Hellfire

May 2006. Pilot Ed Macy arrives in Afghanistan with a contingent of the Apache AH Mk1. It’s the first operational tour for the deadly machines and confidence in the cripplingly expensive attack helicopter is low. It doesn’t help that for their first month ‘in action’, Ed and his mates see little more than the back-end of a Chinook.But when the men of 3 Para get pinned down during Op Mutay, reservations about the fearsome new attack helicopters are thrown out the window. In the blistering firefight that follows, Ed unleashes the first ever Hellfire missile in combat and what had been rumoured as a £4.2 billion mistake quickly becomes the British Army’s greatest asset, as the awe-inspiring Apache is dramatically redirected to fight the enemy head-on.As a young paratrooper, Ed’s dreams of fighting on the front line rested with the SAS rather than the Army Air Corps, but a brutal accident abuptly ended any chance of SAS selection. Learning to pilot and fight in an attack helicopter was Ed’s route back. In ‘Hellfire’ Ed describes the amount of determination and rule-bending it took to make it as one of the best.In this gripping account of war on the ground and in the skies above the dusty wastes of Helmand, Ed recounts the intense months that followed Op Mutay: the steep learning curve, the relentless missions, the evolving enemy and the changing Rules of Engagement.Ed will need every ounce of willpower and skill to succeed over the long, hot Helmand summer, as he and his colleagues find themselves on trial for their lives and for the reputation of a machine on which the British government had staked a fortune. The crucible of fire that awaited them would cement the fate of man and machine forever.