by Al Venter
There was no immediate reaction to our Mayday calls. Instead of an escort arriving, we received a telephone call over the mobile network asking if we were okay. The operator queried whether we had perhaps pushed the wrong buttons by mistake! In the end, everything turned out well and we were able to reach Asadabad where a successful single engine approach was made and the helicopter landed without any damage.
Luckily for us, the Mi-8 MTV is a very powerful helicopter, and its single-engine performance proved phenomenal. Thus, even with all the weight on board, we were able to stabilize single-engine level flight at 8,000ft, all the while maintaining a healthy clearance between us and the mountains all around.
We established afterwards that the cause of our engine malfunction was the failure of certain moving parts in the fuel control unit (FCU). With time, these parts had disintegrated into small particles, which basically became iron filings. These, in turn, ended up blocking the helicopter’s fuel filters and caused fuel starvation. Had it affected both engines at the same time, we’d have gone down.
By the time we realised what was going on, we’d lost power to the point where the malfunctioning engine suddenly became totally useless. As we were unsure of the cause, we decided to shut it down and use only the remaining good engine. That way we prevented further damage to the faulty one.
Once we touched down at Asadabad, we requested a new FCU by radio. When the replacement had arrived and been installed by our flight engineer, we were able to fly back to Kabul.
In moving about vast swathes of Afghanistan we must have visited scores of different bases over time and generally got a very good reception from the military personnel there. Lower ranking military personnel were always helpful and often went out of their way to assist with minor problems, or with refuelling.
In contrast, some the officers we encountered in our daily meanderings among the mountains were nothing short of arrogant. Many seemed to believe that because we were not military we could be treated with disdain. There were those who even resented our presence on their little stretch of turf, even though they couldn’t have managed without the cargo we unloaded from our Mi-8s and our role in Afghanistan was to assist them in their war effort.
Towards the end of 2009, a particularly strong weather front moved over the country and flying conditions suddenly became hazardous. A Russian-crewed helicopter landed at an American base late one afternoon, and the Russian flight captain made it clear to the base commander that not only was he not happy about flying any further that day, but that it would be precarious to take off again so close to nightfall. He’d already been warned by radio that the weather between the base and his final destination, Kabul, was worsening.
The base commander, a colonel, was quite blunt about refusing the Russian’s request to stay overnight at his base. In fact, he instructed the helicopter crew to depart as soon as they had offloaded their cargo. Although the pilot explained that flying would be dangerous, he was told in no uncertain terms to get himself and his chopper out of there. Obviously intimidated, the pilot and his crew lifted off for Kabul and flew straight into a snowstorm. They were all killed when their ‘blinded’ helicopter crashed into a mountain.
Because the weather stayed bad for several days, the missing helicopter with its distinctive white livery was only discovered in the snow after a search and rescue effort that lasted almost a week. One can only speculate whether the colonel who was directly responsible for those deaths was ever brought to book because he refused to let a helicopter crew sleep over.
There is another problem that appears to be unique to Afghanistan. The kite flying season in Afghanistan—it is a national sport—presents aviators, especially the uninitiated, with potential dangers. Pilots operating around some of the larger towns continually have to take evasive action to avoid kites because the cords used can easily get tangled in the controls. Often, while carrying out our usual after-flight inspections, we’d discover what is best described as ‘birds’ nests’ from kites tangled in our rotor controls. Fortunately, the Mi-8 is a powerful helicopter and this twine does not seem to affect the moving controls.
We’re uncertain about whether the kite-flying is a deliberate ploy by the Taliban to push these obstacles into our flight paths in the hope of doing damage. However, what does quickly become apparent is that there are usually many more kites in the air on the approach and take-off routes in and out of Kabul Airport than anywhere else in the country.
During one flight into the Kandahar PRT, some locals launched kites directly into our flight path during our final approach, which caused us to take hasty evasive action. It happened all the time and it has become clear, with time, that it was intentional. Obviously, we couldn’t help thinking that there was something devious going on and that it could eventually become a serious problem. We have complained about it and we are all aware that it would be a simple matter to ban kite flying anywhere within a mile or so of all airports in the country. However, this not likely to happen anytime soon.
Arguably, the most disturbing development for companies running supply missions into the Afghan interior—including some bitterly contested areas—is that in late 2011 some of their helicopters were suddenly targeted by the Taliban. Formerly, the enemy seemed to regard these ‘freighters’ (together with their requisite complements of ‘shooters’) as of secondary importance to the war effort; military targets were always given preference in any attacks carried out by the mujahideen.
However, in September 2011, two civilian-operated helicopters came under RPG fire. American pilot Terry Shay explained afterwards that in the second attack he had been on finals to land at the helicopter LZ at the military base at Baraki Barak, a few hundred kilometres south of Kabul, when he noticed that the children playing football on the football field next to the base were acting strangely. ‘They moved to one side of the field and didn’t throw stones or show abusive signals at landing helicopters as they usually do’, he wrote in his report.
Thinking this behaviour was rather strange, he changed his landing profile and while preparing to hover for landing, he heard a loud explosion to the rear of his helicopter and initiated a go-around. The ‘shooter’ in the back of the helicopter looked back and saw a plume of dust next to a house outside the military perimeter, about 150 metres away. Presuming that they were being attacked, Shay continued his flight without attempting to land. Military personnel at the base later confirmed that an RPG had been fired at the helicopter, but missed.
At a meeting at Kabul afterwards—chaired by Neall Ellis and attended by charter company representatives and air crews—a number of suggestions were made about tactics to counter the threat. These included the proposal that when approaching any LZ in the interior, pilots should carefully observe the behaviour of the locals in the area. If any suspicious behaviour was noted, the base operations centre was to be contacted and the helicopter was not to land until cleared to do so by the officer on duty. In other words, added Nellis, ‘when in doubt, do not land’.
The dangers of flying in Afghanistan are legion. However, nothing brings the reality home more than the facts. A significant number of aircraft have gone down since the start of the Afghan war in October 2001. Rotary wing losses—both military and civilian—at the time of going to press in the summer of 2011 were approaching the 100-mark. These include an astonishing 25 Chinook CH-46s (eight to enemy fire) and 15 UH-60 Black Hawks (three to enemy fire) and a dozen AH-64 Apaches.
The most recent Chinook crash on 6 August 2011, happened in the Tangi Joy Zarin area of Wardak province, about 100km south-west of Kabul. The helicopter with 30 American troops—many of them from SEAL Team 6—and eight Afghan soldiers on board was shot down by Taliban ground fire. There were no survivors, making it the biggest single aircraft disaster of the war.
On the civilian side, losses have not been as significant. However, there have been some helicopters lost, a few belonging to the same company for which Nellis worked. These include two Mi-
8 helicopters operating under contract for NATO forces in Afghanistan One crashed during an emergency landing at FOB Kalagush, Nuristan on 2 May 2010, and the other was destroyed five months earlier when it crashed in eastern Logar Province, killing three Ukrainians.
One of the worst civilian disasters took place on 19 July 2009 when a Russian Hip crashed at Kandahar Airport, killing 16 people: the same number died when a chartered Mi-8 crashed while en route from Khost to Kabul in July, 2006. Only five days before the first disaster, a Mi-26 chopper was shot down with all six crew members on board killed. Seven months prior to that another Mi-26, operating under contract to Dyncorp, crashed killing its eight-man Russian crew.
It is in this hazardous environment that Neall Ellis flies almost daily. He knows the risk yet, as he always has done, he continues to do what he does best with great skill and courage.
ENDNOTES
CHAPTER ONE
1 Gomos are bald, granite kopjes, or hills that are a feature of much of the country, and which would be of such importance when a youthful Neall Ellis, by then a helicopter pilot, later fought there during the guerrilla war.
CHAPTER TWO
1 Majors Charles M. Lohman and Robert I. MacPherson, Rhodesia: Tactical Victory, Strategic Defeat, U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College, Marine Corps Development and Education Command, Quantico, Virginia, 1983.
CHAPTER THREE
1 Man-portable air-defence systems (MANPADS or MPADS) are shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).
2 Paul Els, Ongulumbashe—Where the Bushwar Began, Privately published by [email protected], Pretoria, 2008
CHAPTER FIVE
1 Jannie Geldenhuys, A General’s Story: From an Era of War and Peace, Cape Town,
2 Al J. Venter, How South Africa Built Six Atom Bombs, Ashanti Publishing, Johannesburg, 2008
3 Details about arms manufacturing by the South African weapons company Denel can be found at http://www.denel.co.za. For more advanced weapons systems, see http://www.deneldynamics.co.za/. Denel was formerly Armscor: Armaments Corporation of South Africa
4 At that stage peace negotiations, which never developed into anything concrete, were between Angola and South Africa. Only at the end of the war when Washington, Moscow, Lisbon and the combatant nations sat around the table at the behest of the Americans, was a peace plan finally thrashed out.
CHAPTER SIX
1 Koevoet was also known during the 1970s and 1980s war as ‘Operation K’, or officially as the ‘South West Africa Police Counter-Insurgency Unit’ (SWAPOLCOIN). Strictly a police counter-insurgency unit, Koevoet was the single most effective para-military unit deployed against SWAPO fighters and had a higher ‘kill rate’ than any other military unit deployed during the course of the war.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1 In Afrikaans, Suidwes Afrika Polisie Teensinsurgensie.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1 ‘Natasha’ is a synthetic female voice information and reporting system (VIFR) that warns pilots if they are flying too low, if the engine malfunctions or the aircraft is running low on fuel. In American fighter planes it is called ‘Bitching Betty’.
CHAPTER NINE
1 Al J. Venter deals with the Executive Outcomes Angolan operation in considerable detail in his previous book on the subject of mercenaries: War Dog: Fighting Other People’s Wars, Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia U.S. and Newbury U.K., 2006, Chapters 15 to 19 pp349–444.
CHAPTER TEN
1 It’s worth mentioning that once Mobutu’s regime had been toppled, all three black officers topped Kabila’s ‘most wanted military and civilian suspects’ list, but that was only after they’d ensconced themselves in lavish homes in Johannesburg. When Baramoto fled, he took with him a hundred million dollars in American currency and bags full of raw diamonds, some of them checked through at the airport as luggage. He also took his five wives, an indeterminate number of children and a multitude of freeloaders who seemed to form part of his extraordinarily extended family-in-exile
CHAPTER TWELVE
1 The Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group, or ECOMOG, was a West African multilateral armed force established by the Economic Community of West African States. Essentially, it was a formal arrangement for separate armies to work together, its backbone being the Nigerian armed forces. Its financial resources and sub-battalion strength units were contributed by other regional members including Ghana, Guinea, Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Liberia, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.
2 See Al J. Venter, War Dog: Fighting Other People’s Wars, Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia U.S. and Newbury UK, Chapter 18 ‘Taking Angola’s Diamond Fields from the Rebels’, pp425–444
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
1 Hamish Ross and Fred Marafono, From SAS to Blood Diamond Wars, Pen and Sword Military, 2011
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
1 Al J. Venter, War Dog: Fighting Other People’s Wars, Casemate Publishers, U.S. and U.K., 2006: Chapter 6 ‘The United Nations Debacle in West Africa’ pp131–154
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
1 Late 2001, during the UN mandated cease-fire, Nellis’ original Hind did come down after its main engine seized while on a sortie in the interior. It crashed in a clearing and a British Army major was killed on impact. Nellis and crew had to revert to using the Sierra Leone Air Wing’s ‘semi-serviceable’ reserve Mi-24 with its 80mm under-wing rocket pods. Without air conditioning in the tropics it was a bit of bind for those who flew in her.
2 Major Phil Ashby, Unscathed: Escape From Sierra Leone, Pan Macmillan Publishers, London, 2002.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
1 Tim Butcher, The Daily Mail, London 29 August 2010
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
1 ‘Taliban Missile Downed Helicopter’: Daily Telegraph, London, 27 July 2010, p 5
2 U.S. Army Colonel Lester W. Grau deals with these attacks in some detail in his book The Bear Went over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan, Frank Cass Publishers, London, 1998