Training the Ghostriders

A new air combat unit flies Black Hawk helicopters over Tampa Bay, rescuing imaginary soldiers, aiming their guns at imaginary enemies. It's all practice for the real thing.

[Times photo: Fred Victorin] Army Reserve Sgt. Thomas R. Zawisza, a crew chief-gunner, sits inside a Black Hawk as another helicopter files in the background.

Black above, black below. A line of orange lights sparkling in the west.

That's the view from 200 feet above Tampa Bay, inside a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter chopping through darkness.

But only to the human eye.

The Army Reserve soldiers on board have reached to their helmets and swung down their night vision goggles.

They see a different world, tinted in phosphorescent green. The whitecaps of the bay below. The outline of clouds above. To the west, a glowing downtown St. Petersburg.

This helicopter and another pass above the luminous Gandy Bridge and head south toward Sarasota, because it's training night for the Ghostriders.

For more than a year, the soldiers of this new unit based near the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport have been flying training missions in brand-new UH-60L Sikorsky Black Hawk helicopters, outfitted with M-60 machine guns. They are building a team from scratch, creating one of the few U.S. Army units that will specialize in combat rescues.

With four helicopters on hand and four to come by this summer, this group is dwarfed by Tampa's MacDill Air Force Base. But the Ghostriders, known officially as C Company of the 1st Battalion of the Army's 159th Aviation Regiment, make up the only air combat unit based in Pinellas County.

And though they have been training hard, these soldiers have more in mind than soaring above Sarasota County. You can tell this by walking down a hallway toward the company briefing room. A map covers one entire wall, floor to ceiling.

It's a map of Iraq.

The U.S. Army decided a few years ago it needed to bolster its capacity for combat search and rescue.

When a pilot goes down in enemy territory, a rescue team needs to go in and save the crew.

"The Army really needed a lot more than they had, and it's a perfect mission for Army reservists," said Doug Gregory, a longtime aide to U.S. House Appropriations Chairman C.W. Bill Young, R-Largo.

Young pushed for the increase in such units, and quickly suggested a site for one of them: his home district.

A Coast Guard air station also is at the same airport.

A new training facility is under construction adjacent to the airport, near the site of the former Boatyard Village shopping center and 94th Aero Squadron restaurant.

Meanwhile, the unit operates out of temporary quarters nearby. Commuters driving over the Bayside Bridge can sometimes see the olive green helicopters hovering above, returning to their base.

Beginning in December, Capt. James Fitzgerald, the unit commander, helped assemble the team of about 35 military personnel and two dozen civilians.

"The biggest challenge is, you're stepping into basically a vacuum. You have no facilities on hand, no equipment on hand and most importantly, no personnel on hand," said Fitzgerald, 40, who has spent 15 years in the Army. "I tried to recruit the best people I could possibly get because if you have the right people on hand, they can overcome the other obstacles."

The pilots already were trained as pilots, the mechanics already were trained as mechanics, but the unit has been spending long hours drilling on the techniques for search and rescue.

This mission was easy to visualize during a recent daytime training mission.

Three of the Black Hawks left from the base in late afternoon under a cottony gray cloud cover. Rain pelted in from open windows on either side of each aircraft.

One helicopter returned to base as a precaution because of a mechanical problem, but two continued across Tampa Bay to an airstrip in Manatee County.

The helicopters dived, turned, bumped up high, circled around and dived again, plunging and pulling up as if on a roller coaster.

Crew chiefs were the gunners, pointing the M-60s at an imaginary enemy, without actually firing the unloaded weapons. The idea was for the Black Hawks to swoop around fast, making themselves evasive targets. Meanwhile, the gunners aimed "suppressing fire" at pretend enemies, preventing them from shooting in the first place.

If this had been real, another helicopter would have landed for a rescue attempt while the two Black Hawks provided cover.

In March in Iraq, a Black Hawk helicopter near Karbala, 50 miles south of Baghdad, was shot down by small arms fire, possibly friendly fire.

Such an incident could trigger a rescue mission from the Ghostriders if they were deployed there.

While awaiting helicopters, equipment and additional training, the unit is not yet considered deployable. But most assume an assignment overseas is likely.

"Let's put it this way," said Chief Warrant Officer 4 Stephen L. Alexander, a reservist who flies the Army Black Hawks when he's not working as a Bayflite helicopter pilot. "You think the U.S. government is going to give us these $12-million helicopters to fly around Florida?"

At least once a month, and two weeks or more per year, Sgt. Thomas R. Zawisza leaves his wife, four children and his civilian job as a salesman near Fort Myers to come fly on the Black Hawks.

"I would drive five hours if I had to," Zawisza said. "I've always wanted to be around aircraft. I'm fascinated by helicopters, and I'm fascinated by the mission that we have."

Sgt. Ken Druce grew up wanting to fly, and is a crew chief and flight instructor for the Ghostriders. The combat search and rescue mission intrigued him. This is a less-traditional mission for the Army, which often has relied on help from the Air Force for rescues.

"The most challenging thing about being in this unit would be that we're setting the standard for the Army's combat search and rescue," said Druce, 38, who lives near West Palm Beach and works a civilian job at a flight training center.

"It's a fairly new concept for the Army to have a dedicated asset to do combat search and rescue," added Chief Warrant Officer 4 Lanny Morrison. He said the crews will be ready if they are called to the Middle East.

"I don't know of anybody that's really too fond of going someplace that they're going to be shot at," said Morrison, 50. "However, we take an oath."

That's why the crews practiced during a recent nighttime training flight.

Landing at a Sarasota County ranch, they set up chemical lights on the ground as a simulated enemy. In the air again, they dived and circled, just as in the daytime trip. This time, it was night vision goggles that allowed them to see the darkened ranch, in glowing green.

The crew chiefs aimed their M-60s at the target as the Black Hawks whirled through the night. This time infared lasers - visible only through the goggles - showed when the gunners had aimed properly to hit the target.

And then they turned toward Tampa Bay, flying over a ghostly landscape that only they could see.

- Curtis Krueger can be reached at krueger@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8232.

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