Redirecting...

The Chinook chick survived Afghanistan and Iraq but was almost defeated back home due to her PTSD:
Liz McConaghy racked up an incredible 3,000 flying hours manning the guns on the RAF's heavy-lift helicopters over 17 action-packed years, including 12 deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. But she paid a heavy price once the missions ended...
Helmand, Afghanistan, January 2007. The unmistakable thud of a dozen rotor blades from the two RAF Chinooks echoed across the desert and poppy fields as the helicopters barrelled into hostile territory. This was one of the deadliest war zones in the world – crawling with Taliban insurgents – where British, American and Afghan forces were trying to secure peace in a country which had known nothing but war for decades. On board one of the Chinooks, Liz McConaghy – a feisty 25-year-old blonde from Northern Ireland – watched the changing landscape skidding below and concentrated on the operation to come.
One of four RAF crewmen, two pilots and two aircrew, McConaghy was in charge of operating the M60 machine gun capable of firing 7.62mm calibre ammo at 100 rounds per minute, and one of two “mini-guns” – innocuously named but deadly, firing 50 rounds a second – protruding from the side of the helicopter.
“These weapons of mass destruction gave us the ability to protect the Chinook from all directions, sometimes without needing to fire a bullet, the sight of them being enough of a deterrent to the enemy,” recalls McConaghy.
“When you did press the trigger, within seconds everything you aimed at turned to mush.” The weapons weren’t just for show.
The mission was dropping off ammunition and supplies at the British army’s forward operating base at Kajaki Dam – a beautiful but deadly spot where they could be ambushed or shot down.
Almost 45 minutes after taking off from Camp Bastion, 60 miles to the south-west, the Chinooks approached the drop-off point, with one aircraft circling above while McConaghy’s machine hugged the scorched earth, sending clouds of sand and dust into the morning sky as it settled its netted cargo of ammo on the ground. So far so good.
But as the 17-tonne machine lifted back into the sky, all hell let loose. McConaghy felt the Chinook jolt with a loud bang and was slammed into the side of the metal fuselage.
The pilot desperately tried to wrestle back control, before shouting: “I can’t see!”, as he was blinded by splinters of shattered glass from the cockpit. McConaghy watched her crewmate plunge towards the open central hatch, saved only by a safety harness around his waist attached to the airframe.
Confusion reigned. Were they under enemy attack? Was it a catastrophic engine failure? Or something else?
Only when she saw a huge, sparking cable lashing against the airframe and smelled burning electricity did McConaghy realise they had flown directly into high voltage wires crews nickname “helicopter killers.”
“I knew we were about to crash so I braced myself hard against the door frame and placed my hand on the release straps of my harness,” she said. Just seconds from smashing into the ground, the co-pilot managed to regain control and the Chinook soared into the sky. They had escaped death by a hair’s breadth.
More than half of this time was spent in warzones – including 10 deployments in Afghanistan and two in Iraq – making her the longest-serving female crew member in the RAF’s entire Chinook Fleet. But McConaghy paid a heavy price for her devotion to duty, and after being discharged from the RAF on medical grounds in 2019 was haunted by post-traumatic stress disorder.
She eventually tried to take her own life in desperation during the pandemic lockdown the next year. Growing up in the countryside, McConaghy had no real desire to join the forces until visiting her brother at the nearby British Army Palace Barracks, where she happened to read a magazine with a photo on the cover of a man hanging out of a helicopter.
“Instantly I wanted to become that. I didn’t really understand what ‘that’ was but I wanted to be it!” she recalls. In 2001 she was accepted for aircrew training in the RAF.After two years of training, she qualified as a Chinook crewman and joined 27 Squadron, soon deployed to Basra, in Iraq.

Amen.

Good for her for not giving in.