20 years of Bad Atitude

Could it be 20 years since I flew in Desert Storm? 1991 was not twenty years ago, no, it has gone by like a blink of an eye.

This morning as my 5 year daughter climbed into bed, I lay there thinking. Thinking about the past. I am 45 years old. I was 25 years old then. I entered the Army at age 19, in May, 1985.

The next 6 years were spent in training. Basic training at Ft. Jackson, Warrant Officer training, Flight School, AH-64 Apache Course at Ft. Rucker, AH-64 Apache Armament Officers course, Ft. Eustice, Two new Apache Battalion Unit Training Programs at Ft. Hood. Hundreds of hours in the Combat Mission Simulator (CMS). And of course the flying.

I initially flew as a front seater with a wonderful pilot named J.D. Reimer. He was a great pilot who taught me more than he knows. He also had fun flying. Then I flew back seat. My front seater was Erich Hardy, a young man from Florida. Having just met, we first flew in the CMS together. Someone thought we did well together then, so we were paired as a team. They were not wrong.

For the next 2 years we flew exclusively together as a crew. We trained with five other crews as a company of Apaches. We as a company concentrated on mission training. Daytime, nighttime, anytime. We even did endurance training, one day spending eight hours in the cockpit. We flew all over Texas. We flew in Germany. We flew in Saudi Arabia. Always training, always trying harder.

We had a unique mix of personalities as the pilots and crews of our six Apaches. From the stern by the book, to the knowing the book better than the writers, to the lax barely minimum obtainer, and the outside the box thinkers. But the most important thing we had was a camaraderie, a trust and a confidence in the other guy. We flew together constantly. We knew how the other guy would fly, we knew each others skills. We knew we could count on each other.

Now there is a funny thing about guys who train a lot to do a very hard job. As they get better, their confidence grows. I was in a Battalion that had three companies of these guys. Eighteen Apache crews, three companies of six, thirty six pilots. And as it turned out, the Bad Boys.

Officially we were the Bravo Company Attack Platoon, the Death Dealers. Unofficially we were the Bravo Company Bad Boys. Somebody has to be the best, we thought we were just that, the best. As a company we flew, we flew formation everywhere. We practiced precision start times, no commo flights and plus or minus 5 seconds on crossing checkpoints as well as on target. We trained like this in the day time as well as night. We flew night with FLIR. We flew night formation with FLIR. We got good.

Adding to this was an attitude, an artificially created mystique, a way of life that we called being a Bad Boy. This wasn't doing bad things. This was a planned overt method of competition that drove our group to try harder, to be better. Because if you were going to lay it out there, you better back it up. Everybody, I do mean everyone was after you. Just lying in wait for you to slip up, to fail, to not be as good so they could be better!

I can honestly say that when we flew combat missions in the Middle East, we were at a peak. We were prime. I believe we were the best pilots in the world at that time.

I think the statistics of our flying speaks for itself. We participated in three separate missions.

The battalion, as a whole, did well. Call it the spirit of competition that drove everyone to be better. We just called it being a Bad Boy.

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