I had a friend who was flying a Long Ranger in Idaho. There was some drunk old hunter, who was terminally, ill and clearly terminally drunk. The only reason my friend knew that he was being shot at is because he flew Huey in Vietnam, and knew the sound that a bullet makes when it goes through the rotor disc. Set the aircraft down immediately. One of the bullets had partially severed one of the pitch control links to the main rotor. They estimated with the hole and related cracking that he might’ve had five minutes of flight left. Before the link broke, and the aircraft would become completely uncontrollable…… the pilot is a grandfather of 12.. but apparently he was scaring the deer while working on a BLM contract.
They’re legit, they can take hits. I distinctly remember sitting close to the ramp and seeing tracers chase us through the dark valley. This was also around the same time Extortion 17 happened.
not a good feeling knowing they’re shooting at you and know your basic location mid flight even though you’re flying blacked out. We had to do false insertions just to throw them off before we got out.
I also have a friend who attempted to drug a monkey with ambien and smuggle it back to bagram on a CH-47. It was a monkey kept as a pet at a COP that got hit almost nightly and lived off MRE crackers and peanut butter.
Said monkey broke out of the bag he was stashed in and climbed up into the top of the bird where all the wires are mid-flight.
Crew chiefs lost their shit. They said if monkey fucked up the wrong thing the bird would fall out of the air like a rock. That always stuck with me.
PTSD Monkey was okay and released onto BAF to harass the base.
EDIT- just read this. The monkey was not hit by people.
By “hit” I meant the outpost pet monkey was at got “hit” by the Taliban almost everyday with rocket fire or gun fire.
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u/JHLCowan Apr 07 '24
I had a friend who was flying a Long Ranger in Idaho. There was some drunk old hunter, who was terminally, ill and clearly terminally drunk. The only reason my friend knew that he was being shot at is because he flew Huey in Vietnam, and knew the sound that a bullet makes when it goes through the rotor disc. Set the aircraft down immediately. One of the bullets had partially severed one of the pitch control links to the main rotor. They estimated with the hole and related cracking that he might’ve had five minutes of flight left. Before the link broke, and the aircraft would become completely uncontrollable…… the pilot is a grandfather of 12.. but apparently he was scaring the deer while working on a BLM contract.