None Braver

by Michael Hirsh

  But the situation gets worse. As they gain height above the ground, the pilots slowly start to pick up some forward airspeed, but then the rotors start to droop. If they can gain forward airspeed, they should eventually be able to climb. But at this point the helicopter is so stressed that it never got above ten feet while traveling roughly half a mile along the ground. It’s a potentially terminal situation.

  Here’s Lt. Col. Graham Buschor’s explanation of what was happening, and what the pilots were trying to do to get them off the ground:

  “He’s in a hover, demanding maximum power from the helicopter due to its high gross weight and altitude. The pilot pushes the cyclic to move forward, which tilts the rotor forward, dumping some lift. In order to compensate for the lost lift, you would normally add power, but the helo has no more to give and the rotor starts to slow down, or ‘droop.’

  “If they could keep their acceleration going through what’s called ‘transla tion lift’ (ten to twenty knots airspeed), the rotor will start to become more efficient, and they’ll require less power to stay airborne. The helicopter will then start climbing, however slowly.

  “Because they were at their maximum limit and could not get the helicopter going fast enough to get through translational lift, they couldn’t stay airborne and accelerate. That’s why they kept moving forward, barely above the ground for a half mile, with the rotor still drooping.”

  They need an ingenious solution to the dilemma, and it is the copilot, Lieutenant Jay, who comes up with it. He suggests a maneuver that allows the pilot to take the strain off the rotors, let them spin up quickly, then pull power. He thinks the technique might give him enough muscle to gain sufficient altitude to get out of the ground effect and actually fly away from the terrain.

  Buschor explains, “What he did was let the collective out briefly, giving the rotors a chance to come back up to speed. At the same time he lowered the nose, which will help him gain airspeed, getting closer to translational lift. Ultimately, he was able to pull back on the collective and fly out of it. Fortunately, he had ten feet of altitude to work with. When you lower the collective in this situation, you descend, so this had to be a very well timed maneuver. Actually, it was pretty slick.”

  The crew of the late Knife 03 had dodged four big bullets in the space of a few hours: They’d all survived the crash; they’d successfully evaded potential enemy forces; the helicopter coming in to rescue them had managed to land safely in full whiteout conditions; and now, despite a severe shortage of power, the rescue helicopter was flying home.

  There is only one little obstacle between where they were and a hot shower back at the base: The helicopter that has just rescued them has no gas. They’d dumped just about everything they had in the tanks, including the few extra pounds they’d loaded for Mom and the kids, in order to be able to get all eleven survivors out of bad-guy land. Now they urgently need to refuel.

  The good news is that the tanker that was supposed to meet up with them is right on time, hoses out and ready. The bad news is that with the helicopter overloaded and underpowered at that altitude, as it took on the weight of the gasoline flowing into its tanks, it couldn’t keep up with the tanker that was already flying as slowly as it could.

  What would happen was that the pilots would maneuver into position and score a bull’s-eye in the refueling drogue with their probe, begin taking on gas, and then fall off the hose and not be able to climb back up to make contact again. The only solution was one that required incredible patience and skill, especially for a crew that had already been in the seats for more than nine hours. What they had to do was make contact and take a small sip of gas, and wait. Then take a little bit more gas, and wait. If they tried to rush things and take a gulp instead of a sip, the weight would cause the helicopter to fall off the hose.

  While the pilots are going through hell up front trying to make sure that they’d be able to make it to the small airfield that had been designated as a transload point, where they could transfer the injured to a C-130 equipped to transport and care for seriously injured patients, all four PJs in the back are starting to assess the injuries.

  Gee was the most seriously hurt in the crash, and now is suffering from shock and hypothermia. The PJs put him in a sleeping bag, then strap him to a backboard to immobilize his spine. Next they turn to Peter Forrest, the mission commander, strapping him to a backboard as well, trying to ensure that he doesn’t complicate his back injury any more than he’s already done with the hike from crash site to pickup zone.

  The flight to the small field where the transload of Gee, Forrest, and the STS team was to take place took two and a half hours. The last thing Forrest remembers after the PJs strapped him down was yelling at the right gunner, “My last command as mission commander: Take me home!”

  The remaining six crewmembers from Knife 03 flew back to Jacobabad to rejoin their unit. A day later, it was discovered that Daisy, the tail gunner, had not only injured his back in the crash, he’d broken his foot. He, too, was hospitalized.

  F-14 Tomcat fighters from the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt came in hours later and destroyed the damaged helicopter. Later that same day, U.S. special forces were able to evacuate the soldier whose illness had prompted the rescue mission. Luckily, his condition was not as bad as had been originally reported.

  Nine days later, the injured crewmen were medevacked from the U.S. Army’s Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany to the States. What should have been an uneventful trip turned interesting when they were ordered to hold over the ocean for about two hours. An American Airlines jet taking off from JFK International Airport had lost its tail section and crashed into a Queens, New York, neighborhood. Fear that it might have been a terrorist act caused the FAA to close all New York-area airports. Their homecoming flight was diverted to Canada, and when U.S. airspace was reopened, they resumed their journey back to Hurlburt Field, Florida.

  The mission marked the first time since Vietnam that eleven survivors were rescued in a single operation. The crew of Knife 04 won the Mackay Trophy, presented annually by the National Aeronautic Association to the Air Force aviators deemed to have made the most meritorious flight of the year. The three-foot-tall silver trophy is on permanent display at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. Each recipient received an engraved gold medal to commemorate the achievement.

  Two of the pararescuemen involved in the mission were honored as PJs of the Year in ceremonies that took place several months later at the PJ Schoolhouse at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. S.Sgt. James E. Clark was recognized as NCO PJ of the Year, and SrA Jason D. Andrews, who had been aboard Knife 04, received the honor of Outstanding Airman.

  T.Sgt. Navid Garshasb—Gee—received the William H. Pitsenbarger Award for Heroism, presented annually by the Air Force Sergeant’s Association to an enlisted member of the service for heroic acts on or off duty that save a life or prevent a serious injury. The award is named for the only PJ ever to win the Medal of Honor.

  A few postscripts to the mission:

  • The special forces soldier they had gone in to rescue turned out not to have High-Altitude Cerebral Edema. What he had was a form of meningitis. Army MH-47 Chinooks that were able to get in once the weather cleared rescued him the following day.

  • While the initial accident investigation board did not find that Captain Frank had done anything to cause the crash, the committee that reviewed the finding decided that the crew’s actions were “causal” in that they did not abort the mission soon enough. Clearly, the reviewing body did not understand what the culture of the Pave Low community is, and what the men who fly the MH-53 are called upon to do in wartime.

  • Neither Gee nor Maj. Peter Forrest was awarded the Purple Heart.

  • Frank put his crew in for various awards; to his everlasting disappointment, none were granted. He says, “I feel the need to emphasize the importance of the crew on this aircraft. It is a crew-intensive aircraft to
say the least. In a situation like this one, it is at the extreme. We would not have lived through that if those scanners—Clint [left gunner], Brian [tail gunner], Jeff [engineer in right door], Abe [engineer in the seat]—did not keep their heads that night. It was obvious early on when the weather hit us that something bad was going to happen. If ever there was a time when a crewmember could have just given up and resolved to die, that was it. But every last one of those guys kept his head in it and performed when we needed it most. If not for them, we would all have bought it for sure.”

  And finally, in the “truth is the first casualty of war” category, consider these news reports about the Knife 03 crash. This version of the story is from the Web site of the English-language version of the China People’s Daily on Sunday, November 4, 2001:

  40-50 U.S. Troops Killed While Helicopter Crashes in Afghanistan: AIP

  A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban claimed Saturday that 40 to 50 U.S. troops were killed while their helicopter was shot down by the Taliban anti-aircraft gunfire, according to the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP).

  The spokesman, Mullah Amir Khan Muttaqi, told AIP that a U.S. helicopter crashed for unknown reasons in Nawur district of Ghazni province and a second gunship was shot down by the Taliban soldiers as it came to rescue the crew of the first. “Pieces of 40 to 50 dead bodies were spread everywhere,” he said.

  According to the spokesman, the helicopter with 40 to 50 U.S. troops on board entered Afghanistan from the Pakistan side and was heading toward Dara e-Souf, the key frontline between the Taliban militia and its opposition Northern Alliance in Samangan province. Early Saturday, a Taliban diplomat claimed that two U.S. aircraft were shot down by Taliban anti aircraft gunfire in southern Afghan province of Ghazni during the U.S. air strikes Friday night.

  Najibullah, a senior Taliban diplomat, told AIP that the two U.S. aircraft took part in a round of air attacks on Nawar district in Ghazni. One crashed near Hokack village and the other crashed near Hasrat village.

  In Washington, the U.S. Defense Department announced on Friday that a U.S. military helicopter crash-landed in Afghanistan due to bad weather, injuring four crew members. It said the crash landing, was the first reported loss of a U.S. aircraft within Afghanistan since the U.S. and its allies launched military strikes against the Taliban four weeks ago.

  A Reuters report with a Kabul dateline embellished the story:

  The Taliban said they had shot down the helicopter on Friday night in an operation south of the capital, Kabul, killing up to 50 U.S. soldiers. The helicopter was brought down after the Taliban opened fire on it in the Nawoor district of Ghazni province while it was trying to rescue another aircraft that had crashed in the area, said Qari Fazil Rabi, an Information Ministry official.

  “Altogether between 40 to 50 Americans have died in both these incidents,” he said. “You can see the bodies of the Americans on board the helicopters with their uniforms.”

  And on Wednesday, November 7, the Guardian Unlimited, on-line affiliate of the Manchester Guardian, added additional details about the alleged Taliban triumph:

  Conflicting Reports as Helicopter Wreckage Paraded Through Kabul

  The Taliban triumphantly paraded the remains of an American helicopter through Kabul yesterday, amid conflicting reports that a second U.S. helicopter had crash-landed in Pakistan’s remote western desert.

  Thousands of Kabul residents came onto the streets to watch Taliban fighters show off the wreckage, which was driven through the war-shattered city on the back of a lorry. Two tyres and several twisted metal helicopter parts were clearly visible.

  “Their attack here will soon share the fate of this aircraft,” a Taliban fighter shouted through a loudspeaker, as U.S. warplanes continued their bombardment yesterday of the Taliban front line north of Kabul. “Don’t worry, we will defeat the Americans and their allies,” he added.

  Two-thousand-pound JDAM bomb (USAF photo)

  CHAPTER 2

  JDAMned

  DECEMBER 5, 2001

  Sr.M.Sgt. Patrick Malone was living in shit. Well, perhaps not exactly in shit, but definitely surrounded by it. And since he wasn’t alone, he didn’t take it personally. Alone would have actually been an improvement. He was sharing the inside of a spacious, mosquito- and exotic-bug-infested hangar on the Pakistani Air Force’s Shahbaz Air Base with a couple of hundred American special-operations types—Navy SEALs, Army Special Forces and Rangers, Malone’s unit of Air Force pararescuemen, Marine security guards, and the Army, Air Force, and Marine aviators whose job it was to get them where they were needed.

  For the Americans, the hangar on the base at Jacobabad, Pakistan, was the only secure building there. They slept, worked, ate, and, in their off hours, watched DVDs in it. They also used its woefully inadequate toilet facilities and suffered the consequences when the effluent came bubbling up in a lagoon of excrement, sort of a moat of crap across the eastern end of the building. In the morning, when the sun was shining and the air was relatively clear, kinder souls referred to it as Lake Jacobabad. But as the heat of the day built up and the men and women who worked nights began to wake up and use the facilities, the name given it by some of the world travelers within the building seemed more appropriate. They called it Lake Shittycaca.

  Eventually, the U.S. Air Force civil engineers would bring in canvas portable toilet and shower units, ultimately upgrading them to what the troops called Cadillac showers. Could orders to shave regularly and wear uniforms properly be far behind?

  What wouldn’t change was the water supply. There was never enough to permit more than Navy-type showers, and the warnings of its nonpotability were everywhere. While an Army may move on its stomach, this Air Force-run base was lubricated with planeloads of cases of bottled water, most of it brought in from Saudi Arabia, which, as everyone knows, is a desert. Go figure.

  Malone recalls that in those early days just coming in contact with the local water supply was enough to cause guys to break out in rashes. Whoever coined that phrase about war not being healthy for children and other living things wasn’t only talking about the consequences of gunfire. While the rashes may not kill you—or worse, take you off of flying status (the Air Force calls it “going DNIF,” for “duties not including flying”), mosquito-borne malaria remained a constant concern, and they conscientiously used mosquito netting around their cots.

  Adding to Jbad’s reputation as an airman’s R&R paradise was the local fauna. One soldier patrolling the perimeter had already been bitten by a cobra and was lucky to be alive. The venom stopped the man’s heart. There were warnings posted everywhere to avoid contact with the monitor lizards wandering the base, occasionally even inside buildings. One bite from these two-to five-foot-long creatures is enough to cause a fatal infection. And then there are the nighttime visitors, like the jackals that provide a serenade that’s really annoying to anyone actually trying to do something outlandish like sleep when it’s dark out. The security forces took to organizing jackal hunts on a regular basis.

  Malone had been accompanied on the journey to Jacobabad from the headquarters of the 123rd Special Tactics Squadron of the Kentucky Air National Guard in Louisville by another PJ, T.Sgt. Ryan Schultz. They were sent to replace two pararescuemen who had to go home on emergency leave. The duo got word on October 29, 2001; Schultz was federalized and mobilized, and in less than twenty-four hours both were on their way, doing the PJ bag drag to Baltimore where they boarded the Rotator—the sardine can impersonating a DC-10 that the Defense Department charters from commercial airlines to deliver individual replacement troops overseas—that would take thirty hours to get them to Oman, stopping along the way to pick up and drop off individuals and small units. Each of them had at least a dozen bags with equipment that would make it possible for them to climb a mountain, dive in an ocean, or tackle just about any environment in between. Paying exorbitant excess baggage charges—reimbursable—is a way of life for traveling PJs.

  It took them two days
in Oman before they could hop a flight on a C-17 cargo plane bound for Jbad. And it was on that flight that they found themselves in war.

  “It was hilarious, in a kind of weird way,” recalls Malone. “When are you really in a war? ’Cause you’re not in war in Oman; you’re not in war in Baltimore. You know you’re in a state of war, but when are you truly in a war?” he asks.

  “Well, when we landed in Jacobabad, we were in a war.”

  The crew of the C-17 was brand-new in theater, “spooled up and nerved up,” according to Malone. They knew that the locals were taking potshots with rifles at incoming aircraft, and feared that someone might try it with a shoulder-fired missile or a rocket-propelled grenade. They also knew that Air Force combat controllers were handling airfield operations, and the pilots had been told that there were guns going off outside the gate and snipers on rooftops, watching. (Remember, in this war, Pakistan is theoretically our ally.) Because of the threat, all operations into Jbad took place at night, and the aircraft were blacked out. The theory was that they could be heard, but not seen, and by the time a bad guy fired at the sound the plane would be long gone.

  Inside the cavernous plane, you’re strapped in and helpless as the pilots fly a tactical approach to the field. That means it’s not a predictable, straight-in shot, but a sequence of sudden left and right turns that makes the ride reminiscent of Disneyland’s Space Mountain—a roller coaster in the dark. As a passenger, you sit there in blacked-out conditions, hanging on, knowing that sooner or later you’ll hit the ground—it could be ten seconds or ten minutes.