[Reference] photos of a US base in Iraq and also of downtown Baghdad

[A_Grounded_Pilot]

I got an email that had a powerpoint put together by an American Blackhawk pilot stationed in Iraq. I've added the captions he had on the slides underneath each corresponding picture. I omitted a few of the pictures in the slideshow, and just posted what I thought were the most relevant to PR mappers. If you want a pic of him sitting on a ZPU-4 or holding an AKS-74U, I've got those too


After arriving Iraq, we got assigned our living quarters. Our housing areas are “containerized housing units”, or CHU’s for short. They are set up and surrounded by large concrete “T” walls to protect from shrapnel damage, or bullets. I’m lucky that mine has a bathroom inside (called a wet CHU). Others have to go to another trailer for showers or to the bathroom. Here is a view of the outside of U pod.


Here is in side the pod. This is the view outside my CHU. More T walls and CHU’s. As long as a mortar doesn’t land square on top of your pod, you should be OK.


The outer T walls are quite substantial. If one fell on your CHU, it would crush it like a beer can.


Remnants of soviet built equipment the Iraqi’s had (a BMP and a BRDM I think) There is lots of blown up stuff around, if you look.




Some flight line pictures. Pods with CHU’s are in the background. It’s hard to sleep so close to the flight line and runway with F-16’s taking off in full afterburner at 3:00 in the morning, and CV-22’s hovering by.


These are some really noisy bastards


Good aerial view of part of the base.


This is a “HASS”, for Hardened Aircraft Storage Structure These are quite substantial structures.


Here’s one of the blast doors on the end of the HASS It takes a pretty good size bomb to hurt these.




This is the Euphrates river. I routinely fly over the Tigris too. I have also flown by the city of Babylon, which dates back to the third millennium.


One of the many Mosques that are everywhere. The following are some generic pictures I’ve taken around Baghdad and other places.




This is short final to one of the helipads downtown Baghdad. It’s always busy here at all hours.


How’d you like to try and drive through this mess?


These are the famous crossed sabers that you see in the media a lot.

[ledo1222]

Can i use some of the base ideas for one of my map Or is it only yours. It would make great for the Canadian forces Main im building in my Map

[A_Grounded_Pilot]

By all means, please do. That's why I shared these pics... I don't have the patience to make a map myself, so this is my little way of helping you guys who do And thanks to the mystery mod who fixed the title...

[Tannhauser]

I want that mosque!

[Rudd]

Fantastic pictures, I hope the modellers are thinking "yeah...I could model that!"

the mine enterance static you see on Qinling might be retextured to look like those hardened statics maybe.

[[R-DEV]Hans Martin Slayer]

Thanks for posting, really good refs there!

[Bellator]

These are some really noisy bastards

I cant help but to think of Enclave's vertibirds from fallout. Those osprey's look very sinister, especially when line like that.

[BloodBane611]

My favorite is how the army helicopters have blast shields between them, while the ospreys are totally unprotected. Perhaps the marines are shielding them with psychic powers.

Anyhow, awesome refs, thanks for sharing!

[Cheditor]

Think the ospreys are taking off as the top right one has propellers up and looks like they are moving.
Very nice pics, just shows you how large an actual "main" base is ^^

[DkMick]

OpSec anyone? Did your source say it's cool to put these out?