F e a t u r e s When Everybody ElseGoes Home
Lieutenant Colonel Sean Tully reports on the drawn-down in Iraq
F
rom the MoD STOP IRAQ STOP Top Line STOP The UK military mission in Basra is complete STOP All UK troops will have
withdrawn by the end of July STOP Any UK military personnel remaining in Iraq will do so at the request of the Government of Iraq STOP
The operation to return British military equipment from Iraq is proving to be one of the biggest logistic challenges undertaken by the British military. The Joint Force Logistic Component, a specialist logistic
team is charged with bringing UK forces and equipment home from Iraq in good order.
Included in the inventory of equipment to be removed from theatre are four Lynx and three Merlin helicopters, ten Challenger main battle tanks and over 70 other armoured vehicles, including Mastiff. Lieutenant General Dick Applegate, Chief of Materiel (Land) said: “It’s hard work and long hours. When we first started, the task seemed impossible but we’ve made steady progress and cracked most of it.”
Supporting this mammoth task is the Joint Helicopter Force (Iraq). The JFH(I) operates three RAF Merlin helicopters to provide the lift and shift capability and are still flying operational sorties into Iraq every day. Flown by RAF crews, with support elements from the Army, Navy and RAF, helicopters remain the movement and logistic workhorse of choice to ensure the drawdown of forces from Iraq happens in good order.
In full body armour and flying tactical profiles constantly honed through the conflict thus far, each Merlin takes off with twin front and one rear-facing General Purpose Machine Guns and over 1,000 rounds of ammunition for each flight. Flares are carried and fired to protect against the possibility of heat-seeking missiles. At night they are often required to fly low level across a featureless desert with only night vision goggles to aid their final descent
8 Autumn 2009
into tight landing areas, often bristling with unlit masts and pylons.
“One of the biggest challenges here is the weather” said pilot Flight Lieutenant Mike Barclay, “It can be fine gin clear at take off but in less than five minutes the wind can whip up the sand into a ferocious storm, making a landing impossible. We have to be ready to make some swift decisions when that happens. The Merlin is a fantastic helicopter, but like any helicopter the heat presents its own challenges. We cannot lift the same payload we can in UK for example, this means careful planning and co-ordination is a constant feature of our activity”.
Squadron Leader Graem Corfield, a senior officer in JHF(I) believed the HC3 Merlin, has coped well with work in Iraq. The air engineer from Telford said: “This has been a big opportunity for Merlin. We weren’t ready to fully exploit the capabilities of the Merlin in 2003 for the initial Iraq operation but it has been deployed here for more than 5 years now and it’s become the airframe of choice for many forces – it’s the transit van of the battlefield. Merlin can do any task we ask of it out here. It can lift a lot of stuff, but it’s a small target in the air and it’s well-protected. It’s been very reliable too.”
The bulk of the 75 personnel currently serving in JHF(I) are from 1419 Flight RAF
www.raf-ff.org.uk
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