Episode 044

2/28/23, 14:25

Episode 044

120 Kts 10' Off The Ground and I Was Bored

So There I Was 1 https://sothereiwas.us/episode/44

Former Marine grunt and Army BlackHawk Pilot "CandyMan" takes us on a ride through the dust-bowl that is Afghanistan. Hair-raising stories of taking ﬁre, near mid-airs with other helicopters and a C-17 are just a few of the adventures he talks about... But what scared him most? Dust landings. Find out why, and what he did about it. You won't be disappointed. This is a fun ride.

Transcript

[0:00] Music.

[0:13] On the tanker through the weather oh and to the tanker crew who did that.

[0:19] Music.

[0:35] So there I was crossing the pond and you could see that I wasn't exactly fun So there I was. Which is how all great aviation tales start. Welcome everyone. This is Fig coming to you from Kansas City.

And I have my co-horse today. Where are you, Reapy?

I'm home today. I was on the road earlier this week. I'm back home. Yeah.

[0:59] So Fig has his Kansas City Chief Sweatshirt on for good luck, because we're recording this on Super Bowl Sunday. Maybe a week or so before we get out to it.

Before we get out to it, week and a half to, I don't know.

I've lost track.

[1:12] The point is we are here today with a special guest, special, an army black hawk pilot who we're going to call Candyman and we'll get into why here in just a little bit, but I can already tell he's having entirely too much fun here with us. So welcome Candyman.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Glad to be here guys. Love, love the show.

Thank you. Yeah. So Candyman was a listener and reached out and said, Hey, you know, I've got one or two tails. I may be able to shut some light on and I'm like, okay, you know, yeah.

He's so he did a tour in Iraq, three tours in Afghanistan.

I don't know. Maybe some things happened there that he's been, he's been, he's been there a minute. Oh my gosh. And the, the, uh, the pictures and the videos that he's already sent.

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Um, well, ﬁrst of all, like, uh, the one that we were talking about before we went on there, it terriﬁed me. So I can't wait to hear stories. Yeah. I'm the candy man.

That turned into my favorite thing to do because it used to scare the shit out of me.

[2:13] And I realized, well, quick, quick side point. So I was a brand new PC or sorry, pilot and command.

I was out training and this is when I was stationed at Fort Bliss.

So I came back my ﬁrst Afghanistan deployment and we got bracked, which you guys have covered already.

We all got moved to Fort Bliss, which was all the senior guys were like, I'm not going to Fort Bliss.

I don't want to be in the desert. So I became, I went from a senior pilot to a senior pilot in command in about one check ride because there was nobody else there. So it was, yeah, it was a little something else. So.

[2:52] I was afraid of dust landings because I learned it under the old way. The old way was just truly terrifying. The way that you saw in that video was a slow, smooth, controlled descent. It used to be, literally, you would just come in and just slam it in the ground and hit the brakes and hope you didn't hit anything in front of you. Was that to get down before the dust cloud completely obscured your vision? Basically, that's what they would try and do is you would try and beat the dust to the the ground. So you're doing, you know, 15, 20 miles an hour into obviously unimproved terrain in an aircraft that has three gear. So it's not like it's, it's pretty stable cause it's, it's got a wide set, uh, landing gear and stuff like that. But you basically would just plant it in the ground and hope for the best essentially. And I'm obviously paraphrasing, but what could possibly go wrong?

[3:46] Exactly. Right. I'm just ripping off landing gear and digging roads and rotors and hitting divots and stuff. Oh yeah, it was terrible. It was terrible. So that's the way I was taught. So you used to scare the crap out of me. Well, when I was at Fort Bliss, when I was a young PC, they used to scare me to death. So I'd try and avoid doing it. Well, I had a crew chief, he was our company SI, so like the...

Backseat instructor. Okay. That makes sense. So standardization instructors, what it's called. Okay. I have nothing but great thing to say about him. His name is Carson, but he, Was we're out ﬂying and I was like, I guess we should do some dust landings because at the time they were just called dust landings around now. So now they have an ofﬁcial term.

DVE or degraded visual environment. But, you know, I didn't want to go out and do them because I was scared to death of me said, and I'm, and I'm quoting here said, sir, stop being a fucking pussy and go land in the dirt. And I was like, Okay.

He's right. So I went out and exactly, exactly. Like you're absolutely right.

So I went out and just scared the shit out of myself every night.

Oh, we do that at night.

A lot. Oh, well that makes it easier. So there's nothing to be scared of because you can't see.

Yeah. You just close your eyes and hope for the best, right?

[4:58] Lord. So I went out every night and just scared the bejesus out of myself over and over and over and over and over until I stopped being scared.

And then that was when I started getting better at it because, you know, it's like, you know, like when you're getting up in a ﬁst ﬁght, the ﬁrst time you get punched, everything kind of slows down.

You kind of calm down a little bit. Once you get over that fear of it, you can then think and process what's going on.

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So that's proof that you guys are knocking farts.

I have a burning question I got to ask right out of the gate.

This is, you know what, if you don't want to answer it, candy man, it's okay.

I'm just going to pester you until you do. All right.

Well, ﬁrst of all, it's a two part question. How many hours in the, in rotary aircraft do you have? I'm on the sunny side of 3,300 total.

I am too literally. So I'm retiring in about like seven or eight months and I am.

An hour, two and a half hours short of a thousand hours of goggle.

That's, that's the last thing that I want to do is break a thousand MBG.

And then I've got like 1100 and something combat hours, some of that area.

Okay. So, uh, 3,300, that's a lot. That's a lot in a helicopter.

Yeah. My back will tell you about it too. How many times have you crashed?

[6:22] Crashed zero. Okay. All right. So, okay. So you've never been metal.

Uh, uh, well there's, there's a, there's a ﬁne line between crashing and bending metal. I have been metal. Okay. We were doing surprise, surprise at dust landing in, uh, this is Afghanistan part two, the SQL. You have to name the SQLs. I don't know if you can do that or not. What year was, uh, was part two? Part two would have been 2013. Okay. So my, my deployments were, I did a year in 10, 11, uh, and then I went back again in 13 and then I came back again in 15, 16.

We, uh, we had some overlap in, uh, in 10, 11. Oh really? Where, where do you ever go up to Mez or Kelly guy or.

Well, you know, we were, we ﬂew out of Boggum, uh, and the only places that I can think, where do you ﬁnd age sixties at the time or 47?

60s. I just started ﬂying 47s about two years ago.

[7:21] You know, we went all over the place, um, into those little fobs that had, uh, how about Maimana? Cause I actually saw a C 130 land at Maimana and then they backtaxed and they were just, was that up in the Northwest part?

It sure was. It sure was. Yeah. It looked like the moon sort of.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I was there doing med chase.

So it might actually, I might actually watch you land out there to be honest with you, cause we all were like, Hey, there's C 130 coming in.

So we came out outside the wall and watched. We parked our, the black, well, sorry.

So it was a Norwegian FOP.

[7:56] And they had like their modiﬁed Hueys doing medevac. So we got to country, we were the ﬁrst combat, so CAB, Combat Aviation Brigade.

We were the ﬁrst ones to go to that part of the country as a brigade.

So when we got out there, we went to Maine.

One of the places we went to is Maimano to do medevac. And I'm not a medevac pilot.

I'm an air assault pilot through and through, and we can explain the difference in the black.

There's three distinct blackhawk pilot types. There's medevac, there's the, the cat guys command and control, they do VFP stuff. And then there's air assault pilots.

I'm an air assault pilot. I'm gonna clarify that one. Okay.

But so we would go and do med chase for the, the medevac birds because they don't have guns.

They have a red cross. a lot of carry guns, Geneva conventions, so on and so forth.

So we would ﬂy behind them and basically pull top cover. So if anybody started getting squirreled, we'd

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sweep down and shoot them with our door guns, essentially. Okay. Cause the patches can't keep up. They're too slow. I did not. I wasn't aware of the three different distinctions.

I just ﬁgured, uh, you know, what the hell do I know?

[9:07] Yeah. I learned this is so I, you know, I just learned something. Yeah.

There's very different. So all the 47 guys are pretty, pretty much the same.

They're all like, Hey man, it's all good. Whatever dude. Cause their helicopter does so much stuff. Sorry, our, our, sorry, goose, our helicopter does so much that they can be really chill whereas blackhawks.

I mean, I grew up in a 1975, the height of 1970s technology in a steam gauge Lima with a 128 D GPS and all I had was a little yellow needle to point where I was going.

And that was it. We're doing time on targets plus or minus 30 seconds, you know, with a ﬂight of seven based off of that. So it was, it was kind of rip your hair out.

I remember that. Oh yeah. That's super fun.

Um, but I will say this, one of the most satisfying things in the world to me.

Now, granted I am weird, but one of the most satisfying things in the world to me was when I was short ﬁnal leading a ﬂight of however many three, four, ﬁve, whatever the matter.

[10:10] And we're in low and the dust is kicking up, the crew chiefs are calling the dust, and I've just glanced down at the clock, and I'm just like right on time.

Then I just put it on the ground. That is the most satisfying feeling in the world because it's hard. Doing all that stuff and when everything's clicking, then the stack calls, I'm sorry, if you guys talk about a stack yet, I can't remember. I don't think you have.

So a stack is, And it's pretty much for permissive environments like Afghanistan, Iraq, and stuff like that.

What they'll do is you'll have various assets, whether it be F-16s, F-18s, AC-130s.

We love the AC-130 guys. Occasionally they would lay us the wrong LZ, but that's okay.

We're not going to hold that against them.

[10:53] And then you would have, you know, three or four different UAVs and stuff like that.

And what they would do is they would stack them. So like down low would be the Apaches, above them would be the F-16s, above them would be the F-18s, and so on and so forth, and just kind of varied. Okay. Okay. So you would talk to all these people, all these entities on the way in, you would give timing calls and stuff like that because it's all, it all needs to work together if it, and if it is working together, it's just, it's beautiful.

Everything is clicking. You give a call and then you get six calls back and then the rocket goes out for the loom shot.

And then, Hey, the lights are on and you can see, and it's, it's, it's fantastic.

I just really love doing that stuff.

I may have interrupted you. Uh, I think you were going somewhere before I started ﬁring those questions at you about ﬂight times and how many times you crashed.

Did, were you, were you going, did I totally derail your thought?

Probably, I squirrel pretty hard nowadays. I ask anybody at work, they'll be like, oh, Delp squirreled again.

Oh, that's funny. All right.

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[11:57] Okay, I lost my train of thought. I was thinking about what you were talking about, stack.

And then my mind went back to the stack.

Okay. I can tell you about the time I bent the airframe a little bit, just a small.

Okay. So there's a little panel. So what we're out doing, uh, goggle dust landings as with a, with a younger guy.

He's actually now an airline pilot, believe it or not. There's, there's quite a few of us who have become airline pilots, but anyway, so we're out there doing some training and this is when I was still kind of ﬁguring out my technique and I was like, no, you got to stick it in the ground because that way, you know, you're on the ground.

This is earlier in. This is before I ﬁgured out the slowest, smoothest, smoothest fast situation.

Sure. So essentially...

[12:41] We're coming in and we stick it in the ground and we rolled into like a little rut that we couldn't see because it's zero loom in Afghanistan and ﬁg you've ﬂown it. Did you guys are ﬂy goggles and see 130s always?

Okay, because most of our light in and out of the Hot places were always at night. Yeah, so, you know how dark Afghanistan is now I'm sure like over water stuff is dark darker than that. I'm sure but there is nothing like Afghanistan at night because the elume and I'm sure you remember this it's the weirdest elume I've ever seen so it'll be zero elume for three weeks there will, be a day or two of 20 or 30 percent and then you'll have a hundred percent elume for three or four days and then two or three days of 20 percent and then it's zero again yeah so it's just it's dark and all you can see based on the phases of the moon, right?

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yep.

And it's like most places there's, you know, it kind of starts to get bigger and then it gets a little bit, then it gets smaller stuff.

Some reason that country, I don't know what it is about where it's located on the earth, but it just goes from like extremes, the very unnerving when you're descending through the mountains and you can't see the mountains, it's not fun.

We, we call that this darker than the inside of a cat.

I always use the phrase darker, darker than the inside of well, Digger's ass is what we always used to say.

[14:05] I think I'd rather be in a cat, just saying. That might be a title.

I think I'd rather be in a cat. AHAHAHAHAHA You're welcome. Very well.

[14:19] All right. So Afghanistan, second phase, phase one, what, what you call in phase, were you there earlier than 10, 11? No, no, that was my ﬁrst one. So I went, so obviously I was in the Marine Corps and, uh, simplify and God bless America and God bless the United States Marine Corps. Right, right. So did the, uh, did the Marine thing. I was an infantry for four years, got out, met my wife actually when we were down range. Actually, not down range, we were deployed to Okinawa. So I met her in Okinawa, which is a whole other story.

But anyway, best thing just as a side point that ever happened to me is up there reading a book, but that's a side point. So we got out of the Marine Corps, came home. I was a ﬁreman for like about two years, sort of tractor trailer on the side, sort of thing.

I went to ﬂight school in 2008.

Actually on April Fools of 2008 is when I shipped to go to warrant ofﬁcer Canada school.

And the reason that I had to be a warrant ofﬁcer, the army is the only service that would let me ﬂy for two reasons.

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A, I don't have a college degree. Never went to college.

[15:36] And two, I was blind as a bat before I had LASIK. Okay. Uh, 2800 vision, I believe.

Oh, jeez. I was real bad, real bad.

LASIK works. It's like biggly, biggly lined. Yeah, I was biggly lined.

And so I got, I got this eye surgery and the air force was like, Nope.

The Navy was like, Oh, we don't care if you have LASIK, but it can't be past this refraction while I was a quarter, I think a quarter of a point past what they would even allow me to ﬂy anything.

So it is what it is.

Go army.com.

Did you have that surgery before you went in the Marine Corps?

No, no, no. After. I got out of the Marine Corps in 2004. I had the surgery in 2006, I think it was, because you had to let it rest for like a year or two, I think, before you get to ﬂight school.

Okay, yeah. Wow. Okay. Nice.

So are you 2020 now or close to it? I'm 2015 actually, even to this day, I got this actually funny side point when I was, so I was a saw gunner in the Marine Corps.

I was an O3 11, the most basic.

[16:50] Yup. Remember humping that thing around? The saw wasn't so bad.

It was all the damn ammo candy. Right. I went through ammo so fast.

Oh Jesus. Yeah. It's a squad automatic weapon saw.

Yeah. Yeah, this is M249.

A funny side point about like the reason I learned about like ﬂying helicopters, cause I'd never really thought about it before. I was in 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines.

[17:15] This is even before I met my wife, actually, this is a long, long time ago.

We've been together for 20 years. So we were doing WTI.

I know you guys, I can't remember what it stands for.

Weapons and Tactics Instructor.

There you go. We were the sandbags for all the helicopters and stuff.

Okay. So we were out there just doing air assault after air assault after air assault, running through the jungle or not jungle, running through the desert and shooting stuff and so on and so forth.

Well, we caught a ride through the chocolate mountains at dusk in the back of a 53 and they're just shucking and jiving down through these mountain passes. And I was like, I could do this.

It's pretty awesome. I'll do this. Well, fast forward to the second time we went back. So we deployed to Okinawa, which just the regular UDP, nothing crazy. Just your standard Marine Corps, you're going to go somewhere kind of thing. Come back, go back to WTI. Now I'm a corporal.

So now I'm important.

Well, I was, uh, I was in the front in, I was the chalk leader and had like the crank, you remember the cranials that they would wear like on ships and stuff.

So they would just give us one.

[18:21] So I'm wearing this cranial and I'm hearing the pilots talk.

And it's like John and Bob. I don't, I don't remember.

So John's like, Hey Bob, who's buying the beer for the debrief tonight?

And I was like, and I'm listening. I'm like, what did he say?

And he's like, Oh, it's Johnny's turn. You know, he's good. It's his turn to buy a beer for the debrief.

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And I was like, hold on a minute, gentlemen, let me just get this right.

I'm going to go run around through the desert for like three or four days and you're going to go back and drink beer.

Guys are going to go back and drink beer over a debrief. This all sounds good to me.

Exactly. Exactly. I was like, I need to do that.

[18:57] Fast forward, you know, 20 years and here I am. How about that?

That's awesome. Oh, that's perfect. Yeah.

Yeah. So unprofessional though, Fig, we never debriefed over beer, did we? No, absolutely not.

Well, these were helicopter jockeys. Maybe they do something different.

No. Believe me, don't you? Come on. Oh yeah. Oh, absolutely.

100%. Never, never. Oh man. Oh, that's awesome.

So that's so, you know, you, you came, so you're really not an army guy.

You're, you're really a Marine. You know, you're like a sheep's clothing.

Exactly. I still root for Navy in the army.

Yeah, exactly. Right. a lot of ﬂack when army wins the army navy game because i still root for navy to this very day Good. As you should. Yeah.

[19:44] Okay. Uh, so, uh, you know, for, uh, for me, uh, ﬂying in Afghanistan, I mean, I know what that was like for me.

I think for you, it was a little more personal, a little more close.

Yeah.

Talk, talk, talk, tell us about typical, uh, combat ﬂying day in Afghanistan.

Well, so there's a lot of different things. I was either blessed or not blessed to do a lot of the screwier, more fun stuff.

Because I get bored real easy. I got a real short attention span.

And ﬂying what we used to call a ring route. Now my ﬁrst deployment had a lot of ring routes because that's how you build time and get used to the ﬂying the helicopter and kind of get comfortable with it. And a ring route is where you go, it's fob hopping. You go from Mez to Kunduz to Kiligai to Ope North to back to...

Basically, you're just moving people, just ass and trash, right?

And that's what most of us did. The majority of Army helicopters were done, we're doing that sort of a thing.

Now, Apache's would go do Apache stuff and so on and so forth.

But then we had what we call DelOps or Deliberate Operations.

So my ﬁrst deployment, I got to do one and a half because I was super rookie.

[21:06] Like I ﬁnished oral progression out of ﬂight school in Afghanistan.

Like I showed up to my unit and six months later I was in Afghanistan at a ﬂight school.

[21:15] So let me back, let's back up just a second. I'm going to ask you about that.

So when you got qualiﬁed and you showed up at your ﬁrst operational unit, you were not completely ﬁnished training.

Is that, is that correct? Yes, but no. So the way it works in the army. So the army likes to leave like some of the ﬁnishing, the polishing the turd, so to speak, at the very end, the unit. Because the units, so like we talked about Blackhawks have different personalities, Blackhawk pilots. So a Blackhawk guy that comes out of ﬂight school and goes to an air assault unit is going to really, harp on a few speciﬁc things.

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Whereas a med guy is going to harp on some different stuff.

Does that make sense? So when you're talking about the different types of mission sets that we have in the army, it's kind of hard to train all those things at ﬂight school, speciﬁcally at Fort Rucker, right? There's no dust or anything like that. So they hit all the the big stuff. You're safe to ﬂy. You can do a time on target and the basic stuff, but the speciﬁcs to wherever you go is left up to the unit.

And that's.

[22:37] Go ahead. Were you, uh, qualiﬁed in the H in the, in the Blackhawk when you left Fort Rucker? Yes, that is true. Okay. Okay. Let me explain that. So in the back in the day, you would go through the TH 67, which is what the Navy uses the same. They call it something different, but it's the same basic bell jet range for your helicopter. Yeah. Yep. And that thing is just, Oh, that's a squirrely rascal is it'll get your attention. So after that, uh, in my day, you would ﬁnish all that, you would do the daytime contact stuff like how you ﬂy, how you do auto rotations and so on and so forth. Then you would do instrument phase, which is ﬂying in the clouds, which I know you guys know. And then after that, you would go through what's called.

[23:21] BWS, basic warﬁghter skills, I believe is what it means. And after that, you would go through, selection. And what they would do is they do a much bigger ado about it now, they've improved quite a few things, but in my day, they literally had a whiteboard and they would say they had however many aircraft were available and they would say turn the whiteboard around there, hold it up. And it was funny as crap because I had a lot of guys that want to go guns in my class and I just, I didn't want to nothing to do with it. And so they turn this thing around and it's this many Blackhawks, this many Apaches, this many 58 Ds, which we don't have anymore, so on and so forth. And they're like, all right, you're ﬁrst in the class. What do you want? He's like, well, I'm cool. So I want to be a blackhawk pilot. And then the next guy, all right, cool. What do you want? He's like, I'm also cool. I want to be a blackhawk pilot. The third guy is like, I'm kind of a nerd. I want to be an Apache guy. So, yeah. So when I went through, there was zero 47 slots.

There was just, there was literally a frowny face next to Chinooks. So had that been an option, I don't know that I would have gone Hawks anyway, but now the the Chinook is just it's a really really cool helicopter Okay.

But just... So.

[24:43] Pretend because there's a lot of people out there that don't know what a chinook is and don't know what a blackhawk is Don't know what an Apache is. So can you describe each of those birds and what kind what their mission mostly surrounds and.

[24:57] And what and what else is there I mean I could be wrong but I seem to recall the army has a crap ton of, ﬁxed-wing birds too. Hey, yeah, yeah, this is, Candyman's our ﬁrst is he is he our ﬁrst army helicopter guy because we had coastal we had Nate. Yes Well, okay. We're making history, baby. You're breaking the seal here, Candyman. Yeah. Yeah.

I've got a couple other people that I might give your contact info to get on that got some pretty good stories as well. Right on. All right. So you're here for bro. That's what we're here for.

So yeah, I'm sorry to take you off track, but it just, no, no, it's ﬁne. Just a little bit of, what some of the birds are and what the missions are because I'm blissfully ignorant of many of of that, those, uh, myself, I know a little bit, but I've been out of it for so long.

There's a lot of it. I don't know.

So you have the age 64 Apache. We'll just start alphabetically.

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So the age 64 Apache is the, uh, attack helicopter. They go out and they've got sensors and missiles and bombs, not bombs, but missiles and guns and rockets and stuff like that.

And, uh, they go out and do, they blow up tanks, they pull security.

They're actually the gunships. Yeah. They're very, very useful when people are shooting at you.

So, so, you know, I, as a Marine, I am just, I'm really kind of shocked that you didn't want to ﬁre, you know, ﬂy something that you get.

It was the helicopter. We gotta blow shit up. What the hell?

What happened to you?

[26:24] That saw where you out? You're like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, it was the helicopter itself. I just, if we had Cobras, like...

If the army had Cobras, I would have been a Cobra pilot. Those things are just, just a sexy helicopter. It's sleet, it is smooth and man alive. Especially the whiskey models, which have four blades.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. That was, that came after my time, but like those things are sweet.

And then the Apache just, I mean, it's, and it's good at what it does.

Don't get, don't get me wrong.

Like every, everything and all of our different communities, we all talk smack to each other, but we all love each other.

Yeah. Um, I just, it just did the helicopter itself. I looked at it and I learned a little bit about it and I was like, that's just not my thing. They ﬂy with, This this I thing over like it ﬂips down. Have you ever seen movie ﬁrebirds? Oh, yeah Yeah, okay. Is that Nick that Nick cage Nick cage? Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, so if you want to realize all real all that stuff was 100% ever bit of it. So I got actually this is funny, My third deployment. So this is Afghanistan part three, This time it's personal. That's the that's sequels name And I learned, I Googled like lines from that movie from, from ﬁreworks.

And we were in Dwyer. I was doing Medchase again.

It was one of my rotations out there doing Medchase.

[27:42] And they had the Apache, they had this little like shack built inside the bigger, like it was a, it was a building sort of, but it was like a one story kind of thing.

And they had built this little shack so they could have like their little secret Apache, you know, handshakes and stuff in there.

Well, I had memorized lines from this movie. So I would go up to their shack and I would boot in the door and start screaming lines from far from that movie. Adam, like I've forgotten them now.

Well, I got booted in the door and be like, his heart and braid wired together, cooking full tub boogie freedom of justice. And like, y'all down there just walk out the door.

[28:22] Oh, as a side point, do you know the wounded warrior guy? the outline of the wounded warrior program that he is a Marine.

He was he was a Marine Sergeant. I know him. He's now an Apache pilot in the Army.

Really? He was there. He actually I actually talked him to watching Firebirds with me.

And that was a that was a bit of a mistake for him because I scream with a merciless to the whole movie. But then we went out and he put me in the front seat of the Apache. Excuse me.

And he had me put the helmet on with the little eye thing. And I'm looking around and I'm like, and I'm just doing this stuff and looking around, I'm like, you're nuts.

This is awful. I don't know how you do anything because they ﬂy off this one eye and it's, no thank you. Yeah. Okay.

So that's the Apache. All right. And then you have the CH-47 Chinook, right?

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Which is the cargo helicopter.

It looks like a ﬂying bus, right? It's about the size of a bus.

Or an inverted egg beater, right? It's the- Inverted egg beater, yeah. Large counter rotating rotors.

Daddy used to call it the double whopper.

Yeah.

[29:28] Wafﬂe, wafﬂe, wafﬂe. Exactly. Exactly. Okay.

So that's your heavy lift bird. It can carry Jesus.

Uh, I personally have seen we were doing, uh, air assaults and they had 65 shooters in the back and two four wheelers.

That was a Marsauk team out of Farrar that was doing that. And they had now granted, most of them were Afghanis like their, their partner forces, but they were just, it was standing room only they're packing like sardines.

I was looking in the back of the ramp and I was like, Jesus, there's a lot of people in there.

Yeah. How many clones can you get in that VW?

Yeah. Yeah. You ﬁt them in until there's no more room. And then obviously you have the Blackhawk, which is kind of like the F-150 of Army aviation.

It does a little bit of everything.

[30:13] So you can ﬁt, and the thing to keep in mind with like when you're carrying people and like that is there's power limitations and stuff depending on you know density altitude and temperatures and all that other stuff so it depends i've had as many as 18 people in the back of my blackhawk whoa i've been able to carry as few yeah that was that was that was snug uh that was the ﬁrst time i got shot at was that day now for reference how many how many seats back there so people understand when you're saying 18 people how crowded that really is oh yeah there's 11 seats in the back but when we were working with special operations guys which was more often than not downrange, we would just take the seats out and sit on the ﬂoor.

Yeah. So they just kind of smushing together.

Um, so I had a year that's probably ﬁguring two and a quarter, two 50 a piece or more.

Uh, well, so the Americans would plan on 300. Okay. And then the Afghanis we would plan about 200 cause they're usually pretty skinny. Okay.

[31:09] Okay. Wow. That's a lot. That's a lot of deep learning. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I don't have a picture of it, unfortunately. I'd let you look at it, but it was like they were smushed in like sardines. It was pretty awesome. And then there are days when the most I could carry was, you know, six or seven. And that's just, just when it's a hot day. Right. Right on. And then, so those are the, the three that are still helicopters are still on the surface. There used to be what's called the 58D, the Kiowa Warrior, which is is actually a neat little helicopter.

It's not, it was designed originally as like a VIP transport, like back in the 70s, but the, the army being resourceful sort of strapping guns on it.

And then it turned into the 50 AD and they would like, that was a two seater bubble helicopter with, with the, uh, it's some kind of a pod over the rotor.

Exactly. Yeah. It's a, it's like a, a big bell jet ranger.

It had four blades and had that like thing on top, the siding pod or whatever it read license plates or something.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. No, well, they didn't need that to read license plates.

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They're usually about four feet off the ground. So they just read it with their eyes. Um, so those guys were.

[32:22] Those guys are crazy. I know a friend of mine, when I went through the IP course in 60s, he was a 50 AD guy and we were just, you know, kind of trading war stories. He's like, yeah, I got hit by an ID one time. And I was like, would you land on it? Cause that's how most of us would hit an ID you land on. He's like, no, no, no. Um, it was on a motorcycle and I wanted to see it looked kind of weird. So he ﬂew over top of the motorcycle and did like a bank thing to look at the motorcycle.

And about the time he got just past it, they popped the IED and it blew a hole in his tail boom.

[32:56] Yeah, so he ﬂew back. Oh, God, I can't remember the fob. He ﬂew back to the fob, wherever it was, and he's lands and he's like, oh, I'm not straight and centered up on the pad because, you know, professionals use the center. So he goes to pick back up. Well, when he went ﬂat pitch, or sorry, put the collective all the way down to land. The last little bit on the tail boom just gave away.

And he goes, are you shitting me and fell off right there? Yeah. So it like, boop, like that hit the ground. So he goes to pull power back in again. He's like, doing this stuff. And he's like, no, all the crew chiefs on the ground, uh, run over and like, no, stop. You know, so he goes ﬂat pitch he got into a little bit of trouble for that one because they're like why would you do that to a motorcycle when he's like I want to see if it's an ID which made sense to me but you know it turned out it was the answer was yes the answer was yes that is very true okay there you go holy smokes and uh just to quickly cover it I think we might have already but just want to circle back uh fob is forward operating base or FOP. Yeah.

[34:07] And then we do have airplanes also in the army. We got C-12s and UC-35s. I think they are. They're like the business jet thing. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah. So they- Barbie jet. Exactly. These things are tiny. I got to ride in one once and I was like, this thing is a little bitty, but they do basically VIP transport and that sort of thing. And then there's the RC 12 and then there's a RC 12. Yeah, RC 12. And then there's another one that I can't remember what it's called, like the dash something or another. It's a bigger four engine thing. And they do like Intel kind of stuff out of it. I don't really know what they do. Can't tell you. Yeah. I couldn't tell you if I wanted to. I have no idea. When do you know? And I guess it doesn't matter, but when did the army get rid of Huey's? Roughly. That would have been probably like completely out of the garden reserve and everything.

Probably the mid 90s I would say. Okay.

[35:06] Because that was a big utilitarian, light lift helicopter. We had them in the Marine Corps for the longest time too.

Still got them. No, they're still there. Yeah, they got the, I think it's the Zulu model, QE's.

Four blades. It's... Can't make any more than that. Zulu, you're out of letters.

Yeah. Well, they'll wrap it back around. Alpha, Alpha, Alpha. That's where you go.

What do we know about the Marine Corps? The Marine Corps will ﬁnd a way.

Oh yeah. That's right. They will ﬁnd a way to cheap out and not buy a new airplane.

Absolutely. No, they'll do an upgrade to it. And then they'll call it the UE alpha alpha.

Ah, so Afghanistan combat tour a couple times and then Iraq also. Yeah. Right.

Where were you ﬂying?

[35:52] So I was based in Taji. So at the time I was the battalion SP, which I'm not 100% sure how to explain. So like, the army is set up differently than everybody else. We have platoons and companies and battalions as opposed to like squadrons. So each company has a certain amount of platoons and stuff

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like that. Well, the company has two instructor pilots and a standardization pilot and the standardization pilot is in charge of those two IPs, right? And he kind of runs the program for that company. So when you move up to obviously, there's a battalion level SP who kind of is in charge of all those SPs. Roughly and.

[36:36] Rough equivalent of a squadron, I would say roughly that size.

Does that make sense?

Now, the big difference is I was an active duty, like regular army guy for my ﬁrst three, the Afghanistan tours. And then on my Afghanistan part three, our Chinooks were reserve Chinooks.

And these guys were badass. Like there's the Marja story.

I'll just, I'll take a quick side point of the Marja.

So Marja was the day of holy shit in 2016. It was like, it was the 5th of January 2016.

Spill that for me, I'm sorry. This is Marja? This is Afghanistan, right?

Yeah, this is southern Afghanistan. It's just north, it's in the Helmand River Valley, so like the not fun part.

Yeah, north of Kandahar. No, no, it's west of Kandahar. It's quite a bit west of Kandahar.

So did you ever ﬂy into Dwyer by any chance?

Yes. between Dwyer and Bastion.

Oh, okay. Right? I know exactly where you're at. Yeah, so there's like a little, it's like a thumb print of death. It's weird. Anyway, so let's get back to the thing with Marge because I'm gonna get out and start some scrolling again. So.

[37:53] I was on night shift. I was pulling night QRF quick reaction force with another guy who is just the night.

If you go and look in the dictionary for the nicest guy ever, you're going to see a picture of Corey Haines. He's just a wonderful, wonderful person and one of the most badass helicopter pilots I know. The dude is fantastic. He's a maintenance test pilot.

So he just, he's in the process of retiring actually right now, but can't say no like fantastic things about this guy. I love him.

So I was, uh, chalk one, he was chalk two on Nike, your F. So we are coming into work.

We stopped at the chow hall there in Kandahar.

It's just a big tent, you know, and we're eating breakfast, which is everybody else's dinner, which that was the only downside to night shift is just you get up.

I don't, I don't, I don't want a sandwich for breakfast. I want some breakfast food for breakfast.

But aside from that, it was great.

So we're in there eating and one of the one of the runners from the talk, sorry, tactical operations center, kind of like the command post, basically, comes tear ass and into the chow hall.

And he's like, you guys need to come right now.

We're like, what's going on? They're like, just come now. So we all get up and run over to the top.

And as it turns out, a Medbird had crashed. So Medivac. And actually, interestingly enough.

[39:17] The crew chief on that aircraft was later one of my SIs, or standardization instructors.

So we hear this and of course, as you know, or you may not know, if an aircraft goes down in Afghanistan, the whole country stops and everything goes to that spot. Right. Well, in the day time, so the basic gist of the way it worked out, there was an SF team that was in Marja and they had gotten, basically stuck in like this little compound, right. And just in this nasty ﬁreﬁght.

And one of their guys had gotten shot in the leg, I think it was, and he was really messed up.

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So they called Medevac. So the med guys come in and there's not really a great place to land, so they try and put it inside the compound, which, a little snug, a little snug. Tight, all right.

Yeah, it was so tight in fact that they clipped the roof of the building with a rubber tip.

[40:24] Yeah. Of course, this is nighttime, conﬁrmed nighttime. Oh, no, this was daytime.

This was in the middle of the afternoon.

This is like when you don't want people shooting at you is because they see everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, and they're, and they basically landed in the middle of a three way, like gun shooting match. It was just, it was anarchy.

So they landed there and they were, and their hearts were in the right place.

Like they were trying to save lives. Like I get it.

But so they clipped the building because Mike model, They're in a mic model 60.

Which is the new digital thing, but it's got an anhydral droop rotor tip system, which means the end of the rotor, like an Alima model, it does this and it's slanted back.

The rotor looks like this. On the Mike model has that same slant, but the slant is down.

Like the blade is called a droopy tip for people who don't know.

Had they been in Alima, they probably been okay, but they were in Mike and they just caught the rotor tip right on the edge of that building. Of course, they couldn't take off again.

So they spent and their other aircraft tried to come in and get them a couple times and they just got the shit shot out of them.

[41:32] To the point where their hydraulics locked up at like they ﬂew back to Dwyer and they taxied in a parking and The hydraulics locked up and the ﬂight controls locked up like that's how bad they got shot up Wow Yeah, it was it was nasty. Oh, yeah, they got horror up so we have an aircraft on the ground in the middle of a ﬁreﬁght and And this thing, like they were getting mortared.

There's literally a mortar hole through the stabilator, like that big wing thing.

So if you look, I don't know if you see it right, this thing on the back, it's called a stabilator and it kind of, it keeps longitudinal stability. So it keeps you relatively level, right?

So it's a big wing back there. And it went around through that thing? Through it.

It went through the stave, because it's just aluminum. Through the stave, hit the ground and exploded. Like it was just, I use the phrase shit show And there's not really a better way of explaining it.

It was just a mess. So we're trying to get in throughout the day, not me. I was asleep.

So they're trying to get in throughout the afternoon and get these guys out.

Cause it happened in the early afternoon, I think. And the weather was crap.

It was like 501, like there was a low cloud deck and it was just the perfect storm of nastiness. So.

Fast forward, they're unable to get the guys out, right? So I get rousted from my lovely evening meal.

[42:52] And as well as the other guys in the crew.

And me and Corey had fairly junior, well not junior, they were younger guys.

They were not nearly as experienced as their ﬁrst deployment.

One of them was, I think they might've been, no, one was a PC, our pilot in command, and the other one wasn't yet, I think.

But they were good guys. they were just weren't very experienced. You know what I'm saying? So we go to the talk and the BC, sorry, the battalion commander, this guy was a combat commander, the likes of which I had never seen. We called him the Cougs and people still talk about him now with like reverence. Like this guy was like, if you were bringing the ﬁght to the enemy, you were good. And that

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was all he cared about. He never wanted to go past battalion command. So he was like, we're doing it now.

And it's in his business time. So we go in there and talk to him. He's like, all right, guys, you and talking to me, you and Corey are going to, we're going to, you guys are going to ﬂy out there as a ﬂight of two. And then you two are going to get the same helicopter and you're going to take the senior crew chiefs and they're going to get in the back with you. And you're just going to be my on standby. I don't know what I'm going to do with it yet. Just get out there. So we obviously launched, we ﬂy out there and we shut down and we walk inside and nobody really knows what's going on. The 47s actually the 47s the unit that I'm currently with right now as a matter of that put in like Jesus.

[44:16] Like 100 dudes, SF cats and their partner forces. And they moved to the target.

And now you can't see my hand gestures, but they moved to the target and they kind of helped, secure it a little bit, but it was still in the middle of a ﬁreﬁght.

So they are there, we ﬂy out and they're like, all right, here's what we're gonna do.

We need you to get the DART team. So DART is down aircraft recovery team.

They had something wrong with their tools.

I forget what it was, like they got mud in them or something like that, and they couldn't cut the blades off.

They couldn't do this and that and the other thing. They couldn't rig the bird to come out that night.

So they were like, all right, you two are gonna go in.

We're gonna have some Apaches follow you into there. You're going in by yourselves, but we'll have the Apaches so it's not single ship.

[45:03] Well, interestingly enough- They're basically going in as your armed escort, right? Exactly, exactly.

Now, what is amusing, that guy I told you about the, uh, the, um, the, uh, the Marine that was in the, he was the PC on that aircraft, believe it or not, just as a side point, the window warrior program guy. Yeah. So they kind of came back towards Dwyer. We launched and then we're kind of ﬂying towards Marcia and these guys were like, all right, we got you. And then as we're coming in, I'm looking down and it's just, I can still picture my head, it's crazy. So there's an AC-130 dropping to denial ﬁres. So there's stuff blowing up on the horizon. There's tracers. It's wild.

So I'm looking at all this and I look over at Corey and he's talking to the stack. He's engrossed what he's doing. And then my crew chiefs, and one of the crew chiefs was one of our platoon sergeants.

This guy has just been in combat his entire career. He, wow, he's done some stuff and he's like, all right, I'm going armed.

Cause we're just about to nose over to get down in there.

And I was like, all right, Timmy, here's how you buy the big one, buddy.

So I had that little moment to myself. I just fuck it and nose it over.

[46:32] I'm screaming at the ground. And it's something we do in Blackhawks.

We take the doors off so we can see better because the armor in the door is like glued to it.

And it's about the size of a piece of paper. So I'm like, I would rather see.

So we just take it off and didn't matter.

And that can see better. So we're now at this point, zero-alume.

What time of day, now what time of night is this now? Oh, this is probably two, three o'clock in the morning.

Okay.

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So it's the darkest zero-alume night is of course you're familiar with.

But you get all this great lighting now with tracers going everywhere and exploding.

Oh yeah, that's awesome. Super awesome. It's really easy to see with tracers going all this stuff. Anyway, so, and also it's behind the stuff. So I'm moving towards the target.

Well, I'm also literally knocking dirt off my wheels with the tops of trees because I am seeing all this and I'm like, these fuckers are not gonna shoot me.

That ain't happening. So I am just in it and down in the...

[47:38] 120 knots to the treetops, doesn't sound fast, but I'll tell you what, it feels fast.

I was completely task saturated. And at the time, this is my third, I probably had 1500 hours somewhere in that area.

Maybe, maybe closer to 2000. That's some serious time. That's some big experience.

Yeah. And, uh, and this is my third deployment to the same country.

So like, I'm, you know, I'm fairly comfortable. I mean, I'll say comfortable, but I knew how to do stuff. Yeah. This wasn't your ﬁrst rodeo. Not my ﬁrst rodeo.

They, they wouldn't have put you in that position if it was.

Well, you, you, you were there, you were in that, you were there that night because you were the guy. Yeah. And also Corey and any other guys. Cause so Corey is basically talking to stack.

And as we're ﬂying around, there are some trees that are taller than other ones, you know, and like he would talk to the stack and then he would say three 12 o'clock and I would crank it over, you know, cause they were worried about tree height.

You might be too low. Well, too low is a relative term.

So, uh, when people are shooting at you, can you get too low?

Well, there's the ground. I mean, as long as you don't hit the ground, right. Yeah.

[48:47] Well, we actually know a guy that, uh, that beat the ground too.

We're trying to get him on the podcast, but that's a whole nother story. Keep going.

All right. So we're pushing into the target and I know roughly where it is.

I saw a picture of it on imagery before we left.

So I know roughly what it looks like, but the picture is from directly overhead from like a UAV. Okay. So I am pushing to this target with this little bitty yellow number one And it's literally like that big on my, on my, uh, steam gauge.

So I know I'm getting close. I'm watching the counter countdown.

I'm like, I'm getting close. I'm getting close and get close, but I don't know where it's at.

I don't know where it's at. So I'll pop over a tree line and then I see an SFD just as cool as a cucumber, like lays in the ground, like land here. So I do a, the biggest low boy of my entire career.

I just, oh, sorry. That's when you pull the nose. Do you stop basically?

Okay. So you yank the nose up and then you, you bottom out the thrust or the collective, depending on what you're ﬂying.

You put your left hand down and your right hand back. And what'll happen is it basically, it's like a big speed break.

So you do one of these things. And then I did like a kind of a turn thing.

[49:53] And landed right next to the building.

Well, the clot wall. And so I stuck it right there and I like lean out and I'm looking out the door and I see this SF guy and I'm picking up the dart team.

And I see this SF guy like pointing, like don't step here because you're going to, you know, and he's like

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a little, like a, like a, like a ﬂashlight.

He's like, don't, don't hit that cause you'll fall.

And these dark guys are coming out and I see one guy hop over the thing.

A second guy hop over the thing. The third guy doesn't look and just smack like face plants.

So I'm laughing my ass off in the middle of this LZ with just tracers going everywhere. It was, it was one of the funniest things that I've ever seen.

And it was hilarious. So it was, it was a, one of the sergeants.

So they all get in the back of my bird and I'm like, all right, let's, let's, let's make like a tree and get out of here.

So I just yanked the guts out of it, nose it over and we come blasting out.

And once we got back out over the desert, I just did a cyclic climb and came back up to altitude.

Now, what was funny about this is Mariah said the Apache guys are following us in providing top cover. They didn't see us at all until I did the Woe Boy.

So the guy that I was talking about, the Wind Warrior guy, he's like, dude, I didn't know where you were until the very end, but that was a cool, whoa, boy.

[51:18] So we stuck in the ground and, and they, we got them out, whatever else. So we went up having to go back the next night because they were in there.

[51:25] Like there was a ﬁreﬁght there for like, I want to say two or three days.

It was just a big, nasty, nasty thing. Wow.

But we wound up the next night, sling loading this helicopter out.

And this is where the 47 guys come into the story. I'm not going to say their names, but I work with one of them currently.

And when he walks, you actually hear a clang noise from, you know, from the big balls.

He's from the things are made out of brass. So this dude is and what's funny.

So this this happened in 2016 is 2023 now.

And every once in a while we'll still tell stories about this to each other.

And the guys who weren't there like, Jesus Christ again.

So this dude is sling loading this helicopter out of this clot, right?

And the 47 is 100 feet roughly, I think above it. Hold on. Picking up. Hold on.

I want you to describe in detail sling loading. I know what you're talking about, but just pretend I don't know shit.

Okay. Sorry.

So a sling load is when you basically tie ropes to a heavy thing that won't ﬁt in the helicopter and you attach it to the bottom, there's these big hooks on the bottom and you attach to that and then you pick it up and then it kind of hangs underneath as you ﬂy.

Right.

[52:49] So that's a sling load. Like you're towing it out of their airborne.

For the second time today, I have to ask the question, what could possibly go wrong?

[53:01] Exactly. By the way, people are shooting at you while you're doing this.

Oh yeah. Well that's the thing.

So this guy, he's, and it wasn't like he wound up doing this like two or three more times that before that deployment, Afghanistan part three was bananas.

When I got back from that, like...

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[53:23] I don't think I have PTSD or anything like that, but like I was used to operating at that high level of stress for so long that when you come back from that, it takes you a while to calm down. Oh yeah. And, and I didn't, the funny thing is I didn't realize that I was weird, right?

I was like, what are you talking about? I'm perfectly normal. Wife's like, honey.

Yeah. You're, you're a little weird. You're a little weird. So it took me like a year and a half to calm down, year and a half, two years maybe to calm down after that to get back to my normal operating system.

I can so relate. So I can so relate to what you just said. Right, right. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's not always this, this horrible thing.

You know, sometimes just get used to operating at that high level stress and it takes a while to kind of do.

[54:01] So these guys are hanging out at like a hundred foot hover, just with their ass just hanging out over downtown Marcia, like the worst part of the country at that moment, of course, you know, it moves and there's just tracers and I'm sitting on the ground in that same spot.

I landed the day before I'm there again, but this time with a ﬂight of two.

So we're in that same spot and I'm just looking up. I'm like, those motherfuckers are crazy.

Like tracers going everywhere, the whole nine yards and they're, they lift this helicopter, up and they just, just go on their merry way. This is cool.

The cucumber and off they go and they take it back over to, uh, to Dwyer and they drop it off and, and it's just, this thing is Swiss cheese.

I've never seen. What's funny, medevac guys seem to think that the red cross makes people not shoot at them.

Are you kidding me? It's what they aim at. It's a target, right?

Yeah. Exactly. Bullseye.

So I have never seen a medevac helicopter that has gotten shot.

Right. And I've seen, there's quite a few.

So every single time a Medbird gets hit by ground ﬁre, there's at least one hole in a cross.

I'm just saying. Yeah.

[55:14] Right. Every time, every time. here. Aim here. It's a good contrast point for the visuals to pick up. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay. So that was here. Here's something that next time.

[55:31] It hit me when you said it. And so I want to bring, I want to come back to this point.

So you mentioned this guy with the giant balls is in the process of hoisting this down helicopter up and going to haul it off in the middle of a ﬁreﬁght.

All this is going on.

But you said, yeah, I'm sitting on the ground looking up at it.

And I'm thinking, you know, um, being on that ground in the middle of a ﬁreﬁght is probably not a good spot either.

What the F?

The place that we like that particular area was relatively okay Does that make sense like the the SF guys had kind of put you had some cover You say sounds like you had some cover and you were below trees. I mean, okay Yeah, no, they weren't they weren't gonna see me on the bowl. I mean, Theoretically, of course, I mean I didn't get shot So I guess they didn't see me and were you guys there to haul more people out or did you take people in or what?

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What was it? What was uh? We carry people in and then back out again. So we went in, landed dropped him off and they came back and, Picked him up later unless I'm mistaken that parts a little fuzzy I don't 100% remember but I do remember sitting on the ground being like that like looking up because like there's just.

[56:45] Nuts bananas So the actually the reason I'm now an agr in the reserves is because of those guys because I'm not going to leave my active duty unit of badasses to go and be a part of a crap unit. You know what I'm saying? These guys are, these guys, and they still are awesome, awesome people. And they do really good things. And they're like, Hey, why don't you do this AGR thing or watch join the reserves. I'm like, man, I got 15 years active duty. I'm not quitting now. Five years to retirement. And they're like, do this AGR thing. And I'm like, what's AGR? And they're like, Oh, you're active duty, but in the reserves and I'm like.

[57:25] You're messing with me. Right. You're like, what? How's that? This sounds awesome. So I came back from that deployment and I went down to Rucker. I was supposed to go down there to be just like a regular line IP down there at ﬂight school. And I wound up getting pulled into the G3 shop, which was like the cake-est job at Fort Rucker. It was piece of cake. Exactly. Cake.

Exactly. It was only IPs. And so when I was down there, I started getting a little bored because I knew I had enough time left. I was probably to go back down range again, just, based on principle, because like my deployments are not unusual. Like most of the guys who came in when I came in had the same amount or more honestly than me. I'm just an average guy. Okay. And I applied for AGR and I got picked up. They're like, yeah, you probably want to deploy, if you come to AGR, you probably won't deploy anymore.

I was like, interesting.

I might be all right. Where do I sign for that? Exactly.

Well, so I show up and they're like, Hey, we're going to Iraq in six months. I'm like, shit. What?

[58:33] Of course. This is awesome. Yeah, of course. That's how it goes.

So then Iraq and I, like, I don't have a whole lot of like great stories about Iraq.

It was, it was mainly I was, I was a staff guy and I didn't do a lot of good stuff. Um, I did.

Are you say, you say you were at a Taji? Yeah.

Taji. Taji. Okay. Okay. So we, uh, the only thing that I did of any note was so lame. Uh, we carried, what's his name? That news guy.

[59:00] Brian Wayne, David Muir. No, David Muir. I think it's, I think it's David Muir.

He did a special call lying about it.

We were on ﬁre. Right. Just be who you are, man. Just tell the truth.

So David Muir wanted to do a special on the war in Iraq at this time.

And this is 2019 when this is going on.

So I kind of almost feel bad log in combat time for this deployment.

Like it was just nothing compared to, you know, anyway.

So he wants to go out to this place out like west of Al-Assad, like some little corner of the desert and meet with some Iraqi ground unit and do interviews and stuff like that.

So we, myself and the brigade SP, because it looks, sorry, the brigade is the above the battalion. So it's like company, battalion, brigade. So he was essentially my unofﬁcial boss because he's also a warrant ofﬁcer. But I essentially, I work for my, for my battalion commander and also like I get a lot of guidance

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from the brigade SP, if that makes sense.

Well, the place we're going to, we pulled it up on imagery once again, and it just looked like a... Like a ﬂat dust ball of just nasty dirt as we've previously talked about. I like doing dust landings.

[1:00:18] Pretty good at them or used to be. Nowadays with the Fox model Chinook you don't have to be good.

It does it for you. But so I was like, all right, I think I probably need to do this because this is kind of my thing. So I'm going to ﬂy lead on this blah blah blah. So the brigade SP jumps. He's like, all right, I'll be the air mission commander at AMC. So we're ﬂying over and we actually I had to ﬂy at terrain ﬂight for reasons I can't really get into, but we had to do this.

So we basically buzzed Iraq from what is the name of that fog? It's right next to the bad places, Fallujah and those areas. I forget the name of the fog. So we picked them up there and we took them all the way out to Al-Assad or out past Al-Assad and we stopped for gas and Al-Assad and so on and so forth. And we're just like buzzing along at like 10 feet, just getting it. It was actually a lot of fun. It was daytime, the threat was low, but we had to do this for a variety of reasons.

[1:01:14] And I'm just having fun, right? And he video, so obviously they're videotaping this stuff.

And the only video of all this bad ass helicopter ﬂying we did is out over the desert, west of Al-Assad. It is pancake ﬂat. I was at 120 knots, 10 feet off the ground, and I was bored. There's, nothing. Like, yeah, right. Right. I mean, it's just nothing. So, uh, that's the video of the ﬂy the dicks. And I'm like, that's the video. But anyway, that was the only like remotely interesting thing that I did in Iraq. Everything else was just, you know, ass and trash carrying people around. Nothing's nothing special.

[1:01:53] If I said if I use the term the mer does that ring a bell to you?

The Mer area. Middle Euphrates River Valley. Yes.

Yes. That was the hot area when I was there in 2018.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's always where you go into the Mer. I'm like, yes, I can't ﬁnd this on a map.

No, it's Oh yeah. I remember that.

Oh yeah. Yeah. That was still kind of going on when we showed up.

It wasn't a super duper, duper crazy to kind of, there was a lull because, you know, they pushed out ISIS and all this stuff.

And then the Turkish thing, which was interesting, but like, I am familiar with, uh, with, with the Mer, it took me a second.

I was like, I've never heard that before.

I know that, I know that name. Nice.

Well, outstanding. Uh, holy cow. I think we got another show title, uh, possibly in there too.

120 knots, 10 feet off the ground. And I was bored.

[1:02:54] Yeah. You know, because that's boring. It's funny how our perspective on such things change over time, huh?

Oh yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, oh yeah.

That is awesome. Very cool. Oh man, hit us. Okay, so you don't have an ejection handle.

No. So you don't have one of those to tickle. But yeah, so what's the closest you came to bending metal slash crashing without ever doing so? Yeah, okay.

That's the thing. There's been several times. Okay, well, our other question along those lines was, see, here's how we came with the ejection handle thing.

I always used to say, what was the scariest or the funniest thing you ever saw in the, airplane or in

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aviation? And when people go, okay, did you ever touch the ejection handle?

That usually went, oh, okay, yeah. So you don't have that, but so what's the scariest thing you saw? Okay. So let me think.

The closest...

[1:03:59] There's been several, there's probably been like ﬁve or six times when I've had that conversation like, here's how it happens, Tammy.

And as you're sinking towards the ground, you're like, here it is, buddy.

And I've had that conversation at least a half dozen times.

Okay. All right. So the ﬁrst time, well, the ﬁrst time, because I remember that one pretty good, we were doing just a regular ass and trash ring route thing. And I was ﬂying, and I was a young PI at the time.

I was not allowed to do stuff by myself.

This is in Afghanistan? Yeah, this is Afghanistan. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Okay. Yeah, we're just doing a regular ring route and we're going to, I can't remember the name of the fog, but it was just this dusty, so Afghanistan dust, let me just side scroll for a second.

It is talcum powder. It is the nastiest.

It gets everywhere. And it's just like in it. And sometimes it's like, we would come out of the top of the cloud, usually at 150, 200 feet.

Like, cause you, you take off and you're completely IMC. Sorry.

You can't see outside. And so you're ﬂying off. Yeah. You're ﬂying off your gauges and you just kind of set an attitude and hold it, and just come up and you're just climbing and climbing and climbing.

And then when you pop out the top, you're like, Oh, I can see again. So that's cool. Okay. Quick sidebar. Sorry. I got to do. I'm sorry.

How hard is that on the engines? You go through engines faster over there?

Uh, yeah, it, it, it, we got really good maintenance guys. So it will.

[1:05:28] It will wear away. Did you wash them a lot? Yeah, I just washed them a lot.

Yeah. So back in 16, the biggest thing was the heat really. So we would compressor stall so hard on startup. So we were doing, and in 16 is when we started working with the really fun ones. Those are the ones that really, I'll tell you about my favorite landing in a minute. But so back to the ﬁrst time you thought this was it. Yeah, the ﬁrst time that I thought this was it. So we're in this desk, we're chalked to, so we're landing behind another helicopter. And I'm like, I'm going to stick this. It's going to be awesome. Cause I'm a bad ass helicopter pilot with my whopping 100, 200 hours in it. Well, as it turns out, I was not a bad ass helicopter pilot and I almost killed us because so we're down here and I'm like, I'm just, if, if I lose sight of the ground, which now this is in the days before you took the doors off, right? We took a lesser from the one 60th, which is why, because they always take the doors off their black Hawks.

[1:06:22] And this is before the days when the regular army was allowed to do this sort of thing. So I can't see shit. Like it's just visibility is awful.

So we're coming in, I'm looking at the ground and I, and I lose the ground completely.

I've got no references for how I'm drifting around is a song.

If you land level moving forward, then you're going to be okay most of the time. It's that cyber drift.

So if you have a sour griff, yes, you'll catch a wheel and roll and then you start digging rotor blades in. Yeah Oh, yeah, and then that's that's how you ball up a helicopter So essentially I was trying to hover with no references to the ground because I was trying to be a badass.

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[1:07:03] Of course, not a good idea So right you can't see any light now. Yeah, exactly.

[1:07:10] So it's this I'm hovering and I'm like the crew chiefs trying to calm me down but he had like a real strong accent.

I forget where he was from, but he had a real strong accent.

So I'm like trying to hear what he's saying and I'm trying to like respond to what he's doing and I just, I can't do it.

And we're drifting forwards towards the other helicopter and the pilot in command grabs ﬂight controls and she says, go around and she grabs the controls and does it go around, she pulls in power and knows a little bit so we can start moving forwards, we're not going backwards or something like that.

Cause we have no idea which way we're facing or pointing or whatever at this point.

Oh my gosh, that's terrifying through the chin bubble. I caught a glimpse of tail rotor. Oh, Yeah, so that was that was super fun. That was super fun. I, Had it not been so hot. I might have peed my pants. Oh that reminds me of another one actually almost hit a C17 one time, That's ﬁne 17 that was airborne or one that was not airborne. It was airborne. Oh shit All right. I want to hear that clearly see the pilot and the cockpit is how close we were. So we were in, No, not Sheberg and that's a different place in Shindam, right? Okay. And I was on Nike here. If once again, there's a thing.

[1:08:23] So at the time we were doing it was called a purple team now purple team is an Apache and a Black Hawk, because the Apaches they're, They go through phases where their maintenance is crap and because they're you know, they break a lot stuff like that well at the time, They were having one of their and it's on a cycle like sometimes are really really good and sometimes are really bad So it was just one of the bad cycles. So we were ﬂying with with an Apache and it's zero loom in Afghanistan So I'm hanging out. Well, I wouldn't be of course what you could be you want to be able to see not here, So we're hanging out 1,500 feet and there's a tick. Sorry, Troops in contact. Yeah, there's a ﬁreﬁght going on about a mile south of the runway and shindan's runway ran three six one eight So dead north, north and due south.

Yeah.

So we're about a mile south, just kind of hanging out, just doing idiot circles, just waiting for the Apache to do Apache stuff. Cause I can't do anything. I can't see anything.

[1:09:24] And we're getting jammed. The ground guys had jammers for IEDs.

So we would hear, you know, on the uniform of the Victor.

And then all of a sudden I hear the squelch break and I hear moose ﬁve, ﬁve.

You're clear to land three six. Moose is a call sign for C-17s. So I look out my left door.

Now my doors are off because this is when we were allowed to be cool. So I took my doors are off.

I look out and we're just about to cross center. Like we're just short of three six.

So I look over at the other guy, smack him in the arm and I say, break right!

Right so he cranks it over I look out the door like down out the door and I lock eyes with the pilot of the C-17 at two o'clock in the morning. Now he's not wearing goggles so he probably didn't see me. I could clearly clearly see the guy. So what the best part of this story is this also might be the funniest thing as well. The crew chief remember the guy who told me to stop being a pussy? Yeah.

So he, he literally without missing the beats, like that guy had blue eyes.

[1:10:37] Was he on the same side of the plane, same side as the helicopters you were so he was looking out. Yeah.

So we're both looking down at like, Oh my God.

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Clearly I have never been that close to another aircraft in ﬂight in my life.

How about that shit? that shit. And at that point, I cussed out tower. Like I just let him have it.

I was not politically correct whatsoever. I was calling him every word in the book. And you think maybe next time you got a heavy on ﬁnal, you might want to get us out of the ﬁnal quarter. Yeah. Or maybe tell them to not land because they landed directly over top of an active ﬁreﬁght. Like there was, they were actually shooting and they cleared him to land and we told them we were there.

That's the best part. So the best part is, is you're probably right. Those dudes were not wearing dogs and had they been wearing dogs, they would have seen the ﬁreﬁght and like, yeah, no, we're, we're going to wait until that's over.

[1:11:32] Or maybe come in and land the opposite direction or something.

Well, now there's a thought. Hmm. Right. Crazy.

So I chewed out tower like right on the frequency, which you this, as you guys know, generally frowned upon, but I was, I was pissed.

I was super mad.

Super. Well, you know, near death experience will do that to you. Yeah, it'll get your attention. Let's get your attention, Yeah, so we go back to the talk and i'm like like what in the like this is not okay.

We can't, we cannot have this. Like this is awful. And they're like, well, you can ﬁle an OHR, which, I actually don't remember what an OHR is or what it stands for, but it's basically like a you done messed up report, right? Operational something or another. Yeah. It's the, the air force versus it's called the hater report in the air force. Yeah. Yeah. And they're probably ﬁled in the round on ﬁle basket.

Oh yeah. I have no doubt. So these, so I was like, they said, do you want to ﬁle an OHR on tower?

And I was like, I don't want to like do paper on this, but I want to have a conversation with the guy in charge.

So he was a fellow warrant ofﬁcer.

So I called him up and I was like, Hey bro, this ain't cool.

Well, little known at the time. And he didn't even know this because they didn't tell him they had ﬁled an OHR on me.

[1:12:53] Who's day? The tower, the tower, the tower. The tower controller is a father.

No HR. I mean, well, you, you insulted their dignity by yelling at them.

I did. I did. It was, I was, I was mad and I learned how to cuss on the Marine Corps.

So, um, we're, so the OHR comes out and the, and I was like, they're doing what?

And they're in the guys in charge. Like, it's okay. The C 17 crew ﬁled a hair report on them.

So it kind of, they kind of like equaled each other out. I guess.

It was a 2v1 and you guys were gonna win. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I like I was I don't think I've been that mad in a helicopter My entire life. I was pissed, Okay, it's terrifying, you know, I just oh, yeah, I'm just glad we're above them if we've been below them it would've been really bad, Oh, you're getting by the thump by the wake turbulence. It probably would have, Come to server damage. Oh, yeah Yeah, absolutely Heavy, slow, everything out.

Yeah, that'd been a big wake too.

Yeah, that'd been nasty. I'm glad we're having this conversation Candyman.

And you know, you didn't end up in a bunch of pieces off, off the end of the runway there.

Well, it's like you say, better lucky than good, right? Oh, yeah.

[1:14:12] Because we should have been there's been so many times like stuff like that. Those are the two that I can think of off top my head.

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But, um, that was, so I was glanced over my piece of paper and, uh, Farah J. Tech, you're talking about these, you, the, the, the call sign thing.

So for, uh, is a town just south of Shindam.

[1:14:33] It's over a little mountain range and the JTAC for the Marsauk team down there is I have no idea what his name is.

He never, we never knew his name.

We only knew his call sign and it was simmer, which is short for shit in my room.

I asked him about it and we always knew how important the guy we were going going after that day is based on the color of the wife beater he would wear to the brief before we would go.

So, okay. Right. So he's coming, he's wearing cami pants and he's wearing a wife beater every, every time without, without missing.

So it feels like a white wife beater or something like that.

It was, ah, whatever. He's kind of a mid-level guy or whatever, but if it was wearing his maroon wife beater, we were going after the, the, the big, big Kahuna.

So, so was that, was this a code like unspoken code? Oh, no. It was a luck thing.

This is how he rolled. It was a luck thing. Okay. All right.

And he, so he was a Marine F-18 pilot who was doing his ground tour as you guys do.

[1:15:35] Yep. And he just got put with a Marsok team in Fara as their Tay-Tac.

And these guys were like, Marsok. So all those special operators have got their own special like ﬂavor, if that makes sense, right?

Sure. being a primary and obviously I'm a little partial to Marshal.

But these guys were just awesome. Like all the teams that worked with were just as cool as a cucumber. I actually, interestingly enough, the team commander out of.

[1:16:07] Harat I wrestled against the dude in high school had no idea like we just kind of ﬁgured it out, Small world. Yeah, right.

[1:16:19] But So those guys the dudes are for raw speciﬁcally where they were always just getting into stuff like they were this ﬁreﬁghter ﬁre ﬁghter for ﬁreﬁght and, Which brings me to the time they actually hit me. Well, not me personally hit my helicopter So I was on day QRF because I rotated to a day schedule for an air assault.

We were doing the day for the team out of her rot. Cause they like to do it day stuff with their guys. Sorry. QRF.

Oh, sorry. Yeah. My bad. And, and I'm on the purple team and the Marsoc team out of Farah was in a ﬁre ﬁre, they were pinned in a building and there's a little bit of backstory to this.

So in Farah, there was a Afghan army, uh, garrison called Siwan garrison.

Well, they were doing, I forget the name for it, but they were doing like a meet and greet with the local Afghan leaders, like about a week before.

[1:17:17] And the Af and Afghani walked up and started shooting them. And so two Marines and their dog was killed.

And this is literally not like seven days before the incident I'm about to tell you about.

And I remember this, what year was this? This was 2013.

Okay. Yeah. So, and I remember because I had to carry the second Marine died in the hospital, uh, in for raw, the ﬁrst one was, was, was DOA. The second one died in the hospital for raw.

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And I had to go down and pick him up because I was still on nights at the time.

I had to go down and pick him up and carrying back up to Shindan to be shipped home on a C one 30 or, or whatever it was.

That was the most gut-riching thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

This group of bad-asses carrying their buddy out, putting him on the helicopter, and we shut all the way down.

And we're cranking back up and we're inside the fob so I can lose the license like that.

And I'm just watching this and I'm on the verge of crying myself. Everybody's just super duper emotional because these are the baddest of the bad. You don't become a badass Marine.

[1:18:29] You know what I mean? So I'm cranking up and I turn on the light in the cockpit so that I can and crank and there's just full of moths.

There's moths just ﬂipping my heart in place.

And I'm like, well, I can't go on a moth killing spree while this is going on.

So I just like dealt with it and, and, uh, we cranked up, we took him and we did the whole, you know, the honors thing and we landed and so on and so forth.

And, and to this very day, if there's like a bug ﬂying around my face, I just drives me nuts. I hate it.

I hate it. But anyway, um, so that's the backstory we are on QRF and we get, we get launched obviously to go down to, to for off for these guys, the guy themselves, they went out, they were looking for blood. Okay. So they're in this. I got to answer. I got to ask again, QRF stands for?

Quick reaction force. Sorry. I missed it. All right. Yeah.

[1:19:23] So we're on quick reaction force and we get launched in the purple team.

It's me and an Apache and we're down there and these guys are holed up in this building and it's just nasty.

And that same JTAC, the one where the Marine wife beaters for Bagelman's, he's on the radio and he's just as cool as a cucumber calling out, like they're trying to get him to like, shoot missiles and guns and all that stuff.

The Apache is doing gun runs.

Uh, in the, in the corridor, the corridor in the courtyard to try and give some, some space because the, the Marsau cats are stuck in one building.

And then this other building is the one that's kind of keeping them hostage.

Essentially the nastiest ﬁreﬁghter ever seen from the sky.

Like I literally saw a dude pop out of a hole in the roof with an RPG clear as a bell. I'm at 1500 feet in a turn, like looking down and I looked down and I see, this dude pop out of the, like with an RPG on his shoulder and shoot it. But he was an idiot.

So he hit the wall in front of him and it was just far enough, I guess, for it to explode.

So like about 15 feet in front of him, like I see this huge explosion.

I was like, holy crap. Um.

[1:20:35] Oh yeah. It was amazing. Whoopsie.

So he's, so we're doing this thing and the Apache's doing gun runs and I'm kind of above and behind them.

So they shoot, they do the break and then I'm like above and behind.

I do the break behind him and we're in this turn and I hear wham!

And it was sounded like a, it literally sounded like a gunshot.

So I thought maybe one of my crew chiefs got a little excited and without my permission, it popped off

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around, right?

Cause they're supposed, they're supposed to ask ﬁrst, right?

Unless we're in immediate danger, like, and I used to tell them this, like, if somebody's about to shoot us, somebody's about to kill us, you kill them ﬁrst.

Like that was my standing rule.

What kind of guns are mounted for the door, for the crew chiefs?

240s they're 760 machine guns. Okay, not not a multi-barreled mini gun. Oh, no, no, no, no No, the 160th has those they got the the mini guns and stuff. Okay, so it's a it's a 240 760 machine gun Got it. Yeah, it's got the you We caught the spade on the back with the thumb triggers. So it's got that. And I was like, Hey.

[1:21:39] So my standing rule was if somebody's about to kill us, shoot them. Don't ask. We'll talk about it later because we like, you don't have time to talk, have a conversation about this stuff.

Usually when it's, when it's really that quick. So I thought one of them had gotten excited and popped off around because I had a super experienced door gunner on the left and I had like a very young guy on the right and I thought maybe the young guy got a little excited and pop off around, and as soon as I heard the what sounded like a gunshot I'm looking I'm checking my gauges I call it the Apache like hey guys we've had a loud bang everything looks okay we'll get back to you, so I'm talking to the guys in the back and I said are you guys still amber because at the time it was green amber red was the way that it worked and they're like no I'm still amber and I was like Okay. So what was that noise?

And the experienced guy was like, I smell gunpowder. I said, well, that's awesome.

So does anybody see anything else? Like we're all kind of checking the, see if there's anything crazy. BDA. Yeah.

And nobody sees anything. And I was like, well, I, I don't know what it was.

I have no idea. I can't see anything.

Everything's working just ﬁne. So I'm like, all right, well, Charlie Michael continue mission.

[1:22:52] So we go, um, at this, at not long after this, we start getting low on gas.

So we have to go back to Farah to stop at the FARP, which is the forward area refueling point, and get gas.

We stop and get gas and that door runner, he's, uh, you need to come and look at this.

So I get out of the cockpit and I go look and there's a hole where the door, so the doors were open. We had the cabin doors open. So if you look, yeah, these guys open. Yep. So they're slid open for maximum visibility because we're trying to see what's going on.

Well, where the door closes is called the 308 beam and there was a hole about that big.

[1:23:29] I don't know if you can see it that big, about two inches across. Yeah, about two inches across in that 308 beam.

And I was like, holy crap.

And I look at it and I'm kind of looking around and there's a little, it's right where the strut for the front wheels, the main landing gear on the left-hand side is.

And there's a little shelf about that big, about an inch or two across.

And I'm looking and I'm kind of feeling around the back to see if there's anything else.

And I ﬁnd the piece of metal that was shot out whole in a jacket, like the copper jacket of the round.

It was an AK 47 round and started to tumble and the angle that it hit if we had been in about two inches to the left It would have called him right in the side of the head, No shit, it was that close if I had been out of trim. He would have been dead Wow, Yeah, so He and his name's Ruben fantastic fantastic guy.

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[1:24:25] Just love him to death so we're there and I was like, bro, and he's like, I know I know. So I took it, put it in my pocket, took it back.

Cause you have to, you have to take it back to the attack ops guy for like battle damage and stuff like that. So, but the story's not over yet.

[1:24:41] We launch, I called back to the talk and I said, Hey, we've had some battle damage, but it seems to be okay.

The helicopter's ﬂying ﬁne. We can get back on target.

So we go back over and about this time, somehow these Marsalot guys had broken contact. I don't know how they did it because they somehow did it without the Apache shooting stuff.

MarSot guys, what do you say? So they go back, right? Right. They go back to Siobhan Garrison, which is the, the FAB where their fellow brothers had been killed a week before.

[1:25:15] Right. So they're on edge, rightfully so. Right. Now, of course, like the guy that, that shot their buddies, you know, they, they killed him, but you don't know who's, who's bad or good at that point. So they're in there and they're calling us and they're They're talking to the Apache mainly, but I'm obviously monitoring their frequency.

And they said, Hey, can your blackout come in and get these guys?

They had two or three guys that got, I think it was three guys that got shot up.

And we can't get medevac started. And I don't remember the reason why they couldn't get the med started.

The comms issue or something like that.

And our sat comm was down and about this time is when the Apache stat comm went down too, so we don't have satellite communications. So we're pretty much only right there in that area.

And they said, can your blackout come in and get these guys?

And the Apache called me and was like, hey, can you do this?

And I said, this over the ﬁres net, I said, I'm inbound pop smoke.

So I go in and it's, there's like a wall and they're in the corner of the wall.

So imagine a box, right?

And in the lower left-hand corner of that box, there's like a pie, right?

Like a slice of pie. And the Marines are all lined up in that corner, pulling security with their vehicles and stuff.

And they're like, hey, land next to the trucks.

We got to load you guys up with stuff. So I come in and at this point, it's been a bit of a day.

[1:26:35] You think? Right, so I come in and I land in this conﬁned space.

So remember when I talked about the whole thing where you slam it in the ground and you roll, like you can't do that because you'll roll into a building and crash.

So I do, and luckily enough by this point, I'd kind of ﬁgured out how to do it without rolling forward. So I come in and I land in the dust And it was just, just nasty talcum powder.

This. Everything disappears.

[1:27:01] And we land and I look over to the left and I'm just maybe 15 feet from my rotor disc to one of the marine trucks.

Oh boy. And they're pulling security and there's just like a sea of Afghanis in front of me, like the ANA guys, the Afghan National Army.

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Yeah. And like that they wore like a weird kind of camouﬂage at the time.

Um, so I'm looking at that and I look at the Marines and I'm like, this is not a great place because I've got like this little armor plate that comes out on the side to like about here on me.

So six inches in front of your chest, six inches from my chest and there's no door.

So they can clearly see me, my PI who's so I'm kind of on a 45.

So like I'm on the left side of the helicopter, actually, because I'm on the left side of the helicopter and all the Afghanis are that away.

My P is over here with a wall to his right.

So he, he pulls out his pistol and like he's holding his lap and he takes the safety off and I look at him and I was like, put that away because I'm between you and them.

So, he's taking cover, man. That's all. Oh yeah.

Smart for him, but not so great for me.

Oh boy.

[1:28:13] That gun away now. So they load the guys in there and we go back to Farah and we're just like, we're getting it.

Like we're moving. Now, granted Farah was maybe 10 miles from where we were, so it was really close, but I am wasting zero time to get these dudes back because they're obviously pretty messed up.

Well, the Italians were there in between us and the FOB and they were doing some little air assault and they were inside the tack ring. So each airﬁeld at the time had a tack ring and you would announce where you were in relation to the airﬁeld based on like a slice of pie. So each slice of pie had a different letter like alpha or brava or zulu.

So you would announce where you were.

[1:29:02] In that slice of pie so everybody knew where you were. Well, the Italians are just messing around right inside the slice of pie that I need to be in. And I'm just going like the hammer as hell trying to get back to the house. And then I see, I don't know what they ﬂew. They ﬂew like weird gun birds. I can't remember what they were, but they were like weird European Apache kind of thing. And I see one of those and I was like, ah! And I just did like a cyclic climb.

So I'm like screaming up to get over top these guys and, uh, and we don't have afterburners.

So as we climb, we slow down quite drastically.

So I noticed it back over because I was about to hit the Italian whatever the crap they were ﬂying.

And so we get back to the fob and I was talking to tower and I was like, Hey, there's some Italians just messing around out here and, and whatever, whatever slice of pot was.

And they're like, Roger, uh, we didn't know that. They weren't talking to anybody.

Bad. I was like, it's all right. So we dropped these cats off and the, the good part of the story is they all lived, everybody survived. So it was, it wound up as a good day, a little stressful, but it was a good day. Yeah. Just a little stress. That was a day. Yep. Yep. Well, thank you for that.

[1:30:21] Amazing stories. Yeah. You've got great stories and I bet you could keep going, but we, We were at like an hour and a half.

Oh really? Yeah, I know. Wow, I didn't realize. We should probably wrap this thing up.

I wanna say ﬁrst of all Candyman, thank you for your service to our country.

Indeed, thank you. Thank you. And also God bless United States Marine Corps and your service to the Marine Corps.

Yut. Serpify. We gotta say thank you to our.

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[1:30:51] What is Dave Hamilton to us, repeat? He's our man. He's like the Godfather. He's our mentor. Well, thank you to Dave Hamilton for...

[1:31:02] Helping us put this whole thing together obviously. If we've said a few acronyms, you can look them up on our website. So there I was.us. We have a glossary page and we may be adding a few new ones. I think we are today. Yeah, QR, QRS. You're welcome. I'm here for you. Hatter, Hatter. I don't know. I think there's several. I'd have to Google OHR. I still don't know what that means but yeah I don't either. We need to say thank you to our sponsor Robin's Bird Braid Designs and I every time I say that or when you say it I think why don't I have my coaster in front of me. I can pick it up and show you. Oh there you go. Oh yeah she can laser etch just about anything and we have she did coasters for us and mine I have the old our old squadron emblem on it with my, call sign Fig and I had my family's names put on them for Christmas so they that was really awesome and she does great work.

Rumble. So there I was dot US slash Rumble. We're halfway there we've got 51 followers we need 49 more. Yeah so if we get a hundred then we don't have to pay to be on Rumble anymore and so it's free sign up follow us. Go there and follow us.

Do it now.

Do it now. Yeah, listen to Repeat. No, stop. Go back. You weren't fast enough.

[1:32:27] Go do it now. Are you listening, honey? Yeah, right? What else?

What else? We got to say thanks to our friends, the Dos Gringos, who, as Repeat likes to say, is probably the best part of the Air Force.

That's their music playing in the background, and they were a great interview as well a few episodes back.

Their music is very funny. And very good. It's actually very good and it's funny.

It's very poignant. One of my creatures introduced me to them back in 2010 actually.

Yeah, it's good. They're good stuff.

So, what else? What am I missing here? Emails. Emails, yeah.

If you want to reach out to us like the Candyman did, you can reach us at ﬁgsothereiwas.us, or repeat so there I was.us.

You got questions?

Want to throw somebody our direction to interview we we you know that's why we're here so guys like you know I'm gonna take this opportunity to tease we just booked yesterday someone who won the Navy Cross that's all I'm gonna say, yeah I'm looking forward to that one too well thank you Candyman thank you guys I really appreciate it was a lot of fun had a lot of fun so stay safe and check Six.

[1:33:46] Music.

[1:34:19] And like the song says, it's over.

[1:34:39] Music.

[1:34:49] Is run stock. What's the altitude? About 18 inches.

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