Dear Dad,

I apologise for not writing sooner, but the rate of sorties has been growing recently. Sifting through recon imagery and writing reports is really time consuming work. However, I feel as though the tide may finally have turned in our favour.

Yesterday, Grigori and I were tasked with providing cover to a Spetsnaz unit. The goal of the mission was to retake a small town that the rebels seized a few days ago. According to reports, they were trying to re-establish an old FARP (Forward Arming and Refueling Point) so that they could stage their own helicopters from the town. Needless to say, we couldn't allow this to happen.

I took off just after dawn swiftly followed by Grigori.



The plan was ambitious to say the least. The town in question was beyond the point of no return for our heavily armed Black Sharks. Once we arrived on site, we wouldn't have enough fuel to return to our home base. That being the case, Command tasked us with landing at the enemy FARP once we'd taken out the armour and our Spetsnaz friends had secured the perimeter.



The weather began to close in as we climbed through the foothills of the mountains. The ground rose, pushing us up towards the thick, rolling sheet of grey above.



It wasn't long before we were totally swallowed by the clouds.

Flying in zero visibility just meters from the ground is a pretty terrifying experience. I found myself shifting to the right in my seat and craning my neck to peer down through the side of the cockpit in an effort to maintain visual contact with the ground below.



All the while, I just kept crossing my fingers and hoping that Grigori was paying close attention to his own helicopter's position with regard to my own. Eventually, though, the ground began to fall away beneath us and we gratefully descended back below the clouds.

A few minutes later, after about forty minutes of flying, we finally hit our first waypoint, the town of ----------. Off to our left lay the long valley at the end of which was our target. It was time to get serious.



Grigori and I dropped down from our comfortable crusing altitude and began to fly NOE (Nap of the Earth) towards our initial point. We stuck close to the roads and, at one point, must have scared the hell out of one of our support columns.



It turns out that the trucks were traveling up to a holding position with the task of re-establishing the FARP once our flight and the Spetsnaz had done our work.

Minutes later, Grigori and I had arrived at the Initial Point and made contact with our Spetsnaz controller on the ground. We then established ourselves in a high hover overlooking the town and finalised our preparations for the attack.



Our FAC (Forward Air Controller) had advised us of numerous pockets of air defence and armour. I quickly began scanning the area, adding the targets to my database and then datalinking them across to Grigori.



I then gave the order to attack and the battle began.

As ever, it was Grigori who got the first shot off - launching a Vikhr guided missile towards one of the insurgents' Strela air defence vehicles.



The huge explosion was probably the first the rebels knew of our attack.

The element of surprise was over, now. We had to act fast. I launched my own attack on the enemy armour, aiming for a group of BTR fighting vehicles.



My first missile flew true, flying straight down the throat of the first armoured vehicle.



Boom!



The explosion was crystal clear on my TV screen and I could even see the flash of the impact through the front of the cockpit with the naked eye .

Within the first couple of minutes of the battle, enemy armour was burning throughout the town.



It was then that I made my big mistake. Failing to find any new targets, I instructed Grigori to conduct a reconnaissance near the town. As he got close, however, a fighting vehicle that we'd both missed managed to launch a missile. I watched with horror as the smoke trail reached up towards Grigori's aircraft.



It all happened so quickly that he didn't even have the chance to launch any countermeasures.



Luck was on our side, though, and the missile arced past Grigori's aircraft, eventually detonating closer to my helicopter than his.



It still makes me sick to think that my foolish impatience nearly got my best friend killed. I am such a fool.

It was at this point that the Spetsnaz commander decided to begin moving his forces into the town.



The commandos immediately started coming under sustained fire from the houses and tree-line. The battle took on a renewed urgency as Grigori and I put aside the events of the previous minutes and concentrated on suppressing the weight of fire being directed onto the Spetsnaz.



Grigori managed to keep their heads down with a few salvos of rockets.



Grigori's efforts gave me a little time in which to pick out some more targets of my own.

I then occupied myself with picking off those enemies that had fallen back for a last-ditch attempt at defending the FARP.



Their efforts were futile, though, and I managed to take out the last of their armour before the Spetsnaz convoy even reached the perimeter.



By this point, the battle was won. The commandos moved in and picked off the last remaining rebels on the ground.

Our fuel was running dangerously low by this point, so Grigori and I dropped our wheels and cruised in for a landing. The whole area was still a mass of twisted, burning metal and dead bodies, which was distracting and dangerous in equal measure.



In the end, though, the approach and landing went really easily. I was kind of scared that there may have been one or two insurgents with RPGs still hidden in the tree line, but if there were, they never showed themselves.



It had been a long, tiring mission. We'd been in the air for nearly two hours and experienced some intense low-level flying and some fierce combat, but once again we'd been successful. It's true what my old instructor told me - "With enough training and enough patience, a combat helicopter pilot can achieve anything - just as long as he has twice as much luck as anyone else on the battlefield".

I hope everything is well at home. I can't wait until this is all over and I can share a meal with you and mother and sleep in my old bed again.

Your loving son,

Matysh

Nice!

Very well done AAR!

Very well written, enjoyed it a lot, thanks!

Brilliant work!

Love these AAR's man, truly amazing. Ever think about doing videos like this and doing voice overs? Either way, keep these AAR's coming, GREAT stuff they are.

Very well written! Fabulous pics! Well done.

Cool AAR! Really enjoyed that - hope you got some more in the pipeline!

Kudos on the writing and the screenies! Great read!

(Very minor correction, your first mention of spetsnaz spells out the word wrongly, as "spestnaz")

Are you sure? I've re-read my posts and used the Firefox search and yours seems to be the only misspelling I can find.

Great mission idea. Do you have a source for these, other than imagination?

I hope the spetsnaz convoy had a fuel truck

All of the AARs I've been writing are just creative expansions on missions from the first Black Shark campaign - "Deployment". The shots are all from the relevant missions, I've just embellished the stories a little (but not much).

Excellent! Great job, these are a great read, thanks for taking the time to do them.

Dang, you're a good chopper driver. Nice.