by gerald hall
“One of these sites was inside of an old coal mine tunnel whose entrance had been partially collapsed. A few years after the First Event someone discovered the cache. Afterwards, the State found over twenty helicopter gunships inside of the tunnel along with several hundred tons of munitions.”
“What kind of shape were these aircraft in?”
“Pretty good, considering that they had been stored underground. All of the aircraft had been placed in protective cocoons apparently. But they were very unusual designs.”
“How so?”
“From what I was told, it appeared that they were a cross between the Apache gunship that the Army uses, an old prototype gunship from the 1960’s and some experimental technology from the early twenty-first century.
Lockheed had designed this helicopter gunship called the Cheyenne back in the mid-Sixties to meet a US Army requirement. It was a compound helicopter design that used a rigid rotor, short fixed wings and a pusher propeller in addition to the traditional anti-torque rotor mounted on the side of the tail boom.
This made for one hell of a fast bird. Which also got the attention of the Air Force unfortunately. They wanted to keep the job of close air support and saw the Cheyenne as a threat to that and to the funding for fixing wing combat aircraft. In the end, the Cheyenne got cancelled and the Air Force bought the A-10.”
“Sounds like we got the better end of the deal. The ‘Hog’ has been doing a fantastic job of supporting ground troops for a very long time.”
“That’s true enough under the circumstances. Of course, the Air Force brass hasn’t really been all that fond of dedicated close support aircraft. They aren’t designed to go hunting Mig’s like the F-15 and F-16 fighters. So the fighter jocks looking to become aces don’t want any part of them. Ground support aircraft don’t carry nukes like the big bombers either. But the troops on the ground love seeing an A-10 flying overhead. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many A-10’s left anymore now, I’m afraid.
Anyway, back to what was found inside that old mine. These helicopters are of a compound design like the Cheyenne. But these aircraft have the same twin engines as an Apache or at least similar ones with a little more power. This aircraft has a rigid main rotor like a Cheyenne. Instead of having a separate pusher propeller and anti-torque rotor, these aircraft had a shrouded fan that could direct its thrust using movable vanes so that the rear rotor could do both roles. I think that the Piasecki Helicopter Company had been working on this concept for a while too as something that they called the vectored thrust ducted propeller. This helicopter’s fuselage was very clean to reduce drag and radar signature too.
Then, there were the weapons that this aircraft is equipped with. It has a 30mm chain gun like what the Apache uses but in a small streamlined turret. The aircraft each have six underwing hardpoints for rockets, gun pods and missiles like the Hellfire. It also has wingtip hardpoints that could each either carry a single Sidewinder air-to-air missile or a twin pod for air-to-air versions of the Stinger.
Finally, these aircraft were all fitted with the latest in fire control, avionics and defensive systems, just like what was on the latest Apaches. Putting all of this together with a lightweight composite structure made for one hell of a fast, powerful weapon system. The aircraft was the best that I had ever seen for a rotary-wing close support aircraft. In my opinion, someone took the best features of both the Cheyenne and the Apache and created a sort of incredible hybrid.”
“It also would have led to another royal pissing contest between the Army and the Air Force again, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes. The Feds probably would have taken all of these aircraft and parked them in the desert to bake in the sun while the various services argued. So, Governor Blackmon apparently decided just to keep them hidden for a while longer instead. The aircraft have plenty of spare parts with them in the tunnel, so there aren’t any worries about keeping them operational even though they are a sort of an ‘orphan’ design.
Anyway, someone in the Guard dug up the records on these helicopters and decided to see about reactivating them for duty now. The birds are all out at Ravenna getting prepped for use. The Guard is now working on finding people who have some rotary-wing experience and are willing to fly in combat.”
“You knew that I had a helicopter license already, didn’t you, Jeff?” Wayne wryly chided.
“Of course, I did. You had been quite well off as a result of your job in Columbus and had bought an interest in a nice little A109, I believe. They are pretty quick little birds too.”
“And you thought that I might like to fly one of these helicopter gunships as a result, didn’t you?”
“I thought that you might be interested in flying a helicopter that can go nearly three hundred miles an hour.”
“Three hundred? That’s almost as fast as an Osprey.”
“Yes, but a hell of a lot better armed. The people flying one of these updated Apaches will probably end up escorting Ospreys and Chinooks at least part of the time. Of course, the jihadists have some gunships of their own, not to mention conventional fighters.”
“I’m sure. It’s been a little while since I last flew, but I would imagine that I would be a lot more useful flying a helicopter gunship than laying on my belly in the mud waiting on the bad guys to arrive on my doorstep.” Wayne admitted.
“I thought that you might feel that way. I’ve got a number you can call if you want to see about joining the Guard to fly an Apache.”
“Alright, you got me hooked. Give me the number so that I can get things started, Jeff.”
“Sure thing, my friend. I am going to hate to see you leave us in the militia. We also need every warm body that we can get.”
“I know. But this middle-aged body will be a lot more useful up there giving our people support from the air, I’m afraid. Thank you for telling me about this, Jeff.”
Sure thing. I just hope that those birds with good people like you flying them will make a difference in this fight. The Air Force has been having a hard time operating ever since most of their airfields got hit by those kamikaze airliners.” Jeff grimly smiled.
“We are just damned lucky that ole President Eisenhower had ordered that the Interstate Highway network be set up so that sections could be used as field expedient runways. The Air Force can’t generate as many sorties as normal because fuel and ammunition has to be trucked to the locations where the fighters are operating from. It is also a lot harder to do proper maintenance on the aircraft while sitting beneath an underpass. But at least the surviving fighter-bombers and attack aircraft are still able to generate some sorties in support of the ground forces defending the Alliance.”
“So when are you going to go see if the Guard wants you to fly for them?”
“I think that I just might give them a call in the morning. Who knows what might happen after that.”
A couple of weeks later after making that phone call, Wayne flew back in a light scout helicopter to visit the people in Ashley. Jeff met him at the field where the helicopter had landed.
“I knew that they would find a way to put you to good use, Wayne.” Jeff said after Wayne had shut down the helicopter’s engine and walked out away from the rotors.
“Jeff, you wouldn’t believe these birds that you told me about before. They are everything that you said and more. They are armed to the teeth to start with and fast as hell. It turns out to be a modified version of the Apache after all. The people working on it finally decided that it was something called an Advanced AH-64 Block 2 Compound version that had been proposed almost 30 years ago. The big difference between this bird and the original Boeing proposal was the Piasecki vectored fan tail. I was able to fly one of those new Apache’s to over two hundred and ten knots clean.”
“Just how sharp are these Apache’s teeth, Wayne? That’s what I am most interested in.” Jeff asked.
“We have been flying them with sixteen Hellfire missiles on the four inboard hardpoints and two ni
neteen-round rocket launchers on the two outboard ones. That is a hell of a lot of potential firepower combined with the 30mm chain-gun. We haven’t been carrying any Sidewinders on the wingtips. I think that they are more worried about enemy helos than their fast movers. Personally, I think that the Stinger is more than adequate at keeping enemy fighters at bay anyway. Besides, I like having the extra missile.
We also have the Longbow radar sitting on top of our rotor head. Even with that thing up there, I can’t believe how agile our birds are. I fit right in there with the new aircrews too. Picking up flying the Apache was lot easier than I dared imagine for me. Her flight controls are just so intuitive in how they are arranged and what they do for the pilot. I just fly the bird and handle defensive systems. The latter is very simple since much of the system is automatic anyway. The only offensive system that I have anything to do with is the air-to-air missile. I just simply point the bird at the target, wait for the missile tone and then pull the trigger.
The gunner has the hard job, I think. He has control of the rockets, Hellfire missiles and even the 30mm chain gun. The Guard managed to find a bunch of people who used to be gunners on the older Apaches and Super Cobras though. Sometimes I think that they are the ones in charge of the aircraft. They do pretty much all of the technical stuff. I just drive the bird around mostly.”
“I’m glad that things are working out for you then, Wayne. We may need your help sooner than I dared imagine. Things are not looking good along the border of Illinois and Indiana, I’m afraid.”
“I heard. But we’ll make the invaders pay dearly. You can count on that, Jeff.”
In spite of that promise, the Caliphate’s forces continued to advance eastward in spite of fierce resistance by small numbers of National Guardsmen and local militia forces. The latter continued to fight using guerilla tactics, but the Caliphate leadership proved to be more than willing to deal with insurgents by eliminating all civilians in their rear areas by any means necessary. Refugees flowed from Islamist-occupied territory as quickly as possible, clogging the roads.
Sometimes, the refugees themselves slowed both the Caliphate’s advance simply because they got in the way of the advancing Caliphate. But, on more than one occasion, the jihadists cleared refugees from the roads by simply driving over the latter with tanks and other heavy armored vehicles. The death toll among both civilians and Alliance troops quickly rose as a result. This shook the resistance leaders very badly who had planned upon switching over to an insurgency if conventional resistance to the Caliphate’s offensive failed.
“The jihadists are hitting the highways again where our fighters have been operating from. I think that things are going to get a lot harder for our boys.” Grady Talbott, one of the militia leaders from the neighboring suburb of Delaware remarked to Jeff as they had an impromptu meeting along the border of their militias’ areas of responsibility. They could see new columns of smoke rising from about five kilometers to the east in the vicinity of the nearby interstate highway.
The Caliphate regular troops were skilled enough using radio direction finding equipment now, it was dangerous to talk for very long using long range radios without military-grade frequency hopping and encryption.
“What is happening this time?” Jeff asked as the two men stood under the cover of a nearby grove of trees.
The jihadists are dropping bombs or launching long range rockets, not only at every straight stretch of interstate I-71 between Cleveland and Cincinnati, but they are also focusing on hitting near or one the overpasses at those same stretches of highway. The bad guys know that we have been using those overpasses as shelters for our aircraft. So the overpasses are being targeted to either hit our planes there or prevent them from being pushed underneath after a sortie.”
That is still a lot of highway there to try to knock out. I’m sure that our people are trying to play a shell game with which sections of highway that they are using so that they can’t be so easily targeted.”
“Yes, they are. Unfortunately, there are only so many highway overpasses adjacent to the right sections of highway that are also high enough for a fighter or A-10 to safely park under. Our enemy has figured that part out too.
We are doing the best that we can. But our enemies are not all dumb. They may expend massive amounts of people and equipment for each one of us that they kill, but they have the resources to do that and we don’t. The bad guys are smart enough to have figured that out too.”
“Didn’t we turn off or heavily encrypt our GPS signals so that the jihadists couldn’t use them for targeting guided munitions against us? Bridge overpasses are still pretty small targets.”
“Yes, we did. But the jihadists simply went back to old school tactics for their attacks on our aircraft. They either use saturation raids using dumb bombs or tactical rockets or their planes come in at low altitude to bomb their bombs and ensure that their targets are hit. We’ve lost a lot of people, especially civilians, due to collateral damage from the enemy saturation attacks too.”
“Eventually, the jihadists are going to pay for what they have done to innocent civilians here and elsewhere on this world. It may have to wait until Judgement Day, but they will most certainly pay.”
“I feel the same way. We just have to do all that we can to protect as many people as possible. I heard that the folks out of Wright-Pat are trying to put some more aircraft into operation that have been kept at their base.”
“I know that they had some C-17 transports there. But we need more combat aircraft if we are going to have a chance of knocking the jihadists back on their heels.”
“Well, that is what they are trying to do. They have gone into the museum there and grabbed everything that could potentially fly and started patching them up so that they could be sent east where a couple of air bases have had their main runways repaired. We are talking about some big bombers too along with a couple of dozen fighters.”
“I remember visiting the Air Force Museum right after they put up that third big display hangar. They had planes all the way from the First World War to stealth attack drones there. They even had a B-52, a B-1 and a B-2 at the museum.”
“Yes, they did. And now they are pulling all of the jets out except for a few experimental birds like the XB-70. I have even heard that a some people want to even get the Second World War relics out to see if they can be made flyable.”
“Our folks must be really scraping the bottom of the barrel then.”
“Yea. I just hope that we can get them out of there before Dayton gets overrun.”
“Our choppers are still able to operate alright for now except for the usual logistical headaches associated with remote, austere basing. But as we continue to steadily lose aircraft from enemy ground fire, fighters and mechanical failures. I’m afraid that we won’t have any air cover at all before long.” Jeff grimly noted.
“I heard that Marilyn’s kids are about to provide us with some local air cover of our own soon. They had to wait on some components to arrive from a little job shop in the Carolinas first though.”
“That will be interesting to see. We are going to need all of the help that we can get though.”
“Hopefully, we won’t need that help for a long time. I am praying that the Guard units to the west of us will be able to hold the line along the state border with Indiana.”
Chapter Twenty Nine:
Colonial Headquarters
Hebes Chasma, Mars
April 19, 2048
“Deborah, I know that you have a lot of friends and family still back in mid-Ohio. Are you going to try to make arrangements to get them evacuated to safety here? I’m sure that they would all be approved for admission to here.” Matt Walker asked.
“I have thought about it a lot and prayed about it even more. But there are just so many people looking for refuge here. It wouldn’t be fair for me to use my influence to get people here ahead of so many others. They all need a place of safety. I know that I promised my m
om that I would try to get my siblings and their families to safety, but everything is happening so quickly, including my being elected to the Martian Council.”
“From what a few of the really smart people here have hinted to me, you have far more right than anyone else on this planet to ask for a few favors. You made it possible for all of us to survive here. You also did ‘something’ that will make it possible for many, many more people to be able to live here as well.
So if you won’t ask, I will. Believe me, when I get motivated enough, I can make things happen too in my own peculiar way, my friend.”
“I don’t know what to say, Matt.”
“You don’t need to say anything, Deborah. You just keep doing what you need to do here to get everything ready for the people that we rescue from that mess back down on Earth. I will do what I need to do to secure our new home here.” Matt said with a smile.
Matt’s next stop was to go visit Arthur Wheeler at his design shop. He knew that Arthur had been one of Deborah’s oldest friends. If anyone on Mars would know Deborah and her family besides Deborah’s husband, Arthur would be that person.
Arthur was busy working on another one of his little projects when Matt entered the shop.
“Hey there, please stay behind that partition until I am done with this experiment. I wouldn’t want you to get hurt if something goes slightly awry.” Matt heard Arthur say.
A few moments later, the lights in the room dim briefly and a popping sound is heard. Then Matt heard Arthur cheerfully say.
“It’s all clear now. Come on in.”
Arthur was wearing what appeared to be a basic set of grey coveralls and was pulling off a pair of gloves. His hair was in a certain degree of disarray after he had removed some sort of protective head gear.
“Ahh, Colonel Walker. I’m glad to see you. What brings you to my occasionally hazardous corner of the colony?”