Thankful

As the Thanksgiving weekend wraps up and the maddening rush towards Christmas is well underway, I have a moment to ponder why I am so thankful this year. I was home for Thanksgiving: I enjoyed spending time with my family, seeing relatives, eating way too much, watching all of my football teams lose, putting up the Christmas tree with the kids, and hanging Christmas lights on the house. Simple things really, yet so rewarding.

I will also be home for Christmas; if by home, I mean not flying the line. My family and I will be traveling to Texas so the kids can see their grandparents and cousins, as well as friends from my high school and college. I am quite fortunate to be able to be home for all of the holidays this year.

So, I can't help but think of others who are not so fortunate. Many of the airline pilots in my reserve squadron will be working the busiest travel days of the year, especially those not senior enough with their airline to bid time off during the holidays. But even they will be home within a day or so. The not-so-lucky ones will be flying for Uncle Sam over the holidays, perhaps grabbing a Thanksgiving dinner at a Denny's near an East Coast airbase in the middle of the night; or eating an in-flight meal while crossing the pond heading to Europe; or dining on schnitzel at a German gasthaus; or eating at a chow hall in one of the many outposts scattered across the Sandbox.

But even my brothers and sisters flying the line will be fortunate enough to be home within a week or two. And those flying over Thanksgiving will not likely be flying over Christmas, the way the schedule balances out. Usually if you work one holiday, they take pity on you for the next one.

I am thankful for the men and women whose time in the Sandbox far exceeds that of my fellow airlift pilots, who at most will spend 90 days at a deployed location in the Sandbox. While our overnight stays may not be in choice locations replete with 4-star resort hotels and fine restaurants, our tent cities do not compare to those in Iraq or Afghanistan, where the added threat of airbase attacks can rattle the calmest of nerves.

Those deployed over the holidays will not know the joy this year of carving the turkey with the family or seeing the joy on their kids' faces as they open their presents on Christmas morning. Many of them will miss more than a year in the lives of their families: birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, baptisms, family reunions, bar mitzvahs, three-day holiday weekends, their kids' proms, high school football games, boy scout campouts, and often the births of their children. Those moments, perhaps enjoyed from afar via video tape, internet, and phone calls, cannot be fully appreciated from thousands of miles away.

I am thankful for their sacrifices. I am thankful for their devotion to our nation and to one another. I am thankful that because of them, I am able to enjoy the peace and joy of this holiday season, knowing that they are standing watch for the rest of us. Because of them, our nation can enjoy the fruits of liberty; they have safeguarded our right to act and speak freely, without fear of reprisal. They are the keepers of the enduring experiment in democracy that started with our founding fathers, a system that allows criticism and dissent, even of those who preserve that system, often upon the sacrifice of life itself.

Thank you.

"So There I Was"

One of the vastly under-appreciated aspects of pilothood is the ability to tell a good flying story. Just as there is a wide variance among pilots’ flying skills, the degree of proficiency in telling flying stories is also a benchmark of sorts in rating a pilot’s competence and social standing among his or her peers. If a pilot cannot weave a story in which the laws of physics were briefly suspended during some kind of airborne emergency or near-disaster, resulting in saving the airplane and all the lives onboard entrusted in their care, then other pilots could reasonably question that pilot’s ability to handle the stick when things go bad. And that really is what makes a pilot a pilot; heck, you can teach a monkey to fly, but only a select breed have the steely nerves and daring attitude to make things right when things go wrong. When the wing-off light illuminates on the console, you want a calm and collected hand at the controls, not a monkey reaching for a banana. And story telling is an insight into the pilot’s soul, whether he or she has the right stuff for the job.

Tom Wolfe, in his best selling book The Right Stuff, sums up the attributes required of a pilot well when discussing Chuck Yeager and his contributions to the piloting profession. There are pilots in the mold of Yeager himself who would rather ride an airplane with a multiple-engine flameout into the ground like a glider than utter the E word (emergency) lest some air traffic controller think they’re not real pilots. While not a pilot himself, Wolfe was able to peer into the soul of our profession and accurately expose the “Brotherhood of the Right Stuff” to readers worldwide. If you’ve ever wondered why nearly all airline captains sound like they’re from some dog hollow out yonder from Charleston, West Virginia (Charlie West in pilot parlance), you should do yourself a favor and read Tom Wolfe. He may very well have written the best book about pilots since Ernest K. Gann’s Fate is the Hunter.

There are three scenarios which dictate the degree of truthfulness one should relay when telling a flying story: among his or her aircrew peers, among non-flyers, and at parties or other places where alcohol is being consumed.

After the last flight of the day, it is customary for the crew to meet for drinks after checking into their lodging for crew rest. It really doesn’t matter if folks have changed out of their uniforms or not, or if anybody has showered or not; what is vitally important is that before anybody does anything else, such as sleep or go to dinner, the entire crew must meet in somebody’s room and discuss things over a few drinks. While many subjects from politics to current events may be discussed, inevitably the discussion will turn to flying. And when telling a flying story in front of your peers, it had better be believable. There is some leniency for rumors or hearsay, but if it happened to you, you’d better tell it correctly and you’d better be (mostly) truthful. There doesn’t necessarily even have to be much of a point to the story, but there must be a lesson that everybody can learn from. Even when discussing an aircraft accident, many pilots will not assign blame; they merely discuss what could have been done differently to break the chain of events leading up to the accident. However, nobody can overly criticize what the crew was thinking or what they did before the accident, since others cannot accurately say what they would have done in the exact same circumstances, especially if the mishap aircrew is no longer among the living to defend themselves.

A good example of this kind of story: So there I was, flying an emergency medical flight from Japan to Hawaii with a two-week-old infant with congenital heart failure onboard. After landing in Honolulu, we were directed to exit the runway on the far side from the airport ramp. Once on the taxiway, we realized that we had blown a hydraulic seal on the system that powers the C-141’s brakes and nose wheel steering. The ambulance could not reach us where we were, so we decided to taxi to the ramp using asymmetric thrust to make turns and reverse thrust to control our speed and to stop. I wouldn’t normally do that, but under the circumstances, it was the quickest way to get the poor kid to the ambulance. Yeah, they could have shut down the runway to let the ambulance across, but it would have taken far more time. Lesson learned: sometimes rules are made to be broken if somebody’s life is in the balance.

There is somewhat more leeway when telling flying stories to non-flyers, simply because there is nobody to call you out on your tale. That being said, dear readers, everything I have ever said in this blog is 100% true. If I were standing in front of you at a gathering, I might embellish a thing or two to make it more entertaining, but I would eventually ‘fess up. For instance, I went to pilot training at Laughlin AFB in Del Rio, Texas. When we returned to base from our practice area, we would fly along the Rio Grande to enter into the traffic pattern for landing. One time, an instructor and her student pilot started flying along the river, but it soon petered out in the desert. Realizing that the Rio Grande has its headwaters in southern Colorado and not in West Texas, the instructor executed a sharp turn to the east; they had followed a tributary into Mexico. Sometime later, I took a little liberty with the event and made it my own story; I told a friend at a Christmas gathering that I had strayed into Mexico and was intercepted by the Mexican Air Force flying WWII era P-51 Mustang fighters.

Throw in a little alcohol at a party or a bar and anything is fair game. You can say whatever you want and there is a pretty good chance that your audience will not know the difference, unless there is another pilot among the crowd. As a matter of fact, pilots are in their prime at such events; just as my opening blog last month stated: How do you know a pilot is at a party? He’ll tell you. The follow-up joke is: How do you know a fighter pilot is at a party? He’ll keep telling you.

My office job in the squadron when I am not actively flying is that of executive officer. As such, it is my job to write performance reports, commander’s correspondence, awards and decorations, and other official documentation. I especially like writing awards for members of my squadron, since I am privy to events happening on all sorts of missions; I have read about camels crossing the runway during the takeoff roll, airbase attacks, emergency depressurizations, engine failures, bird strikes, and other stories that make good inputs for Air Medals or other awards. They are also good fodder for embellishing my own stories should the need arise. And with the holiday party season kicking off this week, I should have plenty of opportunities to engage in some festive story telling.

I particularly like the camel crossing the runway story. Seriously, how would you explain a camel strike? We have a standard form to fill in for a bird strike, but how would you write up hitting a camel at 100 knots? Maybe it would go a little something like this:

So there I was…

Texas Skies

When I was a kid, I used to study maps so closely that some of my friends called me Mr. Map. I was so skilled at map reading that my dad allowed me to navigate on our summer car trips to Colorado and Arizona. It is a skill that has served me well as a professional pilot; I am often so familiar with the terrain I am flying over by merely looking out the window. A curve of a river or a stretch of highway approaching a town is sometimes all I need to ascertain my aircraft's position. If I ever have to divert for an in-flight emergency, I would instinctively know many of the nearby airports suitable for landing.

This is especially true when flying over Texas, my home state. Each time, I am able to pick out towns and cities I have visited over the years. As we headed southeast from New Mexico to South America, I scanned the Texas landscape unfolding beneath us: the flat expanse of plains around Midland and Odessa, the hill country towns of Fredericksburg and Kerrville, the Central Texas cities of Austin and San Antonio, the curve of the Brazos River just west of Hempstead, Bryan-College Station just to the north and my beloved Aggieland, and the piney woods stretching north of Houston into East Texas. I could even see the upper stretches of Lake Livingston near Trinity where my parents now live.

As I approached Houston, I looked for the familiar neighborhoods where my friends from high school now live: Barker Cypress, Willowbrook, Bear Creek, Spring, and the Oak Forest neighborhood where we all grew up, tucked up against the Northwest Freeway and the Loop. The multiple skylines of the city rose in glassy splendor: downtown, uptown, the Medical Center, Greenway Plaza, and other skyrises seemingly popping up everywhere like mushrooms after a rainstorm. The freeway network laid out with intricate precision, carrying commuters to the once rural outlying counties, now virtual cities unto themselves. The Juicebox, Toyota Center, Reliant, and the Dome - places I have rooted for Houston's teams, if only in spirit. The east side refineries, the economic engine of the region, stretched along the ship channel toward the San Jacinto Monument, marking the place where Texas was won on the battlefield.

Beyond the Johnson Space Center lay Galveston Bay and its smaller cousin, Clear Lake. The bayside communities, so terribly devastated by Ike, appeared unblemished; even Galveston looked undamaged, but its scars could not be seen from my elevated perch. However, the Bolivar Peninsula's damage was clearly evident; even from 30,000 feet, the land where beachfront homes and towns once stood appeared to have been scoured away by the sea. A line of ships waited for their channel passage at the bay's mouth, anchored amid chocolate colored water on either side of the clear channel leading to the gulf.

And then Texas was behind us as we headed out over the gulf towards South America.

Yet hours later, after a second round of stops in Peru and Ecuador, we returned under clear midnight skies. First, lights flickered below us from the gulf; hundreds of off-shore platforms stretched as far as the eye could see. A meteor raced across the sky, leaving a momentary trail of smoke as it sped towards Mexico. A dim glow on the horizon soon morphed into Galveston and Houston, beckoning us towards land. Looking right to left, I could see the lights of every city along the entire Texas coastline, from Beaumont to Brownsville. It was an amazing sight.

We coasted in from the gulf just south of Victoria and started our descent into San Antonio, our destination for the night. The city was sleeping as we were vectored for the ILS approach into Kelly Field on the city's south side. I clicked off the auto-pilot and auto-throttles as the glide slope came down and manually flew to a landing on runway 15.

It wasn't the Texas overnight I was hoping for; it was well after 1 am and there would be no margaritas on the Riverwalk that night. The Texas skies I'd flown through would have to sustain me until December, when I'll return with my family to celebrate another Texas Christmas.

The Big Easy

I've been to New Orleans before a few times through the years. I was 12 the first time I went, but it's hard to really appreciate the city at that age. The next time I came back was in the immediate aftermath of Katrina, when I'd flown relief supplies to a submerged city still reeling from the untold devastation. Even last year, I'd stopped there for fuel on a previous trip to South America and was amazed at the damage still marring the city two years after the storm.

After parking our jet at the Signature ramp on the north side of the airport, we grabbed a cab and went downtown to the Astor Crowne Plaza Hotel, on the corner of Canal and Bourbon in the famous French Quarter. I was very tired after our long duty day, but the entire crew gathered to head down Bourbon Street for a bite to eat. We found a great place called Oceana Grill, which had some of the best Cajun food I'd ever had. I had the Taste of New Orleans plate: jambalaya, crawfish ettouffee, and red beans & rice with sausage. The only drawback was that they didn't serve Dixie's Blackened Voodoo Lager.

After dinner, we walked the length of Bourbon, soaking in the sights and sounds. It was a chilly Saturday night, but the street festivities were in full swing. It almost had that heady atmosphere of Las Vegas, minus the slot machines, but I felt like a zombie from my lack of sleep. A few of the younger guys on the crew stayed out, but most of us headed back to the hotel for some much needed sleep.

I woke up early enough to get a long run in. It was still cold, but I headed down Canal Street to the riverfront for a runner's tour of the city. I passed Jackson Square and its iconic St. Louis Cathedral, turned north on Esplanade, and back to Bourbon Street. I can say that this was the least favorite part of my run; the combination of smells from the high-powered bleach solution city workers were spraying down the sidewalks with and the still-unwashed sections with foul-smelling human discharges made it less than appealing. I was quick to leave it behind and head back to the riverfront. I headed past Harrah's Casino and the convention center down to the Greater New Orleans Bridge before turning back for the hotel. It was time to get ready for our flight back to New Mexico to pick up the second half of our mission.

I enjoyed my time in New Orleans, especially since it turned out to be our best crew rest of the trip. We'd still make it to San Antonio for an overnight stay, but a late arrival there scheduled for late Monday night wouldn't be quite as memorable as my short stay in The Big Easy.

The Longest Day

In the Air Force, the best-made plans can change as quickly as a shift change in our command post, so our short overnight stay in New Mexico changed into 40-hours thanks to a missing overflight clearance of one of our neighbors south of Mexico. I woke up about 6 hours prior to our expected alert, around 9 am local time. Our alert was delayed two hours, until 5 pm, and our overflight clearance was still pending. However, I was assured that our clearance would be granted prior to our takeoff.

We finally received the clearance, but a minor maintenance problem delayed our takeoff by 90 minutes. We knew we had a long day ahead; it would be 20 hours long without any delays and we had just lost an hour and a half. Once we hit 24 hours, we would have to be on the ground somewhere.

It was night when we took off and headed southeast, passing into Texas just west of Midland. The city lights along the I-35 corridor were clearly visible ahead; we could see every city from Fort Worth to San Antonio, but a layer of clouds obscured everything south and east of San Antonio. All that was visible of Houston was a dim glow from under the heavy clouds blanketing the city. Soon we left Texas behind and headed south over the gulf.

Houston Center handed us off to Merida (Mexico) Control and the lights of Cancun and Cozumel beckoned to the west. If we had had an in-flight emergency, we could have been sipping margaritas on the beach shortly thereafter. But we continued south, along the Caribbean coast of Central America, crossing over Costa Rica into the Pacific. When the sun rose several hours later, the peaks of the Andes rose above the solid cloud deck to the east.

Nearly eight hours after we took off, we descended and landed in Lima, Peru, where it was around 8 am local time. I was amazed at the uncanny resemblance of the Peruvian capitol to Kabul, Afghanistan; between the mountains, the haze, and the same shade of brown coloring the buildings, the two cities could have been separated at birth. There was a major difference, however; nobody in Lima was actively trying to kill us during our arrival. We quickly offloaded our cargo and prepared to depart for our next stop.

Minor language difficulties arose as we tried to obtain our departure clearance. It took some time to straighten things out, and we lost a little more time. Two hours later we descended into Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, a dense metropolis sprawling across the jungle and hills along the Guayaquil River. The city has close ties to my hometown; Houston is one of the Ecuadorian city’s sister cities. As if inspired by the glittering opulence of Houston, the largest city in Ecuador boasts numerous modern skyscrapers and freeways packed with cars. Our stop in Ecuador was merely a fuel stop and we planned to continue back to New Mexico for the night.

It was a weekend in Guayaquil, so they only had one fuel truck driver. Each truck carried about 20,000 lbs. of fuel and we needed nearly 100,000 lbs. Even if we had been the only aircraft on the ground, it would have taken quite some time to refuel, but there was another C-17 ahead of us, and several more landing behind us. We soon realized that we would not be refueled in time to make it back to New Mexico before the end of our 24 hour crew duty day. Our clock was striking midnight and we would soon turn into a pumpkin.

I used the Sat phone to arrange for other destinations; we would be unable to stay in Guayaquil with more C-17s scheduled to arrive later in the day. Perhaps we could make San Antonio, Corpus Christi, or Houston. But as the fuel trickled onto our plane as if through a soda straw, those options were quickly becoming limited as well. We started looking at Cancun; maybe we’d still enjoy those margaritas on the beach. Our command post wasn’t keen on Cancun, much less Houston. They suggested Key West; a quick look at our computer and existing fuel load showed it was possible. So I opted to take the fuel we had and we took off.

I had now been awake for well over 24 hours, so I passed my instructions to my co-pilots and I hit the bunk for a nap. It seemed like minutes later that I was awakened; we were being told that Key West did not have room on their ramp for our arrival, so once again we started looking all along the Gulf Coast for other options. We could still make Houston, but were informed that Customs would be unavailable at Ellington Field at our planned arrival time. The command post suggested NAS New Orleans, but it would be a three-hour wait for Customs at the Naval Air Station. So we asked about Louis Armstrong International.

After a few phone calls, the command post agreed and arranged for our arrival in New Orleans. After checking in with Houston Center, we coordinated our in-flight divert to the Big Easy. Soon the city appeared from the darkness and we were vectored to a landing on runway 01. A check of the time as we shut down the engines revealed a 24-hour and 7 minute long day. Our longest day was over.

On the Road Again

After being home for a week, I am back out on the road again for a relatively short 5-day trip. With the first of the fall rains pummelling the Pacific Northwest with a vengeance, driving creeks and rivers over their banks, we took off in the stormy night for the American Southwest. This will be one of those trips when I wonder why I fly jets for a living; minimum crew rest, nearly maximum crew duty days, minimum en route ground times, difficult language barriers to overcome (on the radio), and numerous nighttime approaches and landings at unfamiliar foreign airports with mountainous terrain nearby. But there will be a few new pins to add to the map and a country I've never been to before, so it won't all be bad. The icing on the cake will be an overnight stay in San Antonio on the way back, and an evening on the Riverwalk with great Tex-Mex food and margaritas is hard to beat. Anytime I can get a trip to Texas, I jump at the chance.

By the time we landed in New Mexico, it was late, but we still had quite a bit of work to do. While my loadmasters and crew chief fueled the jet, loaded our cargo, and put the jet to bed for the night, I tried to figure out if we would be able to takeoff the next day. Due to the mountainous terrain surrounding the airbase, the standard instrument departure routing requires a significant climb gradient to ensure terrain clearance. But with the amount of fuel we need to make it to our destination tomorrow, we may be too heavy to meet the required climb profile. I passed the matter off to our command and control agency until tomorrow. I'll check in when I wake up in the morning to see what solution they have for us.

We finally arrived at our hotel in a town near the airbase well after midnight; it's one of those one stop-light towns in the desert where everything but Denny's has been closed since 10 pm. It'll be a short night; we will take off later today for the first of two very long days, only to return here for another overnight stay. We'll be here during daylight hours when we return, but something tells me this place won't be too much more exciting than it is now.

Sometimes people ask me if I would choose this life if I had the opportunity to do it all over again, knowing how unglamourous a pilot's life can be at times. Lord knows the sacrifices this life entails; living out of a suitcase can be trying - times away from family, missing important events, and sleeping in a different bed nearly every night I'm on the road. Despite the trials and tribulations of a flying career for Uncle Sam, I wouldn't hesitate to make the same choice. I cannot imagine not doing this job; it is all I ever wanted to do since I was a kid.

Many of my fellow reserve pilots also have airline careers. I was hired by a major US airline earlier this year, but thanks to high oil prices and a recent change in the mandatory retirement age for pilots, I was furloughed fairly quickly. But I saw enough to know that an airline job does not provide the same satisfaction as flying for the military. It has all the negative aspects of the job - the late nights, bad airport food, lumpy hotel beds, and missing time with family and friends - but it doesn't compare to the camaraderie that I find in the military. When I am away from home, the entire crew becomes a second family, both pilots and loadmasters. It is us versus the system and we must work together to ensure the mission is successful. And while I would eventually make far more money flying for the airlines, I could never buy the esprit de corps shared by the pilots and loadmasters in my squadron.

The Air Force Hymn

Many years ago, when I was a student at Texas A&M, the local television studio in Bryan used to play the Air Force Hymn before its nightly sign-off (before the days of all-night infomercials!). It was a haunting song replete with images of various Air Force aircraft in flight, which only confirmed my zeal to become an Air Force pilot. I wish I knew who to credit for the song, but the author's identity is likely lost to the ages.

The Air Force Hymn

Lord, guard and guide the men who fly

Through the great spaces of the sky;

Be with them traversing the air

In darkening storms or sunshine fair

Thou who dost keep with tender might

The balanced birds in all their flight

Thou of the tempered winds be near

That, having thee, they know no fear

Control their minds with instinct fit

What time, adventuring, they quit

The firm security of land;

Grant steadfast eye and skillful hand

Aloft in solitudes of space,

Uphold them with Thy saving grace.

O God, protect the men who fly

Thru lonely ways beneath the sky

Veterans Day

Veterans Day is always a solemn day of remembrance for those men and women who have paid the ultimate price in defense of freedom. But this year it is especially memorable; 90 years ago today, at 11 am, the guns of Europe fell silent, ending one of the most brutal wars in the history of mankind. More than 20 million soldiers and civilians died, and countless more were wounded. It was called the War to End All Wars, yet it directly led to another bloody slaughter in Europe barely 20 years later. In the end, freedom trumped tyranny, and today we honor the sacrifices of those who fought and died so that we might be free.

Years ago, I traveled to Verdun, France, where one of the bloodiest engagements of the entire First World War took place from February to December, 1916. More than 300,000 French and German soldiers died and nearly a million were wounded in a pivotal battle sometimes called the Gettysburg of France. The German goal of the battle was to find a place the French would defend at all costs, a place where they could bleed the French dry. I was shocked to see that very little of the landscape had changed; trench emplacements were visible snaking through the trees and the bomb-cratered fields resembled the surface of the moon. Nearby, the American battlefield of St. Mihiel marked one of our early baptisms of fire in European affairs, and the massive cemetery at Montfaucon marks the final resting place of nearly 15,000 Americans who died in the battle. It remains the largest American cemetery overseas.

I was also fortunate enough to visit Bastogne, Belgium last year. It was the town that was completely surrounded by the Germans during the December, 1944 Battle of the Bulge, the WWII battle that made the 101st Airborne famous. Heavily outnumbered and outgunned, the paratroopers dug into the frozen earth of the Ardennes Forest and refused to yield an inch as the Germans threw everything they had at them. Finally, the weather lifted and allied air forces airdropped supplies and ammo, and our boys pushed the Germans back for the final assault into Germany.

Today, the people of Bastogne are forever grateful to the soldiers who fought and died to give Belgium its freedom from Nazi tyranny. A huge limestone memorial caps a ridge overlooking the town and the now peaceful fields surrounding it. Engraved into the stone facade is the epic story of the battle, including all of the units that participated and the home states of the soldiers. The final line of the narrative states:

"Of these dead and of all who fought here, the now living may attest the greatness of the deed only by increased devotion to the freedom for which they braved the fire."

There are many places in Europe today where its citizens have forgotten the American sacrifices of WWI and WWII, but Verdun and Bastogne still remember. Regardless of your views of warfare and American foreign involvement, please take a moment today to remember our fallen men and women. Consider the freedom which we often take for granted today, the freedom that so many gave their lives to preserve, and give a silent thanks to their eternal memory.

Passing Gas at 20,000 Feet

One of the best things I get to do as a pilot is to fly an aerial refueling mission. It is extremely challenging and patience is a virtue that pays big dividends. At the same time, the few times I have been truly scared while flying has been during aerial refueling, especially when the other pilot is at the controls and I sit there watching a bad situation get worse.

One of the first things you hear as a pilot about aerial refueling is that it is inherently dangerous to place two airplanes in such proximity to each other. Numerous aerodynamic principles make it especially risky. However, the number of accidents are fortunately few and far between.

Aerial refueling is actually quite an old concept, but it did not take hold until after WWII. The first successful attempt took place in 1923, when fuel was transferred from one DH4 biplane to another. The practice did not become routine until 1948, when B-29 bombers were converted to tankers for operational use. Today, tankers use a manually controlled boom for Air Force aircraft and a drogue system for Navy and Marine Corps ones. In either case, an enlisted crew member, called a boom operator, sits at the rear of the tanker and directs the intricate aerial ballet between tanker and receiver. During refueling with an Air Force aircraft, the boom operator actually "flies" the boom down to the receiver's fuel receptacle to make the connection.

The whole operation starts while we are still on the ground, well before we even start engines. We program our flight computer with the route of flight, any headwinds or tailwinds, and the planned air refueling control time to rendezvous with the tanker. The computer will tell us when to takeoff and how much fuel we need to receive so that we can make it to our destination.

After we are airborne, we will continually monitor our flight's progress to ensure that we will arrive at the proper place at the proper time, down to the minute. When we are 30 minutes out, we check in with the tanker to make sure they will be there also. Hopefully, the tanker is holding in a special airspace called an air refueling track. These tracks exist all across the country and overseas as well. Once ATC approves the operation, we continue inbound towards the ARIP, or air refueling initial point, where our rendezvous will begin. This sample air refueling track may put it into perspective.

As we approach the ARIP, the tanker will be offset several miles left of track, 1000 feet above us, and heading outbound parallel to the inbound course. At the appropriate time, it will turn towards us, reversing its direction until it is heading inbound one mile ahead of us (and still 1000' above us).

At this time, we begin a gradual climb, with just enough speed to catch the tanker. We want to arrive at the ARCP, or air refueling control point (shown on the sample track) at the proper time. At this point we hope to be at the precontact position, which is approximately 50 feet aft and slightly below the tanker. We must stabilize our aircraft in precontact before we can continue towards the tanker - which means ZERO forward or aft movement.

Once we are stable, we are cleared to contact, which is approximately 20 feet behind the tanker. Here is where the aerodynamic forces come into play: the tanker's engines create a burble of agitated air around our tail and the nose of our aircraft creates a bow wave (like a boat) which can push around the tanker. A slow closure rate is key; one foot per second is ideal. Once we get into position, the boom operator will connect the boom and turn on the pumps.

Maintaining position is hard work, especially as more gas is onloaded, making us heavier. It'll take a little more power to hold us steady, but too much can lead to inadvertent closure. Power movements on the throttles require patience - add a little power and see if it works. Add too much and the boom operator will send us back to the penalty box.

If we get too close or the boom operator sees us coming in too fast, he or she will call for a breakaway. The tanker will accelerate as the boom is pulled clear; the receiver pilot will simultaneously pull the throttles to idle, fan the speed brakes, and push the stick down to attain positive separation, usually ending with us 1000 feet below the tanker.

Throw in a moonless night, some clouds, low visibility, and even some turbulence, and it gets very challenging. Daytime isn't always better either; it seems that half the time we are looking right into the sun. You can have good days and bad, but as long as it get the gas you need, it doesn't really matter how pretty it was.

Here's a video showing the climb to precontact and contact, but it's a little long.

Homeward Bound

Waiting is the hardest part.

Our westbound jet has already landed with a maintenance problem, so we must sit and wait for it to be repaired before we can go home. We have already been slipped for 24 hours from our original takeoff time, and since our jet may or may not be fixed, they have placed us in a "rolling" alert status, otherwise called a Bravo alert. In a Bravo alert, we have a 48 hour window of opportunity in which they can call us anytime to go fly.

Managing sleep during a Bravo alert is quite difficult. I would normally try to sleep right up until we are alerted to fly, but I cannot sleep for 48 hours straight. The worst case scenario would be being awake for 12 hours or so and then being alerted to fly the 20 hour day to make it home.

But there are other problems as well. We are essentially restricted to our billeting quarters during a Bravo alert, so trying to overcome boredom is a constant challenge. Eating meals and getting exercise is a further complication. It is somewhat similar to what I’d imagine what life would be in a white-collar prison.

As luck would have it, we are alerted just before sunrise, and I have been awake nearly all night; I have kept my body clock tuned to Pacific time and it is now nearly 9 pm on the West Coast. It will be a tiring day and I will have to sleep on the aircraft. But at least we are going home.

We drive onto the flight line and notice rows of silent jets in the pre-dawn darkness: C-17s, C-5s, KC-135s, a Boeing 737, and several Boeing 747 cargo charters. The sun is painting the eastern sky a dull shade of pink; it will be a beautiful day to fly. Soon the air will be filled with the sound of jet engines.

Our jet has a few problems that weren't noted in the maintenance forms; one generator is not working and the number three engine bleed air valve will not open. The first is not a significant problem, but if icing is encountered during our flight, we would be unable to keep that engine from icing up. A quick look at the weather on the East Coast shows it will not be an issue, but it may be for our West Coast base. We decide to take the jet as is. If there is icing in Seattle, then we will have the jet fixed on the East Coast.

We call for the passengers and we get ready to go. As soon as we are airborne and climbing out over the low countries, I climb out of my seat and head for the bunk with the hope of dreaming my way towards home.

Guten tag Aus Deuschland

During the height of the Cold War, there were dozens of US Air Force bases scattered across Europe, with the majority of these in Germany. Originally these installations supported WW II occupation forces and held the ambitions of the Soviets in check. The bases have a proud legacy over the years, especially during the 1948 Berlin Airlift, in which cargo aircraft were the only lifeline to the West after the Soviets closed all land access to the German city. The Berlin Airlift remains the defining moment for airlift to this day.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, many of the Air Force bases were declared surplus and slowly weaned down to the handful of bases remaining today. These surviving bases have become de facto American cities overseas, offering those stationed there a little bit of home. On any base there is a commissary, base exchange, fitness centers and playing fields, clubs, restaurants (including a Chili’s Bar & Grill), golf course, library, internet café, coffee shops, community center, and other services.

The local German community around each base also offer warm hospitality to Americans stationed overseas. Some of the larger German communities are near US Army installations, such as Kaiserslautern, Mannheim, or Wiesbaden. The Germans have been gracious hosts for many years and have come to depend on American dollars spent in their communities. These German communities typically offer the same businesses as those found outside of stateside bases and English is widely spoken.

One of my favorite haunts is an Irish pub in a town one of the airbases; playing darts and drinking a good Irish beer is a great way to spend a leisurely evening after dinner. Another favorite is a döner kebab place, one of the best contributions of the Turkish expatriate community living in Germany. For those who have not had the joy of eating a döner, they are the Turkish equivalent of the hot dog but are similar to a Greek gyro with additional toppings.

One of the greatest benefits of visiting our German bases is the ability to travel around Europe when we have time off. Some of my favorite destinations are Frankfurt and the wineries and cafes of the Rhine Valley, the grand duchy of Luxemburg, the WW II battlefields of Bastogne, Belgium, and the WW I citadel and battlefields of Verdun, France. I have also been to Paris twice, but to see it properly, an overnight stay is required and we often do not have enough time off to do Paris justice.

I enjoy my time off in Germany, but after a week or so away from home, I am eager to return home to spend time with the family. I’m thankful that I can do my part for the war and go home after a short amount of time. So many others, who are deployed for months to a year at a time, do not have that opportunity.

The Sandbox

The Sandbox is what aircrews sometimes call the numerous nations that are part of Southwest Asia, but especially Iraq and Afghanistan. Preparing to fly to any nation in the Sandbox can be tricky, because they all have their particular issues, but as you may guess, Iraq and Afghanistan present the biggest challenges.

The jet we flew into Germany yesterday had already departed with another crew and we were assigned another jet to fly to the Sandbox. This flow of keeping the jets moving with fresh crews is the responsibility of the Stage, a mostly thankless job mostly staffed by volunteer reservists from across the air force. They assign crews to jets using some kind of sophisticated process involving throwing darts at a board or pulling names from a hat, but once we are assigned to a jet, it is usually until death do us part. Heaven forbid if a jet limps in with a laundry list of maintenance write-ups, but if we are paired as a crew to that jet, we may wait a week for it to be fixed so we can fly it.

Once we get a good jet, we are alerted by the Stage, and a crew bus picks us up. One of the major problems we face is getting the crew bus to pick us up at the allotted time; more than one flight has been delayed in the past because of a late crew bus. After stopping at the commissary for in-flight meals, we must attend briefings, pick up our equipment, and preflight the jet for departure.

Flying in Europe is slightly more complicated than flying in the states, mainly because there are such a large number of airplanes flying in such a congested area. Sometimes EuroControl will dictate a different takeoff time, called a slot time, which we must abide by to avoid saturating ATC with too much air traffic. But once we leave Western Europe behind, it is usually smooth sailing, at least until we reach Southwest Asia, where for some reason, very few people like us.

It is our goal to confuse and deceive those people so that we can safely provide the necessary equipment and vital supplies to our fellow men and women with boots on the ground so they can do their jobs. To that end, we routinely fly training missions back home to practice our tactical maneuvers so that when we get to the Sandbox, we know exactly how to avoid a potentially hostile situation. They are out to get us and we are out to avoid them, and perhaps even have a little fun while we’re doing it.

The C-17 is such a fantastic airplane to fly, especially when we “go tactical” in the Sandbox. We almost have license to steal, since we’re sometimes given wide latitude about how to arrive at a Sandbox airbase. During yesterday’s approach, I flew a tactical approach like the space shuttle returning to earth, coming in so steep that all that was visible on the ADI, or attitude director indicator, was the color brown, which represents the ground. I didn’t even have to push the throttles up until I was two miles from the runway.

After we land, we want to offload our cargo as quickly as possible and be on our way, since we have more opportunities to avoid hostile eyes when we’re airborne than sitting on the ramp. So it is not unusual to have pilots helping push pallets in the back in an effort to keep our ground time as short as possible. The sooner we depart Sandbox airspace, the sooner we can let our guard down and relax.

One of the main reasons why I enjoy my job is that I am able to support the soldiers, airmen, and Marines who must deploy to Iraq, Afghanistan, or other nations in the Sandbox. I especially enjoy when I am able to fly troops back home after a deployment and see their families and loved ones waiting for them as we arrive. One day this war will end and our troops will be able to shake the sand from their boots for the last time. And I hope to be there to fly the last of them home. Until then, I’ll be back once a month or so, flying the line, so they will always have a lifeline to home.

Sleep When You're Tired

I don’t sleep well on the jet most of the time. But since we can have up to a 24-hour duty day, it is vitally important to get some rest to endure such a long day. It’s not unusual to be awake for up to 12 hours or more before being alerted to fly a max duty day. The obvious solution would be to sleep right up to alert, but sometimes we don’t know when our alert will occur. So for me it’s always been a challenge.

Perhaps if I’ve been awake more than 24 hours or so, I’ll be able to sleep on the jet, but it’s not exactly restful slumber. I often wake up thinking I haven’t slept at all, but it is obvious from the bizarre dreams I’ve had that I did get some rest (I once dreamt that the top of the aircraft was flapping like a tarp in the wind). But I usually feel more fatigued after I get up than before I laid down.

Part of the problem is that the environment is not conductive to adequate rest. Just aft of the cockpit, we have a crew rest facility equipped with two bunks stacked in bunk bed fashion; the loadmaster bunk is on top and the pilot bunk is on the bottom. Since space is a factor, there is perhaps 18 inches between the pilot bunk and the top bunk; it is a challenge worthy of a contortionist just to climb in without banging some body part (usually the head) on the loadmaster bunk. And once inside, it is somewhat akin to lying in a coffin. Not that I’ve ever been in that situation, but I imagine it’s very similar. When you’re dead, there’s no reason to turn over in the search for comfort, but it is quite challenging to roll over on the pilot bunk without bumping an elbow, head, or knee.

In addition, noise often interrupts my slumber. Unlike on commercial jets that are somewhat insulated against external noise, the C-17 is quite deafening. I have to wear hearing protection continuously to ensure what little hearing I still have after years of flying stays undamaged. The pilot bunk also lies atop the stairs from the cargo compartment, and the heavy combat boots we wear make quite a thud on each step of the metal stairs. Throw in occasional alarms from the overhead speakers in the flight deck and it’s a little like trying to sleep in a factory. To be fair, many of my fellow pilots have no problem sleeping, and they are more than happy to use my sleeping allotment. Some of them can sleep at a moment’s notice, despite just having slept 12 hours prior to alert. It is a gift I wish I had.

Even when we’re on the ground, I have problems with a normal sleep cycle. Many years ago, I usually adjusted my sleep cycle to wherever I was in the world, but when I returned home, I would find it difficult to readjust to Pacific Time. At home, I would fall asleep around 5 pm, usually on the sofa, and then I’d be up all night. To appease my often frustrated wife and family, I now tend to keep Pacific Time wherever I am. Of course, when I am in Germany and I wake up at 8 am Pacific time, it is actually 5 pm local time. Then I’ll be up all night, and all the restaurants, the gym, and other facilities on the base are closed, and I’m resigned to watching AFN or late night German TV (And I still have learned very little of the language).

I have settled upon a somewhat successful method to counter all of the above problems: I sleep when I am tired and I don’t when I’m not. If I try to sleep when I’m not tired, I get frustrated when I can’t fall asleep, and when I try to stay awake when I’m exhausted, I feel like I’m intoxicated. This method may sound like common sense, but it’s not. There are always circumstances that prevent its application; for instance, after arriving in Germany yesterday, I tried to power through the sleep wall, since if I went to sleep immediately after landing, I would be up all night with our next flight first thing in the morning. I finally gave in and slept five hours, ate some dinner, and slept a few more hours before I had to go fly. But even as I got ready to go to work, I knew it would be a long tiring day.

Maybe that’s why God invented coffee.

Crossing the NATS

The predecessor to the US Air Force’s Air Mobility Command was called the Military Airlift Command until 1992. Veteran pilots who flew for MAC, as it was commonly known, jokingly said MAC stood for the Midnight Airlift Command. However, this feature of MAC still lives on in today’s Air Mobility Command, which if referred to in acronym form (AMC) could be called the After Midnight Command.

It wasn’t quite midnight when we took off, but we would fly eight hours through the night, landing in Europe sometimes in late morning. However, with three pilots onboard, we were able to always have two of us at the controls and one in the bunk, making our day just a little more bearable. While our flight from Seattle to the East Coast was marked by the gleaming lights of countless cities and towns, this flight was distinguished by the sheer magnitude of utter blackness. Once we left the eastern seaboard behind and flew out over the dark Atlantic, we left all traces of luminosity behind. We flew into an inky darkness so void of any trace of a horizon that we could have flown into a black hole. Even the stars were seemingly plucked from the sky, their twinkling radiance dulled by the thickness of our cockpit windows.

Soon we even lost the benefit of radar coverage as we strayed farther from land; without an air traffic controller in New York Center following our progress on the radar scope, we were required to make regular radio calls to ascertain our position. I can only imagine a wide table in a cavernous room like from some old World War II film, where orderlies move little metal airplane pieces around to track our position. Given the large number of aircraft that make the Atlantic crossing each day, it is a job I would not like to have.

Eventually, we flew out of VHF radio range and were required to switch to HF radio, a nearly anachronistic technology first used prior to WW II. HF waves bounce off the upper stretches of the atmosphere and are quite susceptible to interference from solar flares and cosmic radiation. If you ever have used a CB radio, you may be familiar with the technology. An RC-135 pilot once told me he was flying over Korea talking to a trucker in Tennessee, and his aircraft’s transmission power was so strong, it nearly redlined the trucker’s radio. The only time I tuned up the HF equivalent of Channel 19 over Montana, I must have heard a thousand voices talking at the same time. If I had transmitted, I could have blown out CB radios all across the northwestern US. Why we haven’t switched from HF to a GPS tracking system is an answer that somebody above my pay grade must answer, but the technology is there. After all, we already have satellite radio and GPS tracking in our cars, so it wouldn’t be too difficult to implement.

We had originally planned to cross at FL 330 (33,000 feet), but we were too heavy, so we topped out 3,000 feet lower at FL 300. We were carrying more than 200,000 lbs. of fuel to reach our destination and weather alternate, as well as nearly 75,000 lbs. of cargo, including a full load of crates and pallets of who knows what and enough new Humvee tires to start a Firestone dealership.

Looking ahead of us into the void, we were eventually able to make out a succession of flashing strobes and rotating beacons as the multitude of eastbound air traffic lined up for the transoceanic crossing, just like a modern-day wagon train heading back to the Old World. We had entered the NATS, or North Atlantic Tracks; these aerial highways are spaced at regular intervals both horizontally and vertically, designed to carry the greatest amount of air traffic from one continent to the other. It was a reassuring accuracy check on our navigation systems to see that we were directly astern of another aircraft, several thousand feet above us. If we flew off course out here, we may not have noticed our error until we coasted in over France instead of England.

There was occasional plane-to-plane radio chatter on the common oceanic radio frequency, mostly requests for the proper frequency for Gander or Shanwick Control, wind or turbulence reports, and queries about the final score of Game 5. But the airwaves were mostly silent, other than our hourly HF progress report to our controllers.

Several hours later, shortly after we regained VHF radio contact with Shannon Control, a low gray line was barely discernable across the horizon. We were approaching Ireland, and we had another two hours of our flight remaining. The gray horizon quickly erupted into a stunning rainbow of colors; deep violets, oranges, reds, and yellows stretched across the sky in a fantastic sunrise. It would be the last bit of sun we’d see today, since the cloud cover over Europe meant a bleak day once we landed. But at least the weather reports we’d heard earlier wouldn’t prevent us from reaching our destination.

Crossing the NATS is one of the most challenging things we do in aviation, given the lack of radar coverage, spotty radio reception, and lack of proximity to land in case something were to go wrong. Usually, it is a mundane task and the biggest challenge is remaining alert and finding something to do to stave off boredom. It is such a routine task so far removed from Charles Lindbergh’s daring first crossing that his flight is almost the stuff of myths now. It's just another day at the office for us.