Billed as ‘the ultimate fighting machine’, the AH-64 Apache attack helicopter is a US-designed close-support aircraft in service with US forces and, in the UK, with the Army Air Corps (AAC). This is a senior AAC pilot’s vivid account of flying this and other combat helicopters in action. ‘Ugly’ is the military callsign for the Apache attack helicopter. Getting Ugly is a memoir of the author’s service flying close-support helicopters with the AAC, from patrolling ‘Bandit Country’ in Co. Armagh, Northern Ireland, in the late 1990s, to taking out Taliban fighters in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, in the mid to late 2000s, with active service in the Balkans and Iraq along the way; he was decorated for rescuing other soldiers from a helicopter that had crashed and caught fire. The author, Steve Jones, was a WO1; that is, a warrant officer class 1, the highest rank of non-commissioned officer in the British Army, equivalent to a senior sergeant-major. He was also a qualified instructor on the Apache, and as such helped to teach Prince Harry, the then Lieutenant H. Wales to fly and fight the aircraft.
