CHIEF WARRANT OFFICER 2 RYAN BRIGGS
4-4 ARB
Fort Carson, Colorado

For those of us in the military, especially in a career that requires large amounts of skill for the purpose of ensuring our survival when operating, continued mastery is a way of life. Throughout my career as an Army aviator, I have heard many wise instructors say, "The day when I get in the cockpit and think I know it all is the day that I need to quit." I have looked up to everyone I have ever heard say that statement.

One person I admire, who has made that statement to me many times, is my troop standardization pilot at my first assignment. He was a senior CW4 with more than 5,000 flight hours in an OH-58D scout helicopter and a person I would consider a master of his craft. I was new to the unit in 2012. I had just graduated from flight school and there was still plenty of war to be fought.

Fresh out of training I was deployed and met my unit for the first time when I stepped off the plane in Afghanistan. After several weeks of training flights, I had proven my competence enough to allow me to perform combat operations. It was the middle of the day during the summer. I was in the left seat, monitoring radios and working aircraft systems; my SP was on the flight controls in the right seat. We were monitoring radio calls of enemy activity originating from the ridge, just to the north of a major Army forward operating base. The reports indicated the enemy forces that had been firing mortars and rockets at the base had hidden inside a cave and knew Americans were looking for them. They were scared.

As we circled the mountainside and looked for the area that fit the description of the enemy hiding point, we discussed some of the options we had available to us. The SP was the senior member of the flight of two OH-58D scout helicopters carrying a total of 14 rockets and 600 rounds of .50-caliber ammunition. We were in the lead aircraft, so decisions were his to make as the air mission commander. The threat to our aircraft by advanced systems was low. We were only about 500 meters north of the large friendly base, so he opted to utilize our flare countermeasures as a way to give a show of presence and develop the situation. We found the cave that fit the description and made low passes, using our flares at the mouth.

We began to receive intel that indicated we were in the right spot on the second flyby, so we wanted to attempt to make the enemy react. The plan was to ensure they knew we had found them by flying as close as possible to the cave and dropping a flare into the opening. Imagine if you can a ridgeline, about 6,000 feet in elevation and a few kilometers long with a cave about 10 feet below the top of ridge, about one-third of the way from the right edge of the ridgeline. Like I mentioned before, we had made two passes at the cave already, popping flares in front of it, with no issues. On the third pass, the SP was determined to place a flare into the mouth of the cave and began the maneuver just like the last attempt.

I was still monitoring radios in the left seat, and the second aircraft was in a position to shoot at the cave if the enemy came out to engage us. The next thing I heard was the SP next to me yell, "Oh, sh*t!" I felt the aircraft jerk to the left and heard the overtorque warning in the headset, "Bong, bong, bong." I saw him pull up on the collective control to increase our altitude. As he pulled it to its max upward, the tail of the aircraft whipped right as fast as it could. I saw plenty of red on the gauges and reached for the dash and ceiling to stabilize myself in the seat. I then saw the ground coming at us rapidly. I don't remember if I closed my eyes or not, but the next few moments were a blur as the ground came within inches of the aircraft and the tail barely crested over the top of the ridge with a thump and loud scraping noises.

After that there was silence — at least as much as you could have with a turbine engine 18 inches above your head spinning a rotor at about 500 rpm. We looked at each other and then I heard him tell the other aircraft over the radio, "We've gotta land." I don't know if it was his vast experience that saved us or almost killed us. But in his fixation on ensuring a flare, which only falls from the bottom of the aircraft, entered the cave, we had gotten into a position where we barely avoided striking it and the ground in a high-altitude, hot environment.

Luckily, the SP’s reaction on the controls caused us to avoid any permanent damage to the aircraft and we narrowly escaped rolling down a 6,000-foot cliff. When we landed inside the small FOB, the SP pulled a four-foot branch from the rocket pod on the right side of the aircraft. Since we did not sustain any airframe damage and our mission was over, we took the aircraft and our lessons learned back to the unit at our main operating base. It was a valuable lesson for me in the course of striving for mastery in my craft — one that I have shared many times with other aviators.

Learning from others' mistakes is just as valuable as learning from your own. We spend many hours talking about these types of scenarios and how we can use the knowledge we gain to find different solutions. In this case, there have been many hours of talk about terrain, winds, aerodynamics and tactics that can be used to avoid or succeed in situations where this type of low flying in high, hot and heavy environments are necessary.