The 27-year-old royal, who served ten weeks in Afghanistan during
2007-08, was handed the best co-pilot gunner award, a polished 30mm round from
an Apache cannon mounted on a stand, during a ceremony to mark the end of 18
months of training.
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| Prince Harry |
Prince Harry, or Captain Wales as he will now be known in the Army
Air Corps, and his fellow new pilots were praised by Apache Force Commander,
Colonel Neale Moss.
'The Apache course is extremely challenging and I congratulate all
of the students as they go forward to join an operational squadron and continue
their aviation careers,' he said.
The 27-year-old
Prince is likely to be sent to the warzone to fight the Taliban – and will join
the Apache unit which has the highest 'kill rate' in Afghanistan. He could be
re-deployed as early as this autumn.
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| Prince Harry on the Apache |
The Apache is one of the most sophisticated attack helicopters in
the world, equipped with rockets, missiles and a machine gun.
Prince Harry's first tour of duty in Afghanistan was cut short in
2008 after foreign websites broke a media blackout on his posting.
After he returned to the UK he said he would be unwilling to
undertake costly helicopter training if he was unable to see combat.
You become a very expensive asset, the training's very expensive
and they wouldn't have me doing what I'm doing,' he said last year.
'I'd just be taking up a spare place for somebody else if they
didn't have me going out on the job.'
St James's Palace has insisted in the past however that whether
the royal was deployed on active operations was a matter for the 'Ministry of
Defence chain of command'.
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| Apache Helicopter |
Notes on Apache Helicopter:
The
£46million helicopter gunship is very difficult to fly - and only the very best
pilots ever complete the training course.
·
With a top speed of
161mph the Apache is relatively slow - but the onboard systems are so
sophisticated it can classify and prioritise up to 256 potential targets in
seconds.
·
Yet the helicopter is so
difficult to master that some of the very best pilots are never able to fly it.
·
The training is spread
over 16 months - and Harry must still spend a further eight months flying the
helicopters in the UK before he can be deployed despite completing the course.
·
The two pilots sit one
behind the other and it is usually the front person who is the mission
commander. Harry, as the second pilot, will be in the back seat which gives
better visibility.
·
The army own 67 Apaches
and have 55 crews of two pilots. They have become the aircraft of choice for
fighting the Taliban.
·
Most of the information
from the sensors and radars appears in front of the pilot's right eye on the
'Helmet Display Unit'.
·
The main weapons on the
gunship are a 30mm cannon firing 625 rounds a minute, CRV-7 'point-and-fire'
rockets and four air-to-air missiles.
·
Night-flying is
particularly challenging as rather than using night-vision goggles, pilots rely
on forward looking infra-red which creates a video-screen picture of what lies
ahead.
