Flight Commander Ian Diggle is a man who likes an understatement.
His squadron's first mission flying into the notorious Taliban stronghold of Sangin, will, he smiles, "be quite interesting". A massive crash involving one of his aircraft would be "not nice at all".
In his spare time you can imagine Ian, above, nipping out to the dry cleaners to get his upper lip restarched. Olly Lambert's revealing film follows 27 Squadron from RAF Odiham in Hampshire on their eight week deployment in Afghanistan.
Their job is flying Chinook helicopters in and out of the front line, to deliver troops, supplies and, as we see here, evacuate the injured.
The Chinooks look like giant fireflies buzzing over the landscape and, for the first time, cameras were allowed into the cockpit so we can better imagine what it must be like inside one of these big, noisy targets.
Nothing like Top Gun, as one of them explains, cleaning up after one of the American troops they are ferrying has been air-sick all over his helicopter.
If nothing else, when 27 Squadron return home this film should at least give them a satisfactory answer to the question "So, what did you get up to last weekend?"
By
Jane Simon
17 Comments
siftbotsays...Discarding this video. It failed to receive enough votes to get sifted up to the front page within 4 days.
MINKsays...*waronterror
siftbotsays...Adding video to channels (Waronterror) - requested by MINK.
MINKsays...btw, the RAF really do talk like that. I never heard anyone say "HELL YEAH!!!! THAT ONE'S FROM THE QUEEN, MOTHERFUCKER!!!!"
MINKsays...*save
siftbotsays...Saving this video from the discard pile and sending it back to the queue for one more try; last queued Monday, October 15th, 2007 12:12am PDT - save requested by MINK.
MINKsays...wow, bill maher throws out some truthies, one million votes.
RAF in afghanistan, 10 votes, needs a save.
says it all really.
kulpimssays...*wings
siftbotsays...Adding video to channels (Wings) - requested by kulpims.
kulpimssays...*dead
siftbotsays...This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by kulpims.
siftbotsays...Awarding rasch187 with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.
kulpimssays...*dead
siftbotsays...This video has been declared non-functional; embed code must be fixed within 2 days or it will be sent to the dead pool - declared dead by kulpims.
siftbotsays...Awarding eric3579 with one Power Point for fixing this video's dead embed code.
eric3579says...*findthumb *length=45:25
siftbotsays...The thumbnail image for this video has been updated - findthumb requested by eric3579.
The duration of this video has been updated from unknown to 45:25 - length declared by eric3579.
Discuss...
Enable JavaScript to submit a comment.