Feel better about your day job, even if it is flying a feeble Robinson R-44 helicopter, by watching Apache Warrior, currently streaming on Amazon Prime. The movie takes you through a single mission at the beginning of our second Iraq War. Thirteen Apache helicopters go up a valley to try to kill Iraqis who might interfere with the planned U.S. ground invasion of Baghdad. Each Apache has a front-seater who shoots and a back-seater who flies, unless one gets hit and the roles need to be redistributed. Both crew members are trained as pilots. The movie is mostly an annotation of video recorded from the helicopters during the flight/fight. Since at least my Facebook friends seem to be looking for a female pilot to worship as a hero they will be pleased to find Captain Carrie Bruhl in the front seat of one of these machines. (She does not add evidence to support the theory that the world would be a peaceful paradise if only women were running things!)
I don’t want to say too much more and spoil the movie, but let me note that, despite the armor plating of the Apache, hundreds of thousands of angry guys on the ground with rifles makes for a dangerous environment. Also, Trigger Warning for Taxpayers: All 13 helicopters are so badly damaged that repair had to cost pretty close to the $20+ million retail price per ship at the time. So you’re going to watch maybe $200 million in tax dollars circling the drain.
Related:
- Rotten Tomatoes page on the movie
- Carrie Bruhl’s LinkedIn page (she is in the elevator industry now with, I hope, nobody shooting at her)
Hard to believe that was 15 years ago. I can’t imagine having a formation of helicopters trying to takeoff or land in complete brownout conditions.
Can’t say much for the mission planning but it’s good that lesson only cost 10’s of millions to learn.