James Stier

Its been a while hasn’t it? Life just took over and for the last month I have been working with the British Army and Royal Air Force in California on an exercise involving Merlin helicopters. The training is designed to get the helicopters, and more importantly the heli crews prepared for Afghanistan in hot, high and dusty conditions. And boy was it hot and dusty.

Royal Air Force helicopter crews embarked on this intense four-month deployment to the US in advance of being posted to Afghanistan at the tail end of 2009. The Merlin helicopters and their pilots are based at RAF Benson, but are set to augment the UK’s Afghan helicopter force by one quarter when they take up residence there.

The training was held at the simply awesome NAF (Naval Air Facility) El Centro in San Diego – the facilities for working hard and simply relaxing were 1st class for a base in the middle of the Californian desert. Being underneath the helicopters as they performed load pick ups and performed dust landings was fierce, the downwash was littered with rocks, sand and debris in 50 degrees temperatures. The effect on these men, women and aircraft will be to expose them to conditions where they are working at the absolute peak of their performance capabilities, prior to the arrival in Afghanistan.

The RAF is supported by the British Army, I worked specially with Private Haynes and Corporal Gunn from the 21st Signals Regiment and Kingsman Bishop who are MAOTs (Mobile Air Operations Teams) overseen by Master Air Crew Brampton (RAF) and Flight Lieutenant Bell (RAF).

The experience was a great one and hopefully the passion, enthusiasm and hard work the entire deployment put into the exercise is show in my work.

More info here.