160th Night Stalker | AH-6 & MH-6 Pilot | DFC | Silver Star | CW5 Steve Lapping

and so we're told if he leaves engage him so the vi missions had um either you know capture um shoot who's ever in there like the driver or something to keep the the hvt alive or um terminate everybody you know it's a kill Mission well this was definitely a kill Mission because this was a bad guy everyone who was with him was a bad guy welcome to combat story I'm Ryan fugit and I serve war zone tours as an Army attack helicopter pilot and CIA officer over a 15-year career I'm fascinated by the experiences of the elite in combat on this show I interview some of the best to understand what combat felt like on their front lines this is combat story today we hear the combat story of a long time Night Stalker from the 160th Special Operations Aviation regiment or soar Steve lapping Steve participated in many high-profile operations that many of us have heard of like the Jessica Lynch rescue and the Saddam Hussein capture and many operations we have not heard of like objectives reindeer and Leadville which we'll hear about on this episode this was a special interview for me as you can imagine giving Steve's story background as an elite pilot spending over two decades in 160th and another 10 years in Army Aviation we also touch on some of the Heartbreak that comes with years in the cockpit with accidents shootdowns and crashes including the feeling in sore following operation Gothic serpent AKA Black Hawk Down Steve is one of the most humble individuals you're going to encounter in fact I had to dig in to figure out that Steve was a cw-5 which is an incredibly difficult rank to achieve in the aviation community and to learn about his Awards and decorations in combat I hope you enjoy this combat story from inside one of the most lethal cockpits from such a humble Warrior as much as I did Steve welcome to the show thank you for taking the time to share your story with us oh thank you for having me I appreciate it so one of the things you just mentioned before we hit record was the shirt that you have on I had mistook it for a typical Hawaiian shirt and I'm for those who can't see it it is Hawaiian style but instead of flowers or something on it it's got or there's AHS or the MHS I can't yeah age sixes which we're going to talk about a lot how often do you get to wear this because I'm assuming if your wife is anything like mine not very often well I can wear it as many times as I want to around the house you know if we go anywhere then uh you're not wearing that are you so I took the liberty to go ahead and wear it today you know as one of the three or four times I wear it during the year but still very proud of it absolutely and actually for those who can't see the backdrop is also really cool guide on back there some some really impressive uh artwork on the wall behind you representing a whole lot of service that we'll get to the other thing as I was getting ready for this Steve that I was really impressed by I had to ask this as we were getting ready to hit record um you're a cw5 and I think a lot of people might make a bigger deal of that and you haven't and you just don't run into many w5s so as you look back on this uh very long and and storied career do you end up um do you end up getting asked a lot about hey did you end up as a four or five does that end up being a conversation piece for you it yes yeah you know for for those that are familiar with the warrant officer rank um you know there just aren't a lot of cw5s and so when you talk about in the service and then in the Army and then how the Army's broken up into uh technical branches and Aviation and so being in the aviation Branch you know more so than than any other branch of the uh of any of the services so you tend to see a little bit more um and then going into the 160th you know where it was very unique because the cw5s were allowed to remain in the company and so you know I've got a picture uh of five cw5s and so there was usually four Pilots deployed at any one time and we had five deployed and three of them were in a cockpit and I think we had a W-2 with us so you know and this is just a standard rotation three cw5s a W-2 and then uh the maintenance guy was a cw-5 and then somebody who was on staff at least liaison was a w-5 you know and so you know it was just like being uh just another rank really you know but then when I left the units and I went to uh big army so to speak you know I was one of two guys in the entire Brigade that was a cw-5 and so then you know you became a little bit more of a unicorn uh in that situation yeah very interesting Do You Remember by any chance the first time you flew with the W5 when you were a junior warrant you know the first time um when I went to my first unit was a third armor Cavalry Regiment in Fort Bliss and we had w-4s then so the W5 rank hadn't come out and I was pretty darn impressed you know with these cw4s all Vietnam vets and uh and then I remember Master MW4 came out and a gentleman in the the 160th was one of the first ones to make that Rank and so I flew with them but you know I'd known those guys for you know five six years already so it wasn't a big deal at that time but uh I think that the the person who kind of uh is most memorable to me in that kind of rank thing was I was out at NTC and the National Guard came out to augment us with two attack Battalion excuse me to attack companies and that you know it was a it was a Loach so it was the first time I'd really you know been in close to uh close proximity to a Loach and then uh I'm standing there and they said are you a pilot I said well yeah I'm not a very good one you know oh you want to go flying in a Loach I'm like hell yeah I do so I went out with this you know even crustier cw4 National Guard Loach pilot out of the uh Tennessee guard and man we just had a blast you know so it was kind of a that was my my rank guy there just because he was flying a Loach that's cool that's really cool and we'll get into a lot of the aircraft here in a bit I'm super excited to do this if you can take us back to when you were growing up one of the things that you had mentioned as we were preparing for this has to do with um jumping into some cold water at a young age I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that well yeah I think one of the questions was you know is what prepared me at a young age or what was a you know a parallel um to my youth that you know continued into the army and so I thought kind of long and hard and and I was good buddies with uh three or four kids in the neighborhood all the same age same grade and we decided to be a good idea to go up to the lake up the street and it was still you know probably September so it was still a little cold we still had some ice on the lake and it was a subtly Lake and so it was four of us at the time and we decided to uh go up on the Cove in the lake where that we knew there'd be some ice and so now we're playing around on the ice as shoot I guess we were 13 14 years old not I know not old enough to drive and so we jump on the ice and you know now we want to make an iceberg and be you know captain of the iceberg I guess and so we get some long branches and you know after a while we were able to break this big chunk of ice away from the uh the bank and so now all four of us are on the ice you know and it's not really moving too far and the Cove is actually pretty big and it's actually a pretty good distance from one side of the Cove to the other even at the you know the the innermost part of the inlet and so you know 10 15 minutes go by the ice is starting to you know move towards the center a little bit more um it's starting to get uh smaller you know because we're jumping on it and it's starting to sink and maybe melt a little bit well we decided this is a good time for us to get off the ice you know good idea guys here so we jump off the ice and as our buddy who's not paying attention is still on with his back to us one of the guys takes a big pull and you know gives that little extra shove to the ice which now takes him out of distance from being able to jump to the shore so oh way to go jackass you know and we're all laughing um so now we just think well the iceberg is going to go to the other side of the cove and he'll jump off there well long story probably longer it doesn't it gets in the center of the cove and now it starts moving towards the lake and it starts melting and so you know this is ours and the water is cold it is freezing and so you know now we're getting a little concerned it was fun for a while now we're concerned and so I just said well we got to do something about it so I weighed into my chest you know about up to my my heart and I'm like dude I'm you know I'm maybe halfway I said go ahead and jump in I'll get you you know we'll go to shore come on and uh you know it's it's just something that you know I felt needed to be done and the other guys were like yeah I'm not going in that cold water you got to be crazy and he he didn't jump in and so the other two because you know they weren't freezing cold they run up the street they flagged down a car which happens to be my mom she calls the fire department the fire department comes down they put a boat in and they get them you know and and he's up to you know two feet of water past his knees and so anyway so they haul us all out of there uh he and I both have a hypothermia you know maybe a little bit of frostbite and and a very tragic story was averted thank God you know and everybody walked away but you know just what I thought you know and the motto of the the night stalkers is you know nice talkers don't quit and you know I was just ready to uh to help him out and do whatever it takes you know to to save my friend yeah geez I can't imagine what was your mom like oh you I gotta have a talk with you later on that day yeah yeah that that anything the police said to me you know or the firemen you know because they've been through that whole bunch of times and you know my mom was uh you know very um protective and so she was concerned and then she was pissed and then you know happy yeah go through all those emotions at once right yeah um so you mentioned obviously the night stalkers was a huge part of your career at the time when you join is there this idea of I'm gonna go Aviation not even night stalkers but like I just want to go in and fly is that part of your childhood somehow so you know and I hear others tell their story and I'm probably the polar opposite I mean no you know when I was uh growing up I always had a fascination with the military you know I played with revolutionary army men I played with Civil War army man I played with you know World War II and I always had a tank nearby you know setting up some type of Battlefield scenario so I always was very fascinated with the military I knew I wanted to go in both my mom and dad served in the in the Navy my grandfather served in the Pacific during World War II and so you know there was some family you know uh Heritage there and uh I didn't really have I wasn't driven if you will to any branch of the service or any particular job I just wanted to go in serve my country and you know have fun so it uh it my my story was turned by the uh stepfather of the girl I was dating at the time and so you know I'm 17 getting ready to go on 18 and knew that I wanted to go in the army and so the girl I was dating at the time her stepfather had been in the Marines for two years two tours in Vietnam got out winning the Army was alert for a year there so very quiet unassuming guy you know short um the true leatherneck um when he took his boots off until I knew what it was I thought you know the sewage was leaking uh in the house you know he literally had that trench foot from you know three years in Vietnam and when I when I mentioned it I said man you guys need to call a plumber you know they all just giggled their butts off because they knew what it was but uh I teased Fred a little bit but he was very instrumental you know he sat down with me my parents were very kind of hands off you know hey do what you want you know we think it's a good idea but you know you make the call and so I sat down with Fred one day and I told him you know man I really enjoy you know what what you did and I think I want to do that I want to go in the 82nd Airborne and jump out of airplanes getting all excited he's at no no that's not what you want to do and I I don't you know at 18 years old you're easily persuaded so he said uh Steve you know you want to do that walk you know I couldn't even spell it waft I know what's that that's one officer Flight Training I don't know what a warrant officer is and I don't have a college degree so obviously there's no way I can go in flying and uh so he told me about the program and and even more importantly he described exactly what would happen um when I went down to talk to the recruiter uh yep you could go on the recruiter the first thing I can tell you is that's great we All-American we want to have you but what you want to do is enlist as a crew chief get some Aviation experience and then apply to warrant and I'm like that's what they're going to say yep I know they will and uh so I went down there and uh I was in Fort Meade Maryland and went down and talked with and I'll never forget her staff sergeant Nielsen and she was very pleasant to look at which is probably why you know I continued to to go back for seven months to get everything done and so she gave me that exact Spiel hey you know you need to come in and be a crew chief and I'm like well how about if we try it my way first you know and she persuaded me and persuaded me and I just didn't give in so finally she said okay well you know we'll go through with it and the reason being is because they have such a small percentage of success so they put all this effort into it and then they don't get you through and then you know you go back and either you enlist or you don't do anything and so they're they're out a lot of time and effort so you know it's a business and I understand um so it worked out for seven months and uh I got accepted in and you know one of the things that I go back and I look at now is um I look at my packet you know from my letter of why I want to be a warrant officer pilot to my reference letters to my grades from high school to my letters of recommendations and you know usually everyone's got a stellar story to tell oh I got you know Senator John Glenn to write me a letter of recommendation or I had you know 4.0 or you know I had just uh you know won a scholarship to Harvard and I decided to do this and mine was very uneventful you know I look at the photo now and you know I had split hair with a Sears you know a sucker suit on there with plaid uh pockets on and just I thought it was very unimpressive and I was like man if I had been on that board would I have selected me but you know when I go back and and and look at it and I read I read the um the letter that I wrote to why I wanted to be there you know it was uh I and I wrote it myself but Fred kind of told me you know hey make sure you highlight on these areas and uh I I like the letter you know I will Pat myself on the back for the letter because that's what I'm sure got me in because you know the letters of recommendation from my neighbor from my uh from my employer you know at a at uh Shell gas station yeah and Fred you know E7 in the Army just you know weren't that impressive compared to you know what others put in there sure oh well um at that time as you're getting in this is early mid 80s you're young right this is the 18 to 19 year old time frame coming in as a warrant officer right yes yeah um as you come in and I guess maybe before I get to that as you look back now do you have any second thoughts of like maybe I should have gone the ground route maybe I should have jumped out of airplanes and been on the other side do you ever think about that I'm a firm believer and everything happens for a reason and you know 31 and a half years in the Army um I don't I don't have any regrets I don't wish I had done something different there's other things that I wish I had done you know to continue to do more and more but you know at a certain point man you just you know you're at a point where you can't give any more you can't go someplace else you know and so I I think I maximize the fun um I did have other opportunities you know I took the uh infants exam for West Point while I was in basic and I was about maybe six weeks out from graduation from uh Warren officer flight school and the tax brought me in which is never good you know when you go to see the tax officers you've done something wrong and they said hey candidate lapping we got this approval here you've been accepted into West Point you know and they're like hey great you know and clapping their hands and I uh-huh am I guaranteed Aviation like absolutely not and I'm like nah no thank you you know I hadn't just done nine months to to not do that and uh and I was very proud you know of what I had done up to that point so I didn't do that and maybe that's something you know that I mean hell a great education and experience but I don't regret not doing it yeah no I don't blame you so when you come in if you can I want to make sure that we touch on a lot of the aircraft that you flew just over that long of a career I'm sure it's been many but as you join you get through all the training what's the first aircraft you're in and then when is it you start hearing about this 160th thing so in flight school um I started off in the 55 you know the th550 sage and that was fun and then we went into Huey's and you know with the turban big old helicopter I mean just just a blast really enjoyed that um but the Cobra was out there we didn't have you know the Apache yet I think it was it was in its planning stages but definitely wasn't an option for a uh a transition and so as we got closer and closer uh to being able to pick what aircraft I knew that I wanted to fly the Cobra yeah I wanted to fly something that could shoot back you know I didn't play all those years with army men you know so I couldn't shoot back at something and so when it came time you know we're sitting there in the uh the student classroom and they put uh pictures of each of the aircraft and I think we had one Chinook four Blackhawks uh eight or ten cobras and then the rest were Huey's nice I wanted to be one of those cobras and so you know they go through and the top guy picks the Chinook and the others tops picked their Blackhawks and when it comes to me you know I said okay I went to COBRA and they said okay qualified because there were a couple people that that um for whatever reason you know weren't qualified to to fly the Cobra you know this profile psychological I guess um so I was all excited and happy well no one was picking the Scout ramp and so the arrow Scout route is that you can either do it two ways you go through the aeroscout course while you're in flight school and then you go to a unit as an arrow Scout or you go to the aeroscout course and then you go to the Cobra course and you know you're a much better rounded uh Cobra pilot because you know the Scout Mission the guys who are in front of you looking for things who are then telling you what to shoot but it was a lot of work we had been told too so you know at that point you had two paths you could either go the Huey path which was going down to the beach every weekend and drinking and you know partying or there was the Scout which years you know you're in your room studying and and it was very hard so no one wanted to do that so they didn't of course they didn't have enough people pick Scouts so you know the company commanders up there all right who wants to be an All-American red blooded Scout pilot you know and I just couldn't help myself well I do I do so I went through the aeroscout course with anticipation of then going through the Cobra course after graduation well um with good intentions from the Army but uh after I graduated now I room with two other people uh two friends from school one was going to go to the Blackhawk course and the other one was going to go to the Cobra course and now you know this is the 80s there wasn't a lot of money they got behind on maintenance they got behind because of weather so after being the Museum tour guide for six weeks they're like laughing get in here I'm like oh here we go hey you leaving Fort Rucker like I am but I haven't had my Cobra transition and you're not gonna so you're not going to Fort Riley as a cobra pilot anymore you're going to Fort Bliss as a scout pilot and when we get caught back up then you can come back as a cobra pilot you know by now I'm just bored and I want to get out of Rutgers I say okay great that sounds you know perfect and so you know my my first aspirations of being an attack pilot didn't pan out and it's like what was the Scout yeah oh 58 Alpha Charlie yeah they didn't have the delt out yet by then got it all right and disheartening it sounds like just a little bit I mean did they have guns on those at the time no they had some of the units had uh Stinger missiles you know air-to-air but I guess it was kind of um you know equaled in good and bad so the bad was you know that I wasn't gonna fly attack but the good was when I got to El Paso the third ACR didn't have a lot of money and you know we weren't high priority with three core and so we had uh Huey's 58s and cobras and the Huey's flew because they needed to support the rest of the ACR the 58 flew because they were cheap you know fix and and to fly and the cobras not so much so I made pic probably in about six seven months along with my Stitch buddies in flight school and so you know because they didn't have we didn't have a lot of Pilots I mean we were short um and I didn't know any better I figured oh this is how the Army is um so we make pic you know and now we're told okay your your mission for today on your flight is to take the Cobra Pilots up and let them remember what it's like to be in a helicopter okay so you know it was fun I got a Razz on them a little bit but you know that wasn't like for a couple months that was long term you know for a year or two excuse me well it's about a year and then they finally come back and they said hey Steve come over to S3 shop so I go over to the S3 shop and they're like hey great news we got a cobra transition slot for you and I'm like uh yeah no wow because it wasn't going to get any better you know and they just didn't fly at all and it was you know I I preferred to fly then you know to fly the Cobra mm-hmm where does 160th enter the picture when do you first hear about it so by that time you know there was a lot of things and I'll just refer to it you know as the big army um several things were Weighing on me that you know when we went out to the field I'm W1 lapping and I'm putting up a GP medium with cw4 Vietnam helicopter pilot and the only difference between he and I is he got a pick first where he's going to put his cot in the tits and you know and I'm just thinking to myself man that's not a lot of career advancement right there you know and so I I was beginning to question if I wanted to stay in the Army you know my commitment was four years uh after flight school at the time and you know now I'm going on two years and you know at about the third year mark I'm just uh I enjoyed the Army but you know it's not like I I deployed anywhere you know when we went to NTC and we had went to reforger so reforger was was quite the you know uh experience I really enjoyed that but then it went back to you know going back to the sandbox at home and and just not really doing a lot so I had uh started looking at other options and actually I had met my now wife uh girlfriend at the time uh through the University of Texas at El Paso ROTC program I had went over there to do a static display and uh it looks kind of funny you know I I just flew the aircraft over there and my troop Commander was the one who was going to talk to all the ROTC that's because he was a commissioned officer but he wasn't real much he wasn't a real sociable person so I you know I wound up talking to everybody you know I was I'm I'm a people person so I was always you know talking and uh wound up talking with the group and you know one of them being my wife and so and that's the story how I met my wife that's a great one I know you didn't ask but I'm gonna throw that I like it she might get upset yeah but then while I'm over there I you know wind up talking with the Air Force ROTC instructor and so I applied to go into the uh Air Force ROTC program and and that's what she was in that's the program they had and so I said okay well you know this this will be great I was going to go to the aviation program and you know fly f-16s or something and about two maybe three months later we get noticed that there's a recruiting team coming down and at the time they were the still the 160 sewag Special Operations Airborne group and not the regiment before they came to regiment and so um you know I I really didn't know who these guys were you know and someone said oh yeah you know they do this and like ah it's a half day off at work I go to the theater and get a listen to them you know all right I'll go listen to them and so you know without really any um uh purpose I went down there and you know they put the video on there and they talked about their local flying area you know with a picture of the the globe the world and just kind of caught my attention I'm like you know what that's why I came in the Army right there you know to do things like that whether it's you know on the ground or in aviation so really that recruiting team you know saved me from getting out of the army and and that was a very pivotal moment in my Aviation my army career did you go right was that like you just raised your hand put your packet in and went or was this years later before you actually get your foot in no I I had um you know I was that young Scout pilot you know when I got to the unit I was 20 years old um two years later I went to the instructor Pilot Course and you know I'm the one who's always wanting to fly nvgs you know I'm the one who wants to you know go out and do this um and it was I always wanted to do more you know and you know the sips got his hand on my forehead whoa hold down there younging and so I just wanted to do more and more and then when the team came there I went right up to him and said hey you know I'm within a year of uh derosing of getting out or PCS and um these are my qualifications and they said hey you're about right where we're looking at you know they wanted a thousand hours total time 100 hours of goggles and that's just about where I was at yeah um so that was shoot that was uh September excuse me September of 89. and um they said okay come on up we're going to have you come up real real soon and so I go up there it's like the end of October maybe beginning of November to do my assessment and you know I thought this was the coolest thing which was just TDY which means that they paid for me to fly somewhere by myself I got my own rental car you know and you know so you know how Junior I was right like that I can't believe they give me my own rental car these people are crazy you know and I'm 23 at the time now so I just said I'm going to do it day to day phase by phase um I had really beefed up you know in that limited time that I had in between when they came and when I had to go there I was studying my butt off um I went out flew as many goggle hours as I could did the Navigation like I knew that they were gonna expect and so when I got up there I didn't have any Illusions you know that I was the greatest pilot or you know that I was gonna out PT anyone I've always considered myself very average you know but a good um well-rounded individual if you will so as a as a pilot officer I thought I was pretty good pilot you know I knew what I was doing um I was okay physical shape you know good swimmer so using utilizing that whole man concept I thought I had a chance but you know as soon as you get into something like the PT test you know and doing pull-ups and other things like that it just you know I did okay but when there's people laughing me you know I'm like oh man these guys are studs you know they and you know no [ __ ] they're triathletes they're you know human specimens of just goodness and uh and Steve's not but you know one thing I I'm not a quitter you know and and they'd have to you know drag me off the the racetrack or you know pull me out of the water and I've always been a pretty good swimmer so as he as I did each event you know they don't give you any encouragement you don't really know what the standards are uh and and the recruiter he could tell I was feeling a little bad about myself after the run you know because I was probably one of the last guys and he goes hey man you know don't quit I said okay you know and that kind of motivated me and went on I did uh I thought I did well on the flight test I found my target you know which is most people don't you know as I got into the unit later and I assessed people you know that's a pretty tough thing to do and that's navigation Steve when you say find your target that's like a long distance nav Target to find right so what you're expected to do is to plan a mission and they give you okay you're going to go to here and their their airports but their airports in the sense that they're airports technically you know it's a grass strip out there in the middle of more grass so unless you've been there or you've seen you know satellite imagery of it guess what it looks like grass and at that time you know there was no satellite imagery or anything there's no GPS it's uh it's a map it's a stopwatch and it's a compass and it's hopefully some good planning well you know I'm amazed I I do the assessments um in an mh6 and you know this is a cool ass helicopter it's a black helicopter with you know doodads and you know gizmos on it and I'm just real impressed with it so as I'm navigating I'm talking with the instructor they're assessing officer and I'm like I'm just talking with them and I'm just bsing with them the whole time you know ask them questions and I know he's thinking you know because they don't help you at all I know he's probably thinking man this guy needs to shut up and concentrate on what he's doing but I'm like yeah man so you know what are you guys doing hey make a left up here at this intersection you know and Bam we hit our Target plus or minus 30 seconds which I could kind of tell pissed him off you know because you know they want to be able to keep their their score up right so we went to the second one which was even uh more difficult Target and I landed in the vicinity of it but I didn't land right on that particular strip of grass so anyways it was a successful um uh flight evap well it was unsuccessful because I didn't hit the second one but you know as far as being compatible with the unit it went pretty good dank um wind so I guess just a couple things as you've been talking here uh for people who aren't familiar with the aviation side of things you mentioned being becoming a pic in six to seven months it's a huge deal that's piloting command that's the the one individual in the aircraft who's responsible for the safety of that aircraft basically and it's something that you work towards I'd say it's it varies depending on the aircraft but it's six to seven months sounds like a pretty fast transition and an IP in two years so an instructor pilot you're training other people in the unit how to fly also very quick in two years so super impressive that no surprise that you did pretty well when you were there for that um for that selection process you know it and and everyone you know is humble and and everyone in the unit is you know and if you if you came up and asked me hey are you a good pilot I'm like ah you know I can hold my own but um to be a flight lead in the unit you know you know you're good because if you're not and you don't exert that someone's gonna challenge you you know your decisions and so it that's a learned skill but even you know kind of going backwards through Flight School again you know it goes back to my grades in high school I didn't have good study habits and so when we'd uh take an exam you know on eight aerodynamics uh whatever it was specifically I remember weather so Warren officer candidate lapping fails the weather test only one in my class and so that I go oh yeah okay Canada this isn't good you need to come back two days study and take another version of it like Roger got it and you know and this time you had a prescribed area to study at a prescribed time it's uh 1900 hours study 20 hundred hours done you know and and I just couldn't do it and uh you know I'm not the dumbest guy but I'm also not the smartest and at the time my just study skills were horrible so I go in I take the B version of the test and fail it and uh so now I'm called back into I spent some time in the TAC offices for various reasons but I go into the TAC office and that I uh um Kenneth laughing we got a problem I'm like yeah yeah that did I pass and I no I'm like oh what do we do now like well we don't know because no one has ever failed twice you know and so you know I went and I I went back studied my butt off but then I went back and they didn't have three uh versions of the test so I took you know a again and probably got a 72 on it and moved on that's great but the one thing that saved me I guess I said all that is you know all my friends would get uh you know 95s 90s and like hey Steve what'd you get you know like yeah man 81 you know but when it came time for the light evaluations you know oh I got a 87 no I got 85. Steve what'd you get 94 you know so it the the flying is what always saved me um fortunately because I said I wasn't in Einstein is there something I mean that doesn't come naturally to everybody I don't know if you're not to say that it did come naturally to you but do you feel like there was anything that you had done growing up that or something about the way you think about flying that made you just a little bit better at times I think at a certain point I was just able to relax um you know and just you know let my body you know exhale if you will and just kind of feel the aircraft and it always felt very natural to me you know it felt like something you could uh you know wear you know like a piece of clothing and so you know I've flown a lot of different aircrafts and um I just never flying has always been natural to me although you know I didn't start off as an at a young age and you know it wasn't always something that I aspired to do it's just something that yeah I thought uh um came naturally to me yeah you adapted to it pretty well huh yeah um so you start off flying age is is that right you move to MHS and then back did I get that no no so you know again to go back to flight school I wanted to fly cobras well I I didn't for four years in the Cav because you know of the reason stated so when I assessed for the regiment they said okay well you know what do you want to assess for a86s I want to fight the attack I've been wanting to do that and they're like denied like oh man they said uh you know what would you say if we put you in Chinooks I'm like I'd go fly Chinooks you know whatever you guys need me to do I'll you know sweep the floors drive a deuce and a half which is what they want to hear um and and I've never really been you know oh I'm an attack guy you know that's just you know was was never me one because I wasn't at the time and so they said well you don't have any uh attack skills and at the time you know they were just bringing on COBRA guys most of the guys were Cobras so I assess get accepted into um the 160th and when I assessed it was just prior they were doing rehearsals for Panama for Just Cause 1989. matter of fact when they asked me on the board will give us a current event um oh well this Panama thing is heating up what do you know about Panama what do you know about our involvement you know at night Whoa man this is sensitive I don't know anything because they must be doing something here yeah exactly they just got done so anyway so when I reported to the unit in March you know they had just gotten uh back you know a month before back in January and so the psychiatrist told us all hey you know these guys may still be a little wound up our company Commander was shot in the shoulder we had a couple aircraft you know that crashed uh on the Modelo prison you know we had one of the AHS shot down both Pilots killed and so you know here I am this you know young what was I uh 23 24 at the time and coming there and you know these guys were you know they were the real deal and so as I came in whether they were a W-2 or you know a W-4 um these guys had a lot of experience and and I had a lot to learn and they let me know it too you know they kept you on on a short leash and so the uh the first shoot what was about five months was going through green platoon and uh that was the hardest thing I've ever done in my Aviation career yeah could it you know I don't know how sensitive it is but if you could just share overall kind of what green platoon is I obviously have heard of this um but for people who haven't yeah and it's changed because at that time again this was early um 1990 and the regiment hadn't yet formed the official sawatsi or so at B now the Special Operations Aviation training Battalion so it was just called Green platoon and each of the companies was responsible for training their own Pilots and so what they would do is there was two pilots going through me and my stick buddy Keith and he was a W3 Cobra pilot and I was a W-2 Scout pilot and so you know he was a little bit more experienced than I was um and adjustment I guess would be the the word to describe because there was a um there was an agenda to get us through but there wasn't necessarily you know a a written procedure of how we were going to do things day in day out and so what would happen is two instructor Pilots would come in and they'd you know give us a mission and then we do the mission we plan it we'd come in the next day to brief it with two different instructor Pilots these are all green suitors guys from the company and you know so when you don't have a a uh written POI program of instruction or a standard operating procedure for it uh there's a lot of discrepancies you know so we get yelled at a lot well why don't you do this why did you do that and would it have mattered if we said well the other IPS told us to do it this way no one wants to hear your excuses so you know you just sucked it up and you just you know bit the bullet for I mean four months it was like that you know and just and and I figured it was all you know um rhyme and reason you know they're trying to to test you and a lot of it was but just going through the aircraft qualification you know doing the night vision goggle qualification and doing the uh tactics and so just one story on the uh well two stories so coming from big army if you broke something boy you better be prepared you know to stand before the man and get out your checkbook well the the unit was different because I was out there starting an aircraft and you know I Advanced it's a modulated start on the throttle meaning that you have to manipulate it manually to keep the temperature between a certain uh limit and when I Advance the throttle it really didn't do anything and so the emergency proceed or the start procedure is abort start get somebody to check it out there's something wrong it's not getting enough fuel well if I get to that point you know you always do the old look over to the instructor pod he's like go ahead and give it a little more so I Advance the throttle a little bit more and oh wow you know we over temp the engine and I'm like oh my God now I've done it you know I I shouldn't have listened you know and I'm thinking I'm gonna get in trouble and he's like okay we'll shut it down what's our spare you know you've got it written down uh 623 okay go pre-flight six two three I'll go uh you know change our flight plan and that was the extent of over temping an engine I get done with the day and my stick buddy had was out doing touchdown autos and chopped the tail boom off and you know he thought it was the end of his career yeah and all they did was like uh are we off to the side enough yeah okay what's the spare uh we don't have one laughing took it okay we'll get another one you know and literally we went back out both of us flew you know no peeing bleeding and uh it's not like that now you know it's much more uh strict on that but that was kind of the the the vision into the unit and you know how they did things differently that's great and so I didn't so were you guys did you come out flying Chinooks them was it MHS what did you end up flying right out of the game the m86 the image yeah so I stayed there so just before we jump into some of the operational work could you share with people because we've interviewed Greg Coker from an age six side what are some of the differences that you might experience if you're flying the MH versus ah any anything personality wise that you would look for differently in the pilot mission profiles if you can share just for people who are aware obviously it's a little bird one is designed I understand Steve so just keep me straight here one is an attack platform the ah6 the MH is more of a transport type aircraft but could you just share a little more of like what what's in the details between those two sure so the m86 standing for you know Mission uh and as you said I wouldn't call it Transportation I'd call it you know just a multitude of different missions that it can do and so the best way that I can answer that is when I was a liaison officer with a ground force in Baghdad during you know when ramadi and Fallujah were hot and I'm watching these little birds go to the rooftops in Baghdad ramadi Fallujah just the awesomeness of what they did you know and so the ah does kind of one job it shoots at things you know and that's what it does now all right well it shoots many guns it shoots 50 cows it shoots Rockets but it's gonna you know and I flew it for 11 years so I'm not talking bad about it but I'm just saying uh well to go back the Rangers would come up to me when I was an mh6 pilot and they're like hey how long do you have to fly this before you can go over to the AHS yeah shut up get out of here Ranger you know and the the MH Pilots are some of the you know the best Pilots there are you know and they'll put that thing down anywhere and it always amazed me to watch The Assault guys go into a hlz that's just dustier than hell or a rooftop that's got people sleeping up there with mattresses coming up into the rotor blades or the tail rotors or wires I don't know how many aircraft we left on the top of the building you know on Ops I'm serious and you know then we got so good at Dart which is a downed aircraft recovery team that we had a Blackhawk come in hook up a little bird and fly it out of there and those were all the m86s because they're doing the Dirty Work you know and so the difference between an mh6 and aha 6 is Mission only you know the pilots are are uh very similar a lot of them the MH guys were Cobra guys or 58b so they had all shot you know that they were attack guys um the the mission set you always need somebody to shoot but you know sometimes the mh6s weren't needed you know they have a very specific uh Niche you know if you want to go to a street or an Alleyway and land or a rooftop or if you want to hide something then you know they they're the ones that you go to if you want to shoot something you can kind of pick between the DAP which is the armed Blackhawk or the ah6 so just different Mission sets yeah perfect great context so catch me if I got this wrong but just looking at your career Steve you mentioned Panama as you're going through green platoon you've got Somalia 93 you've got Gulf War as well in 911 and I are we talking 15 to 17 years since you've been in until you actually get into combat the first time did I am I reading the background correctly there yeah it might have been hard to read you know in my tears dropping on the paper on there or some things but but I did I wanted to I just wanted to ask on that because how difficult that could be psychologically when when you've come in you're at the tip of the spear and possibly not because you didn't have the opportunity but there were good reasons for it but I as you talk through this I just be interested how did you manage that um so you know as with any young man that wants to to come in and challenge themselves you know test their metal that's why I came in the Army and so after I'm serving you know and I didn't know Prime chance you know in the mid 80s the only the task force was doing things like that operating uh you know in in the Persian Gulf but uh operation just cause you know we were a low priority unit in three course so we didn't go to that so that's the first thing I missed well then I go to the 160th and I'm sitting at uh I'm sitting in the middle of seer course at Fort Bragg why the instructors come up there like okay everyone come around we're going to start pulling people out because you've heard that Iraq invaded Kuwait and we're gonna start needing you but I'm like man all right my you know I've already been through green platoon in the for the mh6 so you know I'm like well I need to go and start packing up my stuff so that they pull the SF guys out they pull the Rangers out they pull out the Marine uh Force Recon guys and then lapping yeah not so much they didn't need Steve so Steve stays there and finishes The Seer course and so I missed the initial um Desert Storm or Desert Shield Desert Storm and so now I'm a little upset or you know just disappointed I guess because the third Acro I just came from they all deployed well you know they're they're horror stories of how they didn't do anything it was just miserable made me feel a little bit better but when I got out of here course we had split up into a b and c groups you know the a deployed first the senior guys the B guys were on standby and then the C you know was probably half full because we didn't have anybody you know and I think we may had a World War II vet they threw him at us or something I mean the C group was not going anywhere and that's where all Steve was at so one of the guys was having a baby and they decided okay we're going to bring him home and someone's gonna go relieve him and I was a bmq at the time so there's three levels of Pilots basic Mission qualified fully Mission qualified and flight lead and I was a bmq at the time and the guy who was coming back was a bmq and so the only people that were back that weren't on the uh B team was Keith and I and so we had to go in there and report to our commander and explain to him why we should go and replace this guy you know we're in competition and uh my boss was a little bit of a hothead and goes all right we got this opportunity for you guys to go and relieve you know Chuck overseas and first off do you guys want to do it and uh yes sir good because if you wouldn't I would have fired your ass right here you know we're just like oh man this guy is crazy anyways but uh so he chose Keith because he was a cw3 so Keith deploys over to um to Iraq we'll call it that we based out of someplace else and you know Steve still doesn't have a combat patch and you know Steve's one of the few guys in the unit who hasn't seen anything so that's that's strike two on me well then 1993 comes around for uh operation what was you know Gothic serpent at the time Somalia and so I had just progressed from fmq to flight lead so now you know I'm doing good and I'm progressing you know very quick but I'm the junior flight lead and so when they start making up the deployment you know they're going to take the senior guy so they take the senior flight lead the senior fmqs who were my peers but you know I kind of I progressed to the next level but now you know I'm starting over again so I'm not on the deployment package and I'm like well this kind of sucks but my boss came to me goes well your wife's pregnant you're not going anyway you know she's due in in November we don't know how long this is going to be gone so um the battle of the Black Sea you know goes on we lost you know a lot of good uh night stalkers a lot of good uh Rangers and Special Forces guys during that uh very difficult time did great things you know and I'll just mention you know what the the little bird guys did you know the the AHS you don't hear much from them on the movies or anything but you know they flew their butts off and uh did did a lot of great attack stuff but the m86 guys my uh my stick buddy you know they're the ones that landed in the street next to the Blackhawk carrying you know wounded SF dudes out of there so just the uh the greatest amount of respect for those guys for everybody you know black coffee yeah so you know that's the third one on a personal note that's the third one that Steve you know misses out on yep and with that Steve could could you share what's the morale like when that unit comes back everybody's seen the movie um you can only imagine but just be in there what was that like it I know we lost guys you know and I knew a lot of them um but it didn't it doesn't hit you until they come back and the thing that struck me most is that um the guys are crying because they felt like they didn't do enough you know to uh to bring everybody home and as I get older and removed from the unit you know I get more emotional you know thinking about that but while I was there you know you didn't show those emotions if you didn't have to because you had a job to do but uh I just remember you know going up to him and you know thanking them and you know hey you guys did an awesome job and every one of them just said hey I'm sorry yeah I just you know broke your heart one of the uh recent interviews I did was with this guy Aidan Aslin who was uh held for five months in Russia he's a Brit who was fighting for the ukrainians captured and used his propaganda piece and as I was talking to him one of the things that came to mind was uh Michael Durant where that was one of I'm not saying it's the only one but like a very early pow in a different era like where you have TV going on right at the same time and this guy Aiden in my opinion was also a new era of pow of the social media time where right he has a huge online presence so if you can imagine going through Sears school where they knew everything about you as opposed to just name rank serial number you can't get away with that anymore you know so it's different and so it just made me think back to Durant and the pictures of his face at the time and uh yeah I can't imagine what it would have been like to be you know shoulder to shoulder with those guys coming back and being part of that unit that's special and difficult obviously um with that Steve if we look at the if you could take us to maybe the first time that you're in combat where where do you find because we just talked about all this time but it's not like you miss out on combat obviously like there's a lot you've spent your time in in uh in that seat so what's the first time that you remember being uh outside the wire in that sense um so where were we 93 so I leave uh a company flying the mh6 I go for three years down in Central America flying the Blackhawk with Delta company we've got a small five company uh Detachment down there um there's a couple Ops that come up down there and and I just this is just kind of more you know stuff that Steve didn't do you know and it does I think it goes uh like 15 2000 and two was the first time I deployed it to a combat theater and so in 2001 um last story that I'm not in is uh is oef deployments and so now I've gone from Blackhawks now I'm flying now so after 15 years of trying to fly attack aircraft when I get done and and the regiment's real good if you're doing a good job and you want to do something different and you're giving back then you know they're very open to switching aircraft and so you know I flew aircraft through flew the Blackhawk for three years got done they were kicking us out of Panama anyway they said okay where do you want to go after Panama I said well I want to finally go back to me company and fly the ah and so they said okay you can do that and so as I get there now I'm the junior bmq again and um 911 happens and so I've progressed enough where I'm the senior bmq meaning that by All rights I don't know if it's in the Constitution or what but I should be going in this deployment and I am right up to the point where you know they get together and they like hey we need another maintenance guy in this really so lapping you're off so I don't go to uh oef for the initial you know uh deployment of that and I understand you know again disappointing so 15 years I finally get to fly uh I'm in the attack aircraft and then you know Miss one more the first time I did go I went to uh to oef as a liaison guy for Siege of soda and um I got back at some of the guys who deployed for oef because they started giving out bonuses and Steve got somehow you know outsmarted everyone like I said I'm not real smart maybe until you know it comes to something that you know interests me so I found out that if I signed for my bonus overseas I got it tax-free so the boss came by and goes hey I know none of you want to do this but anyone who wants to be a liaison guy you know and and I thought about it and I did some quick math and I I'll do it like really you want to do it I'm like yeah okay and then everyone gets together and they're like why would lapping want to do that this is that son of a [ __ ] you know so I I got over for once and uh anyway I did 90 days over in Bagram uh watching the the Chinook guys and the the daps you know just do some incredible things uh and that's my only deployment in Afghanistan so my big uh combat deployment which I you know earned a uh a combat patch was working 12 hour shifts and a talk and uh being a little uncomfortable but getting the tax-free money so that's important too yeah that was you know that was good that was good but I came back uh March of 2003 of course you know Iraq invades uh uh or I'm sorry we set up to invade Iraq and it was all Hands-On I mean everybody was going and I was a new fmq ah guy by this time and so um there was just no way I wasn't going to do this you know and I was ready to you know I was ready to fight for this one so we deploy uh we're just outside Iraq and our job was to uh go out to the western side of Iraq and fight the vizabs which is a visual observation post and so we kind of knew what we were going to do before we went there and so we did some train ups and what we had done was we had made teams and the team consisted of one mh6 with a FLIR two ah sixes and two a10s and our job and we had you know multiple teams and we had corridors on Western Iraq and we just flew the corridors and we cleared out the vizobs made sure no scuds were there and you know that was our our initial while everyone else was concentrating on the primary push uh out of Kuwait into Iraq we were you know uh TF dagger with the ground SF guys very low key out on the west making sure that you know the Iraqis weren't able to draw uh other countries into the war as well the uh there wasn't a lot of resistance you know we had comment Communications intercept so we heard the Iraqis talking with the these visual observation posts and it was uh I remember it just being sad you know we dropped leaflets and said hey we're going to come out here in a couple days you guys shouldn't be there so they're calling back and like hey you guys need to come get us you know the Americans are coming you know and their command is saying yeah no and if you leave we'll kill you you know and and it was just you know sad because you got to figure you know these are the lowest of the low in the Iraqi Army that are out there but you know it's a job to do and um it I was always able to detach myself like that I didn't consider them you know people uh you just if in my um you know my thought process I couldn't I it was a job we were all professionals hell I'd been in the unit you know for quite some time and all the guys there were always you know professional so it's I don't remember us especially in the beginning you know getting together and talking about our feelings well what do you think should we do this this doesn't seem right it was like man sucks for those guys and so that's tough that's a tough call to make I mean it's not it's not a hard call to make I suppose you're gonna do it but that's not what you're imagining right when you are getting ready to go fly guns it's hey this guy's bad clearly I gotta go after him and yeah that's a tough one I've not heard that before it's not one that that we felt good about you know there's missions that I felt very good about because you knew what these people had done you know just evil people but this was not one of them yeah how about oh yeah keep going Steve sorry oh I just said you know but it wasn't really the the people or the enemy situation that that really um but had me uh concerned during those initial stages it was you know we're in the western part of Iraq we don't have very accurate weather forecasting we don't have real good you know Maps or Intel it was just kind of we'll go out you know and see what happens you know and like okay and you know as we flew out there I mean it was dark and I I think the most uh concerned the hell I'll say scared you know I was scared was I never really was scared and I a threat you know enemy or something like that because you know we had been trained I knew what to do you know it was usually not a fair fight you know we're bringing a machine gun to a knife fight and uh that never really bothered me what most concerned me is going out and these blowing sandstorms with you know no visibility um there's bad guys out there and if we have to land then what you know now we're kind of on our own and that happened multiple times you know we're out there and uh I said we had the corridors and so we'd go out there and you know we'd talk to another team that was coming back and like hey what's going on guys like oh man weather's crap we're going back it's okay good luck you know and we keep going in the same direction you know and and I was flying Trail wingman at the time and I said hey you know everyone else is going back should we go back I don't know we're just gonna go for a couple more minutes and you know next thing you know it's a blowing blizzard Sandstorm you know that's just crazy um one night we hit a uh a Target it's not like about a gas station and again you know these are all very lightly defended um no chance really of us being hurt from the enemy but we uh we engage this uh this objective area and I can't see anything after we do the engagement you know it's just bad and so I'm flying with the company commander and I'm like hey I don't see the ground anymore he goes I got it so he grabs the controls you know okay yeah and you see lead nope I don't see lead we don't see the MH and you know now I can tell do you really see the ground there's no way you see the ground go I lost it ah so you know now we're both fighting for the controls to try to keep us level we're at 50 feet and we come up on a brdm just an old brdm that's sitting there I don't know of anyone's on it or not but it gave me a a visual reference so I slammed the aircraft down and we're all you know that was horrible so now we're trying to call the rest of the team and there everybody's broken up because the sand was just bad um but it's just something I remember you know that that happened a couple times a week and we did missions every night it was just the West the western part of Iraq was what scared me the most just because of weather it was just always horrible and we you know it it didn't stop us from going wow you know I always find it difficult explaining to people how dangerous the weather is for a pilot and it's just not it's hard to understand I think if you haven't been in it and you hear ground guys who will go out in anything you know like it doesn't matter what the weather is we're going to sleep out there but there is something about the weather when you're flying that's really hard I don't know if you've had experience I'm sure when you're at the liaison officer for Siege of soda for you know Special Forces special ops task force you're probably having to explain this regularly the only impact of the weather yeah so you can't wrap their head around that was probably the toughest thing I did you know and My Philosophy was so I I did this job for 18 months um mainly get promoted to cw5 because I'd never been out of the company but so I live with the ground force for 90 days at a time and I'm the only Aviation guy down there so it's it's me against them you know and if some if we did something wrong you know they're up there making you know a little stick chart up brown here one two three wrong you know and so I'd get up there you know I'm like there is no doubt that the people that we worked with and four were the greatest in the world but you know I also recognize that no one there's none better than the task force 160th uh for helicopter Pilots you know support personnel and everyone I mean they're the best no doubt and so after a while I kind of got a little fed up you know so Steve walks up there in my short my t-shirt and I write down you know SFS yep green and I start putting a couple notches on there and I go sit back down at my desk you know and they all kind of stop like I said there's probably 20 dudes there yeah and uh they're all looking like what are you doing I'm like yeah your guy uh did this and he wasn't supposed to do that he was supposed to do this and they're like oh oh look lapping's getting ballsy you know and so it kind of became a you know a little competition after that but they respected it you know as long as for sure as long as I you know was respectful but I didn't want to get my ass kicked by you know any of the 20 dudes in there no yeah yeah no this is not big army right I mean this is your Delta and that I'd have been taped to a chair pretty quick I'm sure can you talk us through um up or objective reindeer I think it is um context for that and what goes on in that particular event so we had um we had done two months and we're out in um buyout now you know we changed psyop airport Saddam International to Baghdad so that uh he's no longer you know a figure and we're living there and we think you know mission complete again and all that good stuff so Steve goes home and I'm home for maybe a week and a half and I get a phone call and it's like Steve come back we're gonna start rotating you know we're not done yet I'm like oh okay so now I go back and um this is a a rotation you know that goes on for the next you know 8 10 11 years and one of the things that we did uh initially was they call us up and they said hey we've got a terrorist training camp um what we're kind of waiting to see what's going to happen because the 101st has been given the mission to to eliminate it like okay well why aren't they going to do it well they've had it for two days and they say they need two more days to plan for it but the CG wants it done soon when does he want it done tonight but ah I mean it's just another mission yeah so we get the uh the thumbs up and we move all of our uh assets that we need for that night out to al-assad which is out in the western part of Iraq and we plan a mission with the Rangers and it is a couple companies of the Rangers and four Blackhawks with uh two AHS two teams of ah just so four AHS excuse me f-16s ac-130s and what's most memorable about that is train like you fight so we had done scenarios like that with the Rangers you know first Battalion okay great you know three months later Third Battalion four months later second Battalion and you know it was so familiar to us because you know we just do it over and over again and that's all this was initially was you know hey we're planning a mission and that's why we could do it within 24 hours we planned the mission and we executed just like we had done in the training scenario so we could have been in Fort Benning you know and and executed it just like that um obviously you know we had the the combat stake in it and there were some Rangers that were wounded thank God no one was killed but I think we were at 90 Terrace and all of them uh did not fare well and you know unfortunately we did have a couple Ranger casualties on that but the mission was it's very timed and the time sequence is very precise so the f-16s are going to hit it in the AC-130 is going to hit it and then the a86s are going to hit it well I was uh I was the fmq in the lead cockpit meaning that the flight lead is responsible for everything and the fmq does you know whatever the flight he tells them to do and make sure that he's set up but the difference between the assault aircraft and the attack is that the flight lead is usually flying and the fmq is navigating so fmq lapping has the map in front of them leading a eight-ship assault Force yeah it was four Blackhawks and two Chinooks and then two little birds and you know when this was our first real big mission you know that we were going after 98 dudes and so we're going up there and you know now the flight lead turns and goes are you sure this is right this doesn't look right you know and you never need never need that little bit of you know hesitation you know I'm like stick with what you know stick with what you know you know and I'm like yep just keep going this way that's what you're saying to yourself yeah exactly I'm not going to let them talk me out of it um and we get up there and you know the pre-assault fires are going from the AC-130 they're supposed to turn off they're not because they're having a good time you know still shooting we're yelling at them stop stop so they finally turn off and we roll in um with their two AHS you know and even after we had dropped some uh 500 pound bombs so the ACs engaged them for a couple minutes they're still bad guys left and so as we turn at our uh Ravine and you know again we know exactly where we're going we know exactly where they should be and sure enough you know there they are well they still got a little bit of fight into them they're shooting at us really the first time I had seen tracers come at us you know I'd seen him go up in the air before out on the Fizz OBS but uh it was just you know that was kind of sad you know like oh man look at those guys now it's like holy [ __ ] you know um they're shooting at us and so the Mike does a good job and we eliminate the threat there uh for the most part but at that same time so what we're doing is pre-assault fires and then the Blackhawks land you know 30 seconds after us and when the Rangers step off you know they had a couple casualties wound wounded and so we stay on station for a couple hours we do a target handoff with other ah team and it was just for the most part uh very successful and so it was you know an attribute uh to all the planning that we'd done you know in training and it it paid off when you're coming in I mean I can just feel the pressure if flight leads asking you hey are you sure we're in the right spot here um I can't even imagine I mean this hinges on you getting to the objective and and there's no I guess the year there's no GPS this is you on a map so by then we had GPS's but This was um it wasn't there weren't any reference marks you know so now we call them a piss a point in space and you know you just go out to a piss and you turn then the you had to track the satellites because there wasn't good satellite coverage so sometimes the GPS works sometimes it didn't and so you couldn't count on it and so and you didn't and you know the uh the assault guys were behind us and they turned off at the RP but I'm so now I'm having to get the ah you know on our uh our engagement uh heading because you know if not we're going to be shooting into the ground force and we want to make sure we're not doing that so it yeah that was probably up to that point one month the most stressful time that I'd had you know with a with an engagement when you transition from navigation into the attack profile there to go and take a shot as the fmq guy are you the one who's going to end up doing the bump and the shot or are you handing that off to slightly nope yeah that's all flight leads to the flight lead is primarily responsible for Rounds On Target you know no errors and he did just that you know he put it into there and uh he did a couple more engagements and then if if it's a good flight lead he's going to turn it over because the fmq who flies with a flight lead is pretty experienced guy you want an experienced cockpit up their lead you know getting you up there and so he let me fly and and I was able to do some engagements with some other guys and uh and reads so a couple of the guys you know they probably weren't in good shape but you know they were crawling out and we we still got calls for fires on them and uh you know so Mike gave me his crumbs to you know clean up it sounds like a pretty big um Ground Force as well on a static Target like that how um was it difficult I don't know if you recall was it difficult to kind of Orient here's where are are for like the friendlies are versus the enemy was it fairly easy to deconflict that in that scenario I thought so because it you know it was planned out we knew what everyone was going to be doing there uh I believe three different hlz's so we knew where they were going to be they they're all marked you know with their IR lighting and they've got their forward observers you know have their um marking apparatuses you know and we're like Hey where's the flot who's the forward guy okay there you are and we're able to talk and just really control the movement of the ground force and the fog of War wasn't there now I will tell you you know when you're doing jump through your ass without knowing really what the ground force is going to do especially during the day then it's much more you know uh I I'd say more deliberate you know you're just not going to go in there and shoot because you aren't sure you know the effects um and I think did you not get a DFC in that one um yes for reindeer uh the the both Crews got uh distinguished pretty amazing that's amazing congrats on that geez um the other one that I was hoping we could talk about was and actually this is kind of like a it's amazing how many opportunities here for the operations you had that we could choose from but just looking through some of these could we talk about uh Leadville I think it is sure so uh I guess we've been over about two years and everything is at night you know night stalkers we own the nights uh ground force moving during the nights um men with green faces you know and it's all oriented during the nights we'll come to find out that the bad guys have been moving around during the day kind of at will and so the command didn't like that and they wanted to come up with a means to be able to stop them well you know you already have a good portion of the force deployed we've got troops in Afghanistan we've got troops in Iraq and then we've got you know the ready force that we always have so I mean what are we going to do how are we going to stand up another half Hilo assault for us well we can't I mean we're just you know we're stretched then but you know the the task force CG says let's make it happen and so of course you know the ground force comes up with something and it you know what they decided was well we're going to do a very small and light um task force and we're gonna shock and awe and then get the hell out of there you know so we're gonna do a hit surprise and then we'll leave and let the battle space owner come in and clean it up so basically what that meant was is that if there was a bad guy who was leaving a bad area going to another bad area that if we could catch him between those two areas then we had an opportunity you know to stop the vehicle and exploit that and not be in such a bad position with a small uh shoot we had I guess the ground force comprised of about 20 guys so when you're talking about 20 assaulters out in the middle of Iraq and we went all over that country you know so it's not like we did not pick where we went you know we were told uh where we were going and some of the places were not were not good and so uh this being one of those situations um we also had criteria if the mission called for it that we could do a uh a house assault otherwise you know we only did uh day VI which is a vehicle interdiction we're going to get this car between a and b and if he gets too close to you know to be then we let him go he you know he beat us that day well if the hvt the high value Target the enemy is deemed to be an acceptable risk for a uh building assault then you know that's what we're going to do and so this particular Mission we got information that the planner for the Madrid Spain uh train bombing was in country doing some recruiting so we forward staged down to Baghdad and what we called it was the triple Deuce Hunt Club we had uh two little birds with uh two MH sixes two a86s and two Blackhawks with about 20 guys and that's all really that we could afford despair for this mission but it turned out to be real effective you know with that mission criteria so we're down waiting you know and it's uh it's hot it's uh it was May May 2006 um Mother's Day and we were still defining you know our TTP tactics techniques and procedures and we had done some a bunch of Vis but you know later on we got real good at it but this time you know we're still working on some of uh some of our tactics and we did a call that they had a uh a voice intercept they know where this guy's at and we're usually not told where because you know they don't know they kind of know an area so they just tell us take off head south 185. so we take off we're heading south 185 and all of a sudden you know then we started getting more Intel hey it's a blue the proverbial blue Bongo uh blue Bongo he's uh you know okay turn yeah probably go left uh one seven zero and then you know a couple minutes later okay here's the grid where he's at so now we have a a objective to go to uh we can start kind of setting it up but he's at a location and so we're like okay are we waiting for him to leave and they're like nope this guy warrants a a building assault well before they left um you know we usually get a picture of the building so the Blackhawk guys can and the the little birds can formulate their Landing plan and we weren't able to get that but I think that they got it in routes saw what it looked like and you know so you know literally we're 10 minutes out you know formulating our plan you know that's kind of about shooting from the hip well as we get up closer you know we're told from the asset that's watching the target vehicle yep he's there he's moving towards the vehicle it looks like he's going to leave after all and so we're told if he leaves engage him so the vi missions had um either you know capture um shoot who's ever in there like the driver or something but keep the the hbt alive or um terminate everybody you know it's a kill Mission well this was definitely a kill Mission because this was a bad guy everyone who was with him was a bad guy so we're told you know this uh kill Mission if he attempts to leave you know engage the vehicle so now we're told as we get closer they can hear us and so we're being told that they know you're there they're starting to haul ass well it's too late by then so I'm Trail uh wingman again for for the lead aircraft he bumps bends it over at the top and engages this Bongo truck and it just goes up like a match head you know they got explosives in there it's it's a just a very high volume of of ammunition and other crap bomb making materials in there um as I bend over you know and what I'm referring to that is at the top of the the bump you know now you're looking at things you're assessing what you're going to do and it's kind of obvious to me like well no need to shoot there he's you know Target destroyed so we come off cold uh two does and we go to holding now and we're like shoof man that's pretty bad well the ground force lands because they're going to go over and they're going to do their uh their sensitive site exploitation SSE they called it and you know find out why this guy's there because usually bad guys are with more bad guys well as they get there you know their shots fired from the ground so it's it is it's been confirmed it's another bad guy location so now we've got an assault force on the ground and receiving fire and now we're trying to assess the situation to kind of go back a little bit when we called the battle space owner and this is in the yusufia Triangle we asked them we always give them a heads up once we're there hey we've got a small assault Force that's going in your battle space we need your qrf numbers and how soon you could be there and the the response we got back was uh yeah no they're like what do you mean yeah we ain't going in there you know that is the worst place in Iraq right now one they they didn't have the capability to go in there they just didn't have the numbers you know they were barely able to have some Ops that um were on the periphia of this area oh yeah they had shot down two Apaches in this area within the last I think 40 days and you know so now we know that there's a aired or uh ground-to-air threat so we knew going in there that we wanted to hit and get out well while we're going in there you know they're they're feeding this casts close hair support so we've got uh slowly we've got some f-16s f-15s coming over to us just in case well we get on on the objective we engage the vehicle the ground force is on there and now they start taking you know fire um we decide we're going to go ahead and hit the building and so the AHS move off to the West we uh drop a j Dam on the building and I'm just looking at it and you can just not imagine anybody living through this airstrike and maybe you know it takes a minute for the smoke to clear in the dust and you're just looking at like man 100 good hit good hit right on and it you know as I'm congratulating you know the team freaking door or Rubble opens up and people start walking out and you're just like no way so now it's two three four you know seven or eight people walk outs uh women included you know and so now the the ground force wants to get over there and you know interrogate them and as they move towards the building start receiving more fire and now it has turned into a you know a pretty good gunfight on the ground and you know we're in our holding we're waiting for calls for fire and sure enough all right now the uh the day tax calling I said and we're doing shooting very close and we're doing danger close which is you know shoot I think that the closest I shot same with the lead was probably within you know 30 feet I mean he's very close in Canal that we didn't shoot Rockets you know we shot many but we had that relationship working with these guys they knew you know that um that we could shoot that close and not shoot them Steve what sorry just real quick what altitude like when you guys were bumping and coming over uh for a shot that close how what was your distance from the target at that time how high were you think so we didn't get much above 50 to 100 feet during the day because you know we're trying to make sure we don't yet yeah so when we bumped you know we'd bump up to maybe you know two or three hundred feet if we had to to acquire the target but we we you know during the day we did not want to get up in our normal altitude you know hundreds of feet during the night um but yeah this is you know you're flying right over the top of the trees and so we had a lot of engagements you know at close altitude you know shooting down you know to 50 meters before breaking off and uh it just it went until we were Winchester meaning that we didn't have any more ammunition and we had to go back to the far and re-arm refuel and come back and I think we had done that twice and during that time again this is a bad area you know so as we're there longer the locals are starting to um close in on the objective area and so as I remember coming back from the fart and flying over people and they're moving towards the direction of the objective um I I this is bad people don't move towards the objective area so we talked a little bit about it in the cockpit and we said okay anyone who's moving towards objective is enemy you know but that's just kind of weight that's not you know engage anybody just yet and uh about that time we took some rounds to the rotor blade like son of a [ __ ] I just flown over this guy who had gotten out of a pickup truck and I knew it was him so it kind of pissed me off that you know I let him go you know because I wasn't sure if he was a combatant or not and you know turned out that yeah he was um the other aircraft has has taken some damage they got shot uh their gun cable the radio so things are just kind of going bad for us you know it's it's turning into a pretty good fight and we're uh just shoot you know for it's an hour now you know that we're fighting and that's about 55 more minutes than we wanted to be there but we can't leave because [Music] um they they wanted it to be on the objective and make sure you know that they were getting all the Intel that they could and it was a pretty it was worth it but they're dropping bombs you know they've got the cat the stack and so when you talk about a cast stack it's you know you've got an aircraft at 8 000 and you've got two more at 8 500 and they're just stacked all the way up for ten thousand feet and they're just dropping bombs and you know it's um it's a very busy day for the jtac and after a while we've kind of become combat ineffective you know I've got uh well excuse me one story so after our blade is is shot you know the aircraft's not acting good so I know where the the talk is you know where the commander is and uh and the radio the jtac so we land the aircraft by them and we do an emergency shutdown you know no cooldown or anything reach into the back and we each of us have what's called a go bag or a three-day bag and then it you know we've got ammo food you know maybe some licky chewies and stuff like that um we land we each grab our three-day bag and you know we're hauling ass to where the ground force is you know we get there and kind of jump in you know and and uh it was the troop Commander he's just kind of looking at me and I gotta look at him like man you must have thought we look like idiots running over here with this all this pilot [ __ ] on huh he goes yeah you guys did look a little ridiculous but all the ground guys start coming to us now and they're like hey what's in the what's in the go bag you know and I'm like ah you know they're like you got ammo and like yeah I got ammo so you know they open up my bag and they're going through it I'm like oh awesome you know here I am surrounded in the middle of enemy territory and I've got the world's best Special Forces soldiers gonna you know surround and keep me safe well they grab all my magazines and Hand Grenades and then they haul ass you know they've got a job to do I I just you know it just kind of it was funny at the time I knew what they were going to do so now it's just uh two SF guys and two pilots out there you know forming our little perimeter in this little depression and uh we did that and one of the Blackhawks went and got another blade and they bring it back so they get another little bird blade at the at our Barb site um bring it back and as they're inbound you know we get our [ __ ] we run back out to the aircraft take the old the bad blade off the crew chief and uh one of the ground guys running over the new blade we put the blade back on there you know people are shooting at us and you know we're we're pretty good at putting the blade on there we've got it on you know within 30 seconds or so we and meanwhile um the other aircraft had landed at our aircraft and we had went out there and taken all of our ammunition out of our aircraft and gave it to him so he could continue fighting you know while while we're down so this is just one aircraft that's down yes I didn't okay yeah so the other aircraft has taken rounds but they're still flyable okay but uh because our blade you know it was uh at the trailing Edge and for you know those who aren't familiar with uh a moving rotor blade it doesn't do real well when it's uh when the aerodynamics are are changed in it so we got a new blade on there it's not tracked or anything but it'll fly and so we get up um we've got some some ammo with us and we go back into engagements you know we're there for probably another 15 minutes uh engaging targets and it was it became usually the AHS are controlled by the ground force right you tell us what you want us to shoot but it became uh just so many targets that we were just shooting on our own you know and I couldn't talk with lead because his radios were out but I saw what needed to be done and so we we picked our own targets and we engaged them um red who's flying next to me you know it's pointing stuff out when we're running low and I I was never big on the concept of you know throwing grenades or shooting the M4 out but I mean this was an instance where we were low on ammo we didn't have a lot so Don's shooting his you know M4 out and with me yelling at him don't shoot us down you know because the easiest thing to do is go go into a tight bank and he's shooting out you know now he's shooting through the rotor blades themselves so we did that now we don't have any M4 ammo left or anything and uh the other aircraft you can tell they're coming over trying to get our attention that they're having some some flight control issues now so we take off um but sorry we know we need to take off and before this we had said hey we need some help out here you know we're combat ineffective now and at the MSS the mission support site which is probably maybe 20 25 minutes away we've got the night crew and the night crew is you know sleeping because it's the middle of the day but we uh asked them to to come and relieve us so they're given a phone call up there they wake them up the guy as you know no questions asked jumping in their Chariots of death another ah team comes out and as we're leaving um I do a battle hand off because lead can't talk because radios are all shot out and tell them say Hey you know here's the situation we've been holding to the West things ain't going good over this way you know you guys may want to try the east and they give us a okay you know a lot of hesitation not a lot of questions their their primary intent is to get over and talk to the jtac who's going to control them and give them the ground situation so they can go to work well we head off to buy up and do a uh run on Landing with a skid aircraft over in the little taxi area get out everything's okay he's flyable but you know definitely have some combat damage so we determined that we can make it back to the MSS we'll get back there let maintenance take a look at it reload and then we'll go back and relieve the other guys well we get back to the MSS and as maintenance is coming out uh you know we're going to go in and you know maybe get a bottle of water or something while they're fixing everything they came and told us that uh sorry the other team was engaged and Trail was shot down both killed so you know they had just got there and what had happened was we found out later is that that uh anti-aircraft unit that had shot down the Apaches was you know right over in that area and so they didn't really have much of a chance you know they went into uh you know an engagements and uh they had to climb up to get above the the power lines which put them in you know just uh right where the other guys needed them and so they engaged Chuck to just uh shot down crashed and burned and Lead was shot up enough where he couldn't fly and so you know they got our aircraft ready we're getting ready to walk out and crank and go back out and uh that's when we got word that we're not allowed to go back geez and I have to assume Steve like you probably knew these guys so well same unit right I mean it's I mean these are just it's just the night crew from your company yeah so cw5 JB weeks and Major Matt Worrell who was uh just you know senior Cruise you know and the lead aircraft had had senior members and and it's and uh you know mention the names but obviously with Jamie and Bubba um if there was one gun pilot you know and you know no [ __ ] who taught me you know most of of what I knew as a gun pilot was Jamie you know he was just a uh down to earth Alabama boy Cobra Apache pilot and uh just you know the best sense of humor and uh those are our first aias in Country and you know to not be able to go back out there and help or at least you know oh God to go back on station when they came you know to relieve us you know and the feeling that I had when I did that battle Handover with them you know it's like oh man thank God these guys are here you know that they saved us you know and then the guilt you know is after they were shot down and you know we're safe you know back the MSS and we can't go back you know it's it's just got too hot and so they didn't do any more no one else could go to the objective until it got night and so you know a couple hours went by I mean they're just continuously dropping bombs the knights uh crew scrubbed all their missions you know obviously that the primary Mission now is to go back and recover the remains and get the ground force out of there and so they do that they go out there with just full force and the bad guys knew you know not to [ __ ] with them because it would not have turned out well so they recover the remains uh x-fill the ground force and you know brought back the Fallen Angels which is what the uh down Personnel or cold so it was uh very tough day you know Mother's Day both of them married with kids I have to imagine after that amount of time you've spent in service by then that especially in aviation like you've seen fatalities but this must have been on another level yeah it was you know being personally involved right there you know and and us being the ones that called for them you know I guess being like a commander you know hey charge that machine gun you know that that is something that needed to be done it was you know it was all of our jobs but you know there was a sense of guilt for that definitely I um were you able to to get back in the cockpit again relatively easily the next few days whenever it was you had to get back up or does that weigh on you or did you just have to push it out you know I think again I was able to to remove myself from that you know very sad um the other Crews uh went back to escort the bodies back to the U.S I stayed and we didn't do missions the next night you know in a little ceremony and then the day after that you know we went to work you know and it's just yeah it's it didn't stop geez um one of the things that I wrote down as you were talking just because of all the the hell you've seen and it may have been that night but or that day sorry but is is there a particular discussion or call you had in the cockpit that you particularly remember like this is one of the hardest I ever had to make or one of the toughest discussions we ever had to have when you were up there for that particular objective just any it may I guess what I'm saying is maybe it was on that objective but if you think about the other times you've been flying is there a uh is there a particular call or conversation you had that you you think back on like that was that was deep um so they all seem to fall under the day missions you know because they just Anything Could Happen yeah but you know I I don't regret most of what I did you know I was out as everyone was professionals you know that's what we did we were over there to hurt bad people stop them from doing what they were doing and never had any malicious intent you know it was our job however you know [ __ ] happens and a couple things that I remember is um when I was talking about you know the the infancy stage of the day VI well uh a white Bongo looks like a white Bongo looks like a white Bongo and before we had the ability to see what the the ISR asset was looking at you know before we had our own screens we kind of talk through it and if you've ever talked to anybody you know to going somewhere during the day it's extremely difficult so you with a four three to four second delay so now we're flying and you know our job is to go up and engage this uh White Bongo to stop them and you know okay the vehicle so this is this is the the feed we would be getting from the the asset that's watching the vehicle all right he's uh on Highway One traveling in a high rate of speed passing a oh looks like a blue building oh there's two cows okay and then you know we'd see it and then you know the intent was for us to identify the right vehicle and then you know do our engagement well we came up on one and you know there it is and um one of the aircraft who was assigned to stop the vehicle um attempted to stop the vehicle and as we're engaging the vehicle we're hearing the ISR talk to us okay he just passed a you know a Corral on the right hand side you know and everyone you know who's in the half is thinking oh [ __ ] you know we just engaged the wrong vehicle that's not this one yeah yeah and so you know as we um left you know because you slow down we're like okay let's get back on it so we continued and we found the right vehicle engaged it and completed the mission so you know maybe 15 20 minutes we get done doing the you know the the SSC there we get everyone back on board and we fly south and we pass that vehicle and be in the wrong vehicle you know it's a father holding his son you know that we killed inadvertently but you know it's just so that that's probably one of the things you know that I remember the most of something that I wish we could have taken back have back yeah yeah you know and he's just looking at us and we just fly back you know you know we wave to him like you know hey sorry you know and and we went back you know and he was compensated you know as much as you can compensate somebody for that but that was probably one of the shittiest times I can imagine Jesus um uh so this went by way faster than I thought it would Steve I'm sorry for taking so much of your time um no not at all I don't even know where are we at a couple hours now so sorry no no this has been great um I know since you've been out like you still have to you're still involved with supporting the war fighter you're still involved with veterans um how do you think back on some of these moments like um do do you do these anniversaries come back to you as you think about like when when Jamie weeks passed away um some of these more dangerous moments do they kind of reflect year on year you know that's one of the things that that the community and whole and the unit does you know I just came back from the 40th anniversary uh at Fort Campbell and the largest turnout that we've ever had and I try to go back to those you know at least the 10-year anniversary but the unit does it right I mean there's no doubt you know that the gold star uh family member program that they have to take care of everyone um I I always feel I never do enough you know and no one does how can you you know ever do enough for for someone who's lost but um they're never forgotten you know we had a uh a couple training deaths you know we were doing over water training and we lost a soldier to drowning um and you know that was probably one of the hardest things you know he's underneath my aircraft and um has had an equipment failure and it not that I remember him more so than anyone else but there was some family you know tragedy there also involved and so every every day any an event happened you know I remember it but I also don't I don't think I've ever had any personal issues you know with with PTSD or anything like that I've been able to you know compartmentalize that and uh so I feel very fortunate because I know how tough it is you know on others and uh and I do have times you know when I reflect and I kind of need to be by myself but for the most part I think I'm able to lead a normal life yeah so there's two questions I like to ask everybody before uh before we break and one of them is as you were flying was there anything and this is specifically in combat but probably the same Loadout that I would imagine you'd have but is there anything that you always wanted to have with you like a good luck charm something that somebody gave you that had sentimental value a picture an item like that I can't think of anything so I was never um superstitious if you will you know a lot of people had things on there I always wanted to have you know more gas and more bullets I guess hahaha I like it I like it it sounds like you had a good go bag though as well yeah I I got a lot of [ __ ] from my my you know co-workers that uh because I spent a lot of time building that bag I mean I had a little Hatchet in it and all other kinds of things and you know I used to kid them said hey if we go you know if we have to land which I had done at least three or four times and you try to come over and get [ __ ] out of my bag uh it ain't gonna work out well for you oh and you'd share with me yeah high demand obviously when it came in need um and then just the last question I ask everybody you talked about a lot of somber moments um some sacrifice on a great scale and a very long long period of service um as you look back on that Steve and you think about it would you go back and do that again 100 percent I said I don't regret anything um obviously you know staying in 31 and a half years uh they kicked me out you know I was at the end my legal contract but it the Army was so good to me it was good to my family you know all three of my kids were born in Fort Campbell Kentucky um I don't know if my wife would answer the same you know and and I haven't mentioned her here but you know gone I was in the 160th for 21 years probably averaged you know 200 to 230 days gone out of the year so you can imagine who raised our kids and just incredible you know work that that she did um again I don't know what her answer would be for that but I think it would be you know because of the support that we had through the unit and friends I think she'd say the same thing but uh so much respect to all the wives and family members for supporting you know those that that deployed yeah agree entirely I can't imagine the uh the amount of work that went into that with uh and I think when you mentioned those 200 plus days that's probably pre and post 911 just even the training op Tempo is so high there so it doesn't matter if it's combat I mean combat only makes it more dangerous but the time away is it's always there for y'all um Steve I don't know if you have a book in you one day but I think you got enough stories we didn't even touch on Jessica Lynch Saddam is saying there's a lot more there so thank you so much for the time um sharing this with us has been really interesting and thanks for being so real about everything thank you Ryan I appreciate it uh I enjoyed talking with you and sorry I went on so long no not at all I'm glad I just realized how long it had been so thank you very much appreciate it Steve I hope you enjoyed this combat story uh you all know that I love hearing from another pilot especially someone in 160th their skills are just on another level so let's jump into some listener comments we've got uh first one here it's a YouTube comment on Billy Billingham it's from Wayne Pratt he says I love this podcast and it's great to see British soldiers on the show watching from the UK would like to see Christian Craighead and Nims purgia tell their stories Billy is a true inspiration in the UK to anyone wanting to join the military yeah and definitely not just the UK had a lot of really positive feedback from many Americans who just love hearing that story and obviously we're so close the Brits and the and the Yanks as they like to say so it feels like one of our own as well but this this particular comment was interesting because uh the reference to Christian Craighead and Nims purga I've reached out to both of them if anyone out there has a way to get me in contact and get them on the show please do I would love to get them on big fans of both of them if you don't know them just take a quick look um online to see some incredible stories of Bravery sacrifice and and pushing the limits in a way that many of us never see the next comment is a YouTube comment on the Lisa Jaster interview and it's from Ted Archibald says I love your story thank you for sharing the engineer's perspective my father-in-law was in the Royal Engineers serving the Canadian military in World War II and your experiences Echo some of his in scrounging resources and material that's so true and I position that that interview as a lot about Lisa's experience with getting through Ranger school setting you know like breaking some barriers but I also and I think what got overlooked is her time as a combat engineer just as an engineer in general and what they do on the battlefield and how they enable operations now they're rolling around outside the wire with no protection besides themselves they don't have any um SF team that's helping them get through or get down at different main routes they have to go and literally figure out where they're going to get material get it to where it needs to be they are the ones who make this possible for us to be forward deployed to where we were so it's an interesting story if you're ever curious about hey how did that fob even get there how did it get the resourcing it needed like it's people like Lisa so thank you for leaving these comments really appreciate it thanks for the support everyone hope you all have a great rest of your day or week stay safe

Channel: Combat Story

Views: 140,728

Keywords: 160th Night Stalker, AH-6 & MH-6 Pilot, DFC, 160th SOAR, Silver Star, CW5 Steve Lapping, Night Stalker, Global War on Terror, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, Chief Warrant Officer Lapping, Airborne, Does 160th SOAR see combat?, Are 160th SOAR pilots?, Are Night Stalkers special forces?, History of the 160th SOAR, 160th Special Operations Air Regiment, Becoming A Night Stalker, US Special-Operations AH-6 MH-6 Helicopters, MH-6 Little Bird Helicopter

Id: pkVMJ1JcqqM

Length: 121min 1sec (7261 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 26 2022