Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan

by Sean Parnell

The Chinook crews were a breed apart. They usually flew with the ramp down and the flight engineer sitting on the end of it like a kid fishing off an old dock. Except instead of a pole and Zebco reel, he wielded an M240 machine gun capable of spewing out up to 950 bullets a minute. In an age of Mach 2 jets and satellite-guided munitions, going to war at about ninety miles an hour with your feet dangling in space seemed old-school hard core.