AIR CAV DAYS IN GERMANY: THE COLD WAR ADVENTURES OF REV

Chapter Five Air Cav Work

Revv was not clear on just what the Air Cavalry was supposed to do in Germany. Over the course of the next couple of weeks, several tedious briefings would clear it up for him.

The main briefing took place in the base theater about a week after he had arrived at Wiesbaden Air Base. As he walked through the theater, he noticed the side walls were dimly lit by lights emitting from plaster sconces plastered into the wall. They must be a remembrance of the past glory days of the German Luftwaffe, he thought.

The first thing visible on stage was the unit's patch, which was being displayed by an overhead projector onto the large theater screen. On the rectangular patch, some sort of mythological creature with the head of a bird and the body of a lion, was covered in orange flames with a blue background. The meaning was aviation blue, with bravery, duty, and some other things. Most of the lowly Cav enlisted soldiers referred to the patch as the chicken in hell. They knew how the flame engulfed chicken felt. They were stuffed into old barracks with drab furniture, eating bad mess hall food, and working long hours, for low pay, day-after-day. The chicken in hell displayed their exact sentiments of serving in the army.

On stage, several overly-motivated soldiers, accompanied by the appropriate soppy patriotic country music, started to perform a skit. They explained to the Cav Troopers who filled the old theater that this is the Cold War Baby! The United States backed up by West Germany, Great Britain, Canada, and France standing toe-to-toe against the Soviet Union on the East German border. The background slides changed to display the enemy's weapons, the American Flag, and exciting images from WW II. The Red Horde's tanks lined up in combat formation just waiting to stream through the Fulda Gap and take over West Germany. Freedom against communism, President Ronald Reagan against the Evil Empire, and all of the other hooah stuff. The Flying Circus was here to "Kill Tanks, Sir!" We are going to stop the Soviet tanks in their tracks with our AH-64, hi-tech Attack Helicopters. Hell Fire missiles, artillery, flechette rockets, 30 mm cannons! Hell yah baby! We are armed to the teeth. If you aint Cav you aint shit! You have a die in place mission soldiers! Stop those damn tanks to give the rest of NATO a chance to mobilize! I expect you to take ten times as many Ruskies before you go to Fiddler's Green. We are gonna fill the Fulda Gap with so much lead from artillery, Apaches, and M1 Tanks that the Free World will thank us forever! BORN IN THE USA MOTHERFUCKER!!

Now he knew.

The Apaches were the premier attack helicopters in the World and the Hell Fire, laser-guided, missile system was feared by the Soviets for its ability to destroy their tanks. Revv's Air Cav unit owned eighteen of the ultra-modern, Apache Attack Helicopters, three ultra-modern UH-60A Blackhawks, along with...12 ancient OH-58 Kiowa Scout helicopters. Unfortunately for him, the scout helicopters were same version used during the Vietnam War. They were old birds.

The AH-64 Apache Attack Helicopters were the most modern in the world, Blackhawks were all around versatile utility helicopters, and the OH-58 Scouts...well...they were underpowered and sad, but the aircrew members who manned them were brave as hell. Maps, compasses, clocks, .38 Special six shooter revolvers, night vision goggles strapped onto their helmets, and Vietnam War era radios were the navigation equipment and weapons of the aeroscout.

Aeroscouts were trained to call artillery, to spot enemy tanks, and positions in order to hand off the targets to the Apaches, so they could blow up the tanks with their missiles. There was an old Vietnam War Army Aviator saying: The burning scout helicopter marks the tank. The aeroscouts were trained to penetrate deep behind enemy lines on recon missions and report back on their sightings. Their life expectancy, if the Soviets were to storm across the Fulda Gap, was three-minutes and fifty-seven seconds. During that time, the aeroscouts were tasked with killing tanks, which meant getting off as many artillery calls as they could. With a combat life expectancy under four minutes, aeroscout aircrews tended to drink a lot of beer, and not worry about the future very often.