Flying to the DEW Line (or Taking Oil to the North Slope)

In the fall of 1975 I was a freshly qualified C-130E Navigator in the 773^rd Tactical Airlift Squadron, 463^rd Tactical Airlift Wing, Dyess AFB, Tx.  The C-130s had been transferred from TAC to MAC a year earlier, while I was in survival school, and our squadron was tasked to provide three or four aircraft to help resupply the Distant Early Warning Radar sites along the northern perimeter of Alaska.  It seems the summer thaw for that year came late and the barges that would normally be used couldn’t get to the sites and return before the winter freeze set back in.  I was on one of the crews chosen to support the operation.  This is just a simple "there I was" tale.

Our deployment was a simple two-day trip.  Day 1 was from Abilene to McCord AFB, WA, with Day 2 a straight overwater shot from McCord to Elmendorf AFB, AK.  McCord was my first experience with a MAC (now AMC) command post and it taught me that for a CP controller -- having all the squares filled was actually more important than having the right information in the squares. 

When we had arrived the evening before I had worked out the flight plan and the fuel loads, adding a few thousand pounds of gas just to be on the safe side.  I had done this with the performance charts we carried.  For us, at Dyess, we had not yet been fully MACemsized so we used the C-130E 1-1.  MAC had taken the data from the 1-1 and put it into an approved MAC book (whose number escapes me).  When we submitted our planning to the Command Post (CP) the only question they asked was what page in the MAC book I had used?  I had to go find the book, find a chart that approximated my fuel load, and then give them that page number.  Once that square was filled we were approved to step to the aircraft, crank up the mighty Allison T56 engines and wing our way northward.  After about six hours, we arrived at Elmendorf where our newly issued winter parkas proved to be a critical piece of gear.  The temps were just above freezing and a C-5A stood off at the end of the ramp bleeding hydraulic fluid from a number of points.

We checked in with CP and told we would get our orientation brief the next day, and we should head to billeting to check in.  Since we were all pretty new to this MAC thing we thought about how the C-141 and C-5 crews always seemed to get off-base hotel quarters and were pretty excited about spending time in downtown Anchorage.  Sadly, we learned there was Big MAC and Little MAC and we were in the wrong one.  We were billeted on base, but right next to the O’club and it was King Crab night!  All you could eat for about $12 (if I remember correctly).

The next day all the crews from Little Rock, Pope and Dyess assembled as they laid out the plans for resupplying sites with names like Barter Island, Lonely, and Oliktok.  We would be carrying all the stuff they needed to sustain operations until the next thaw in late spring.  This included foodstuffs, toilet paper, and heating oil (carried in bladders that filled the floor of the aircraft like a big waterbed).  We would fly from Anchorage to the northern sites, offload and then return to Eielison where we would refuel and reload to make a second sortie.  Some of the crews would RON at Eielison and fly from there the next day with their second sortie returning to Elmendorf.

A couple of days later we were on our first sortie.  Elmendorf to Lonely, back to Eielison, then to Barter Island with a return to Elmendorf.  It would be about a 12-hour day and I think half of that was in the air.  If I recall correctly, takeoff was about noon and with sunset at about 2 or 3 pm at Anchorage, most of the flying would be in the dark.

The things that stand out in my memory are pretty simple.  The Alaskan pipeline was being built and there was a highway of white lights that went north from Fairbanks for a hundred miles or more.  When you were 200 miles out from the DEW line site you could easily identify the stations on the radar since they were the only returns you saw.  The night was completely dark and the heavens so close you could touch them, except on the nights the aurora was present -- when the show was unforgettable.

It was during this operation that I knew I had chosen the right profession and had somehow stumbled into the right aircraft for me.

A Note to a Friend

--> I found this while cleaning out for an upcoming move and figured it might seem funny to some who were involved in these events.  It comes from a letter written just after Desert Storm and deals with what was then the 39^th Special Operations Wing (now 352^nd SOW).

“Dear Mike,

I hope this letter finds all the XXXX’s in the very best of health.  I know it has been quite a while since I’ve written but the past nine months have been a very busy time for the Townsends.

As you are aware, in January I got to go to Incirlik to take part in the CNN special “Desert Storm the Renovation of a City.”  Well right after we came home George called and asked if we could head back to resupply the Kurds.  It seems they took us at our word and attempted to overthrow Saddam.

Operation Provide Comfort evolved into a three-phase program.

Phase I: “FIND A KURD.”  During this stage aircraft loaded with MREs, bottled water, and toilet paper (for dysentery), flew into northern Iraq looking for population centers (i.e. refugee camps), and dropping supplies to them.  After a few Kurds tried to catch the 16,000-pound bundles we moved into phase II.

Phase II: “ADOPT A KURD.”  In this stage, the aircrews were assigned specific areas to fly.  The theory being the aircrews and Kurds would get used to each other’s quirks (like an aircrew who always drops into the center of the camp).  Just about this time the Kurds threatened to report us to the UN as inhuman for providing so many MREs.  So, we moved into phase III.

Phase III: “HERD A KURD.”  Here American ingenuity really came into play.  The diplomats figured out it would be nice to establish large refugee camps in major Iraqi cities like Zakho.  To get the Kurds out of the mountains we staged a two-part campaign.  First, we dropped large quantities of MREs to the camps (ensuring an end to all dysentery in our lifetime, and at the same time chasing the refugees out of the shelters) … as an aside I don’t think the pork patty was a favorite!  After we had moved the refugees from the tops of the mountains, we started dropping real food just a little beit in front of them as they began their migration towards the cities.

After 45-days of this fun, I redeployed home to continue planning for the wing’s move from Frankfurt to England.    Well enough about me… how have you been?"

So Tell Me Captain - Other Than That How Was the Flight?

            No CSO’s were harmed in the telling of this story.

Fairly early in this Global War on Terror, AFSOC expanded its airlift fleet with what was referred to as non-standard aviation.  Small commercial aircraft intended to move special operations forces to their destinations without much fanfare and at costs far below that of using a C-130 to carry the half dozen to a dozen people on a SEAL team or A-Team.

While USSOCOM was busy buying the Dornier 328’s used today, AFSOC leased a few interim aircraft (I think they were DeHavilland Dash 8s) to jump-start the program.  We built up the crew force from a number of sources, primarily from AMC.

Two of the aircraft were deployed to Africa to support the newly created AFRICOM, whose headquarters is in Stuttgart.  Periodically one of the aircraft would make the journey from their forward operating location to the HQ to coordinate and shuttle personnel and material back from Germany.

On the way back from one such trip the aircraft needed to stop for gas.  If I recall correctly it was somewhere around Sierra Leone or the Ivory Coast.  They had some problems with the local officials and the AC made the decision to press on without the gas.

When they got to altitude the flight management system showed they did not have the fuel necessary to make it home.  They started a gradual descent and the FMS said they could make it, then they leveled off and it said they wouldn’t. They played this game a number of times, always ending up where their fuel flows were worse than when they started due to the lower density altitude.

Rather than look for an alternate (they are few and far between in Africa) they pressed on until it was clear they could not make it, declared an emergency, and began to divert to an alternate (that was actually just as far away as home).  I think they skidded to a power out halt about ten miles from the runway they were trying to reach, and 12 hours from a rescue team.

The AC was a former KC-135 pilot and the co-pilot was (I think) much less experienced.  If I recall correctly both had less than a hundred hours in type.  There are two lessons I think should come from this cautionary tale.

Don’t let hubris cloud your judgment.  Admit mistakes early, review options quickly, and commit to a best course of action, even if you think someone will yell at you.

Know how your FMS works and keep in mind reducing altitude is unlikely to extend your range unless you are near your service ceiling, or can start a reduced power descent all the way to the runway.

BTW, the 12 cases of German beer stowed onboard all survived the crash… so at least we have that...

How Far Can a U-28 Glide?

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One day, long ago, as AFSOC’s U-28 program was getting underway the initial cadre were developing the tactics, techniques, and procedures needed to bring game-changing ISR to the ground forces and theater commanders.

As part of that build up, and given the fact it was a single engine aircraft the flight crews began working on flameout procedures for the aircraft.  Although the procedures were in the manuals, some felt it was much better to keep the aircraft in a clean configuration until just prior to landing, and at the last moment drop the gear and flaps.  This way their glide ratio would be optimized and they would cover a greater distance.

Unfortunately, they failed to consider the negatives of crew workload, changes in learned behavior and stress.  When they were practicing this technique one day someone forgot to put the gear down at that “last moment” and they came to a rather abrupt stop shortly after the flare.

My take away was… it can glide all the way to a full stop.  The nature of that stop depends on the aircrew's situational awareness.

Why is That F-14 Sitting on Our Wing?

In late April 1980, our crew was flying over the Arabian Sea in a big, black and green, C-130 without any national markings, when all the sudden an F-14 was sitting off the right wing.  We were about FL 180 minding our own business, just killing time until we could RTB so this came as somewhat of a surprise to us, especially since we had an EWO who was supposed to alert us of such things.

We had taken off from Masirah Island about an hour earlier and had another hour or so of droning before we could go home.  We’d been on Masirah for about a week or ten-days and the routine had become somewhat loose.

As we stared at our new friend (he seemed pretty friendly because he was waving at us), and wondered why he was there.  Then it dawned on the pilots and me that perhaps those weren’t waves, so much as numbers, as in a UHF frequency.

We dialed up the UHF to say hi, and they came back with a simple question.  “Did we happen to know the IFF/SIF codes for today?”  Duh!

In our scramble to get out of the heat and into the air someone had forgotten to set the codes or to even turn on the set.  It had been turned off for a mission a couple of days earlier.

Once we turned on the set, dialed in the codes and told him we should be good now, he waggled his wings, selected AB and went screaming off towards the heavens.  About 30-seconds later his wingman came over the top, also in AB, and also climbing for the stars.

About this time the EWO woke up and asked what all the excitement was?