Missing Apache
 

Any word on what happened to that AH-64 that was 'shot down' by some peasant in Iraq?

I heard it was bombed a day or so later in an air-strike. Then I also heard it turned out only to be a mock-up the Iraqis quickly put together after trucking the real thing away. But this could've been more bull**** put out by Comical Ali. Apparently we're not to believe everything he said...

Anybody?

Probably in the Shed at Shawbury with all the other Apaches issued to the brown jobs. Well, hey-ho, back to the old faithful Tow Lynx and Gaz when you need a job done.

Why not hand them over to someone who can use them? We're waiting!

No, really - the Iraqis have full-scale models of all our aircraft, ready-prepared for just this eventuality....

CV:p

I saw a 10sec clip of it being driven away intact on a truck; maybe they whacked it later?

ADT

Yawn....yawn....zzzzz

Are they about to modify the captured helfires to carry a WMD warhead?

If James Bond can fly one, surely the lad wat shot it down can do a quick refresher.

The story in the crew room is that alledgedly the pilot in his wisdom decided to use the fuel in his internal tanks first. Knowing that he could fly back to base with exactly the quanitity in the externals, the 'cunning plan' was hatched. The plan was to continue flying and about and fighting the aircraft without the distraction of thinking about fuel, when the internals were low the associated warnings would alert the pilot who would then switch to the externals and Foxtrot Ocscar. But the un-armoured externals were holed by locals taking potshots with the forced landing as a result.

I hope this is just bull and we find out that it was a simple case of engine failure. I find it hard to belive that any professional aviator would be so dumb, but these guys were working their nuts off and must have been exhausted after days of heavy and brave fighting. Whatever the outcome of the investigation my hat is off to all those who proved the Apache to be an awesome fighting machine again.