Until the Apaches came, soldiers called their helicopters ‘whipped cream beaters’

Every war movie since Vietnam has featured a helicopter, it seems, with piercing chatter, screen-filling clouds of dust and bird’s-eye views of treetops and rooftops. And a message about military helicopters is invariably accompanied by videos of heavily armed soldiers floating through the air on a cable, such as last summer when the Netherlands the purchase of fourteen Caracals announced.

The helicopter belongs in contemporary warfare like a bullet in a gun. In addition to transport, support and reconnaissance – the traditional tasks – the helicopter is used to protect friendly troops and attack enemy targets. For example, Onno Eichelsheim, now the highest boss of the Dutch armed forces, once led a unit of Apache attack helicopters in Afghanistan, which fired missiles at Taliban fighter strongholds.

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what Onno Eichelshem tells about his operations as an Apache pilot

CV Rolf de Winter

Rolf de Winter (Vlaardingen, 1962) studied social history at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He fulfilled his military service as a scientific employee at the Air Force History Section of the Royal Netherlands Air Force, where he later started working as a civilian employee. Since 2007 he has been a senior scientific employee at the Netherlands Institute for Military History.

It is all the more remarkable that the Netherlands has converted the helicopter into a weapon at such a late stage. For example, France already developed an airmobile brigade in the 1980s. Other countries had helicopters that could destroy advancing tanks from the then Soviet Union. During those Cold War years, the Netherlands only had light reconnaissance helicopters, Alouettes and Bölkows, initially without night vision equipment, modern radar, armor, armament or protection against missiles fired from the shoulder.

“The Royal Netherlands Army ended the Cold War with more than nine hundred tanks and many hundreds of armored vehicles equipped with anti-tank weapons, but also without a single anti-tank helicopter,” notes military historian Rolf de Winter (60) in his dissertation on the helicopter in the Dutch armed forces. De Winter received his PhD this summer from Utrecht University for his dissertation, the commercial edition of which was published last week. From everyone and no one.

Defense made significant cuts after the end of the Cold War

The title is telling, because the helicopter has been the stepchild of the armed forces for a long time. “This was mainly because the Netherlands chose early on, in the 1950s, to place this weapon system in all three branches of the armed forces: army, navy and air force,” says De Winter at the Netherlands Institute for Military History in The Hague. his employer. “In those branches of the armed forces, the helicopter always came second, after the main weapon systems: tanks, frigates and fighter jets.”

In the air force the fine flower fighter pilot, not helicopter pilot. Officers on the helicopter did not reach the highest ranks and mechanics preferred not to tinker with the ‘whipped cream beater’. The army was scornful about the vulnerable helicopters. One officer wrote: “Afghan resistance fighters are reported to have repeatedly shot down Soviet helicopters with outdated elephant guns.” In the navy, the investment in on-board helicopters for the frigates was a soap opera of postponement and undressing for decades.

The helicopter’s breakthrough only came after the fall of the Wall in 1989 and the subsequent crumbling of the Soviet Union. “After the end of the Cold War, the Defense Department started making major cuts, including by selling hundreds of tanks,” says De Winter. Minister Relus ter Beek (Defense, PvdA) and his successor Joris Voorhoeve (VVD) decided to invest heavily in the purchase of helicopters such as the Apache and the development of an airmobile brigade. De Winter: “The idea was: we are not just going to demolish, but also build something new.”

That ‘news’ turned out to fit wonderfully well into the new world order that was then emerging. The Netherlands and its NATO allies had for decades geared their armed forces to a large-scale conflict with a militarily equivalent opponent. Now soldiers started to focus more on so-called irregular warfare, with weaker but often elusive opponents. They encountered them during the international missions in which the Netherlands participated: in the Balkans, later in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali. De Winter: “The helicopter turned out to be ideal for this type of conflict: fast, flexible and relatively cheap.”

But without politics it wouldn’t have happened, right?

“Beats. The helicopter’s full place in the armed forces has largely been enforced by the political and administrative leadership. It is true that Dutch soldiers always carry out political decisions very loyally and in this case they quickly started counting their buttons. Like: we will have an airmobile brigade with transport and combat helicopters. You can come out with that.

“Because there are not many allies who can bring that to the table. You suddenly join the French, the British and the Americans.”

So where did the initial resistance come from?

“The army, navy and air force each consist of numerous small parts, with their own subculture. They all have theirs esprit de corps, their unique way of making a difference and their own agenda. This phenomenon is very interesting for a military historian, but it also means that soldiers are often somewhat conservative and opt for weapon systems that they know inside out. The helicopter is effective at the intersection of water, land and air, so everywhere actually. For a specialized unit with a long tradition, the helicopter remained something you did on the side.”

The helicopter was initially a failure-prone, vulnerable and complex weapon system

You also give many painfully hilarious examples of defects that helicopters had to deal with, such as the Bölkow, which could not see high-voltage cables, antennas or cranes for a long time in darkness. Didn’t those flaws make it easy to reject the helicopters?

“That was a disruptive factor. Shortly after the Second World War, it quickly became clear that the helicopter could be used in all kinds of ways, military and civil. From rescuing people from the water to detecting and combating submarines. On the battlefield in Korea [1950-1953] the helicopter quickly managed to get injured soldiers onto the surgeon’s table. In the Vietnam War [1955-1975] the Cobras were really used as a weapon, especially for protection during troop movements by air.

“Dutch soldiers certainly saw the potential of the helicopter. However, the helicopter was initially a malfunction-prone, vulnerable and complex weapon system that could only be made operational with great difficulty. It is logical that in the armed forces they watched the cat out of the tree for a long time and commanders thought, so to speak: for the same money I would rather have three trucks than one rickety piece of equipment. In my dissertation I also speak up somewhat for the leadership of the army, which has long hesitated about purchasing an armed helicopter. Especially because there was no good insight into the power of this weapon system. Because what the Cobra did in Vietnam was actually insufficient to be considered a full-fledged one air maneuverhelicopter to operate. They really needed the Apache for that and it only came in the 1980s.”

If you have to do certain operations without the Apache, you are vulnerable

Was the Apache helicopter a game changer?

“Yes, you can certainly put it that way. Everything becomes clear when that Apache is there. Then this armed helicopter suddenly appears in all kinds of scenarios for possible conflicts and during exercises. If you have to do certain operations without the Apache, you are vulnerable. Infantry battalions [600 tot 800 militairen] can go out with transport helicopters such as the large Chinooks and the smaller Cougars, but are relatively lightly armed. The Apaches then provide fire support and form the flying artillery. An airmobile brigade without Apaches is not an airmobile brigade.”

The Dutch air mobile brigade reached the international top in 2003 when it passed a difficult task during a NATO exercise. air maneuverexam. The helicopter was then permanently anchored in the armed forces in 2008 with the establishment of the Defense Helicopter Command (DHC), based at the Gilze-Rijen military air base. In previous years, helicopters had been spared due to defense cuts.

That financial privilege came to an end when the armed forces were cut even further after the 2008 credit crisis. In 2011, Defense decided to sell all Cougars, much to the anger of DHC commander Theo ten Haaf, who felt that his transport helicopters were ‘sacrificed’ to the classic weapon systems: “Maintaining the Cougars would have meant: or a squadron F -16s less, or one battalion less, or one frigate less.”

The House of Representatives managed to block the sale of several Cougar aircraft with a reference to wildfires in which the helicopters had performed a lot of useful work shortly before. When the replacement NH-90 helicopters were delayed, the sale of the remaining Cougars was postponed. After that it became increasingly clear that the special forces, which the Netherlands has expanded significantly in recent decades, desperately needed the helicopters. The Cougars were allowed to stay. In the coming years they will be replaced by the more advanced Caracal aircraft.

The Chinooks that fly in to evacuate soldiers are also very exciting

Is the Cougar soap an example of what you call ‘swamp policy’?

“In any case, this is the political opportunity that you often see around investments in defense. The armed forces have to deal with this, just like, for example, with a financial crisis, and that is complicated. You see that chance also plays a major role, such as with those wildfires that give MPs the opportunity to take corrective action. And when politicians decided to develop the helicopter weapon in the early 1990s, they had no idea that the special forces that would be so desperately needed in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

If you were to make a Dutch film with an important, true role for the helicopter, what would you have to show?

“Marines descending from the air on a cable and boarding a ship, perhaps. And further operations in Afghanistan, as Dutch soldiers have done many of them. Special forces who land in the middle of a village and then rush out to arrest Taliban fighters. The Chinooks that fly in to evacuate soldiers are also very exciting. And of course the actions of Apache pilot Roy de Ruiter.”

Risking his own life, De Ruiter saved Dutch soldiers several times, including by acting as a decoy for enemy fire. He received the highest military bravery award, the William Order, in 2018. “That knighthood is illustrative of the increased importance of the helicopter in the Dutch armed forces,” says De Winter. “The royal knighthood is symbolic of recognition of the helicopter as a new main weapon system.”