During a deployment in Afghanistan, Chief Warrant Officer 4 Dylan Ferguson was flying an Apache, providing close air support to a special operations ground force below. When his aircraft's 30-millimeter cannon failed and there wasn't space to get the standoff distance required to fire Hellfire missiles, he and his copilot changed tactics—flying in low over enemy fighters to bait them into opening fire on their helicopter, so the other Apache flying with them could identify the enemy location and target it. He shares the story in this episode.
In 1962, while on a year-long break from college, Barry Broman was first shot at in South Vietnam while working as a photographer for...
In early 2003, Karl Blanke was a Marine platoon commander during the early stages of the US-led invasion of Iraq, when his battalion was...
This episode features a story from Maj. Joe Ritter, an MQ-9 pilot—the first remotely piloted aircraft story featured on The Spear. The MQ-9 has...