The Thin Red Line of Dawn

Taking the seat for the night shift is fraught with challenges, the least of which is trying not only to remain awake but alert as well. Coffee helps immensely; it is a drink I couldn't stand until I became a pilot. The official air force policy is to refrain from using electronic devices or any reading material other than technical manuals, but that doesn't cut it at zero dark thirty crossing over the Atlantic, especially with all the modern improvements in communications and air traffic control that leaves pilots with less demanding responsibilities. What is really more important, an awake but entertained pilot or one who is asleep with the flight manual in their lap?

But the night shift can also be quite rewarding, especially as the coming day approaches. The first sign of the new day is a gradual lightening of the horizon where none was before. A subtle gray envelopes the sky even as the world below the horizon exists in a uniform shade of black. The thin line of the horizon becomes more and more pronounced, brightening in fiery shades of red, orange, and magenta stretching across the entire eastern sky. Clouds only magnify the effect, creating an almost surreal portrait that defies the imagination. Then even as the world sleeps in darkness below, the vault of the sky above turns the deepest blue. Pictures simply do not capture the scene appropriately.

Eventually, the sun flashes over the dividing line of bright and dark, destroying the vivid eruption of colors burning the sky. And as sun rises higher, blasting our eyes, we dig out our sunglasses, lower our seats, and cover the windscreen with our aviation charts, whatever it takes to shield our eyes from the blazing glare. There is nothing more to see now; perhaps the relief pilot is awake and I can hit the bunk for a few hours of sleep before landing in Europe.

Until Death Do Us Part

One week ago, the largest military base on the West Coast was created when the BRAC-directed merger of Ft. Lewis army post and McChord Air Force Base took place. While the missions of the installations in Washington State will remain unchanged, the consolidated base, now called Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), falls under the administrative control of the US Army. Much like an arranged marriage, there will be plenty of growing pains as each side learns more about the other, even though the two branches were once one prior to 1947. But much has changed since the Army Air Corps spread its wings and became the United States Air Force.

JBLM is one of seven new joint installations created by the 2005 BRAC mandate, joining five other joint installations created in 2009. While many of the new super-bases share a common fence line, as JBLM does, others are spread over a wider area, such as Joint Base San Antonio, which combined Lackland and Randolph Air Force Bases with Ft. Sam Houston. Most of the combined installations involve mergers between the Army and Air Force, but naval facilities at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Charleston, South Carolina, were combined with Air Force installations in those locations. Administrative control of joint facilities reverts to the larger branch, which usually means Army or Navy oversight.

Other than gaining an unwieldy new name, such as Joint Base Andrews-Naval Air Facility Washington (formerly Andrews AFB, the home of Air Force One), what does the new joint realignment process actually do? Not much.

Sure, some essential services, such as perimeter security, civil engineering, base housing, and landscaping, will be streamlined, but in many cases, the civilian workforce at joint bases will increase, not decrease, due to an expected increase in services needed by a larger installation. Other base facilities, such as the main exchange and commissary service, will remain unchanged; these functions have combined decades ago as the Army Air Force Exchange Service and Defense Commissary Agency, respectively. At JBLM, the Army assumed command of the Air Force clinic some time ago, but the ultimate goal of closing the clinic and combining medical care at Madigan Army Hospital will never be realized due to a lack of space available and simple logistics. Even as one installation, redundancies at JBLM will continue to exist indefinitely, challenging the BRAC goal of saving money in the long run.

Money is what the joint process is all about. Shrinking defense budgets have forced the entire BRAC direction, even though Congress is not supposed to dictate how the Defense Department spends its allocated funds. That is not their job, but the BRAC completely subverted the traditional process. In any event, defense officials believe that merged operations will save money in the long run; they claim joint bases would need fewer delivery trucks, and contracts could be negotiated at better terms to the government. That reasoning is seriously flawed, since they will actually use the same amount of vehicles, if not more at geographically separate facilities like Joint Base San Antonio. Furthermore, since when has the same government responsible for $600 hammers ever negotiated anything from a position of strength?

Even the government is skeptical of the expected cost savings. Last year the GAO pointed out that the BRAC’s expected $2.3 billion savings over 20 years had already dwindled to $273 million, a difference of 88 percent. Furthermore, the GAO report concluded that the amount will continue to decline in the future, and could result in an actual increase in costs due to higher administrative costs and the loss of efficiencies in the wake of new DOD standards for service levels. Yep, the joint process could actually cost more money than if nothing had been done at all.

Maybe it’s not about the money; many experts believe it will encourage greater joint operations between the branches. Representative Adam Smith (D-Tacoma), the chairman of the House subcommittee on air and land forces, believes that the armed forces will move toward greater jointness despite their historical perspectives. However, the historical differences are what make each branch unique and ideally suited to each respective mission. Blending the branches together ignores their heritage and their skill sets, and could water down their warfighting mission. Sure, Canada has unified armed forces, but they haven’t conducted offensive operations since WWII. If all you need are peacekeeping troops, the Canadians are the world’s best. If you want to win a war, you’d better pass on a nation with unified armed forces.

Don’t get me wrong; jointness in an age of declining defense budgets despite an increase in demands for military power is a great thing. We operate joint bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, but those facilities are expeditionary camps for the most part. Joint operations were the only way to get the Navy and Marines into the land war in Afghanistan, a landlocked country more than 600 miles from the sea. Yes, their help is imperative to the war there; in fact without them, the early air war over Afghanistan would have much more difficult. But that is more a confirmation of naval air power and the need for the aircraft carrier than it is for joint operations.

The Air Force has much to lose in joint basing arrangements. We have always spent more on quality of life programs and facilities than the other branches. Our airbases and the aircraft based there are the equivalent of the naval fleet and deployed forces that the Navy, Marine Corps, and Army meticulously fund and support. The other branches often defer base maintenance when limited funding is needed for other priorities. Under joint basing arrangements, which typically fall under Army or Navy control, reducing the quality of life and facilities may reduce readiness at bases where the Air Force has lost control. McChord AFB was one of the shining jewels in the Air Force crown; the base is the only home of the Air Mobility Command Rodeo, an international airlift competition that the new Army landlords are lukewarm at best about hosting next year. Other bases, like Hickam AFB in Hawaii, also have a long and distinguished history that will undoubtedly be diminished under Navy control.

In reality, little will change for me, personally, at JBLM. It will almost be transparent. I will continue to fly the C-17 wherever the Air Force needs me to go. My day-to-day life will change little more than seeing base decals on car windshields once again and browner grass and crumbling buildings endemic on army installations nationwide. But it could be worse; at least we don’t have a name like Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth. Try putting that on a letterhead.

A Slight Detour

I woke up a few hours ahead of our expected alert for our flight home. It had been a long trip and we were two days late getting home, but the entire crew was eager to depart. After a run along the main drag of the town next to the airbase, I returned to find my crew chief in uniform waiting for a bus to take him to the jet. Apparently, flight line maintenance had found a cracked lens on the rotating beacon under the belly of our jet. I decided to call in before they turned our mole hill of a problem into a mountain.

It was already too late. I was informed that they did not have a new lens. A part would have to be driven from another base, several hours away. I suggested that they remove the light assembly, cover the hole with aviation speed tape, and we’d get a one-time waiver for a daytime flight back to our home station. They had already considered that; however, the hole was too big to cover with speed tape. How about fabricating a sheet metal plate to cover the hole? They had that covered also; their sheet metal shop could not fabricate a plate of the required thickness. We were broke and it looked doubtful that we’d be fixed within our alert window. We’d be looking at least one more day away from home.

Before I could pass the word to my soon to be dejected crew, I received another nugget from the command post. They wanted me to call TACC for a mission change. Um, excuse me? We were going to be three days past our scheduled return date and they had a mission change for us? Not good.

I called the Duty Officer at TACC and was informed of our new mission: they wanted us to rescue a jet broken in Canada. We’d fly in the parts they needed along with a maintenance crew to make the repairs. I mentioned that we were broken as well; perhaps there was another C-17 on the East Coast that wasn’t broken that could fly the mission. After all, there are three C-17 bases on the eastern seaboard. How could we be the only one available?

But it had already been decided that we were their crew, regardless of logic. The same maintenance team that was driving the part to us would fix our jet and then fly with us to Canada to fix the other jet. I also discovered that TACC thought the other broken jet was in Quebec, but the 4-digit ICAO code was for a Canadian airfield in British Columbia. A simple error had caused TACC to reach out to what they thought was the closest aircraft to fly the mission. I pointed out that a jet already on the West Coast could have the stuck aircraft fixed much sooner; hell, even a pair of commercial airline tickets would have the maintenance team in Canada faster than we could, and for far less money. Our jet costs $3,000 plus per hour to fly; putting a couple of maintenance guys on a commercial flight would run around $600 per person. But TACC wasn’t interested in alternative solutions. They already had a solution - us.

And there was one last parting gift; the other jet was a higher priority mission with plenty of attention from the star level – meaning some general officer somewhere was quite interested in moving the cargo and troops stuck with the jet. So there was a chance that when we landed in Canada, the other crew would move the cargo to our jet and continue their mission, leaving us stuck with their broken aircraft. We’d be overdue three or more days, stuck perhaps a four-hour drive from our home base.

As you can guess, these latest developments didn’t go over well with my crew, especially the ones who had wanted to fly past our legal duty day the night prior. I called our squadron back home to let them know what had occurred and asked if my co-pilot could be allowed to buy an airline ticket home to save his vacation. However, he felt that we would still make it back home in time, even with the Canadian detour, as long as we didn’t lose our aircraft when we landed. But even in a worst case scenario, he would be able to catch a flight from Canada to make it home in time.

So we got another night in a small town on the East Coast. The next day, our aircraft was fixed and we were off for Canada. Checking our dispatch paperwork, we were scheduled to continue with our aircraft to our home base. Unless we were told otherwise, I planned to fly the mission as scheduled. I sure wasn’t going to stick around once we landed to see if something changed.

We descended into quite a storm on Canada’s West Coast. Gusty winds and driving rain greeted us as we emerged from the overcast clouds and foamy whitecaps furiously rippled across the Strait of Georgia beneath us. The weather radar was painting some seriously dangerous storm cells scattered around us – shades of red and magenta on the screen reflected areas we took extra caution to avoid. It was easy enough to find the airfield and we maneuvered for a visual approach. The winds were blowing plenty of seagulls over the airfield; if we were unlucky enough to hit one, we’d be stuck in soggy British Columbia as well. Fortunately, we landed uneventfully and taxied to the military ramp.

We deplaned the maintenance team with our engines still running and called for our outbound clearance, which we had conveniently filed en route to Canada. I had already checked NOTAMS and the weather, so there was nothing else to be done. I didn’t want to give anybody the opportunity to trump us and take our jet. So as soon as the tower read us our clearance, we taxied out and took the runway. Soon we were hurtling down the rain-slicked runway, gulls practically whizzing past us, and eagerly leapt into the saturated sky.

Mission accomplished. We were going home.

Get Home-itis

Between our delayed dispatch paperwork and the last-minute aircraft deicing in Canada, we lost a little over two hours of our day – two hours that we didn’t have. As soon as we took off for the warmer climes of the Carolinas, I started figuring out exactly how much time we’d have left in our duty day. We’d land with just over six hours remaining, but by the time we’d refuel and get our flight plan in the system, there would be no way we’d be able to fly the next leg home. We were looking at a 25-hour day to do so, one more than allowed by our regulations.

Three members of the crew were eager to continue our day to make it home. Since we had previously requested a duty day waiver earlier in the trip, they were hoping that I’d request another waiver so that we could make it home. But it didn’t pass the common sense test: fly all night, a 25-hour duty day, nobody had slept all day, we would have an empty aircraft, and we’d arrive back at home station around six am the next day. It had all the markings of a classical malady well-known to the flying community: Get Home-itis.

Get Home-itis is a syndrome in which crewmembers place the desire to return home after a prolonged absence over more pressing factors, such as fatigue, that could contribute to a flight mishap or accident. Poor judgment is often the first symptom, although irritability, channelized focus (aka one-track mind), and inattention to detail can also result. While it cannot be found in any medical journal or dictionary, Get Home-itis is a very real malady that that has caused mishaps, taken lives, and damaged aircraft.

And three of the five people on my crew had it – bad.

While still en route to our second destination, I had already determined that we couldn’t continue our day. I contacted our command and control agency to let them know, then called the base to ensure we’d have rooms for the night. All but one of the crew gradually accepted the fact that we’d be away from home one more day, after I explained the big picture. Eventually the lone holdout’s story came out and I understood his hesitancy to spend the night at our destination.

It turned out that a few months earlier, he had spent the night at a local hotel just off base. He was understandably disappointed when he discovered that his room had not been cleaned. The piece de resistance of his dismal evening had been when he pulled his sheets back to discover – ahem – something usually flushed after a night of sexual relations. To add insult to injury, when he complained to the base lodging office that had sent his crew to that hotel, they didn’t believe him.

At least lightning doesn’t usually strike twice. There was little chance he’d have a repeat experience, especially since we would be staying at a different place, a newer chain hotel well known for its hospitality. I know it was little recompense for somebody anxious to go home after a longer than usual trip. I’d probably be the poster child for Get Home-itis myself if I had plane tickets to Hawaii a few days later.

I thought everything would work out in the end. We’d have a decent alert the next afternoon and we’d be home at a decent hour. But I was wrong. I was going to pay for playing by the rules.

Garden State

November was a busy month in the squadron and I soon found myself back on the road on another trip. With a new crew and a new jet, I was soon flying across the country eastbound. It was night when we arrived at an airbase in the Garden State and my co-pilot was flying the aircraft as we were vectored for the ILS approach. My co-pilot’s approach and landing were uneventful, and we taxied to the ramp. We were scheduled for an overnight stay before we’d fly out for Germany the next day.

After engine shutdown, one of my crew discovered that we had struck several small birds during our arrival. Two bird strikes were visible on the fuselage, but a third bird impacted our number two engine nacelle and possibly had been ingested by the engine. Maintenance would have to inspect the engine carefully to determine if any internal damage was noted, but they’d have plenty of time to do so while we were in crew rest. We soon found ourselves at a hotel off-base, at the edge of a small town. It was late, so little was open besides a convenience store and a Domino’s Pizza place, so most of us wasted no time in getting some sleep.

The next day, I called to check on our aircraft. Maintenance had found no damage with the engine, but changes in our mission now required us to slip our departure by two days. With 48 hours off in New Jersey, we began planning what to do with our newfound freedom. New York City was within reach to the north, but Philadelphia was closer. I started calling around, looking for some wheels. None of the local rental car outlets had any available cars, and none of the crew possessed a government drivers’ license required to check out a government vehicle. Taxi service to Philly was outrageously expensive and we were too far from the closest rail station as well. We were stuck in a flyspeck town in the Garden State with no means to go anywhere. As if to add misery to our pain, the area experienced a power outage, plunging the hotel and all nearby businesses into darkness. We had to get away.

A few of us splurged for a cab to the closet sports bar to watch Monday Night Football, an adventure that set us back $60 round trip to a nearby town just off the Interstate. It was nice to get away, at least for a night, but the excessive cab fares kept us closer to our hotel for the rest of our stay. At least there was a great Italian restaurant a few blocks from our hotel and a package store across the street, so it wasn’t too bad. But we were more than ready to leave at the end of our stay. Our dreams of touring the eastern seaboard had been crushed, so we were ready to reach Germany and make our way downrange for the remainder of our mission.

The dawn of our last day in Jersey revealed a soggy mess; low sullen clouds and a grim veil of mist painted the landscape a morose shade of gray, a scene reminiscent of fall back home in the Pacific Northwest. Our alert came late that afternoon, springing us from our 1970s era hotel. The weather wasn’t looking great on the other side of the pond either, but we were determined not to spend another night in Jersey. We added a little extra fuel for a potential divert and prepared to depart.

We had one last hurdle to overcome. Our takeoff was scheduled for sunset, at the peak of the local bird activity period. Birds generally flock within an hour of sunrise or sunset, so we had to obtain special permission to takeoff during this period. We sat in our seats, ready to start engines, while the command post contacted the appropriate waiver authority to allow us to depart. I couldn’t imagine going back to our dismal rooms for another night of monotony.

Fortunately, we eventually gained approval to depart. We started up, taxied out, and lined up on the runway. Our stay in the Garden State was soon behind us.

A Fine Mess

After sitting a few days in Germany after our Purgatory in the Sandbox, we recuperated quite well. German cuisine and beer can do that for you. As can sleeping in a real bed again.

However, we were all eager to go home. We were a few days late when we were finally alerted for a westbound sortie. But it was disappointing when our crew bus pulled up to our aircraft and we unloaded our bags to find the filthiest jet we had ever seen. Dirt was caked on the pallets and a fine sheen of dust settled over everything in the aircraft – even the cockpit. It was unacceptable. Knowing that US Customs would never allow the aircraft to pass inspection, our loadmaster passed our concerns to maintenance. The aircraft and cargo needed to be cleaned.

Maintenance deferred to the aerial port, the organization responsible for loading and unloading cargo. The aerial port personnel were quick to point out that the cargo had been loaded downrange – in the Sandbox – so they weren’t responsible. True, it was loaded downrange, but it still had to be cleaned. We could not transport dirty cargo in a dirty aircraft back to the States. We repeated our concerns that the aircraft and cargo needed to be cleaned. Or downloaded. But the aircraft would still have to be cleaned even if the cargo was taken off.

The aerial port supervisor – a civilian ironically named Mr. No (not sure how he spelled it, but that was actually his name) – refused to comply. His people would not clean the aircraft and cargo, nor would they offload the cargo. We were now in a pissing match with Mr. No, who promptly called our local command and control organization, the Air Mobility Command Center (AMCC). Instead of backing us, the AMCC tried to get us to take the cargo as is. They’re supposed to know our rules and regulations as well as we do, yet the AMCC sided with Mr. No. We stood our ground.

The AMCC bumped the problem up the chain of command – to Air Mobility Command’s Tanker Airlift Command Center (TACC) near St. Louis. A full colonel there tried to assure us that Customs would clear the aircraft. But we were far from assured that he could vouch for Customs. When the rubber hit the road, it would be the aircraft commander facing a $10,000 fine and I’m pretty sure that Finance would not reimburse a Customs fine on a travel voucher. We stood our ground.

The aerial port found a local US Customs representative and asked him to come out to “pre-inspect” our cargo, basically to ask him if the cargo would be cleared if he was the inspector stateside. He took one look at the mess and shook his head. We had our first ally in our struggle.

Hours passed. Nothing was being done. We figured out that the AMCC was letting us “burn” until we reached the end of our duty day, four hours after our scheduled takeoff, at which time we’d go back to crew rest and they’d simply alert another crew on the same jet. This was technically against the rules, but so was allowing a filthy jet to head back to the States. The AMCC would probably find a young active duty crew eager to get home, who either wouldn’t know about the regulations concerning a dirty jet or could be coerced into bending the rule. Full colonels have a way of convincing junior captains into doing whatever they want.

Mr. No grew impatient. He should have waited for our four-hour rule. But he called out the big gun – the aerial port’s operations officer, a major who came out to the jet armed with the latest regulations in his hand in an attempt to get us moving. It was Mr. No’s downfall. The major had brought us the written guidance backing our position: dirty cargo could not be transported back to the States. The cargo had to be cleaned.

Within 10 minutes, we had every available airman in maintenance and in the aerial port sweeping and vacuuming the jet. There was too much grime and dirt for a thorough cleaning, but they made a definite improvement. Once we felt it was within acceptable limits, we accepted the jet for flight. It was an extremely late takeoff, but we were finally heading home.

After landing on the East Coast to download the cargo and refuel the jet for the remainder of our journey to the Pacific Northwest, Customs officials met our jet as expected. They came aboard, poked around the usual places, and checked our paperwork. It was obvious that something was bothering them.

“Kind of a messy jet, isn’t it?” one of them asked. “It’s a good thing I’m in a good mood tonight; I’ll clear you this time. Merry Christmas!”

And it was only October.

Groundhog Day

Three days after arriving at the American airbase, we were still there, waiting for parole. It seemed tantalizingly close, yet as the seconds turned into minutes and the minutes turned into hours, we still were not alerted to fly. There we sat on Bravo alert, in our cramped tent, waiting for the pager to tell us to go to work. And the damned thing never went off.

Before we had been set up on Bravo, we had relatively more freedom. We had one day to enjoy our allotment of three beers, make a morale call home, watch the Sunday football games on a wooden screen at The Bra, and basically have the run of the base. It was initially pleasant to be set up for our Bravo with an expected alert time, which meant that we would eventually be allowed to leave. But as the time passed after our expected alert time, we learned that they were trying to fix our jet; the yaw damper was out and they gave us an estimate time to repair it.

That time came and went as well, as did all of the subsequent times they gave us. A Bravo alert can run up to 48 hours before we must be released or alerted, so our waiting turned into a kind of Groundhog Day. I’d sleep whenever I was tired, I’d sneak out for a bite to eat when hungry, even ventured out for a quick run in my civilian athletic clothes. I lost myself in reading, watched a movie or two on my laptop, and sneaked out to call home and grab a coffee. We were supposed to remain by the pager so that if we were alerted, we would be immediately ready to go to work. Yet at any given time, the five of us on the crew were scattered to all four corners of the base; it would have taken some time just to get the whole crew back together.

Most of the time, I was good and stayed in our tent. Depending on the sleep schedule of one or the other of us, the lights would either be full on or all off. The only constant was the monotonous hum of our air conditioner; during the nights it was quite chilly, but it barely kept pace with the searing daytime heat of autumn in the Persian Gulf. Afternoon windstorms were also quite common, rattling the sides of the tent like a tarp over a pickup’s bed on the freeway, and occasionally yanking the door of the tent wide open. In order for the door to stay closed, we would have to slam it a few times until it latched. It was like trying to sleep in a frat house without the partying.

As the maintenance crews tried to fix our jet, we learned more about its woes. A flight control module for the aircraft’s elevator was bad, but even after it was replaced, the whole jet shuddered when the flight controls were moved. Boeing was looking into the matter, which meant that nobody had any idea what was wrong with the jet. It all boiled down to the fact that we were leaving nowhere quickly. With three days left before our scheduled return date to our home station, the forecast for an on-time arrival looked grim at best.

So our Groundhog Day continued. Eventually, after more than 45 hours into our 48 window of availability, the pager finally went off. Another jet had come in, so we no longer had to wait for them to fix the other jet. We hurriedly packed the last of our bags and donned our uniforms.

Freedom was waiting.