From the symbology on the guntape I could see Underdog Two was ready to fire, laser pulsing and missile seeker-head locked on. I watched the first Hellfire go in. The missile left the right-hand rail of the aircraft, briefly leaving some heat shimmer on the video image, then tracked for the concentration of laser energy on the first technical. It hit dead centre of the flatbed, just where a weapon, probably a ZU-23-2, was mounted. The technical was destroyed in a huge explosion, indicating more ammunition had gone up with the Hellfire hit. Jay’s sight then moved four technicals to the right before moving back to the left. There were still some pro-Gad trying to hide, lying down close to the right-hand vehicles, while others were crawling away close by. Jay brought the sight back left to the technical next along from the now intensely burning first target. Continuing to engage from the left would allow the pro-Gad further right to get up their courage and start running.
The second Hellfire ripped the next technical apart, detonating its ammunition. This was confirmation for the crawlers; they got up and ran for their lives. Jay checked the third technical and observed a soldier get up and run away to the right, before pulling the trigger for a third time and sending another Hellfire in. He was now too close for more Hellfire and needed to save some for the next target. Changing the FLIR polarity from white-hot to black-hot, he flicked his left thumb up to deaction the missile and bring his gun online. With the aircraft fast closing on his breakaway point, he sent four 20-round bursts of 30mm into the two central technicals. Switching back to white-hot FLIR, he sent another 100 rounds on five bursts into three more technicals, with Big Shippers guiding the aircraft on a left break.
The whole engagement, from first Hellfire hitting the left-hand technical to the last 30mm hitting the eighth technical to its right, took 1 minute 35 seconds. Eight technicals destroyed or damaged, no one dead and up to twenty-five pro-Gad out of work in just over a minute and a half. And Underdog hadn’t even got to their main target yet! This sequence was declassified the following day by the Ministry of Defence under the ‘defenceheadquarters’ tag and released to the media as an example of our activity that night. It can be seen on YouTube; just google ‘Apache Libya’.[11]
I turned the page over on Nick’s briefing pack and looked at the route to Okba, the primary target for the mission. Nick and Big Shippers clicked forward the infrared guntape and played part two of their night over Libya.
Okba airfield had been a regime airbase for decades. Well away from the bustle of the coast and the attention of Tripoli, it sat untouched in the desert. One road linked it north with Zuwara, 35 miles away, and the Nafusa Mountains, another 40 miles to the south. When the civil war began its accidental importance emerged, as a natural pro-Gad supply and staging post. Just as quickly, the third front line formed in the tribal areas of the mountains and NATO began searching for targets. Okba had been watched for months. It was active and gaining a reputation as an important part of Gaddafi’s southern operation. Occasional overflights had brought back photographs; analysts pored over them and concluded it was an active military area, no civilians, all activity nefarious and good to strike.
Only five miles north-east of the burning technicals, the regime operators at Okba would have heard the chaos coming from the sky, so the Apaches had to get there quickly and make fast decisions to maintain their momentum.
Now Underdog One and Two were banking hard round to the right, levelling out on their pre-briefed attack heading, infrared sights slaved to the Okba coordinates. Nick had two minutes to run, barely enough time to race through the pages on his MPDs, check his fuel state and weapons configuration and read the map. This was where meticulous planning, briefing and rehearsal took over. All four pilots knew what to do next. They’d all planned it, walked the map, the headings and the heights, briefed it and answered questions to check their understanding; now they were living it out second by second over Libya. NVG over the left eye, infrared zoomed in close over the right, both front-seaters went hunting for targets and threats.
From five miles out Okba looked quiet: no movement, just scores of silent buildings on an apparently disused desert airfield. They flew past the destroyed surface-to-air missile site to the south-west of the airfield, checking it was out of action, and settled their sights on the airfield itself.
Nick fast-forwarded the tape, describing his decision to move in close: ‘I wanted the standoff range to maintain surprise and use the jet to suggest areas of interest, but they saw nothing. I asked the jets if they could see any movement, any targets, but they came back with a negative. “Nothing seen down there,” was his phrase. We decided to take a look anyway.’
Okba airfield stood lonely and apparently empty, its parallel east-west runways unused in months and its aircraft apron on the north side completely bare. About 100m north of the runways stood the distinctive pentagonal compound with Hardened Aircraft Shelters (HASs) forming spokes from its hub. The HASs were out of use, destroyed by delayed-fused 2,000lb bombs from miles up right at the start of the campaign. Since then the airfield had had no air utility and the place had been left to get hot and gather sand. But pro-Gad was using it to store equipment and rest soldiers prior to sending them south to the Nafusa Mountains. It was their safe place to make plans, gather weapons and set off to attack the FLF and civilians in the mountains.
‘See those five HASs.’ Nick pointed at the screen. ‘There’s a heat source in a second…’
And gradually I could see an emerging heat spot glowing white against cooler black temperatures and moving across the ground to the west of the pentagon. I wanted to see more, and as if anticipating this the FLIR zoomed in closer to identify the mover. The white-hot glow grew and took shape: a man, hunched over, carried something long and heavy across both arms. He moved quickly in a straight line and stopped suddenly in the open where a mark on the ground, about 10m long and a metre wide, crossed his path. Then it was as if he was enveloped into the mark – his body appeared to be swallowed and only his head remained visible.
‘Trench system,’ said Nick. ‘Look here and here, there’s loads of them.’ He pointed out similar marks around the airfield on Jay and Big Shipper’s guntape. ‘They’ve run out from the buildings and positioned themselves in trenches, and that is probably a MANPAD he’s just dropped off. They must have heard the commotion to the south-west. I reckon they were getting ready to defend the airfield.’
With the preceding target just five miles away, the sound of the Hellfire and 30mm ripping up eight technicals would have carried easily in the desert night. Any pro-Gad in Okba would be ready and waiting, expecting the Apache to visit. The movement on the ground looked like classic pre-launch anti-helicopter work. Zlitan twice, and the Brega mission, had told us that much.
Nick sent in a Hellfire and instantly changed the picture. Then 30mm followed up the Hellfire and the manned trench ceased to be a threat.
As Underdog One broke away to the left Jay and Big Shippers, who had been searching for targets in the same area, were cleared in to the attack.
Jay destroyed a pair of warm-engined military trucks near the trench system and, shifting his sights further north still by another 100m, settled on a communications node with its satellite dishes and antennas pointing north-east towards Tripoli. With one Hellfire and now low on ammunition, he switched to the minimum 10-round, one-second bursts and added 60 rounds of 30mm in a 30-second onslaught that cut Okba off from the rest of Libya. Now it was isolated, and on fire. The place where from where the regime thought it could mount attacks into the mountains was broken and in disarray.
11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHlk6Ss6Czo The MoD footage, not edited in chronological order, begins with the strike against the communications node on Okba airfield, then shows the 99th Hellfire strike against a technical, as described in the final quarter of this chapter. The footage then shows the destruction of eight technicals described above. In reality, the action took place as it is described in this chapter, but the footage is the actual guntape from that night