Apache Warrior whirlybird documentary

[Rogerborg]

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6423664/

Just caught this on Amazon Prime video.  Fascinating stuff.

It's the small, tightly told story of an AH-64 company going in for the first time in Operation Sandy Quagmire 2003, composed of cockpit footage (I suspect with just a little help from post production and CGI) and interviews.

I'll not spoiler it, except to say that the striking part is the stark contrast between the bold certainty of their training and mission preparations versus the confused clusterfuck that it rapidly degenerated into, all played out through the actual recorded footage and radio chatter.  It's interesting to see (or not see) that the vaunted optics and electronic systems on AH-64s aren't that omniscient in practice, but you certainly can't fault their survivability.

They say they learned a lot from their mistakes.  I reckon if they'd asked the Russians about the advisability of flying over a bunch of restless natives - fousands of 'em - every one of them (and their mums) armed with AKs then they might not have been so confident to begin with.

 

[Hami]

just started watching this! Check out citizen soldier and hornet's nest too if you haven'ts seen them, both good documentaries! 

 

[Rogerborg]

Cheers, will do.

 

[Guyver1]

If the documentary floated your boat.

Pick up a copy of    Apache by Ed Macy.

Very interesting read. ?

 

[Rogerborg]

Check out citizen soldier and hornet's nest too

Good shouts, thanks.  Citizen Soldier was excellent.  Not too jingoistic, although during a bit of speechifying about Paul Revere and the colonials fighting the British imperialists, it did occur to me that some (not all) of the Afghans they were up against fell into the same category.  Otherwise, very well done and quite touching.

Hornet's Nest, urgh, I'd like to see a cut without the constant overblown soundtrack trying to turn it into a Hollywood action movie.  Also, the journo constantly bigging up himself and the situations and his personal story with his awful Voiceover Man schtick got really tiresome really quickly.

Less would definitely have been more there: the actual footage is great, all they needed was to just show it without heaping noisy cheese on top.