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Yahoo! My Yahoo! Mail More Yahoo! Services Account Options New User? Sign Up Sign In Help Yahoo! Search web search Home Singapore Asia Pacific World Business Entertainment Sports Technology Australia China India Indonesia Japan Malaysia Philippines Thailand Vietnam Elite US squad flies for survival in Afghan war AFP - Sunday, December 6 Send IM Story Print Elite US squad flies for survival in Afghan war BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan (AFP) - – When US Captain Andy Gray and his specialist rescue team heard a helicopter was missing in the Afghan mountains, adrenaline kicked in and the pilots raced into action. Commanders told Gray about the missing Mi-8 with three Ukrainians onboard before he and his crew took off on a routine mission -- collecting a sick child in the same area where the chopper was believed to have gone down. Gray's Pave Hawk swooped so slow it practically clipped village rooftops, as elite parajumpers (PJs) chucked soft toys out of the gap next to the heavy machine-guns, watching the biting wind carry them down towards mud-brick homes. Throwing toys to children and picking up sick Afghan civilians are part of efforts to win hearts and minds as the United States and its NATO allies look for a quick end to the eight-year war against the Taliban. "We're looking for a black smudge," said Gray, referring to the ominous dark stain imprinted on the landscape by what is euphemistically called "controlled flight into terrain," or CFIT, a major risk for aircraft in mountainous Afghanistan. "Isn't that what we are always looking for," quipped flight engineer John Durbin. Pilots in the elite 33rd Emergency Rescue Service (ERQS) execute virtuoso, nerves-of-steel flying. Gray's helicopter swoops along a narrow, winding river lower than the grassy bank and skims villages so low he can see the faces of women going without burqas in the privacy of their own courtyards. One slip and his helicopter too could be a black smudge, but such thoughts do not distract him and his colleagues. "That others may live" is their motto, coined during the Vietnam War when the 33rd ERQS picked up downed pilots. Thirty years later, the unit is flying for survival as the United States battles bulging expenses from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The HH60G Pave Hawks -- modified versions of the Blackhawk -- are now past their prime and due for replacement. But in April, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates withdrew the air force budget to acquire new combat, search and rescue helicopters. The unit now feels under pressure to perform if it wants to remain intact rather than be disbanded and absorbed into other branches of the US military. "These guys live to fly," says Lieutenant Colonel Sean Choquette, commanding officer of the unit, which is normally based on Japan's Okinawa. It took the best part of a week to find the Mi-8 debris. Winter was arriving. Visibility was poor. The crevices of eastern Afghanistan's unrelenting mountains hampered the search. The decisive tip-off came when Afghan authorities said a "local national" had reported an explosion near his settlement. One and a half hours' flying south of Bagram Airfield, Gray finally spotted the black smudge, spreading 30 metres (100 feet) up a boulder in the shape of a flame. The slope, at the southern end of a long valley, was almost vertical and the surface streaked with snow. Beyond the ridge an empty plain stretched towards the mountains marking the border with Pakistan. Hovering above forbidding rocks, Gray could identify wreckage spilling down the slope, including a rotor hub. At first light, two Pave Hawks returned to the site in the southeastern province of Logar along with two Apache gunships to keep watch, just in case. Out of sight a Predator surveillance drone circled above, providing Choquette with video coverage of the operation in real time. It was a hostile area and heavy US traffic could draw an insurgent attack, he said. A group of PJs descended by winch onto the slope. For hours, they scrambled over boulders working to recover the three bodies found at the site and to gather evidence to confirm the wreckage was indeed the missing Mi-8. By late afternoon, their grim haul was ready to be winched up -- three stretchers filled with bulky objects of vaguely human shape. Despite suffering record casualties, the US-led coalition has kept a firm grip on the Afghan skies and no US military pilots have been shot down or had to be rescued by the 33rd ERQS in Afghanistan since November 2001. If the body bags crowding the helicopter on board served as a reminder of the dangers, none of the crew let it show as they headed back to base. More pressing perhaps is the prospect that Gates may think the 33rd ERQS has served its purpose and that its flying days are over. 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