Hope you like the following pictures of Dutch Chinooks at work in and over Afghanistan. They were made early 2008. I made them during a trip to Kandahar for our publication "Airpower, the Netherlands Air Force"
(Airpower, de Nederlandse Luchtmacht). Many pictures were published in this book but many more were never published. This topic also included a lot of scenery pictures with Chinook involvement!
Enjoy... (still many thanks to both 298sq crews who made this all possible).
Starting with a ride from Kandahar to Tarin Kowt
Afghanistan looks great from above!
Guarding the ride. Most pictures were made from the same location, next to the ramp gunner.
Breaking underneath us, wow!
Really low level
Doing were it's made for, transport!
Dutch Apache flying cover
Search the tiny beautiful Chinook...
Spectacular sight to see the shadow moving over the ground while the Chinook is more or less steady in its flight.
Doing some recce too!
Find the Chinook again... this is what the crew call a brown-out landing (and departure). I will help... on the right hand side (just above the middle) the Chinook is almost departing the picture. Moments before,
the enormous sandstorm was made by that CH-47D during a slingload dropping. Watch the white car on the road in front of the dust too, that gives perspective how big the dust cloud is.
Need fuel
Picking up some military
Dropping some pallets at a remote location
This starts one of my favourite series...
In the middle of a brown-out! The pics before this moment are published in the book
Departing the brown-out
Continuing the flight
Landing on a stamp
Find the Chinook again!
After a day work... going home from Tarin Kowt (in the back ground) to Kandahar
Flares above one of the lakes
Haha, nice story. If you look carefully to the nose cone, you can see a dent in it, caused by a bird. One of the Dutch F-16 pilots asked himself how the hell it's possible that a Chinook can receive a birdhit
as normally those birds hit on the rear end...
A few miles out
Sunset over the Dutch ramp
Take the hand of your girlfriend... it's getting romantic
Hope you liked these
Grtz S