Final Mission

In March 2007 Sean Hobbs, the Memorial’s first official photographer in Afghanistan, was waiting to photograph CH-47D Chinooks of the Australian Army’s 5th Aviation Regiment (5AVN). 

Time was running out, as A15-201 Courage and A15-202 Centaur were due to return to Australia in April for refurbishment. Hobbs’ opportunity finally came on 30 March, when he spent seven hours aboard Courage as it and Centaur flew their final mission of the rotation from Kandahar Airfield to Qalat Forward Arming and Refueling Point (FARP), then to Forward Operating Base (FOB) Baylough and back. Hobbs’ photographs and footage became the cornerstone of the Memorial’s Afghanistan collection. 

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Sean Hobbs was surprised that his photographs taken aboard Courage were successful, considering the flying conditions: “All you need to do is find an old industrial washing machine; get in that, turn it on so that you are rattling around, turn the lights out, and imagine you are sitting there [in the aircraft] … that’s exactly what it’s like.”

Serendipitously for the Memorial, Hobbs’ photographs of the Chinooks’ final mission were augmented by the Memorial’s acquisition in April 2016 of the decommissioned Centaur. Hobbs had died unexpectedly less than three weeks earlier, aged only 38, and Memorial curators feared that key information about his Chinook images would be lost forever. 

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In 2019 we heard from Captain (now Major) Jason Otter who, with Major Jason Duggan, piloted Courage with Hobbs aboard. He clearly recalled the flight: “The mission was recognisable to many of the rotation’s aircrew as the ‘the shipping container job’. The single refrigeration unit at FOB Baylough had failed and this unit was the urgently required replacement.” 

In 2019, Major Otter generously donated his own collection of photographs and footage from his first deployment to Afghanistan with 5AVN in 2006–07, including images of “the shipping container job”.

It included rare video of the mission, filmed from one of the two escort AH-64D Apache helicopters from the 82nd Airborne Division (United States Army). 

Major Otter later noted: “We were the lead aircraft with two Apache escorts. The flight to Baylough was a little slower than normal – approximately 80 knots to ensure the stability of the large shipping container. I have to say, we did present a large target as we flew along. The comments of Chief Warrant Officer 3 David Guzzetti (Apache pilot) from earlier flights still resonated with me: ‘Sir, I can’t stop them shooting at you, but I will avenge your death’.”

Sergeant (now WO2) David Hanney, an aircrewman aboard Centaur, provided the Memorial with the last piece of the visual puzzle. His footage from the port window of Centaur shows both Courage and the Apache in transit. There, 200 feet above the striking landscape, can be seen the grainy figure of Sean Hobbs sitting on the ramp of Courage, alongside Aircrewman Technician Corporal Garth Pregnell, as the refrigerated shipping container swings precariously below.

In the digital era it is common for an event to be covered from multiple perspectives; but filmed in a war zone, the coverage of the shipping container job is unparalleled in the Memorial’s present collection. 

Over a 14-year period, hundreds of images and hours of footage have come together to form a comprehensive visual account of a day in the work of 5AVN in Afghanistan.

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The circle was completed in December 2020 when Major Otter and WO2 Hanney were reunited in Centaur at the Memorial’s Mitchell complex to record their memories about their deployment in it and Courage. 

The poignancy of the event was only amplified by the absence of Sean Hobbs. 

This article was originally published in Wartime Issue 96, Spring 2021.