Gas & Go

Our mission following our short crew rest at a Persian Gulf airbase was a planned seven hour flight to an American airbase in Spain, instead of Germany as originally scheduled. It was a Sunday, and quiet hours at German bases prohibit takeoffs and landings until the afternoon so as not to disturb Sunday church services in the devout regions of southwest Germany. Our mission had to move as soon as possible for diplomatic reasons - they wanted our persona non grata out of the country immediately - so we refiled our flightplan to Spain.

However, since we carried a full load of cargo on an older jet with a limited fuel capacity, we would be unable to make it without refueling somewhere in between. Our flight dispatcher checked all the usual suspects – American bases in Italy and Greece – but long lead times for diplomatic clearances or airfield closure times (it was a weekend) prevented us from stopping. The American airbase in Turkey has severe restrictions about which jets can land there, so that was out of the question as well. And getting a tanker for an aerial refueling would take a miracle, given their poor maintenance reliability and high usage rates for other missions. We had to think outside of the box for a solution.

Unfortunately, none of the locations we preferred, such as Romania, would work. But the dispatcher found one that would.

Baghdad.

The thought of taking a $200 million dollar aircraft full of cargo into a combat zone for no other reason than a fuel stop did not sit well, especially since personnel at the American airbase in Greece were enjoying a weekend off (I was shocked that anybody in the military gets weekends off in a war). But there was no other choice. So like good airmen we took off for a gas and go at Baghdad International Airport.

But it would fortunately still be night when we arrived, and our aircraft was protected by the latest countermeasures for man-portable surface-to-air missiles. We descended into the murky night toward the Iraqi capital city and made an uneventful approach and landing. We didn’t need much fuel, maybe 40,000 pounds, so we quickly topped off the tank and were on our way before sunrise. We leveled off over northern Iraq and enjoyed a brilliant sunrise over the mountains of nearby Iran.

We were now leaving the war behind and heading home.