War Moments by Ed Darack

Author:Ed Darack
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Amherst Media
Published: 2018-03-10T16:00:00+00:00

Rocket and Gun Run

Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range, California

Close air support, or CAS (pronounced “cass”), ranks among the most dangerous and difficult missions in military aviation. The reasons for its complexities and potential hazards all relate to the first word of the mission, close—as in close to friendly ground forces, not close to the ground. Some legendary CAS missions have had jets and helicopters firing upon advancing enemy forces just a dozen or so feet from friendlies, meaning even a slight mishap can end in the wrong people getting hit. The mission requires a tremendous amount of “detailed integration” among those on the ground and those in the air. I photographed this Marine Corps UH-1N Iroquois “Huey” helicopter, armed to the teeth with rockets and guns, practicing CAS at the Chocolate Mountain Aerial Gunnery Range in southern California’s Mojave Desert. The live fire gun and rocket runs end with a hard bank and the expenditure of flares—in real world, combat and enemy may take advantage of an aircraft’s ingress into their territory and attempt to shoot it down with a surface-to-air missile, which are thwarted by these flares.

I photographed the Huey using a Nikon D300 with a 200–400mm f/4 telephoto zoom lens from atop Observation Point Feets.

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