Flying The Mission

The air up there in the clouds is very pure and fine, bracing and delicious. And why shouldn't it be? – it is the same the angels breathe.

- Mark Twain, ‘Roughing It,’ Chapter XXII, 1886

I mentioned before I took my first flight the other night. It was good to get out of the office routine and fly. Mainly because that is what we do. Unfortunately as you go up in management, you get less chances to do that, and more and more responsibilities for all the things that can go wrong. Being an Ops guy is a challenge and rewarding, but nothing beats getting out and flying the line, moving an airplane and executing the mission.

I was put on the schedule because the crew's normal Nav came down with something and went DNIF (Duty Not Including Flying), which basically means he was grounded for something. As it turned out, he was better by the time of the flight, but since I was rested and had my shift already covered, I stayed on the flight and shared the duties with him.

It's tough to talk a guy out of not flying. Most crew dogs will do just about anything to stick with their crew and fly, even in the most hazardous situations. You hear about guys getting injured and wanting to get back to their platoons or units, and after you've been with a hard crew, you can understand why. In B-52s we had hard crews. We flew, lived, ate, and partied with each other pretty much non-stop for up to a year at a time. In the airlift world you mix and match to meet the mission, UNTIL you deploy, and then suddenly the hard crew concept comes into play and you are back in that same team-building routine. You get a rhythm as a group. After a couple sorties, you can sense what each other needs at different times during a mission, and you pitch in to help each other when necessary. Its camaraderie much like a sports team, only the stakes are bit higher and the rewards bit more obscure.

I was lucky that it was night flight because it matched my circadian rhythm. We were "alerted" at 3:30 pm, and caught the bus over to the squadron at 4. They alert you for flights in the airlift world. Many things can delay you, so the crew is told when to expect getting called to fly, but generally you don't do anything until they call. Sometimes there are delays, and they don't want you showing up too early. The plane might be broken and needing maintenance; the actual cargo may not be loaded yet, or ready to load. Diplomatic clearances for over flight of some country may not be worked out yet. Any myriad of things can delay you from taking off, so you sit and wait and supposedly "rest." Truth be known, you are always ready to fly when they tell you to expect it, and any delay just degrades that. They do have rules though, they can't let you wait indefinitely. After six hours they have to let you
go. But 5-1/2 hours is a long wait if you still have a 16 hour day ahead of you, once you get the call.

Once we show at the squadron, we go get an Intelligence briefing. It lets us know about the general situation, anything going on we should know about, any specific threats that have been identified. They also tell us where we're going for the day (Always a good thing to know).

Next the Tactics guys give us a brief, then we all sanitize (take off all our patches and identifying papers), and the back-enders head to the airplane to load the cargo. The pilots and Nav stay to study the mission, come up with a game plan for getting to and from our various destinations, file paperwork, get the Ops Officer's blessing, and then head to the plane via the in-flight kitchen, where we pick up water and meals for the crew.

At the airplane we have a quick crew briefing, establish some roles and responsibilities, get an update on the maintenance status of the airplane and how the loading is going, then we all hop in the seats and start up. As you can see, it's a rather long, detailed and deliberate process, but one that over the years seems to have evolved into a safe, but successful routine.

By the time you lift off, all the hard work is pretty much done. Preparation is the key. Developing the plan, rehearsing it, and then executing it. If you've done your training right, the execution goes like clockwork and things are pretty uneventful. That's petty much how things went this evening.

Our first stop was Kirkuk, up in the northern end of Iraq, and area rich in oil and controlled supposedly by the Kurds. Oil production must be on the increase because the airport is surrounded by bright oil refinery fires, making the night sky almost as bright as daylight.

We off-loaded some passengers, uploaded about 14 more, and took off again for Mosul. Actually had a hard time finding the place, even though we'd been there before. They had the airport lights way down, and it was really difficult to pick out from the surrounding city. We taxied in, keeping our engines running this time and did a quick upload of people and a pallet of bags, then took off again, this time headed to Baghdad.

Baghdad looked the same as it ever did. Big two runway operation just to the west of downtown. Bright lights everywhere; not my favorite place to go into because of all the lights. Still a lot of baddies out there, so I prefer to sneak in and out, not be seen for miles and miles in a big slow, lumbering transport. What can you do?

The landing was uneventful, and we taxied to the main ramp. The last time I was here it was busy place with lots of transports and helicopters moving constantly. This time we were just about the only ones there, and our passengers had to wait about half an hour before someone came to pick them up. Meanwhile, we uploaded fuel for the ride home, and about 20 passengers.

The final take-off was uneventful and after we got up to altitude, itwas just a long smooth ride home on a cloudless, moon-lit night. We landed at around 6: 15 am, down loaded our passengers and cargo, and turned the plane over to maintenance. I got back in my room about 7:30, and a quick couple of hours of sleep before my night shift started at 4. All in all, a productive night out of the office. Hopefully I'll get a couple more in before we head home.