Dictionary>Well, only one flight this week to write about, and I spent about 30 minutes looking for cool 46 pictures of an Airfield Seizure (the mission we did) but came up empty. Our Escort aircraft: AH-1W's had some great FLIR (forward looking infrared) footage of us landing and dropping off the Marines and then taking off. I'm going to try to get that and as well as some pictures and start putting some media together. I know the pictures and video are a lot more fun to look at than my words, but I'll give a quick description of the flight, and hopefully next time I can post some pictures.
We spent a day and a half planning this mission to take an airfield up on an island just off the north west portion of Okinawa. The scenario was that it was an Island in the Philippines and it had been taken over by terrorists. I was the AFL (Assault Flight Leader) so basically in charge of the six CH-46's and two CH-53's in the flight. Overall the flight went really well, and we inserted 120 Marines from Kilo Company of BLT 3/1 which is the Helo Company for the BLT and extracted 125, the 5 extra were the R&S team that parachuted in the night prior. These large exercises are really great to execute, there's always a ton to learn from them, but they're also a lot of work to plan for. I'm glad the weekend is here, because I am beat. Had to run a PFT this morning as well. Next week we're suppose to finish up MEUEX and I'll likely get my AMC (Air Mission Commander) Check during a NEO (Non-Combatant Evacuation Operation). When we're with the MEU we do these large operations and have to be ready for real world catastrophies in places like China, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, etc. We're still working towards proficiency in a lot of areas, but I'm happy with the progress so far, and our squadron is really coming together as a team.
Anyway, like I said I'll try to post some cool pictures here, maybe when I get to fly at the back of the formation I'll get out my camera and take some good shots.
peace,
Adam