Mission to Sarajevo

 The Balkan conflict of the 90s was a real mess. When Tito died in 1980, Yugoslavia started falling apart. It was a country that had been used to being ruled autocratically since the Second World War. They sputtered on for about 10-12 more years, but after the Berlin Wall fell, there was no “umph” left in dictatorial rule, so it dissolved in spring of 1992 into Croatia, North Macedonia (Macedonia is a state in Greece where Alexander the Great is supposedly from, so there is NO WAY they are giving up their name), Slovenia, Montenegro and Serbia.

Simplified: as is typical in old, well established areas that have been forced to live together against their will for decades, a lot of old animosities simmer, and they boiled over when Bosnia (Muslim) attempted to separate itself from Serbia (Orthodox). The US got involved as part of a NATO peacekeeping force when the killing in Bosnia got too severe, and the city of Sarajevo was surrounded and in the process of being starved out.

I think I flew to Rhein-Main AFB in Germany sometime in September. For the next two to three weeks, as part of a NATO humanitarian relief effort called Operation Provide Promise, we flew plane loads of relief supplies pretty much every other day. My missions were all airland, but later guys were doing high altitude airdrops of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat), where large refrigerator boxes would be pushed out of the plane and then fall apart, raining plastic packages the size of bread loaves containing basic meals down on people’s heads all across Bosnia.

We would load up in Germany, fly over Austria, down the Italian coast, then across Croatia into Bosnia. All high level. We flew high because the Serbs were using anti-aircraft guns mounted up in the hills overlooking  citites and towns to shoot down into them, and we didn’t want them to start aiming them up at us.

About 50 miles out we would start talking to the French air traffic controllers who were controlling the air traffic in and out of the Sarajevo airport. We all had slot times we had to make +/- a minute or so. Once we were cleared in we would press into about 25 miles, over the top of a pretty significant valley, slow down, drop flaps to provide drag, and then pretty much drop out of the sky in a very significant manner. I would call out distance to go and required altitude to remain on glide slope to the airport. All to attempt to stay above any groundfire that someone on the hillsides might decide to aim our direction. 

Then we had to make sure we landed within the first 2/3s of the runway, because the Serbs were firing those anti-aircraft weapons (cannons) across the runway into the apartment buildings across from them. If you were too fast and felt you couldn’t land and stop in time, you were to abort the landing, and try again, climbing out as fast and as steep as you could. It was quite a rush.

We would taxi into the parking ramp, turn and back up to the main building, drop our ramp, using the airplane as protection for people unloading in the back…small comfort for us sitting ducks up in the cockpit. Passengers would rush off, cargo would be pushed off on to awaiting forklifts, new passengers waiting to get out would rush on, we would close up and taxi out, taking off pretty much empty from mid-field. I started timing our total time on the ground after about the 2nd mission. I think by the end, we got it down to something like 5 minutes. It got to be a well-oiled, choreographed operation.

We would fly out to the city of Split, in Croatia, about 45 minutes away, upload any passengers or cargo awaiting there, head back to Sarajevo, do the same ordeal, then take off again and head back to Germany to make it a day. Fun times. The next day or the day after, at the latest, we do it again.

In 1995 I went back again for a couple weeks because it was no longer a NATO relief operation, it was a military operation called Operation Joint Endeavor. For us, the only thing that changed was that it was designated combat missions and we were flying out of Ramstein AB instead of Frankfurt. Had a couple flights down into the Mediterranean, and the beer was still good.