I left Active Duty on 1 May, 1990, because the Berlin Wall fell the previous fall, the Soviet Union was falling apart before our eyes, and I was sitting B-52 alert, living away from my family, one week out of every three for no discernible reason. The next day, I was in Pittsburgh at my first Unit Training Assembly (UTA), or what most people call Drill weekend (“One weekend a month, 15 days a year,” My ass!) On to the world of C-130 Tactical Airlift.
Almost immediately, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and within several days, guys from my Bomber unit deployed to Diego Garcia to be in place if we were to take it back (We did, and they flew downtown Baghdad low level the first night of the war). I, on the other hand, sat at home and worked my new civilian job as a Quality Engineer at Cooper Power systems, and slowly got up to speed in my new airplane. It took a couple months because I would only go in during the evenings to study with an Instructor Navigator, or fly. I ended up taking my high level checkride in about October or November.
When it looked like we might deploy, all of a sudden my check ride for being “Mission” Qualified” (able to fly low level, and deliver supplies either via airland and/or airdrop) was condensed into two demo rides and a check ride. Needs of the Air Force.
But we didn’t go… because Turkey suddenly backed out of letting the US stage out of one of their airports. We were geared to do a huge paratroop drop of the 173 Infantry Brigade out of Italy into Northern Iraq to secure the airfield, but that was cancelled. (Ends up C-17s did it later and threw their troops all over the sky, some miles from each other). So, I spent the “Gulf War” (Feb -Mar ‘91) flying out of Pittsburgh and other places, moving supplies and weapons to the coast where either C-5s &C-141s, or ships took them to Saudi Arabia.
After the War was done, there was an operation, Operation Southern Watch, set up to monitor the Iraqis and ensure they behaved. C-130 units took turns sending crews and planes over to move stuff around. Our base got tagged in late January of ‘93. I really wanted to be a part of SOMETHING, so I volunteered to fill a spot with a Youngstown crew that was going at the same time as crews from my unit. I flew over with them, stopping in St. Johns, Newfoundland; probably Mildenhall, England; Crete and finally Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where the US set up an operating base on the Persian Gulf.
Our job was to fly around the entire Persian Gulf moving stuff from one place or the other. I found out that flying around Saudi Arabia is much like driving across Texas. It takes forever! Miles and miles of nothing, Then suddenly a huge city. Then nothing.
But we didn’t go… because Turkey suddenly backed out of letting the US stage out of one of their airports. We were geared to do a huge paratroop drop of the 173 Infantry Brigade out of Italy into Northern Iraq to secure the airfield, but that was cancelled. (Ends up C-17s did it later and threw their troops all over the sky, some miles from each other). So, I spent the “Gulf War” (Feb -Mar ‘91) flying out of Pittsburgh and other places, moving supplies and weapons to the coast where either C-5s &C-141s, or ships took them to Saudi Arabia.
After the War was done, there was an operation, Operation Southern Watch, set up to monitor the Iraqis and ensure they behaved. C-130 units took turns sending crews and planes over to move stuff around. Our base got tagged in late January of ‘93. I really wanted to be a part of SOMETHING, so I volunteered to fill a spot with a Youngstown crew that was going at the same time as crews from my unit. I flew over with them, stopping in St. Johns, Newfoundland; probably Mildenhall, England; Crete and finally Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where the US set up an operating base on the Persian Gulf.
Our job was to fly around the entire Persian Gulf moving stuff from one place or the other. I found out that flying around Saudi Arabia is much like driving across Texas. It takes forever! Miles and miles of nothing, Then suddenly a huge city. Then nothing.
My Youngstown crew had two pilots who were planning to fly for the airlines, so they would fly as slow as possible across Saudi Arabia in order to build up flying time. It was agony. Luckily, I only had about three missions with them, when someone realized that one of the Pitt crews had a married couple flying together, the guy was the Nav and the girl was the Aircraft Commander. When brought to his attention, the Commander put a quick stop to that! So they swapped Navigators, and I went to the Pitt crew, while the married Nav came to my Youngstown crew.
We were staying in the Khobar Towers, right next to the airport. Big US compound made up with a bunch of high rise apartment buildings the Saudi government built to provide homes for the Bedouins using all their oil money. Unfortunately, Bedouins like their nomadic lives where sheep and goats and camels could roam with them. The apartment buildings didn’t provide for any of that, so they never got used. Very nice place. I think I was up on the 7th or 8th floor. Huge place that had 4 or 6 bedrooms, marble floors, balconies, huge flat screen TVs, etc.
We were staying in the Khobar Towers, right next to the airport. Big US compound made up with a bunch of high rise apartment buildings the Saudi government built to provide homes for the Bedouins using all their oil money. Unfortunately, Bedouins like their nomadic lives where sheep and goats and camels could roam with them. The apartment buildings didn’t provide for any of that, so they never got used. Very nice place. I think I was up on the 7th or 8th floor. Huge place that had 4 or 6 bedrooms, marble floors, balconies, huge flat screen TVs, etc.
Interestingly enough, those high rise dorms were the ones bombed by terrorists three years later, on 25 Jun, 1996. I remember sitting on the balcony overlooking the security fence line and the entry checkpoint thinking how close they were. Timing is everything.
As I stated before, the flying was pretty boring. We’d leave Dhahran, fly all the way down to Oman, the UAE, Yemen or the Southwest corner of Saudi to Khamis Mushait (and pick up U-2 surveillance camera film and take it to the HQ at Riyadh for analysis. Other times we’d go to some pretty obscure places that didn’t even have full runways yet (we’d land on the taxi-ways), where we’d pick up pallets of old bombs, mines, ammo, bullets, etc, and take them to a base called Al Kharj… we called it Al’s Garage… where they would collect it for storage or shipment back to the States.
It was a fun month of seeing more of the world than I had done before.
It was a fun month of seeing more of the world than I had done before.
All too soon it was over, and I was back in the US. Within a day or two of my return, the “Blizzard of ‘93” hit, which was quite a dichotomy from what I had been used to the past month or so. I think we were snowed in for at least three days… the roads were impassable for at least one. Luckily, Laura had a Mazda MPV by then, and we could get out and about Zelienople fairly quickly after we dug it out.
