Even though Lieutenant Cerro preferred air assault operations to jumping, they, like all military operations, were not without their hazards. As with the combat jump, the soldiers are useless as long as they are in the helicopters. Helicopters are able to fly low and maneuver about, using terrain to hide and cover their move. Transport planes, on the other hand, fly high and in relatively straight lines, making their routes predictable.
Flying low, however, exposes the helicopters to small-arms fire that transports need not worry about. Anyone on the ground with a rifle can, and usually does, take potshots at low-flying helicopters.
Air assault operations share the same hazards as airdrops during the initial buildup stage. The small force in the airhead is exposed to counterattack and does not have all its support on the ground such as artillery and heavy mortars. These items, which are normally part of the follow-on forces, all must come in by air, just as the initial assault force did. Only, the follow-on forces do not have the element of surprise to protect them. The enemy on the ground knows exactly where the airhead is and, as a result, knows where the follow-on forces will come. This allows the enemy the ability to mass antiaircraft weapons around the landing zones or along the routes leading into the landing zone. Often, it is better to be with the initial force going in than with the follow-on force. Besides the antiaircraft weapons, artillery and mortars massed to fire on the small, well-defined airhead are a great danger to the follow-on forces while the helicopters are on the ground disgorging their cargoes.
The assault force that Cerro was with waited until the last minute before making its final approach, in order to keep the Iranians guessing as to where the landing zone would be. When the Blackhawks were less than a kilometer away from the landing zone, they made a sharp turn to the left and began their descent. The A-10s were gone by this time, but the Apaches were coming in on either side of the assault force, ready to hit any target that appeared. Cerro, looking out the open cargo door, could clearly see dug-in Iranian positions as the Blackhawks made their approach. There was, however, little ground fire. The A- 10s must have done their job well, Cerro thought-they had either killed the defenders or caused them to reconsider the value of martyrdom.
Suddenly all that changed. At one side of the landing zone Iranians popped up out of hidden positions. The door gunner seated in front of Cerro began to fire wildly. An Apache flew by, firing rockets at positions out of Cerro's field of vision. Tracers from the defenders could be seen racing up toward the attackers while tracers from the door gunner's machine gun and the Apaches rained down upon the defenders. The crash of rockets threw up fountains of black smoke and dirt. In just a few seconds, Cerro and his men would be dropped into the middle of that caldron.
First Lieutenant Griffit watched intently the scene unfolding below him.
Having assumed command of the company after the death of Captain Evans, Griffit was "the Man." Until the battalion commander arrived, he would be in charge of the operation on the ground. Success or failure of the entire operation depended on his actions during the initial phase, and he was nervous. Griffit had had it easy as the XO. It was the company commander who had to make all the hard decisions. It was the commander who was responsible for everything the unit did or failed to do. Evans, dynamic and a workaholic, had run the company almost single-handedly, leaving Griffit to deal with little details. Now, even with reassurance from the battalion commander, and with several small combat operations under his belt, Griffit was unsure and hesitant. He knew that he would eventually grow used to the awesome responsibility of command and the need to make rapid life-and-death decisions, given time. But there was no time.
He had a few seconds left to memorize the view below him-the lay of the land, enemy dispositions and key terrain features-which he would not have again once he was on the ground. His initial decisions during the first few minutes on the ground would be based on these quick observations. Griffit, engrossed in watching the battle before him and screwing up the courage he would need to carry him through his next ordeal under fire, did not notice the tracers reaching up at them from the other side of the helicopter. The pilot, however, did, and he knew what they meant. Instinctively he tilted the Blackhawk over to avoid the hail of bullets, watching the tracers rather than where the aircraft was going.
Griffit felt the Blackhawk tilting, but paid no heed until it began to buck violently. Falling debris caused him to look up and straight out the open door. To his horror he saw the blades of his Blackhawk hacking away at the blades of the Blackhawk across from them. In the effort to escape the machine-gun fire from the ground, the pilot of Griffit's helicopter had flown into another.
The pilot and the co-pilot struggled to control their aircraft while the Blackhawk they had hit fell helplessly away. Then, unable to regain full mastery of the helicopter, the two men fought to reduce their rate of descent and at least control their crash. There was, however, too much damage. The blades, no longer balanced, wobbled wildly. In one sweep, a section of torn blade angled down and cut into the crew compartment, decapitating the pilot and showering the co-pilot with deadly splinters of Plexiglas and aluminum. All semblance of control was lost as the Blackhawk rolled over on its side, then nose-dived into the ground.
Cerro watched the two Blackhawks go down. He knew that the XO was in one of them. The first smacked into the ground on its belly. One of the paratroopers on board, wanting to escape, rushed out before the blades stopped spinning, not realizing that they were lower to the ground than normal. A blade seemed to pass through his body, tossing it about like a rag doll. The second Blackhawk, the XO's, went in at a steep angle, nose first. The entire aircraft, the crew and the cargo of paratroopers disappeared in a fireball that rose above Cerro's own helicopter.
He sat there transfixed. In an instant his Blackhawk swept by the scene of the crash and prepared to land. The image of the crash had come and gone, but Cerro did not move, paralyzed. The first clear, conscious thought that came to his head was that he, the senior surviving officer, was now in command of the company.
The thump of the wheels on the ground jerked Cerro back to reality. He unsnapped his seat belt instinctively and jumped down from the Blackhawk into a swirl of dust. Cerro ran forward alongside his men for several meters, then flopped down onto his stomach. Once all the paratroopers were clear, the Blackhawks lifted off, made a hard bank and flew back to Bandar Abbas to pick up their next load.
The paratroopers stayed put for a moment, waiting for the dust to settle so that they could get their bearings. The Iranians didn't wait. With the helicopters gone, they leveled the barrels of their machine guns and began to sweep the landing zone. The paratroop squad leaders and platoon leaders sized up the situation in their immediate areas and began to issue orders.
Those who were not pinned by the machine-gun fire maneuvered their units against the nearest Iranian positions. The techniques the paratroopers used were the same they had used against the Iranians while mopping up Bandar Abbas: find them, pin them, get around them, kill them. The Apaches assisted in this effort. They circled overhead, trying to sort 112 out good guy from bad guy. When they had a positive ID on an Iranian position, they went after it with 2.75-inch rockets or 30mm. cannons. Between the Apaches and the ground attack, the Iranian positions in the immediate vicinity of the landing zone were overwhelmed and silenced within ten minutes.