6 March 1996
Once again, I’m out on the road – refreshing myself one more time why I don’t want to do this flying thing as a full-time profession. The Bosnians sat down in Dayton last fall and hammered out a peace agreement. We (United States) sent in 20,000 troops to act as peacekeepers, and I volunteered to fly a rotation (two weeks) of supplies into the AOR (area of responsibility) when the Reserves and the Guard spell the Active Duty. I don’t know why I set certain expectations of these trips - they never end up being anything like they are advertised.
I called up daily for about two weeks prior, asking what had changed and what I needed to do, if anything, to get ready. Nothing. I saw on the “board” I had a 1300L showtime for a 1600 takeoff. That sounded like it sucked but they have quiet hours in Germany and you can’t land between 2200 and 0600. The trip over takes 12 hours, so you’re limited when you can take off in order to land at an acceptable time. I wasn’t looking forward to that much time in the airplane, but I was excited to go over and participate.
Naturally, when I showed up things had changed (what else is new?) I double parked my car to unload my bags; when I walked through the door to the squadron, Darius Pierzadeh, the SOF (Supervisor of Flying), told me I was late for a briefing! (What’s this?? An unscheduled briefing? Imagine that)
The briefing was a bunch of people from finance and Intel, giving us all the things we “needed to know” before we deployed. Basically, we wasted an hour of our mission planning time learning not to have unprotected sex, and that we would get paid while we were gone. (THAT part was important!)
We eventually ended up at the airplane, did our preflight and checks, started engines and taxied out for takeoff. On the way out, the local news organizations were out in force, filming their local boys going off to war. I didn’t make it on camera, but Daryl Hartman and Dale Hoth both got their 15 seconds of fame.
So, we taxied out, did the enhanced alignment, and started our takeoff. Right after lift off (on time), the pilot, Conrad Witalis, called for gear retraction. The left main gear indicated it had stayed down.
After a quick conference, we recycled the gear (probably not the best idea) down and back up, but had no success. So we called back to Pitt Ops, told them to fuel the Spare, and flew a box pattern back to an uneventful landing.
The Bag drag took about an hour, including downloading and uploading pallets to the new airplane. There were some considerable discussions of stopping along the way and spending the night somewhere on the East Coast, or perhaps going to Keflavik in Iceland. In the end, we decided to be mission hackers; get off if we could by 1800 and proceed as planned: fly up to St. Johns, Newfoundland for refueling, and then head east into the night towards Germany. it was a decision I’d like to do over.
The trip up to St. Johns was pretty uneventful. Four hours watching the US pass beneath us and turn into Canada. We’re heading north east, so it got dark pretty quickly. By the time we landed and taxied in, I felt like I had put in a long day and we weren’t even halfway done yet!
Someone had prepositioned a Youngstown plane up at St. John’s with a maintenance kit. They were to sit there till all the planes pass through, then press on across themselves. Our two-hour delay really helped their crew duty day too. In fact, as soon as we touched down and reported no major problems, they were on the radio asking for clearance to takeoff.
Unfortunately, they didn’t wait till we refueled and started up again. The unique thing about machinery is that things do not normally break during use. Somethings do and it can be catastrophic. Usually, especially with airplanes, it’s when you shake things back to life after a shutdown that things shear and break. This was no exception. We gassed and started things up to takeoff and immediately ran into trouble – The flaps went asymmetrical - one went up and the other stayed locked down – not a good thing to try and takeoff with! As with most mechanical things on the airplane, I’m pretty clueless – they didn’t give us any training on how planes fly – reserve that for pilots and flight engineers – I just concentrate on what happens once the airplane is in the air. The more I fly, the more I wish I knew more, but it works out – with three “experts” on board things generally get figured out pretty quickly and accurately.
Anyway, it wasn’t looking pretty. It was late, and we were fast approaching the end of our crew duty day (Max time you are allowed to operate airplanes in a single day: the time from show at the Squadron until you land and taxi in at your destination) – taking off later than about 25 minutes hence would mean we would still be flying well after the 1200Z drop dead time for our 18-hour crew duty day. We started shutting things down and resigning ourselves that we were going to spend the night in St. Johns when the maintenance Crew Chief called up to say, “Try it again!” He had literally banged on the side of some piece of equipment and got it to come un-lodged.
The Pilot cycled the flaps and they worked! We debate the wisdom of pressing on, but decided that if they stuck down on takeoff, we’d just come back to St. John’s called it a night. If they wouldn’t come down for landing, we’d land flaps-up; either way, there was no reason not to try it at least once… so we decide to press on. And so we did.
Take off was uneventful. The thing I didn’t like about leaving St. Johns is that after takeoff, you’re immediately out of the water and heading east. I REALLY enjoy having about an hour or so after takeoff to evaluate my navigation systems. Take some fixes and get a nice warm feeling that it will stay tight until you reach the English coast, six hours away! We (Aldo Filoni, the other Pittsburgh navigator) took a handheld GPS with us to back up the SCNS, so it wasn’t too disconcerting, but I still like the warm fuzzies of an hour of land under my feet, just in case. (Age old adage: Nobody cares about the Nav until you get lost!)
The trip across seemed to go on forever. I’m pretty sure no one slept in that morning, so we were pretty beat up by the time we left Newfoundland. There wasn’t much to do going across, but make position reports every 10° of longitude, which was about every hour. I took one celestial shot about halfway across to check the accuracy of the SCNS and GPS – one more check to verify their information – plus ensure the airplane had a good system. Everything was where it was supposed to be so I decided that since I had five satellite telling me I was where I thought I was, I could relax. I concentrated on periodic updates of the SCNS off the GPS and trying to stay awake.
Coffee was flowing pretty heavily. I had stopped at 7-ELEVEN on the way to the base and found some vanilla flavored Folgers instant. Conrad Witalis, our young Aircraft Commander, brought some French Vanilla International Moments Instant Coffee, and Dale Hoth, the Flight Engineer, brought a small French press and some Starbucks – we were awash in Java and needed every bit of it.
The Youngstown airplane was about 45 minutes ahead of us, flying a course just south of ours. We had them on the air-to-air TACAN and for the most part they stayed about 200 miles ahead of us. The sun came up about 0430 Z which was about halfway across the pond. It was very pretty being that high and seeing the horizon turn into a red glow and then explode as the sun lifted itself out of the clouds in the distance.
As we crossed the English coast, the clouds below broke up enough to see the shore and some of the countryside. We coasted in in just south of Wales and flew south of London and over to Dover. By the time we crossed by London the clouds had closed up, and we were unable to see anything below us. I had the radar so I knew where we were, but it was not the same as seeing it firsthand.
Once we got into Belgium, the deck broke up, and we began to make out the landscape below, until we got to Germany, where it was 1400 local and clear & a million, which was good because we were all dead tired, and a tricky weather approach would have been an extreme challenge.
Upon final approach, we realized that we were number two behind the Youngstown airplane that had taken off in such a hurry 45 minutes in front of us! Evidently, they had taken a detour through France, encountered some bigger headwinds than we did and lost all 45 minutes!
Just to make the flight that much more of a challenge - right before we landed, Tower made us do a 3600 turn to make way for a “Priority IFOR mission!” so we did, and then landed at long last… Only 19 hours after showtime at Pittsburgh! Total flying time (including the first takeoff), 12.4 hours!
Taxiing in was a nightmare – the base is a lot smaller than I envisioned it to be – basically one main runway, one ramp where the 37th AS (Active Duty) park their C 130s, and a small ramp in front of Base Ops for transient traffic.
We got to park in a fighter dispersal area that you have to see to believe – the taxiway is wide enough for a fighter, but is surrounded by trees. The trees are supposed to be cut back to provide 10 whole feet of clearance for C130s! It was a scary thing to taxi back into the woods, hoping you didn’t hit anything! The ramp basically looks like this:
The thing is, the base is built for fighters; yet the fighters are gone, and now they are trying to park C130s in an area that is totally unacceptable (well maybe not totally – we ARE making it work…)
Upon arrival at my hotel room (we’re staying in VOQ’s since the 50th Airlift Squadron out of Little Rock is still here), I ran into Gary Poore, a Nav from Dobbins I met last time I was here in Germany doing this. I changed clothes went over to his room had a beer, then went with him over to the 50th dorm where they were putting on a kegger.
While I was there, I ran into Burt Minor a Nav I flew with in Buffs at Griffiss. He is a contemporary of Dave Re, so a few years behind me. He is flying with Chicago right now, getting ready for that unit to shut down. Small world.
Called Laura to say I was safe and sound.
