But mostly it's helicopters. So for today's blog, I'll give you a dose of all things aviation. These are just random aircraft that happened to be flying ahead on the rare days when I had my camera with me. There are many more great pictures I missed as these beauties buzzed literally at treetop level, pounding the air mercillessly with their rotor noise.
The most common helicopter over here, of course, is the UH-60 Blackhawk. This is the workhorse of the U.S. military, just as the UH-1 was our mule of choice in the Vietnam War. It fulfills a ton of roles, mostly transport-related. It has machine guns that can be mounted in the doors, but those are primarily for self-defense.
For attack, we have two main helicopters, the AH-1 Cobra - an old Vietnam-era helicopter mostly used by the Marines out West - and the AH-64 Apache. The AH-64 is my favorite, and is equipped with the ever-versatile Hellfire missile and the most advanced gun system on the planet. We don't get too many of them flying over our particular base, but here are a couple of images from the few I've seen:
Most American helicopters are named after American Indian tribes. Blackhawk, for example, refers to the Blackhawk Tribe. Apache is obvious. The Cobra's official name is actually the Iroquois. We also have the Bell D-255 "Iroquios Warrior", the Bell 207 "Sioux Scout", the OH-58 Kiowa, the CH-21 Shawnee, RAH-66 Comanche, the AH-56 Cheyenne, the UH-19 Chickasaw, the CH-37 Mojave, the H-34 Choctaw, and the workhorse heavy-lift helicopter, the CH-47 Chinook.
But here at Camp Victory, it's pretty much the Blackhawk show, all day and all night, all year round. They fly over me at night, with their lights off, an eerie, ominous presence that you can hear but can't see. They pass over me at low level as I step out of work into the bright afternoon sunlight. They're flying over me as I go to lunch, and when I come out. When I am sleeping, they buzz my trailer - sometimes so close you'd think they'd graze the top of it with their landing wheels.
Above: Blackhawks coming over our trailers, loud enough to wake the dead, get them crying in pain, and bleeding in the ears. Still, you get used to it in time. Below: A Blackhawk literally crossing over my trailer:
Most helicopters travel in pairs, and operational note that I can divulge because every living soul in Iraq is well aware of the fact. There's a lead and a trail aircraft, and they operate much the same as lead pilots and their wingmen in World War II, with each aircraft looking out for the other. Any moron on the ground with a DSHKA machine gun or whatever who tries to mess with one helicopter usually finds himself on the fightin' side of the other one, and the result is typically not pretty for the bad guys. And if that helicopter is an Apache, it's worse than ugly.
When they come directly over you (as below), you just want to stop and stare - giddy as a kid seeing one of the world's most expensive toys. After a while, you realize that such behavior makes you stand out as a newbie, since all the old hands on base just ignore them. But when you're all alone and there's nobody around, you drop all pretense and just stop and stare, marvelling at these beautiful aircraft.
A Blackhawk sweeping over the Al-Faw Palace, where I work:
Like I said, we're less than a mile from the Baghdad International Airport, and there's always something coming and going from there. Sometimes, if you've got your camera ready, you can get a shot like this, which captures how busy things can be:
We get a wide variety of aircraft here, not just American. Here's a long-distance shot of a Soviet-era Antonov transport:
One thing you rarely see around here, however, is fixed-wing combat aircraft. We have a number of fighters in theater - the F-16, F/A-18 and the GR-4 Tornado (British). Occasionally, B-1's are also used. However, these aircraft typically fly at very high altitudes. Only once, on a very clear day - a rarity here - when I squinted real hard, could I see what I think was an F-16. Typically, however, you hear them, but see nothing.
That isn't to say that they're invisible. One morning when I was walking home around breakfast time, we had cool air at altitude that produced contrails. An F-16 was flying over Baghdad, doing some work, and left these beautiful images (those are birds in the foreground):
All and all, it's like working every day at an airshow. Except when I'm trying to sleep at 5 p.m., it's always a good thing. For a guy who grew up on aircraft, looking in the sky here never gets old.
