks. And, of course, none of them had much prior experience of working on a busy airfield, and they could – and frequently would – do completely unexpected things as we passed close to them. So just taxiing a Harrier the two miles or so to the end of the runway for take-off could be quite an exciting adventure in its own right. The chaos that surrounded us somehow reminded me of the movie Airplane!
C-130s were probably the worst, because to get one moving backwards it had to get up a fair speed, and that meant it would simply shoot out of its dispersal. And that was what happened at that precise moment as I steered the Harrier cautiously down the taxiway. The C-130 appeared at speed right in front of me and, to make matters worse, the dispatcher, who was at the rear door of the aircraft checking for obstacles, was looking the other way, down the taxiway and not up it.
I braked to a halt immediately, checked that Dunc behind me had also stopped, and just waited. When the dispatcher finally remembered that the taxiway extended in both directions and turned round, he did a classic double-take. The look on his face was almost comical, and I could see his mouth opening and closing as he immediately shouted, ‘Stop, stop, stop’ on the intercom to the pilot. The C-130 did just that – and lost all momentum. To get going again the pilot had to run the engines up to high power, pumping out black smoke and blowing debris in all directions.
To add to the workload, during the taxi we had numerous after-start checks to do on things like the brakes and steering and other systems. And at that stage we also switched on our self-defence suites.
Once we were visible from the control tower, the Ground Controller handed us over to the Local Controller.
‘Recoil Four Five, clear to Tower.’
‘Roger.’
‘Kandahar Tower, Recoil Four Five. Flight of two ready for departure.’
We were always relieved to get to the end of the runway, because then the only people likely to cause us problems were the Taliban, and it was a lot easier to avoid their weapons in the air than reversing C-130s at high speed on the ground.
As we approached the end of the runway Dunc and I checked that we had both done everything we needed to do inside our cockpits, then did our normal pre-take-off checks.
I reached up to the top-left side of the cockpit towards the Master Armaments Safety Switch. I switched it on when I reached the runway and was sure that the forward-firing CRV-7 pods were pointing in a safe direction. And it stayed on for the rest of the sortie.
‘Recoil Four Five, Tower. Clear take-off, wind zero four five at ten, gusting fifteen. Contact Departures.’
‘Roger, Tower. Recoil Four Five is rolling.’
I pushed the throttle lever fully forward with my left hand and watched the numbers changing on the air speed indicator as the Harrier picked up speed. As the jet accelerated down the runway – we never took off as a pair, always one after the other – I switched to Departures and called, ‘Recoil Four Five is rolling.’ That would be the cue for the departure controller to watch for my Harrier appearing on his radar and to check my IFF code.
Off the runway, I selected gear up, hearing it lock shut beneath me. Then I held the jet low and flat as the airspeed wound up rapidly. I eased back on the control column and moved it to the right. The aircraft powered rapidly away from the ground, carving into a climbing turn as I steered it towards my tactical departure sector, and to the safety afforded by height. Ready to go to war.
But, far from delivering some ordnance on this, my final flight in theatre, it looked as if I was going to be disappointed yet again. For about an hour we stooged around, looking at the view and waiting for something – anything – to happen.
And then, at last, we got the divert call from Crowbar to go and bail out the combined ANA and American patrol that had been ambushed by the Taliban near the river. Finally, I thought, as I pushed the throttle forward. Dunc and I rolled the two Harriers on to the new heading and accelerated towards the firefight.
We did the fighter check-in, arrived overhead and assessed the situation. We identified the friendlies and the position of the Taliban insurgents. The JTAC selected the five-forty airburst, Dunc’s laser illuminated the target and I was about to start the outbound run.
And that was when the bloody Mi-24 Halo clattered past right in front of me and cocked everything up.
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The huge white shape of the Russian-made chopper disappeared underneath the Harrier’s nose. Fuck it. I hauled off, levelled the wings and headed outbound, then pulled the Harrier through a hard, one-eighty turn and started the inbound run again.
I looked at the target area ahead and checked the image on the cockpit’s flat screen. The UN helicopter was now clear of the area, and Dunc’s laser was properly illuminating the target. This time we’d deliver the good news. I began my run-in. But then, as I settled on the bomb run, it became clear from the HUD that all was not well. Shit. I seemed to have a malfunction – I couldn’t get the right sighting up. And now, as I streamed impotently in over the hill, attack number two was a bust. I’d gone dry on the attack. This wasn’t going well.
‘Going round again,’ I managed through gritted teeth, cursing to myself. ‘I can’t select the weapon.’
I pulled back and rolled away. I started again from the beginning, checking everything. Then I realized the problem: finger trouble. Distracted at the crucial moment by the helicopter looming ahead of me – instead of selecting the weapon, I’d inadvertently deselected it by pressing the wrong button on the throttle. Both the control column and the throttle are peppered with switches and controls. And as I’d pulled away to avoid a mid-air collision I’d got the wrong one.
I’d lost my firing solution and could only go round again. My thoughts turned to the troops on the ground. For me there was a point of professional pride involved in getting things right – every pilot likes to get his weapons away first time, every time – but for them, pinned down by enemy assault rifles, it was potentially life or death.
I ran a couple of miles out down to t
he south, and checked and double-checked that I’d got the switches right.
‘Jaguar Zero One, Recoil Four Five. Sixty seconds.’
‘Four Five, Zero One. Call wings level with direction.’
‘Zero One, Four Five. Wings level, from the south. In hot.’
‘Recoil Four Five, Jaguar Zero One. Clear hot.’
And that committed me to the attack. I pressed the red button on the control column to authorize weapon release, and I continued flying the azimuth line displayed in green on the HUD in front of me, towards the ballistic release point. And, at the moment when the computer calculated the bomb was most likely to hit the target, it separated from the pylon under the wing with a jolt that resonated throughout the airframe, and fell away from the aircraft.
This time there were no hitches. The high-explosive five-forty dropped from beneath the Harrier’s sloping wing and flew true and accurately. Seconds later it exploded directly overhead the target. As the shockwave spread out at the speed of sound, the fireball sucked in the air from the surrounding sky.
‘Excellent, Recoil Four Five – direct hit,’ the USAF JTAC reported on the front radio, ‘but we’re still taking small-arms fire from the front end of the tree-line. We’ll take the second five-forty.’
‘Roger.’
They wanted more.
I tried to assess the situation from the air. Just because a strike has been requested by troops on the ground, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it can be justified. That was a decision only I could make. This one was a no-brainer. Continuing attacks on the isolated NATO patrol gave us no choice. We had to go in again with a second weapon. So I rolled the wings and swung round in another hard turn. I pulled back on the stick, maintaining altitude with a light touch of the rudder. And as I banked through the turn I began meticulously rechecking my weapon switches.
I ran in over the trees for the fourth time that afternoon, checked that the target was still illuminated by the laser, and released the weapon. The second bomb left the wing hard-point and I hauled off to ensure the soft-skinned Harrier was well clear of the blast as quickly as possible. Attacking aircraft have been brought down by shrapnel and debris from their own bombs more often than you’d imagine.
And that’s when it all started going wrong.
Through my dark visor I saw a sudden flash behind and below me in my peripheral vision, and at that instant I heard Dunc’s urgent voice on the back radio.
‘Flares, flares, flares!’ he shouted. ‘We’re being shot at!’
The moment I heard my wing-man’s call I reacted at once, taking immediate evasive action to pull the aircraft out of danger. I jammed the throttle lever fully forwards. At the top right of the instrument panel the RPM gauge spun like the wheels of a fruit machine as the engine wound up to full power. Climbing away as quickly as possible, I reached down to my left and the flare override switch and began manually pumping out self-defence flares, designed to seduce heat-seeking ground-to-air missiles like the Stinger away from their target. And that was the first oddity, because the automatic flare dispensing system, which should have been triggered by the approach of the missile, clearly wasn’t working. I was being shot at, and their failure to fire automatically, I thought instantly, could easily have cost me my life.
As burning flares streamed out of the belly of the jet like fireworks, I was shaking my head in disbelief. Not only was it the last Harrier sortie of the day but the last for anyone in the squadron before we handed over to 1 (F) Squadron RAF. And it looked as if there was a good chance that the CO was going to be shot down in the last few minutes of his time in Afghanistan.
It was all, I thought, very unfair. I’d gone through a prolonged dry patch, a period of about two weeks when I’d returned to our dispersal at Kandahar Airfield without expending a single weapon. They’d ribbed me before, of course, but immediately before my final sortie several of my pilots had told me they guessed I would just drop my weapons anyway, even in an open field somewhere, just to save the embarrassment of having to return to base with the usual bunch of bombs still bolted under my wings.
As I powered up and away from the scene, flares firing in my wake, these thoughts ran through my mind with startling clarity.
‘You’ve just got to be shitting me …’ I muttered.
I checked in my mirrors and then looked back over my shoulder, trying to spot a second missile. With my luck, I had to assume there would be another one. And there, quite a way below me but still high above the ground, I could see a huge black cloud where something big had exploded. But what I couldn’t see was any sign of where my bomb had detonated, only the aftermath of what appeared to be a mid-air explosion. Whatever had exploded, it had clearly been a large warhead, much bigger than the relatively small charge fitted to shoulder-launched missiles like the Stinger or the Russian SA-7 Grail or the more modern SA-14 Gremlin weapons. It looked more like the detonation of a turret-mounted or vehicle-deployed surface-to-air missile, a heavy weapon, but that really didn’t make sense. I certainly hadn’t seen any intelligence to suggest that the Taliban possessed any weapons like that, though this wasn’t a particularly reassuring thought as I stared at the explosion’s aftermath.
Oh, shit, I thought as I checked the GR7’s handling and scanned the instruments, SAMs are all I need, but at least I haven’t been hit. Yet.
Then the FAC on the ground called me again. ‘The bomb exploded,’ he said, ‘right above our heads.’
And with a wave of relief I suddenly guessed at once what had actually happened. The five-forty I’d dropped had fragmented, detonating prematurely just a few seconds after it had left my Harrier. When a Close Air Support aircraft drops a bomb, the pilot turns away for a very good reason: to get the aircraft well away from the weapon’s trajectory so that if there’s any kind of a misfire or premature detonation the explosion won’t damage the aircraft.
As soon as a bomb drops off the wing pylon, stabilizing wings pop out of the tail. At the same time the arming process begins. The fuse is a spinning vane on the end of the tail that is turned by the airflow. As a safety measure the bomb can’t arm itself until the vane has spun through ten revolutions. This delay allows the aircraft that dropped the bomb to be clear of the blast when the thing goes off. At least, that’s the theory.
In my head I went through the sequence of events, trying to establish what had nearly brought me down. It looked as if the delayed fusing had worked correctly and only armed the bomb once it was clear of my wing, but then the proximity fuse had malfunctioned and transmitted a false pulse, just as though it was close to the ground. That bomb was designed to explode as an airburst and so the moment the weapon armed itself it went off, probably just a few hundred feet below me – a tiny fraction of what constituted a safe distance from the blast.
So it hadn’t been a missile, just a malfunctioning bomb. This also explained why the aircraft’s automatic self-defence systems hadn’t been activated: they were smarter than I was. They knew no missile had approached the Harrier, that there was no threat, and so they hadn’t started dispensing flares.
All the same, I knew I’d been lucky. The premature detonation could have killed me just as effectively as a Stinger. There have been Fleet Air Arm pilots who’ve watched in horror as friends have been blown out of the sky by bombs detonating prematurely. I’d definitely been lucky. Being brought down by my own bombs would have been just as bad as getting shot down on my last sortie. In truth, it would have been worse, because I would effectively have shot myself down. The ultimate result would have been the same – only with added shame and embarrassment.
So what had started out as a very sedate mission had done the classic one-eighty, and in a heartbeat. I’d almost had a mid-air collision with the UN helicopter; I’d screwed up my switches on the first attack run; then I’d successfully launched the first weapon which had done exactly what I’d intended – it had killed most of the people I’d needed to kill, removing the threat to the patrol on the grou
nd. Immediately afterwards both Dunc and I had thought we were being engaged by missiles, and then we’d realized that it was a premature detonation, which was almost as dangerous. And, finally, the explosion could easily have done some damage to the troops the Harriers were supposed to be protecting, because the bomb had gone off almost immediately above the joint ANA and American patrol.
‘Right,’ I said, and pressed the transmit button. ‘Recoil Four Six, Four Five. I’ve had enough of this. We’re done here. Let’s go home.’
On the ground, the firing had now stopped completely, and the patrol members were able to do a Battle Damage Assessment. They did a body count and reported the result to us as we departed the area to the east.
‘Your BDA is six KIA,’ the FAC stated. A somewhat cold shorthand for ‘Killed in Action’, but sentiment and sensitivity aren’t big in Afghanistan, or in any other war zone. And the fact is, if those six Taliban had stayed at home and not opened up on the patrol with a heavy machine-gun, they would still have been alive.
The patrol had reported they had been attacked by a seven-strong group of insurgents, so the firing that occurred after the first weapon had exploded was probably a last defiant gesture by the seventh man, before he decided to head for home so he could fight another day.
‘Kandahar, this is Recoil Four Five flight on recovery.’
‘Recoil Four Five, runway zero five. No circuit traffic. Call visual.’
‘Four Five is visual.’
‘Roger. Land. Wind zero three zero, light and variable.’
We ran in over the airfield high and fast, then descended rapidly, turning hard to bleed off height as quickly as possible – a typical tactical approach and landing. The nervous phase was always when we neared the runway, because we always had to fly through the same bit of sky on final approach. An easy target.
Joint Force Harrier Page 22