Kiowa Helicopter Shot Down Near Kabul
If you ask me, this is another product of the neglect of the war in Afghanistan:
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) - A helicopter from the U.S.-led forces was shot down south of the Afghan capital Wednesday, but the crew escaped without serious injury, the coalition said.
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Logar police chief Mohammed Mustafa Khan said reports from his officers in the remote district suggested Taliban militants shot down the helicopter with a rocket-propelled grenade.
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Most recently, seven soldiers died when a Chinook helicopter was shot down during an air assault in the southern province of Helmand in May 2007.
That crash in May 2007 runs through my mind fairly often. I was laying in my rack at Kandahar Airfield in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. Normally, I worked the night shift in the TOC as the Battle NCO during missions. On the night of May 30th, however, I switched shifts with the day shift NCO. It was nice to see the sun for a day, but my sleep schedule was now backwards.
When it became obvious that I wouldn't fall asleep anytime soon, I got up and went to go check out the news. One of the first items I saw was that a U.S. helicopter had crashed in southern Afghanistan. The worst circumstances imaginable entered my mind. We were in-filling by CH-47 Chinook into the Kajaki District of Helmand Province for the beginning of Operation Kulang Hellion. We had the full support of all American rotary in Regional Command South that night. All of this added up meant that if a U.S. chopper had gone down in Southern Afghanistan, it was part of our mission.
I headed for the TOC as quick as I could. When I arrived I learned the situation was not as bad as it could have been, but still not good. The...