PYEONGTAEK, South Korea — Apache helicopter crews carried out an important training stint Friday in which they launched live Hellfire anti-tank missiles at a target range off South Korea’s west coast.

Fifteen Apaches from the Army’s 2nd Combat Aviation Brigade took part in the live fire over Chikdo Range, an island cliff that juts out of the West Sea about 20 miles west of Kunsan Air Base. The training was scheduled to begin March 10, but fog and yellow dust grounded the helos until the end of the week.

“This is one of the very few times they actually get to fire real Hellfire missiles,” brigade spokesman Capt. Brad DeLoach said in a telephone interview several days before the shoot. “It’s a familiarization shoot for the guys,” he said. “Most of these kids have never fired a Hellfire unless they do it in combat.”

“A lot of guys don’t know what it feels like coming off the rail, looks like or sounds like on impact. … A lot of times on the simulator, it’s very anticlimactic,” Chief Warrant Officer 2 Dan Archer said Thursday.

“When you get in the air and you’re actually shooting the real missile — knowing you can’t do anything to mess up — you can’t replicate that,” noted Capt. Ashley Lee, while waiting for weather to clear at Kunsan on Thursday.

The Hellfire missiles, which cost $20,000 to $25,000 each, are built to destroy tanks.

The brigade, headquartered at Camp Humphreys, is part of the 2nd Infantry Division. Its Apache battalions fly the AH-64D Apache variant, known as the Longbow. The two-seat aircraft is armed with a 30mm chain gun and can be fitted with 2.75-inch rocket pods, up to 16 Hellfire missiles, or a combination of rockets and Hellfires.

Counting ground crew and other support troops, some 350 of the brigade’s soldiers took part in the training, which was staged out of Kunsan.

Apaches armed with three or four Hellfires each lifted off from Kunsan in flights of two, making a 20- to 30-minute over-water flight to Chikdo. There were no manmade targets the crews had to hit on the range; they were instead free to fire at any piece of terrain they chose.

They fired at altitudes below 500 feet, DeLoach said. “They’re gonna go and engage rocks — just terrain — there’s nothing out there to shoot,” he said.

While one pair of Apaches was en route to the range, another pair was heading back from its shoot.

On returning to Kunsan, the Apaches rearmed and refueled. Some were used to practice a “hot swap,” a quick change of crewmembers that takes place while the engines are kept running.

If an Apache crewmember became incapacitated in combat, the helo could land, the disabled crewmember could be taken out, and a fresh crewmember could quickly take his place, allowing the Apache to quickly return to action, DeLoach said.

The Apaches were from the brigade’s 4th Battalion, 2nd Aviation Regiment. In addition, two CH-47 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters and a UH-60 Black Hawk of the brigade’s 3rd Battalion, 2nd Aviation Regiment joined the training as a personnel recovery element, DeLoach said.

“Their mission is, if an Apache goes down in the water, they’re to pick [the crew] out of the water,” DeLoach said.

Stars and Stripes reporter Ashley Rowland contributed to this report.