November 17, 2003
Over Baghdad: Wary Targets, Yet Confident
By DEXTER FILKINS
AGHDAD, Iraq, Nov. 16 — As the rooftops of the Iraqi capital passed beneath him, the crewman of a Black Hawk helicopter looked down, shook his head and stated what had once again, only the night before, become so tragically clear.
"It's like shooting ducks for them," said Specialist Nik Kayler, 22, over the roar of the rotor. "They could be hiding anywhere down there."
It is not a good time to be a helicopter pilot in the skies over Iraq. In two weeks, the Black Hawks and Chinooks and Apaches that once zoomed overhead with such grace and panache have suddenly become vulnerable. Four American helicopters have been lost over Iraq since Nov. 2, sending 39 soldiers to their deaths.
One copter, a Chinook, was destroyed by a missile fired from a palm grove, and a crowd of Iraqis cheered. Another, a Black Hawk, was brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade.
On Saturday night, in circumstances still unclear, two Black Hawks collided over the northern city of Mosul and plummeted to the ground. Seventeen American soldiers died. American officials said the collision apparently occurred when one of the Black Hawks came under fire and the pilot veered upward, pushing his rotor into the helicopter above.
The collision sent a tremor through the barracks of the Black Hawk pilots and crew at Baghdad's international airport. On Saturday night and Sunday morning, the men gathered to talk about what they might learn from the incident. They brainstormed, as they have done after each downing, for ways to confound an ever more tenacious enemy.
But as the Black Hawks lifted off and landed at their base, the most poignant reckonings were personal. Some of the men here knew those who had died in the collision, and every one of them, whether a friend had perished or not, had only to think of his next mission in the air.
"Deep in my gut, I know the same thing could happen to me," said Lt. Sean Kenney, a Black Hawk pilot, as he prepared to board his craft. "Every night, I see the tracer rounds go up, and I know that one of them one day might hit me."
The pilots who fly the Black Hawks exude steely confidence in themselves, their training and their machines. On any given flight, the odds are in their favor. It is the "lucky shot," as they all call it, that binds their thoughts.
A quick glance at a Black Hawk does indeed inspire a sense of security, or as much of one as is likely in a war zone. At $7 million apiece, the machines are quick and nimble, able to duck and weave with each tilt of the rotor. The pilots sit encased in frames of bulletproof Kevlar. Each Black Hawk has a spare hydraulic system, an extra fuel network and an additional electrical system. The fuel tank, if pierced with a bullet, seals the puncture by itself.
With all of that, the Black Hawk has become the all-purpose aircraft, a kind of flying mule: tough, versatile, able to carry men and matériel almost anywhere, in all kinds of weather, in total darkness. The Black Hawks, with no lights, dart through the night sky invisible; only their sound betrays them.
"It's the best doggone helicopter in the world," said Lt. Col. James Schrote, who commands a fleet of 16 Black Hawks here.
But the vulnerabilities of the Black Hawk, as with any helicopter, are obvious enough. It is far slower than an airplane, so makes for a much easier target. It skims the rooftops, exposing itself to dangers a fighter pilot would never dream of. The Black Hawk helicopter shot down over Tikrit eight days ago was flying just 300 feet off the ground when it was hit with a rocket-propelled grenade. Over Baghdad, Black Hawk pilots coming under fire have sometimes had difficulty turning to get away; they have to watch out for the telephone wires.
The Black Hawk's strengths and vulnerabilities showed themselves in a patrol late Sunday afternoon over the streets of Baghdad. Seen from above, the Iraqi capital is an astonishing sight, its squat buildings stretching for miles in each direction, an ocean of mud bricks broken by the pale green of date palms and the garbage in the streets. It hardly seems the conflicted city it has become.
All of Baghdad is visible this way: the giant green Martyrs Monument to the fallen of the Iran-Iraq war, the buildings destroyed in the current war, laundry flapping on clotheslines, children waving from a football field. The Black Hawk flies so low that it almost seems possible to reach out and touch the people below.
"Strangest thing I've seen is a goat on a rooftop," Chief Warrant Officer Steve Patch said as the Black Hawk raced over the city.
Since arriving in May, the Black Hawk crews working with the First Armored Division have watched the city emerge from the chaos that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein's government. At night, they flew over a city shrouded in darkness; now, with the electricity mostly restored here, it bristles with light.
Colonel Schrote, a veteran of the ill-fated American venture in Somalia 10 years ago, said the city he flies over today has much to recommend it over the Somali capital, Mogadishu, then without a government and broken up by feuding warlords.
"Baghdad is much more civilized than that," he said.
At any point in the hourlong journey on Sunday, one well-placed shot from a rocket-propelled grenade, or a lucky hit from a Kalashnikov rifle, could have sent the Black Hawk and its crew into serious trouble. The shot could come from anywhere: a rooftop, a window, a stairwell.
In some ways, the low altitude preferred by the Black Hawk works in its favor; at treetop level, the helicopter cannot usually be seen until it is directly overhead. Then, in a flash, it has disappeared over the next building. There is very little time to take aim.
On this day, as on most days, the sky above the city stayed calm.
"There used to be parts of the city where we couldn't even fly over," Mr. Patch said.
The evenings are a different matter. Every night, the Black Hawk crews say, the tracer bullets come up to meet them. Flying without lights, racing across the rooftops, the Black Hawks make a difficult target.
"They are shooting at what they hear," Colonel Schrote said.
He figured that more bullets and rocket-propelled grenades had passed by his helicopters than he knew about; in the chaos and darkness, they had gone unseen.
So durable are the Black Hawks that Colonel Schrote said his greatest fear was that his men would be tempted into complacency. Each time they take off in Iraq, he reminds them, they are on a combat mission.
The recent calamities seem a permanent guarantee against anyone here getting too comfortable.
"With the right equipment, with a better aim, they could take down helicopter after helicopter," Specialist Kayler said. "I'm just trying to stay focused."
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