Near miss the only news
A Chinook is fired at without any hits and it makes the press. I guess you’d call that good news
AUSTRALIAN soldiers and journalists have experienced a close call in Afghanistan when Taliban insurgents fired on their helicopter. Television footage shot by SBS cameraman Jamie Kidston on board the chopper on Monday shows what appears to be a rocket-propelled grenade missing the Chinook by about 20m.
Australian commander at Kandahar, Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Humphreys said today the crew were unaware of the close call until after a review of the TV tapes.
A miss makes the news because journalists captured it on video but the crew and military pax on board wouldn’t have ever raised the issue.
Mildly interesting but really it’s just part of the job.
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Kev the real news is that no-one on any of the choppers saw that they were under fire from a heavy MG as well as the RPG except for John Hunter Farrell from Aussie Defender Mag.
“Lt-Col Humphreys said if the crew had seen the rocket they would have returned fire.
“If we can positively identify where the fire is coming from then my men will defend the aircraft.’’
A reporter on the aircraft said he also saw muzzle flashes from a small village as insurgents fired bursts from a heavy machine gun, possibly one of the widely used Soviet-made 12.7 DSHKs.
“There was a long series of bursts, three, four, five rounds each. He knew what he was doing. He worked us over,” John Hunter Farrell said.
Mr Farrell, publisher of the Brisbane-based Australian and NZ Defender magazine, said the others aboard had been unaware of what was happening.
“I got out of the helicopter and said we were engaged by a heavy machine gun and they all made fun of me. They thought I was being silly,” he said.
He said he believed they came under intensive attack.
“If one person fired one RPG, it meant 30 people were firing Kalashnikovs as well,” he said.”
I know John personally and he’ll be crowing about this when he’s home safely next week (please God).
Let’s hope our blokes in the ‘Ghan keep their arcs covered a little better in future or it’ll be big news for all the wrong reasons.
Very difficult to cover your arcs at 130kts. There’s only so much ground you can scan, and at that speed, the self-defence aspect of the weapon is null and void. Speed and manouvere are what saves your ass.