Death From Above (Call of Duty 4)

"Hehe, this is going to be one helluva highlight reel." "I heard that!"

- AC-130 FCO and AC-130 TV Operator

Plot
Death From Above carries on from the previous mission, Hunted. The player, assuming the role of a gunner on an AC-130H Spectre, protects Captain Price and his team (including Soap - one of the player characters) as they make their way through an enemy-controlled village, clearing out enemy defenses and offering some powerful close air support as the SAS commandos make their way to the extraction point by foot and by truck. Arriving at a local junkyard, the SAS team must hold off a considerable enemy assault with the aid of the Spectre until they can be rescued.

Tips

 * The 40mm Bofors gun is best for killing groups of enemies and vehicles as the explosion is small and controllable. Comparatively, the 105mm howitzer is powerful but has a slow rate of fire, and the 20mm has a fast rate of fire but is weaker.
 * The armored vehicle the player encounters during the level can be destroyed with two 40mm rounds.


 * Careless use of the 105mm M102 howitzer can easily wound SAS characters, thus ending the mission. It is good for clearing buildings with enemies however.


 * Although the player's character cannot die on this level, he can still fail the mission by harming members of the SAS squad, or by firing on the church or the drivers of the trucks the SAS squad commandeer.


 * Friendly soldiers and vehicles "strobe" or flash, unlike the enemies which will be a solid color. This is easier to see on WHOT mode.


 * WHOT and BHOT means which color is warm and which color is cool. In WHOT, warmer objects are brighter and cooler objects are darker. In BHOT, warmer objects are darker and cooler objects are brighter.
 * If either a howitzer round or 5-6 Bofors rounds are fired on a small house (a small rectangular house), the house will be leveled.

Xbox 360 Achievements

 * Straight Flush is obtained by killing five enemies in one shot on this level.


 * Death from Above is obtained by completing this mission on any difficulty.


 * The Escape is obtained by completing both the previous mission and this one on Veteran difficulty.

Trivia

 * This is the only mission in which the full form of MacTavish is visible in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, although the team simply appear as white/black silhouettes, making it difficult to determine which one is Soap. He is one of the characters who must be protected. However, his full form is shown in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
 * In the end of the previous level, Hunted, when Captain Price calls for the AC-130, he designates the AC-130's callsign as "Warhammer", however in this level the AC-130 is designated by the callsign "Wildfire".
 * The AC-130H in this mission is actually an AC-130U, because the AC-130H doesn't have the 25mm Gatling gun in real life.
 * The cutscene before "Death From Above" starts shows the gunship with two 25mm Gatling guns, even though the player only gets to use one in-game.
 * There is actually no AC-130 in this mission. By enabling the "noclip" cheat in the console (available only in the PC version), the player cannot see the AC-130 that they are riding. The sounds of the plane and the guns are purely cosmetic.
 * The player ended the previous level "Hunted" with five soldiers in their party: Soap, Price, Gaz, Nikolai and a randomly named soldier. The player left three dead at the crash site: Paulson and the two pilots. However, the player begins "Death From Above" with a party of eight soldiers running along the road to the extraction point. Somehow, from the beginning of "Blackout", the group has doubled in size and a force that initially required one chopper to evacuate now apparently requires two CH-46s.
 * This is the only mission where the player can hear their character speak.
 * This is the only mission where the playable character cannot die or take damage.
 * During the credits, the player can watch a slightly modified version of the level being played out (possibly) by Infinity Ward.
 * Though the player has to restart from the last checkpoint if they kill the civilians when they get out of the vehicles or while they are in them, the player can get away with leveling civilian houses. They can actually get points for doing so in Arcade Mode. Each house will give the player 1,000 points and counts towards the killstreak multiplier.
 * The water towers, as well as many other buildings (such as the U-shaped one), cannot even be scratched by the 105mm Howitzer.
 * If you look closely at the vehicles the civilians are driving (best done with 25 mm), you'll notice they are UAZ-469s.
 * The civilians appear to have the same model as the Ultranationalists; complete with a ski mask. It is possible that Infinity Ward did not want to create separate skins for characters only seen for a few seconds in the game.
 * When playing on Arcade Mode, this mission is one of the best for racking up a lot of points, especially on Veteran, where it is easy to achieve a score of over 1,000,000. The best way to do this is to abuse the 40mm. It is powerful enough to kill a significant amount of enemies in a short amount of time, and will easily kill small groups of them in a single shot, giving the player a fast-rising multiplyer, one-shot kill points and a good amount of time remaining at the end. The end-of-level bonuses will do the rest.
 * At the LZ, despite being at a junkyard, the cars will blow up as if fully fueled. This is a good way to score secondary damage to enemies not immediately caught in the blast.
 * In Arcade Mode, shooting even uninhabited houses gives the player many points despite being empty of Ultranationalists.
 * This mission appears to be inspired by this video. Some specifics: the AC-130's callsign is Wildfire, they start firing around a Mosque, and some dialogue was taken from it. It is still quite different though, in the game friendly forces are being extracted and in the video they are attacking a meeting of some kind.
 * It is actually possible to pick up a G3 on this level. Since there is actually a battle down on the ground, the player can use the "noclip" cheat to fly down to street level and pick up a G3 from enemy corpses. When the player exits "noclip" by typing it again in the console, their character in the AC-130 will load the G3.
 * It is strange that the S.A.S. members all wear the Black Kit from "Crew Expendable" and Nikolai is nowhere to be seen.
 * The helicopters used to evacuate the personnel you are protecting have "US Marines" written on the sides.
 * There is a special ops mission in Modern Warfare 2. It's like this mission, but it's only a two player mission. One person has to defend the other person using the AC-130 while the 2nd person is on the ground with enemy forces. The 1st person has to guide the 2nd person to a designated area in an amount of time.
 * You can not fail the mission by providing too little support.
 * If you look at the civilians on this level after exiting their vehicles, their models appear to be soldiers and their running animation is similar to soldiers and they seem to be carrying a 2-handed weapon.
 * In Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, there is a callsign "Death From Above" for getting a game winning kill using an AC-130. This is an obvious reference to the mission.