The Apache
The ApacheUpdate: 2025-02-24
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A soldier recounts a strange encounter during his time at Fort Campbell.
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Transcript
00:00:00
[MUSIC]
00:00:06
Regardless of how anyone feels about it, the United States government is rather big on keeping secrets.
00:00:12
Sometimes these secrets are intended to protect the America public and its interests.
00:00:18
In any case, there are certainly many things that the government is involved with that are never intended to be made known to the general public.
00:00:26
As a soldier in the U.S.
00:00:29
Army, I would come to discover that being in the military puts a man that much closer to stumbling across something that he was never supposed to.
00:00:39
This is part two of the story of the not-shifts before Campbell.
00:00:49
I'm Luke Lamana, and this is wartime stories.
00:01:04
My days and nights while stationed at Fort Campbell were a great time for me.
00:01:17
Say the very least, those 23 months were the most interesting part of my life.
00:01:21
I say interesting because although my primary occupation was in communications, I was temporarily transferred to the military police division to work as a security guard.
00:01:31
Since fixing broken antennas, radios and other com gear was far from exciting.
00:01:38
I very much enjoyed doing those daytime and nighttime security patrols, long and mostly quiet backroads and secluded areas in and around the large base.
00:01:47
However, I did have more than a couple, what I would call, strange encounters during the conduct of these patrols.
00:01:56
One of these encounters wasn't anything you might consider highly unusual, or maybe it was.
00:02:03
I mean no disrespect by saying that I am well aware that our government has plenty of secrets.
00:02:10
The world is full of unseen dangers, and there are of course some things that are best kept under wraps, in the interest of protecting not only Americans, but those countries with which we are allies.
00:02:21
I'll give you an example.
00:02:23
One of the biggest secrets maintained by the United States government was to conceal an entire American city in the outside world, even from fellow Americans.
00:02:33
The city is called Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and it's actually just a few hours drive east of Fort Campbell.
00:02:40
For those who don't know its extraordinary history, the U.S.
00:02:43
government built the entire city of Oak Ridge just a matter of months back in the 1940s.
00:02:48
It was intentionally hidden, tucked away inside 60,000 acres of land, purchased in the undeveloped and isolated backwoods, Tennessee.
00:02:57
The entire city, everything right down to the city streets, stoplights and sewers, was planted and constructed by the U.S.
00:03:05
government to house one specific group of people.
00:03:07
These were the tens of thousands of civilian personnel, along with their families, who were secretly relocated to Oak Ridge to accomplish one goal.
00:03:17
To acquire and prepare the materials needed to manufacture the newly developed atomic bomb.
00:03:23
The year was 1942.
00:03:26
The A-Bomb was a new wonder weapon of mass destruction, and it was going to end the war, if not tragically.
00:03:33
During World War II, the city Oak Ridge was a vital part of the then top secret man had project.
00:03:39
As such, its very existence was kept hidden from the outside world.
00:03:43
It wasn't even listed on maps for several years, not until after the war was over.
00:03:49
Now, imagine how hard it is to keep an entire city a secret like that.
00:03:53
What would happen, hypothetically, if some random hiker got lost and stumbled into the town?
00:03:59
I have no idea.
00:04:00
But if a private citizen learns about a government's secret like that, it's probably a big surprise for him.
00:04:07
A person might have a hard time keeping quiet about it, and if a secret that big gets out, the rest of the world would soon know everything about it.
00:04:15
You can only imagine the potential consequences of Oak Ridge being discovered, the damage to the Manhattan Project and the impact it would have had on the war.
00:04:24
So you can probably also imagine the lengths to which the US government went to keep it from being discovered.
00:04:29
Let's just say I personally wouldn't want to be that random hiker.
00:04:34
But unlike a civilian, if a person in the military, like myself, happens to stumble across something top secret, they at least understand it could be damaging the national security,
00:04:46
and certainly to their own career, to talk about it, so they're more inclined not to do so.
00:04:51
Again, I tell you this because when I was in the army, stationed on Fort Campbell, there was a time when I thought me and my buddy whom I'll just identify as Corporal Lack.
00:05:02
Might have stumbled across something like that, something that we weren't supposed to have seen.
00:05:08
Now, something you should know about Lack.
00:05:12
Overall, he was a good soldier, professional, easy-going, and he had a good sense of humor when it was appropriate.
00:05:18
He pretty much couldn't help but like him.
00:05:20
But Lack also had a habit of being a little too serious at times, and one night in February of 1988, it put both of us in a very bad position.
00:05:31
Nearly got both of us killed, in fact.
00:05:34
1 cold night in February, while we were conducting our routine patrol around Fort Campbell.
00:05:59
Lack and I received an unexpected radio call.
00:06:02
Our dispatch informed us that they'd been contacted by the nearby dispatch center, Clarke's Field Police Department, because they'd received a 911 call by a possible crash of a small civilian plane,
00:06:14
someone having spotted it flying low over the base's southern fence line.
00:06:17
Since the caller said they thought that the plane had crashed on the base, the local civilian police couldn't conduct the initial investigation, so they called the base police.
00:06:26
Lack and I were patrolling in that general vicinity of the base, so we were assigned to search the area where the caller believed the plane may have gone down.
00:06:34
We were somewhat skeptical, planes don't exactly crash every day, so as we drove around the area, when we didn't really expect to find anything.
00:06:43
This area of the base was less heavily forested, having some open patches of land scattered alongside the roads.
00:06:50
After a bit of slow driving in the dark, shining the truck's spotlights along the tree lines as we went, we suddenly saw what indeed appeared to be a crash site in one of these open fields.
00:07:02
Getting out of the truck with our flashlights, we walked quickly, although very carefully, towards the wreckage, shining our lights around, trying not to step on any of the countless pieces of wreckage and debris.
00:07:14
In hindsight, I maybe should have radioed our dispatch right away, before leaving the truck, to confirm that we had found it down to aircraft.
00:07:21
But in the heavy darkness, I suppose we were curious, and wanted to confirm what it was before reporting it, as well as to check for survivors who need help.
00:07:31
The pile of wreckage was billowing some steam, which was quite visible in the beams of our flashlights.
00:07:36
The main fuselage lay amongst scattered debris, sitting in the middle of the field, about 75 yards from the road, about the same distance from the tree line behind it.
00:07:45
As we got closer to the main body of the aircraft, we were shocked to realize that these were not the remains of a civilian plane.
00:07:53
It was one of our own Apache attack helicopters, or rather, it was what was left to one.
00:08:00
Unable to detect the smell of spilled fuel, nor seen any indication of my catch fire, we kept approaching it, opened again to first check for any survivors, although the general appearance of the crash site didn't seem hopeful.
00:08:13
The ground showed a significant crater at its initial point of impact.
00:08:18
Pieces of the helicopter were clearly buried in it, with a length of other impact points and bits of debris strewn along the ground in front of it.
00:08:26
A number of detached rockets also length scattered around the clearing.
00:08:29
These additional craters indicated that it had likely bounced after its first impact, then flipping or rolling a number of times before coming to a stop.
00:08:37
Now the broken and twisted heap of metal that lay before us.
00:08:40
Scanning the tree line behind it with our flashlights, it was a section of trees whose tops were noticeably damaged.
00:08:47
Considering the 911 call about a low-flying aircraft, we figured that the helicopter must have clipped the tree tops at a fast speed, which caused it to crash as hard as abruptly as it did.
00:08:57
The pilot probably had little no time to react.
00:09:00
The damage to the Apache, including its cockpit, was extensive.
00:09:05
Seeing this, we knew then that there was little chance of either the two pilots having survived.
00:09:11
I told Lack to check the cockpit anyway before I jogged back to our truck, carefully avoiding the debris, so I could radio back a report on the crash.
00:09:20
And that was when this strange situation got even stranger.
00:09:26
[Breathing]
00:09:28
[Breathing]
00:09:30
[Breathing]
00:09:32
[Breathing]
00:09:36
[Breathing]
00:09:54
This is Bravo 47 calling command.
00:10:00
Come in over.
00:10:00
Command at Bravo 47.
00:10:04
Go ahead.
00:10:04
We are currently at...
00:10:07
What the hell?
00:10:10
Command this is Bravo 470.
00:10:15
You read me?
00:10:16
Huh.
00:10:19
That's weird.
00:10:21
Command this is Bravo 470.
00:10:27
Command over.
00:10:28
Right after my dispatch acknowledged my call in, my transmission was suddenly drowned out by some kind of radio interference.
00:10:36
A distinct electronic hum was the only thing I could hear.
00:10:40
I clicked through the radio trying a few other channels, but the same interference seemed to be preventing me from transmitting on those as well.
00:10:49
Being my primary MOS was communications, I suspected, shall I say strongly suspected, that this wasn't just some kind of random interference with our radio.
00:10:59
I had certainly never heard of before.
00:11:02
I knew enough about radio signals to know when something strange was happening.
00:11:06
Here I'll give you an example.
00:11:08
You're ever driving down the road and listening to your car's radio, specifically AM radio.
00:11:13
And you pass by some overhead power lines, you'll notice the radio signal will often either get fuzzy or be completely drowned out by static.
00:11:21
That interference is caused by the electromagnetic energy coming off the high voltage power lines.
00:11:26
However, out here in this empty field on 4 Campbell, there were no power lines or any other reasons for this kind of sudden, very powerful radio interference.
00:11:38
I had no idea why, but it seemed very possible that the designated radio frequencies we were using were intentionally being jammed on all available channels,
00:11:48
no less.
00:11:49
Unable to send up a report, I impatiently tossed the radio handset onto the front seat.
00:11:55
I then reached into the cargo area of the truck, grabbing a fire extinguisher, for jogging back over to the wreckage.
00:12:01
Lack was now standing right beside the airframe, staring at the pilot who was still strapped at the rear seat, plainly visible through what little remain to the chopper's canopy.
00:12:10
Starting to open my mouth, I wanted to tell Lack about the issue with the radio, I suddenly stopped.
00:12:16
My attention being drawn back to the pilot.
00:12:19
He wouldn't wear in the right uniform.
00:12:23
In my experience, American pilots would normally have worn in all of Green One Piece Cybert flight suit.
00:12:31
This man was wearing something that looked much more like the older Vietnam air fatigues, O.D.
00:12:36
Green with large buttons down the front of the blouse, the jacket.
00:12:40
Shantama flashlight from various angles, looking for any other identified markings, I then saw the patch of a foreign flag sewn on to his upper sleeve.
00:12:49
My suspicions were confirmed.
00:12:52
Having deployed to Central America myself, if only for a few weeks, I thought I had recognized the uniform he was wearing, a Honduran Army uniform.
00:13:02
Very much had a place on someone pilot an American helicopter, I thought.
00:13:06
He was wearing the right head gear though, a pilot's helmet, which was equipped with its rather obvious integrated not vision hardware and target acquisition display.
00:13:16
He was also very clearly dead.
00:13:19
No surprise us though.
00:13:22
We figured there was a little chance of either the pilot or the gunner having survived to crash this bad.
00:13:26
The nose of the helicopter happened to practically obliterate it on impact.
00:13:30
The front part of the aircraft with the gunner would have been seated was just gone.
00:13:35
If there had been two men in that helicopter, you wouldn't know it by looking at it.
00:13:40
Looking back at Lack, who looked as confused as I was, I suddenly remembered the issue with the radio and told him about it.
00:13:48
Not sure what else to do, we continued carefully walking around the wreckage, looking for anything else unusual while discussing what our best course of action was,
00:13:58
what was not being able to communicate anything back to our command.
00:14:01
Having a fire extinguisher on hand, we figured at least one of us should say close to the wreckage, in case it caught fire.
00:14:08
Being able to stop a fire as soon as it started might help preserve something important, or whoever would end up investigating the crash.
00:14:15
Suddenly, we heard the sound of vehicles approaching, soon followed by headlights on the nearby road.
00:14:28
Now, things got even stranger.
00:14:32
Two humbies in an M35 troop transport truck sped up to the clearing, stopping abruptly.
00:14:41
A dozen or so soldiers wearing black uniforms, very unusual, quickly filed out of the back of the doose.
00:14:48
They swiftly approached the wreckage, scanning the area, the two of us included, their M16s out and ready.
00:14:56
Very odd behavior from investigating a crash site like this, I thought.
00:15:00
Especially, as they kept pointing loaded rifles at what were clearly two fellow soldiers.
00:15:07
None of them wore any divisional insignia, nor had any name tags on their uniforms.
00:15:13
They wore only a subdued patch of the American flag on their sleeve.
00:15:16
One of them did have sergeants bars on his collar, and another had a corpus, but the others had no rank identifier as whatsoever.
00:15:24
A colonel, a lieutenant colonel, and two majors then got out of the humbies, identifiable by the rank they wore on their collars.
00:15:32
But none of them had any divisional insignia or name tags either.
00:15:35
As they approached us, still standing next to the wreckage, four soldiers in the larger group walked over and joined them.
00:15:42
The colonel suddenly pointed at us and shouted, "You will leave now."
00:15:49
Remember when I said lack had a bad habit of taking his job too seriously?
00:15:54
This is one of those times.
00:15:57
He got, if you will, all formal in by the book.
00:16:02
He firmly told the colonel that we were not leaving the area, until we were properly relieved, according to the rules and regulations and all that.
00:16:10
Well, the colonel was clearly not happy with his response.
00:16:15
By the look on his face, his two-second fuse was already halfway burnt.
00:16:19
Personally, I felt that the regulations on this were pretty clear and obvious.
00:16:24
The colonel was very much our superior officer, and he had given us direct orders to leave.
00:16:29
I was fine with obeying those orders and leaving right then and there.
00:16:33
But for the life of me, I don't know what lack was thinking.
00:16:38
And I certainly did not expect what happened next.
00:16:41
The colonel turned to one of the black-tailed soldiers, one wearing sergeants' bars, and very clearly said, "Sarchant, if they are not gone in 30 seconds,
00:16:52
kill them."
00:16:54
He then turned back to face Lack, as he continued his instructions to the sergeant, and disposed of their bodies along with that.
00:17:06
He was appointed the wrecked patchy.
00:17:10
Sergeant No-Nane then stepped forward and brought his M-16 up to shoulder, pointing it directly at Lack's chest.
00:17:19
Now, I'm not a very good poker player, but I sure as hell know when I need to fold my hand and walk away from the table.
00:17:30
I quickly turned and walked back towards our truck.
00:17:34
I didn't say a word.
00:17:36
I got into the driver's seat, started the engine, held my foot down on the brake, and put it in here.
00:17:42
I kept staring straight ahead at the road, praying that Lack would wise up and get in the damn truck.
00:17:50
I thinkfully, he was climbing to the passenger's seat about three seconds later, having evidently changed his mindset.
00:17:58
Keep my eye straight ahead.
00:18:01
I immediately drove us the hell out of there.
00:18:05
[Dramatic music]
00:18:11
Probably would have insisted to get man to come in over.
00:18:24
After a time,
00:24:48
having forgotten all about the radio, it suddenly barked back to life, startling me.
00:18:31
I hadn't even realized that the electronic hum, had stopped.
00:18:34
Dispatch was calling us, asking if we were okay.
00:18:38
As calmly as I could, I replied that we were fine.
00:18:43
They asked what I had attempted to say in my initial radio transmission before the strange interference had started up.
00:18:51
With some hesitation, I replied that we hadn't found anything yet, and that we planned on continuing our search of the area.
00:18:59
[Dramatic music]
00:19:02
Several hours later, when we got back to the station, at the end of our shift, our shift commander pulled us into his office, and what I thought was something of a tentative manner.
00:19:12
He asked us if we had ended up finding anything during our search of the woods.
00:19:17
As I have previously indicated, this wasn't my first radio.
00:19:22
I've been down this road before, and I knew full well that silence is golden.
00:19:28
Clearing my throat, looking first at Lack, then back at the shift commander, I quietly said that no sir, we hadn't seen anything out there.
00:19:37
Nothing unusual to report.
00:19:40
Lack seemed like he was about to say something, but then he simply nodded, said the same thing.
00:19:47
Nothing unusual.
00:19:49
We all just stood silently in his office for a moment.
00:19:54
Commander seemed rather pleased by a replies.
00:19:58
I could swear by the look of relief on his face, he knew more than what he was either willing or able to tell us.
00:20:05
He then dismissed us, and I was very relieved to be dismissed.
00:20:10
I left the station, and lacked it too.
00:20:14
I don't even think I stopped anywhere to get anything to eat on my way home.
00:20:19
I simply drove back to my tiny-based apartment, and sat in the dark in my tiny living room.
00:20:24
The night's events raced through my mind.
00:20:28
I wondered why things like this had to happen to me.
00:20:31
I couldn't come up with an answer, so finally, I went to bed.
00:20:38
We never heard anything about any civilian plane crash.
00:20:46
I never asked anyone about it either.
00:20:48
For a good number of years afterward, I would find myself lost in thought.
00:20:53
I wonder if that colonel was bluffing, or if he really would have had lacking me killed if we had chosen not to leave the crash site.
00:21:00
Some years beyond that, after I got married and started a family, now having my own children, I began to question what became of the bodies of the two men who died in that helicopter crash.
00:21:12
Where were their final resting places?
00:21:14
Where were their families told?
00:21:16
Where did their remains in that Apache helicopter simply vanish into the void of yet another classified government secret?
00:21:24
As for why a hunter and soldier was sitting in the pilot's seat, I may be able to offer you some amount of explanation.
00:21:31
I would come to learn that at that time, the Apache was being used to secretly train foreign pilots to fly US military helicopters, and for a specific reason.
00:21:42
On March 17, 1988, only a month after the night we discovered that crashed Apache, thousands of US military personnel, some from the 82nd Airborne Division,
00:21:53
deployed in a Honduras in support of Operation Golden Fessant.
00:21:57
As I have alluded to already, I was also deployed to Honduras, but that was in December of 1986, more than a year before this official operation began.
00:22:07
My group was assisting with the construction of an airfield, likely to prepare for the upcoming airborne operations.
00:22:13
Like the recent war in Vietnam, during my time in the 80s, the US international policy prevented the spread of communism was still in effect in Central America.
00:22:22
As with local anti-communist groups who had fallen Vietnam, following an overthrow of the Nicaragua government in 1979, the US was now back in the anti-communists in Nicaragua.
00:22:34
In this case, it was the Contras, and they're fighting against the newly established Marxist and reportedly Soviet-funded government, the Sandinistas.
00:22:42
Operation Golden Fessant was built as an emergency deployment readiness exercise, a simple joint training exercise between the US and Honduran militaries.
00:22:51
But our soldiers were evidently deployed ready to fight, not only to conduct training.
00:22:56
The rumor was that the Sandinistas had been illegally operating in Honduras, and that the American troops were sent to push them back out.
00:23:04
However, panning on a officials assured the public that our troops would be staying well away from the border, where the US back control rebels had reportedly been fighting with the Sandinistas.
00:23:16
Whatever the true events were, following this rapid deployment of US troops in Honduras and March, the Sandinistas quickly withdrew, and the US troops were pulled back out by the end of the month.
00:23:27
Ultimately though, the US government support and funding of the Contras was frowned on by many Americans.
00:23:34
When it was discovered that the US government had been covertly selling arms through Iran to bypass congressional approval, it sparked a rather nasty political controversy back in the late 80s.
00:23:45
Such as the result of the uncovering of government and military secrets.
00:23:51
War Time Stories is created and hosted by me,
00:24:03
Luke Lamana, executive produced by Mr.
00:24:05
Ballon, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt, written by Jake Howard in myself, audio editing and sound designed by me, Carla Cascio, and Whitlett Cascio, additional editing by Davenin Tag and Jordan Stidham,
00:24:18
researched by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan, mixed and mastered by Brendan Cain, production supervision by Jeremy Bone, production coordination by Avery Siegel,
00:24:29
additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden, artwork by Jessica Collox and Keiner, Robin Vane, and Piccata.
00:24:35
If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info@wartimestories.com.
00:24:41
Thank you so much for listening to War Time Stories.
00:24:46
[BLANK_AUDIO]
00:24:56
Great show and podcast, there's a great channel called Bedtime Stories they got me on to Wartime Stories. I now eenjoy both of these shows.
love it