The horizon disappears for a moment as the nose of the helicopter rears. There's a faint thump as rockets trailing brown smoke arc ahead. The aircraft banks as if flicked on its side by an outside force.
Diving back towards to the ground it spurts flares from its tail to distract heat-seeking missiles.
Somewhere in the battle for the eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, Russian soldiers are being torn apart, and burned, as the ground itself erupts when the rockets find their target. There's no time to reflect -- the effect of the rockets will get passed back to the pilots later. Their task now is to stay alUkraine's losses are a national secret. But pilots and air crew in the Sikorsky Brigade have all lost close friends to Russian SAMs (Surface to Air Missiles). Often shoulder launched, the man-portable missiles can send a helicopter into a ball of flame in seconds.
They're hunted. Whether airborne or not. Ukraine's air force and army aviators along with their planes and helicopters, are priority prey for Russia's missiles. They're likely top of the Kremlin's list.
CNN spent time embedded with the Sikorsky Brigade in eastern Ukraine operating from a secret base. It has a handful of helicopters and pilots there, conducting combat missions against Russian forces.
Given the gigantic advantage that Russia enjoys over Ukraine in terms of aircraft and pilots it's staggering that Ukraine can still threaten Russian forces. Indeed it's baffling that almost one year into the conflict Ukraine has an air force and helicopter fleet at all, given the effort to destroy
A Ukrainian army helicopter returns from a combat mission near Bakhmut, described by President Zelensky as currently "the most difficult out of all" areas in Ukraine.
We're always surprised that we're here. But, well, we are and we're never going to stop," says the deputy commander of the Sikorsky Brigade -- his name and location are military secrets.
Ukraine's helicopter pilots have to fly so low that being onboard one is like riding a pebble as it skims and skips across water.
Serhiy and Hennady are both middle-aged pilots with more than two decades of flying behind them. They spent much of the early 2000s flying for the United Nations on peacekeeping missions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The experience, they say, had been invaluable. It kept their hours up and gave them experience of flying low and in difficult circumstances -- like the ongoing civil war in the DRC.
Still this week Serhiy, who commands a flight of two Mi-8s each flying about three combat sorties a day, tells CNN he clipped a tree. Three of his five rotor blades were damaged and caused a forced landing -- a drop of about 20 feet. The venerable Mi-8s -- all made before the collapse of the Soviet Union -- are over three decades old, their flanks are streaked black with exhaust and oil.
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