Immediate Response: Original Edition. This item is unavailable.Immediate Response: Original Edition

2006 in Helmand saw British forces engaged in the most ferocious fighting since the Korean War. For much of the time they were hanging on by their fingertips, holed up in remote platoon houses, outnumbered, facing relentless assault and nearly overwhelmed. Only the Chinooks kept them in the game. But that meant their crews putting down in hot LZs, exposing their aircraft to withering attack from an enemy for whom downing one of the big helos would be the ultimate prize.

They had been lucky. So far. Then they launched their biggest operation yet: a complicated, high-risk airborne assault that launched a fleet of heavily armed helicopters into the Afghan Heart of Darkness. And then a report came over the net that one of the Chinooks was down . . .

In Immediate Response, Major Mark Hammond, a Royal Marine flying with the RAF, tells the gripping inside story of the Chinook squadrons' war for the first time. It's a visceral, unputdownable combination of hi-tech and old-fashioned grit; an action-packed story shot through with a mix of aviation fuel and cordite ...

Major Mark Hammond joined the Royal Marines in 1989. After specializing as a pilot, he flew Gazelle and Lynx helicopters for 3 Commando Brigade Air Squadron and, subsequently, 847 Naval Air Squadron. After a tour in America with the US Marine Corps flying Cobra attack helicopters, he now flies the Chinook HC2 on exchange with the RAF. He took part in the 2003 assault on Iraq's Al-Fawr Peninsula and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in Afghanistan in 2006.