OPERATION HERRICK

This has been a busy week for the Hercules of 904 EAW with tasking hitting a peak during midweek. In all, over 2400 passengers and almost 280 tonnes of freight were transported including a contingent of personnel from a Coalition partner nation and 2 of the new Panther Command and Liaison vehicles being delivered to the British Army. A number of injured personnel were moved by Hercules to connect with a Tristar aircraft for onward transport to treatment in the UK.

In what has been a fairly busy week for the ground forces, the majority of sorties for the Harriers of 904 EAW were in direct support of Coalition troops in contact with enemy forces. Although the Harriers dropped no weapons this week they were employed heavily providing overwatch, searching compounds and tree-lines for hostile forces. Two Shows of Force were undertaken this week, once to deter hostile forces from attacking and the other to suppress enemy force activity allowing friendly forces freedom of manoeuvre. Two sorties this week proved more exciting than normal for the crew involved. In one, the pilot was forced to abort his take off on the runway in the middle of the take-off run. Leaving his aircraft in the care of the engineering team, the pilot immediately boarded the spare aircraft and took off uneventfully to complete his mission. In the other, an aircraft was supporting friendly forces under heavy fire from hostile troops. Running low on fuel and finding himself unable to take fuel from the nearest tanker aircraft, the pilot was forced to return to base. However, he immediately took off again in the spare aircraft and rejoined the fray allowing the friendly forces to extract themselves and return to their base.

The Comms fleet transported 16 passengers around Theatre.

The Tristar of 902 EAW flew 2 tasks this week, giving over 100 tonnes of fuel to a variety of UK and Coalition aircraft. With the aircraft fully serviceable all week, but not always tasked, the engineering team was able to take the opportunity to anticipate several planned maintenance activities.

OPERATION TELIC

Tasking for the Hercules of 901 EAW was significantly lighter than previous weeks. In all, over 350 passengers and almost 120 tones of freight, including an unusually large fork-lift vehicle, were moved. This has been a particularly frustrating week for the Hercules engineering team. An unusual fault with the navigation system of one aircraft briefly tested their ingenuity, while an elusive and re-occurring technical problem with another aircraft tested their patience and fault-finding skills. As usual, a steady and logical sequence of fault elimination by the skilled technicians overcame the problems.

Images: Cpl Scott Robertson/Cpl Kryssy Lees, RAF.

Header Image: Beyond the Clouds.

Image 1: C17 Arrival, loading and unloading.

Image 2: RAF Harriers.

Image 3: Sergeant Chris Perrio-Stone from 15 Sqn RAF Regiment on patrol outside the Basra COB.

Image 4: C4I Flt dismantling comms lines.

For more images view this weeks Operational Gallery.