Originally Posted by
tartare
Horrific - but no question you'd have to make some rapid military decisions on the flight deck and go regardless of the consequences.
Do C-17s have external cameras that look back at the airframe from the wings?
Tried to google - but unclear.
Assume that the Apaches would be telling the crew they had people hanging off the jet.
I have seen a few well-meaning comments elsewhere sympathising with the transport crews, saying how terrible this must be for them. It is certainly unusual for them to be faced directly with the kinds of "take life to save life" choices faced by the combat arms, but I don't think that framing their choices as "terrible" or "horrific" is helpful. The opposite. I write from the perspective of someone who's taken such decisions.
How each of them deals with it is going to be a personal choice. If it were me, I'd take the view that anyone hanging onto the outside of my aircraft has their own agency and the consequences of their choices are reasonably foreseeable to them. Their choices don't get to affect the prospects of those being evacuated in my aircraft. We go, regardless. That being so, I would not want a camera or an Apache telling me there were people hanging off the outside, and I wouldn't attempt to correlate videos of people falling with any sorties I might have flown. So please don't tell me how terrible or horrific the decision to go "must" have been, because as far as I'm concerned it wasn't, and I don't appreciate the implication that I'm an emotionless psychopath.
My personal take. Others will differ. Hopefully those looking out for the crews (whether colleagues, commanders, friends or family) will avoid clumsy one-size-fits-all approaches. Maybe someone can tell us how train drivers are counselled after on-track suicides? I'm willing to bet that no-one tells them "that must have been horrific"...