We took off. We stood down there, but basically the time we got at altitude were on end. We were getting shot at all the way down the track.

Didn't get hit, but we were getting shot at, since flashes all of them. Base was on a attack.

Drop the load to the 12 bundles burden. The sheets disintegrated because the load was probably not too heavy or whatever.

The sheets 10 of them hit the ground smack on the middle of the LZ.

And we flew all the crew ended up getting small words for that, but I didn't need to know that that changed those guys' life on the ground.

It was enough for me.

Welcome to Combat Story. I'm Ryan Fugid, and I serve Warzone Tourers as an Army attack helicopter pilot and CIA officer over a 15-year career.

I'm fascinated by the experiences of the elite in combat. On this show, I interview some of the best to understand what combat felt like on their front lines.

This is Combat Story. Today we hear our second combat story with a member of the Air Force's Aerial Special Operations Community, Mike Lefef, and MC-130 Navigator in the Air Force's 8th Special Operations Squadron or 8th SOS.

Mike was deployed consistently in 2001-2006 with the 8th SOS as the most deployed Air Force Special Operations Squadron at the time.

This included trips to both Afghanistan and Iraq as both the aircraft technology improved and bases in theater became more fortified and established.

In the MC-130, Mike was responsible for a variety of mission sets, supporting primarily Special Operations Community, including Dev Guru as we hear in this episode.

The MC-130 is designed to support the Special Operations Community with air drops, delivery and extraction of Special Operators, refueling, combat search and rescue, and so much more.

In the next episode, we pick up where we left off as Mike goes from his first deployment, post-9-11, into the next and more established operational tempo, going from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan to Kuwait to Iraq and back again.

And I hope you enjoyed this set of combat stories in the versatile MC-130 as much as I did.

Mike, thanks for coming back for round two with us, Mams.

I'm always glad to be back, I've enjoyed a couple of episodes since I was on, so.

Excellent. Well, for people who hadn't seen or listened to the first round, I wanted to catch them up.

And we left off with you kind of coming out of your first deployment post-9-11 in what we described as kind of the Wild West.

I know what we're going to do is go through some more established operations with bases that actually have fences around them and proper security.

And that sort of thing, but for people who didn't tune into the first one, can you just give us a recap of your background, how you got to that place, and then we'll jump off from there.

Yeah, so retired in 16, the tech colonel, US Air Force grew up out in Oregon and Washington went to the University of Washington and ROTC straight into the military.

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