Originally posted by Slash27
Holy crap!
Whats the rules about that stuff anyway?
Rules? You are now discovering why the only military types that absolutely luv the war are pilots. They get to play like they never could during peacetime back in their home nations. Many of them are having the time of their lives over there.
I only experienced steep combat landings at BIAP in C-130's and flying (very) low over the Tigris River and city of Baghdad in a Blackhawks during OIF-II on a couple occasions while there, but those guys fly like that all the time.
This is a pic from rear view mirror of 5-ton "gun truck" (converted 929 dump truck) of a convoy escorting munitions to be destroyed... large items like FROG-7's, SAM's, up to 500# bombs.... Apache's were often assigned as escorts (early on anyways, not so much later in the mission), and the convoy was hauling down the roads at 55 to 75 mph most of the time.
LSA West was right on a flight path between several points around Victory, Abu Ghraib, and Baghdad and the BIAP area, and the pilots would fly just few yards over the trailers at times, day and night, buzzing all the Engineers, MI, and postal and pay units that lived along there.
One day, a Kiowa scout buzzed us, and one of the guys in my squad walking in the area had the presence of mind and good humor to jump through a door to a housing trailer and exclaim: "That guy almost hit me!" While dust kicked up by the chopper swirled in. This kind of thing was later translated into one of the "BOHICA BLUE'S" comics that SSG Grant was creating and posting in the DFAC at LSA West.
I'm sure there are more films floating around out there. I sure wish I'd take had a video camera to capture a lot of what I saw while I was in country.
It was insane.
