Take, for example, a recent C-130 midnight run from a Persian Gulf nation (it must remain unidentified) to Baghdad. What keeps it all working is a stubbornly dedicated collection of air and ground crews that refuse to accept defeat in the face of unexpected breakdowns, enormous dust storms that fling rocks into engine intakes, or the blowtorch heat that bakes dirt onto compressor blades so hard it has to be chiseled off. After the airplane sustained more battle damage, the story goes, USAF replaced all four of its engines and both of its wings, and it is going strong today in the Gulf. For example, a C-130 recently parked on the apron at a base in Kuwait is said to be the same one that took a mortar in one engine while hauling marines out of Khe Sanh in early 1968. “Every day, we rack and stack requests and support them until we run out of aircraft.” Ladnier keeps a chart titled, “Regrets”-which, he explained, lists those he has told, “Sorry, can’t move you today we are out of airlift.”įew aircraft are worked harder than the ubiquitous C-130, which first flew as a prototype in 1954 and in the ensuing years has seen action in just about every war theater in the world. “I wonder if we do have enough airlift,” Ladnier said. It is no surprise that the C-130s are struggling, but senior USAF officials note that even the new C-17s are starting to show the effects of fatigue. In the entire US Central Command area, one finds just 40 theater-range C-130s and 20 longer-legged C-17s. Ladnier, TACC commander.Įven with heroic labor and inspections, and with crews working long hours in the stupefying 130-degree heat and choking dust, there just aren’t enough mobility airplanes to fill the need in Southwest Asia. Maintainers pull their engines and strip the skin from the wings, a process that takes up to 36 hours. Even the MC-130Es used in special operations force missions cannot exceed 90 flight hours without undergoing a major inspection. Wynne told a House panel about his concern that the Hercules’ wings will “crack and fall off.” The E models, which the Air Force began buying in 1962, are restricted from flying in Southwest Asia. This spring, Secretary of the Air Force Michael W. The expense of running a fleet of C-130s is accelerating steadily, and concern about their stamina in this long war goes deep. Old aircraft such as the venerable C-130 are wearing out, just as the demand for airlift has risen dramatically at busy air bases feeding into Iraq and Afghanistan and the swarming wartime bases in those countries themselves.Īirmen say that it is like driving a 1964 Chevy on a daily work commute you can do it, but the operating cost is high. The Air Force’s unmatched mobility force, however, is up against some serious problems. That is exactly what airmen at the Tanker Airlift Control Center (TACC), Scott AFB, Ill., did last spring. In addition, no one else could suddenly rescramble all of that careful timing to divert a C-17 into Balad Air Base in Iraq to transport a terribly wounded marine to Kuwait and on to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., with global tanker schedules rejiggered to support the marine’s flight home. No one else can accomplish the astonishing choreography that enables C-130s to ferry rifles, spare tires, computer paper, blood, cash, ammo, and thousands of other items to bases around Iraq, and then shuttle weary troops out to Kuwait to meet homebound C-17s that gas up twice with tankers, orbiting at the right places and the right times, on their way back to American bases. No other military in the world can fly people and cargo as far and as fast and as efficiently as can the American military. Less noticed are the men and women who provide the air bridge enabling them to fight as they do. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have brought attention to soldiers and marines, who are taking lots of casualties. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s winning. So goes a little noticed war that sets a dedicated band of C-130 air and ground crews and technicians against the relentless effects of time, weather, and hard use on USAF’s best-known airlifter. Forty-three years later, on a parking apron near Kuwait’s border with Iraq, the soldiers knew it would be a long afternoon. Johnson whipped Barry Goldwater in a Presidential election-that is, since 1964. Airmen swarmed over the aircraft, which has been in continuous service since Lyndon B. They shifted from one boot to another, smoking and watching. Two platoons of infantrymen had been standing nearby, waiting to hitch a ride back to Iraq. “That’s just wrong,” he said to a young airman standing nearby.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |