Mike Durant

And I think, you know, we put them back on the bird and took them back.

So we had refueled them, which basically gave them one ammo load and two bags of gas to work with.

I know they did engage targets.

I know they supported the airfield seizure.

Somewhere in there, a chip light comes on.

So this is like in your car where you get and check engine light.

which means there's a piece of metal that has been detected within the main transmission, which now I'm thinking, oh shit, we overstressed the transmission and it's starting to come apart.

But I'm like, we can't shut this thing down here.

I mean, we're going to, the PDF is, some of them got to come this way.

And, you know, they're going to stumble upon us and we're going to be in a firefight on the ground.

And so I decided we're going to fly this back.

So we crank it up.

fly back, landed on the airfield.

Turns out the transmission wasn't trashed.

It was just probably, you know, like if you run a transmission in a vehicle in a gear that's never been used much, maybe there's a metal shard or something that wears off and ends up in the oil.

Well, that's what these chip detectors are designed to detect.

And it's got a magnet in there, and it'll attract it.

That's probably what happened.

We put this thing in a mode that it hadn't been in.

It's not a gear, but the weight of the aircraft put it in such demand on it that it caused the chip to come loose.