An-124 loading AH's at Wattisham 25/9

[gary1701]

Gents,

As there's a mixture of Apache and civil airlifter images on a military contract, I decided to lump them all in here, which I trust is acceptable. This is the latest An-124 run to move Apaches in & out of Wattisham on Crimson Eagle duties.

Arriving on 23 early on a grey afternoon. Must have drawn a few suprised looks as this came in from the Woodbridge direction.



The Land Rover has RAF Brize Norton on the side...a long way from home!



Loading up three AH1's, note the blades are folded rather than removed (a feature unique to British Apaches) but the stub pylons and the FCR have both been removed.





Going up the ramp.



Nearly done.



OC 'B' Flight, 22 Sqn coming over for a look. The 70th anniversary of RAF SAR markings didn't last very long?



Sun comes out and about to go.



Finally, climbing out on 23, inbound to Brize Norton (presumably for refuelling) before going across the pond. If it follows the usual pattern it will arrive in California soon.



Gary

[urkles]

Nice shots Gary, saw this coming in, you were unlucky with the weather, we were bathed in sunshine at Bentwaters all day!

[cwbalmer]

Nice shots and good to see something unusual up there. And there I was going to go up there to see it tomm! Damn...

[Mr Burns]

The Blades are now only removed when the apache travels on a C17 as the clearance is to small
and for other safety reasons

very nice pics though. i had the joy of working on this when it came back to Brize last night.

[captain scarlet]

Good catch mate.

[gary1701]

Thanks gents. They turn these around pretty quick now. When they first turned up in June 2007 they used to take a day or so to turn them around, but now it's a matter of hours. I just wish more use was made of the runway and ATC services here. I can't remember the last time a RAF C-130 came in, and they used to be fairly common. For rotating the AH's to Afghanistan they have flown the C-17s direct into Wattisham a couple of times upto a few years ago but then stopped (last time was January 2009) and now it's all done through Brize Norton. You'd think the SOG C-130's at Mildenhall would come in for some circuit work, but when one MC-130P turned up for a few circuits earlier this year, that was the first time I'd ever heard of them over here. I suppose it's all down to the general rundown of military aviation in this country.

I'd love to take more pics for the army; they have used some of my pics in the past and the 16 AAB press officer at Colchester has my details as they used my pics for the Apache 100k flying hours event back in May. In this very PC era, you tend to find that the AAC leadership is still rather nervous of the publicity that the Apache can generate and it tends to keep a low profile with the local media. The Apache really only has one role - it's a no frills, pure killing machine, but they try and de-emphasis this as much as possible with the local media, even to the ridiculous point of labelling it as a 'live saving helicopter' in one local news story recently. I think this approach shows a unfortunate, although understandable lack of faith in the majority of the British public to understand that something like the Apache is a necessary evil - the vocal liberal minority have a lot to answer for...

Glad the pics went down well though!

Gary

[F800Srider]

A great set Gary, nice to see something a bit different.
Cheers
Rob

[billydog]

Cracking set mate! That must've been quite a sight coming in over the fence!
Thanks for posting them up.