During my first deployment to Afghanistan as a Chinook pilot, at least once a week one of our aircraft would come back with bullet holes in, but I managed to get through the whole deployment without ever getting shot at or hit.
On my second deployment things were different, however. On one occasion while taking a 4 tonne under-slung load into the Forward Operating Base at Kajaki Dam we, as a crew, felt a small jolt through the airframe. There was a pregnant pause, then someone said, “Did anyone else feel that? Was that a bird strike?” I’m not sure why we suspected a bird strike while flying in a hostile environment! We checked that our engines were responding normally and at this point were so close to landing, we continued across the water and landed at the site at the dam. Our crewman conducted a thorough walk-around but found no evidence of being hit.
So, we continued the 45-minute flight back to Camp Bastion. Once on the re-fuel point, the crewman conducted another walk-around and found a hole under the belly of the aircraft. It had come through the floor of the aircraft and hit our inch-thick body armour that covered the floor and sides of the aircraft. Presumably that was the jolt we had all felt. We shut down the aircraft and returned to the engineers looking sheepish that we’d “broken” one of their aircraft and “could we have a new one please?”
Meanwhile the crew from the second aircraft that we had been flying with that morning came in and said, “That hole through your engine – how did it keep on working?” We rushed outside again to inspect our aircraft and found there was indeed a second impact, this time through the left-hand engine. The engineers pulled back the dust filter and found the round had gone through the engine’s gearbox. One of them said, “It should have ripped itself to shreds,” but somehow it kept working for over 45 minutes.
We then worked out that had the engine failed roughly 10-20 seconds after we felt the impact, we would have been right in the middle of the lake at Kajaki dam. We would have been at 80 feet above the water with a 4-tonne underslung load and unable to fly away safely with the remaining engine. Had we had to ditch the aircraft into the water, it would have been an incredibly difficult task getting out of the cockpit and then try to swim away from a sinking aircraft while still wearing our own personal body armour, pistol, and 200 rounds of ammunition strapped to our bodies.
I felt that God had been faithful to me and my crew in keeping us safe, and I felt secure, knowing that God was answering the prayers of all my family and friends back home.
*Photo credit: https://www.pexels.com/@ann-h-45017