The Loss of a Canadian Chinook in Afghanistan: The Pilot’s Recollection of 5 August 2010
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A Canadian Chinook received heavy enemy fire on 5 August 2010 near Ma’sum Ghar. Relying on his experience, training, and ability, Captain William Todd Fielding, the pilot, safely landed the burning helicopter, thereby saving everyone on board. His recollection of the event, in his own words, offers a first-person account of what could easily have become Canada’s worst day in Afghanistan. For his actions, he was awarded the Medal of Military Valour. Resume: Le 5 aout 2010, un Chinook des Forces canadiennes a subi un tir ennemi soutenu pres de Ma’sum Ghar. Fort de son experience, de sa formation et de son habilete, le pilote, le capitaine William Todd Fielding, est parvenu a atterrir l ’helicoptere en feu, sauvant ainsi la vie de toutes les personnes a bord. Son recit des evenements nous fournit un compte rendu tres personnel d’un incident qui aurait pu constituer la pire journee du Canada en Afghanistan. Son action lui a valu la Medaille de la vaillance militaire. T h e C a n a d i a n h e l i c o p t e r f o r c e (Afghanistan) (c h f (a )) played an essential role in Canada’s war in Southwest Asia. Consisting of six CH-147D Chinooks purchased from the u s Army to ferry troops and supplies throughout southern Afghanistan and eight modified CH-146 Griffons to provide escort protection and occasional fire support to troops on the ground, the c h f (a ) helped © C a n a d ia n M ili ta r y H is to r y 24, no. 2 (Summer/Autumn 2015): 267-290 1 : The Loss of a Canadian Chinook in Afghanistan The Pilot’s Recollection of 5 August 2010 Published by Scholars Commons @ Laurier, 2015 268 : T h e L o s s o f a C a n a d ia n C h in o o k in A fg h a n is ta n Before: U ndoubtedly the last photograph taken o f Blow torch 61, snapped about five m inutes prior to take off. [Courtesy o f Capt. W.T. Fielding] a lle v ia t e s o m e o f th e t h r e a t p o s e d t o C a n a d ia n so ld ie rs in a n d a r o u n d K a n d a h a r P r o v in c e . T a b le d in e a r ly 2008 a n d o th e r w is e k n o w n a s th e M a n le y R e p o r t , th e I n d e p e n d e n t P a n e l o n C a n a d a ’s F u t u r e R o l e i n A f g h a n i s t a n m a d e th e a c q u is it io n o f h e lic o p te rs a c o n d itio n o f C a n a d a ’s c o n tin u e d in v o lv e m e n t in c o m b a t, so d e a d ly h a d in s u r g e n t a t t a c k s b e c o m e .1 T h e p a n e l ’s re c o m m e n d a tio n , t o b e su re , w a s in n o w a y u n r e a s o n a b le . B e tw e e n th e s t a r t o f th e m is s io n in 2 0 0 1 a n d th e e n d o f 2008, n in e ty th r e e C a n a d ia n so ld ie rs w e r e k il le d in a c tio n ; o f th is n u m b e r, f u l ly s ix ty f iv e , o r r o u g h ly 70 p e r c e n t o f th e t o ta l , w e r e c a u s e d b y im p r o v is e d e x p lo s iv e d e v ic e s (i e d s), ro a d s id e b o m b s o r s u ic id e b o m b e rs in o n e fo rm o r a n o th e r .2 A c c o r d in g to n o w -C o lo n e l R o b e r t W a lk e r , i e d s c a u s e d a ll o f th e e ig h te e n fa t a l c a s u a lt ie s s u s ta in e d b y h is b a t t le g ro u p , w h ic h w a s b a s e d o n th e 2 n d 1 The report was named after its chair, The Honourable John Manley, PC , and now OC. Canada, I n d e p e n d e n t P a n e l o n C a n a d a ’s F u tu r e R o le in A fg h a n is ta n (Ottawa: 2008), 27, 35, and 38. 2 As calculated using N a tio n a l P o s t , “Timeline: Death toll in Afghanistan,” available online, last accessed 5 December 2014. See also Canada, DND, “Canadian Forces’ Casualty Statistics (Afghanistan),” Fact Sheet, Project number FS 12.002, 10 June 2013. Canadian casualties for the entire mission in Afghanistan, 2001-2014, totalled 158 military personnel, one diplomat, one journalist, and two civilian aid workers. 2 Canadian Military History, Vol. 24 [2015], Iss. 2, Art. 12 http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol24/iss2/12
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".