The inter-aircraft radios were cackling with information about target coordinates, pro-Gad runners, weapons systems being moved and vehicles moving and hiding. But it had already been a long mission, ammunition was running out and both aircraft were low on fuel for the long, hostile transit back to the coast and beyond.
Between the two aircraft they picked off four more vehicles, sending pro-Gad once again racing into the desert, useless without his weapons. With just two laser-guided Hellfire and sixty 30mm left, Jay and Big Shippers noticed their fuel was now at ‘bingo’ – the minimum quantity left to allow a safe return to Ocean. It was time to leave, and Nick made the decision to do so. With targets racing around the airfield it seemed ridiculous, but the point had been made and jet man had better things to do over Tripoli; so, cursing the fact that he had just two Apaches in his patrol, Nick directed Charlie and Big Shippers to turn north and begin the low-level transit back to Mother.
Nick and Charlie took the lead, but Charlie was off form, he couldn’t keep it straight and level, the aircraft was off heading, its height constantly changing. Being very low-level, this nibbled precariously at the margins for error.
‘Sorry, Nick, HMD on the blink. Keeps dropping out. Everything is wonky. Static in the eye, no feeds, symbology off, using the NVG on the left to keep us somewhere decent.’
Charlie was dealing with a Helmet Mounted Display failure. The information being projected into his right eye was intermittent and more of a distraction than an aid to low-level combat flying. In a low threat environment the aircraft could have climbed away from the ground to a safer height and allowed the crew time to rectify the fault. Not here. Not 50 miles inland behind regime lines. They had to stay low and accept that they were down to one set of eyes.
‘Okay, got it, I have control.’ Nick took the flight controls while Charlie tried to wrestle the technology and set himself up to fly the return leg.
Meanwhile, Nick transmitted to Jay and Big Shippers, ‘Heading zero-one-zero, your lead, we’re lame duck, HMD failure in rear seat, call passing.’
Big Shippers was straight on the net: ‘My lead, passing left-hand side 30 seconds heading zero-one-zero.’
He and Jay now took control of the patrol as it entered its most vulnerable stage. The transit back to the coast was over new ground, 60 nautical miles of it, all pro-Gad. During planning, the satellite imagery looked clear of habitation, and their chosen crossing point to the Med was only a few miles away from the Tunisian border. The patrol had kept to their fuel calculations and they had just enough to get across the desert and then coast out to find Ocean. Both aircraft knew they were in the final and uniquely exposed phase of the mission: low on fuel, very low on ammunition, a long time inland and with pro-Gad waiting for them to come back north and cross the coast. If the regime was going to stop an Apache, this was their chance. Tonight the added complication was that only one Apache was fully operational, and it was providing both navigation and defence for both.
In Underdog One Nick was flying, hands on the control, as well as searching for threats, while tracking Jay and Big Shippers, who were able to search and navigate while taking the lead.
They raced at 120 knots low-level across the barren emptiness, scanning all the while. With ten miles to run until the heightened anxiety of crossing the coast, Jay picked up a heat-spot on his FLIR hidden amongst some trees – probably a life-saving observation.
He notified Big Shippers: ‘Technical, right 2 o’clock, 2 kilometres. Group of trees. Technical in the centre. Weapons on the rear, dismounts seen. Actioning missile!’
In the rear seat the master of Apache gunnery glanced in at his right-hand MPD displaying Jay’s FLIR video image and directed Jay: ‘Coming right. It’s too close to fence around. Underdog One is vulnerable. Coming into constraints, you have one shot. Closing fast… good Lock-On Before Launch, missile will come off the left rail… ready.’
Big Shippers had expertly aligned the aircraft to give Jay direct line of sight through the trees at low height. Three pro-Gad soldiers were hiding, attempting to keep a tree between them and the aircraft, but they weren’t the target. The threat was on the back of the technical; a large weapon system, possibly a MANPAD, was mounted on its rear.
On the inter-aircraft radio Jay told Nick what was going on and what was about to happen: ‘Technical at zero-two-zero, less than 2 kilometres, engaging now.’
Closing on the technical at over 100 knots gave Jay just two seconds to get his missile in the air; any delay would mean the Hellfire might not have time to boost away from the Apache and gather the laser energy to steer itself to the target. Fast-moving, close-in missile firing requires a deft touch and lightning quick decision-making. Recognizing his chance would be over in a heartbeat, he pulled the trigger and sent his sixth Hellfire of the night into the technical. It took less than four seconds to reach the target. As the missile struck the technical a concussive wave of energy and shrapnel washed through the trees. Jay instantly stepped out a field of view on the FLIR and saw the three men, their backs to the trees between them and the wreckage of their technical. At less than one kilometre from the mayhem Jay saw three more pro-Gad out of work.
‘Delta Hotel! Technical destroyed head left three-four-zero to avoid. Slowing to 80 knots for you to catch up.’ Big Shippers passed the good news on to Underdog One.
With the patrol linked up, but still with seven miles to run to the coast, the danger had not passed. The technical in the trees had got their collective adrenaline pumping and Underdog Two, still in the lead, had just one laser-guided Hellfire and a handful of 30mm left. More concerning was the fuel. Effectively running through the technical, rather than boxing around it, had saved a few pounds of fuel, but it was still going to require precision navigation from both Ocean and the Apaches to avoid embarrassment over the sea.
Their final leg took them out over the coast past a narrow eight-mile long spit of land providing a natural shelter to fishing boats, only a few miles from the Tunisian border. Jay could see several boats afloat directly on his flight path. Stepping out to the widest field of view with the FLIR, he could see small boats left and right too.
‘Coming right.’ Big Shippers weaved the patrol between the boats, and they left Libya behind. It seemed that early August was the big fishing season in western Libya. They had to treat each boat as a potential threat, keeping low to avoid them. The AWACS up high and SKASaC out at sea fed them a stream of avoiding manoeuvres over the radio. This meant they could not follow a straight line to Ocean and consequently edged towards their fuel reserves, eventually landing just as Big Shippers reported – spot on, to the pound.
In the flip-flop all four aircrew looked exhausted. It had been a long night and our longest mission. It was also our most successful in terms of targets struck – only slightly disappointing in that it was not a four-ship.
Doug Reid, doing his ammunition accounting, called across to Jay, ‘That was Hellfire 99 for the op so far, Jay.’
Another ten Hellfire could have been used at Okba, but that could wait for another day, we thought. The CO came in to see the debrief and immediately got on the phone to the CAOC to pass on the story. The third front was very much ours to deal with. We’d proved it again. But it had not been easy; it was risky, and the margins for error on the return leg had been very slim. We knew we were mortal, and pro-Gad only needed to be lucky once.
On the ground three scenarios now looked likely. One was that the FLF would turn the broken regime military over. The FLF would then march unhindered into the capital and take control. The second was a long bitter fight north, gaining and losing ground, eventually reaching Az-Zawiyah and Tripoli, where the agony of fighting an urban battle would turn the capital into a Stalingrad. The third, and least likely, scenario was that Gaddafi would realize he was losing and either surrender (very unlikely) or flee along with his inner circle, leaving the regime leaderless. The innumerable dynamics of war eventually yielded an amalgam of all three scenarios, but in early August any one of them looked likely. What was certain on 6 August 2011 was that a gaping hole had opened up, perhaps coincidentally, directly to the south of Okba. Within hours the FLF were on the march north. And pro-Gad were not there to stop them.