Here’s part of an interview with an Air National Guard Pave Hawk helicopter search-and-rescue pilot:
What was your favorite video game while deployed in Afghanistan?
That’s easy. We were addicted to Halo. It was amazing: We had a bunch of computers linked together, and we could play capture the flag with 16 or so people. You could hear people yelling out tactical info like “Help! Johnson is sniping us from the waterfall!” and such. So much fun.
I didn’t see that one coming!
(Separately, who has read the interviewee’s book, Shoot Like a Girl? Does the pilot of a Pave Hawk actually do any shooting in real-world operations? I would have thought that was the door gunner’s job.)
Related:
- Lockheed Martin buys Sikorsky for 1.1X revenue (despite the $40 million cost (at least!) of the Pave Hawk, making them is apparently not very profitable)
I heard a good interview with her on Fresh Air:
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/02/517944956/a-purple-heart-warrior-takes-aim-at-military-inequality-in-shoot-like-a-girl
The intro reads “In 2009, Maj. Mary Jennings Hegar was shot down by the Taliban in Afghanistan while co-piloting an Air National Guard medevac helicopter. Though she was wounded in her rifle arm, Hegar managed to return fire while hanging onto a moving helicopter, which saved the lives of her crew and her patients.”
Once things go all to hell, shooting is the job of anybody who can get to a gun.
fuel tanks, two crew-served (or pilot-controlled) 7.62 mm miniguns or .50-caliber machine guns and an 8,000 pound (3,600 kg) capacity cargo hook. To improve air transportability and shipboard operations, all HH-60Gs have folding rotor blades.