As the world turns, flying schedules change. We were scheduled to go to Jordan. That was scrapped as we had a plane broken in Aviano and the Africa mission had yet to return. They decided in the meantime that we would go to Qandahar, or Kandahar for the westerners, but the F'ups up the chain of command didn't think that an H model C-130 could color in the lines so they scrubbed us. Then they put us on a one day KOO (pronounced coo) mission, which is a Kosovo run. At least it would be tax free for the month.
With all of these changes we decided to continue our holiday and went to Heidleberg. What another wonderful day! We went up the hill to the castle and roamed around. It was a good thing there was a steep climb and lots of walking because we had to sweat out the beer from Thursty Nellie's the night before; we went downtown to watch team USA get it's ass kicked by Ghana.
After a fine workout and lots of looking around, we found the wine cellar in the castle. They have a huge wooden cask in there that held 220,000 liters of vino and has a dance floor on top. Man what an aircrew party that would be!!!! It's pretty impressive that they built the thing in the 16th century and it stands today despite being in a cool, dank cellar. Of course it leaked so they discontinued using it after only 20 years or something like that; it was never full either because they filled it from the local vineyards on the surrounding hills. I think it's cool that the vineyards that filled that cask are still surrounding the castle and that the grapes that are growing today are from the same vines.
After our workout we found a nice little restuarant in the main square and we had a nice meal. I never tire of eating pork schnitzel and french fries with gravy, washed down with a....bottle of wasser, no gas? Yeah, I wussed out because I had one too many KilKenny's the previous evening:) While we dined, we got to enjoy Germany versus England and watch the German fans go nuts.
Man when Germany won I was excited for the fans!!! They were ecstatic and blowing their horns. Lots of flags and face paint. The streets filled with cars full of fans waving German flags. I'm probably in the minority, but I was happy for the German people. They work hard not to display any form of nationalism. I don't know how long they should not fly their flags or show their pride. I hope no one forgets the atrocities of World War II, but a lot of the people celebrating that night should not be punished for the sins of their fathers. Anyway it was great. I kind of hope they win the cup.
After that, it's been back to boredom and running. As I write, we are scheduled for a Afghanistan run after all. The idiots at the top did the math and realized that H2's get the job done!! I am looking forward to flying any mission just to do something.
In the meantime enjoy the pictures I have posted and take care of yourselves.
6.29.2010
6.25.2010
Airman gripes about underutilization
The title of this post would be the title of an article if I was interviewed about my deployment. I know I called out the American people yesterday about their whining, but I am about to whine. I'm not whining about missing my family; or about my pay, quality of accomodations and meals. I would like to whine about not getting to do my job as much, and as efficiently, as possible.
A real idiot once said, "you don't go to war with the army you want. You go to war with the army you have." REALLY? When you pick the fight (Iraq)? Okay. Well when you do task the Air Force you have to go to the war you are fighting, you should ask them to come lean, mean and ready to fight.
Am I implying we are not ready, or able, to bring the fight to the enemy? Nope. I'm complaining because of the compliment we came on our deployment with. We have one more crew than we have aircraft. That is so we swap out and we can keep all of our aircraft in the fight. I think that is a beautiful idea because it allows us to not be over tasked and grounded because we exceed the 30/60/90 day maximum number of flying hours. I will bitch about the "duty" crewmembers.
We brought along the equivalent of another entire crew to oversee things like scheduling, tactics, duty crew to load and preflight aircraft for the next days mission. You absolutely need a scheduler to schedule missions and keep an eye on crew rest and how many flying hours we have. You need a tactician to plan missions so that the routing doesn't fly you right over the last f'ing position of the enemy; the tactics officer also handles diplomatic clearances which take up to a month for some countries.
My issue is that these duty individuals are treated like another crew to fly missions. Bullshit!!!! I signed on for a hard crew. I came to fly. These guys signed up to sit in the office. The only justification for flying them is currency requirements. They don't need to fly more than once a month to do that. The crew position I have the most problems with is the loadmaster section followed by flight engineers. Why would I attack the enlisted? I am not attacking the individuals, who happen to be enlisted, I'm attacking the concept.
We have landed after a long mission and our loadmasters are downloading the airplane while the duty loads are in there blabbing their mouths and drinking a latte. Their job is to download that fracking aircraft and seeing the passengers off!!! Our job as duty crew is to make sure that the airplane is loaded and ready to go so the crew flying her can jump in and go asap. All crews could have rotated people in on their off days to answer phones, preflight and load the planes and help with the offloading once someone landed. We don't need additional crewmembers to sit around and complain that they never get any time off. REALLY?? What the F do you have to do when we're in Africa or the middle east for eleven days at a time? We are on hard schedules so you don't even have to be in. We're not in when there is no crew to launch.
The other day we were duty crew and a crew went to Kosovo on an out and back. They actually came back early and didn't let anyone know via the computer we carry on board to stay in touch. They didn't phone back. So, the crew is 30 minutes out and they can't raise anyone the phones. The commander calls people on our crew and tells them to get in there. By the time they show up everything is taken care of and one of the duty loads mouths off and says, "it's about time you guys decided to show up." He got a royal ass reaming from one of the crew who basically told him to have a nice hot cup of shut the F up!!!
We could be lean and mean and take care of ourselves. That's how other deployments have gone. I think that command has gone off it's rocker. The other big issue is the size of our crew.
A Herk flies in combat. Two pilots, a nav, flight engineer (that'd be yours truly), and two loads. Well the powers that be at the numbered Air Force's that dictate our missions wanted four maintainers on our missions and when we go into civilian fields with iffy security they want four Ravens. Ravens are security police specially trained to protect the crew and aircraft at all costs.
So we can't take the six pallets we're built for we can only take five because we have an additional eight people with us. Yesterday morning ATOC came down to load the airplane for that day's mission and got in an arguement with the mission loadmaster. The supervisor informed him that there were six pallets to go and if one was bumped the mission would be scrubbed. I couldn't believe what the loadmaster told him. "Cancel the mission!" REALLY? These are pallets going to the war zone. They are probably much needed given that lots of hazardous material was on them. And this guy is going to say no way?
Did the extra loads we brought fix the situation? Nope. An experienced loadmaster off my crew who was pulling duty load got with the supervisor and said, "wait a minute lets see what we can do." He learned stuff about the Herk that he didn't know and he's been doing it 25 years. In the end he made it work and that involved bumping some of our maintenance people.
Our commander made the final decision and wanted two crew chiefs on the plane to refuel at enroute stops. He took off the engine troop. For the first time in over 150 hours, this particular aircraft broke in Italy for an engine problem. In my opinion it should have been one crew chief and one specialist. For this aircraft an engine troop would have been a good choice as there are four motors on a Herk and all four of this Herks motors have issues!!!!! He wanted to leave the crew chiefs on to refuel. I can do that with one of the loadmasters. I don't need a crewchief to pump gas. It makes my life way easier, but I didn't hit the EASY button when I signed on the dotted line.
On the Africa mission one maintainer brought a huge three foot tall peice of luggage and had to do laundry after eight days. I brought a Kelty backpack and had enough clothes for 13 days and never had to wear anything twice. It was ridiculous traveling to and from base in Djibouti. We had a mountain of luggage and most of it was the maintainers and our Ravens. Pack for war gentlemen. Everyone knows the Air Force is generallly Gucci, but don't show our fellow services it's true. I was so embarrassed because the soldiers running base security probably packed one bag for a six to eight month rotation and the Paris Hilton's on our crew had luggage big enough to house five or six Djiboutians and only had enough clothes for eight days!!!! What a bunch of divas!!!!
The Ravens are diva extraordinaires. They slept every leg, the entire way and ate everything in sight. We had four on board and only two had to spend the night on board one time. At Comores we had a national attempt to get on the aircraft and it was the interpreter with the spec ops guy that stopped him by yelling at him. Then one of the Ravens comes over and guards the door. ARE you SHITTING me? That's why you see us unarmed in the pictures. Our 9's are locked in the gunbox because we have the fire breathing Ravens!!!!! The consensus amongst the crew is we should arm up and leave these boys home. Or at least two of them. But the generals swear by them. Wow!!! If Patton were alive today he'd kick some of these generals in their private areas and call them a bunch of $%^&*#!!!!
Seriously, when you fly in the combat zone everyday, you have body armor, your packin' heat. There is no protection except what you bring. You go down and it's all up to you. It would be the scene from Pearl Harbor where they crashed in China and had to defend themselves. I could see a movie in the future. It would have a scene where a 130 went down and the crew was defending the aircraft and a Raven would climb out of the wreckage looking half asleep with a chocolate brownie from an MRE in his mouth.
I just want to do my job the best that I can and get home safely to my wife. If I'm working more, the time passes more quickly. I know I should just shut up and appreciate what I've got. Who complains about not being beat up and overworked. Those who live to serve. Where are you when I need you Patton?
A real idiot once said, "you don't go to war with the army you want. You go to war with the army you have." REALLY? When you pick the fight (Iraq)? Okay. Well when you do task the Air Force you have to go to the war you are fighting, you should ask them to come lean, mean and ready to fight.
Am I implying we are not ready, or able, to bring the fight to the enemy? Nope. I'm complaining because of the compliment we came on our deployment with. We have one more crew than we have aircraft. That is so we swap out and we can keep all of our aircraft in the fight. I think that is a beautiful idea because it allows us to not be over tasked and grounded because we exceed the 30/60/90 day maximum number of flying hours. I will bitch about the "duty" crewmembers.
We brought along the equivalent of another entire crew to oversee things like scheduling, tactics, duty crew to load and preflight aircraft for the next days mission. You absolutely need a scheduler to schedule missions and keep an eye on crew rest and how many flying hours we have. You need a tactician to plan missions so that the routing doesn't fly you right over the last f'ing position of the enemy; the tactics officer also handles diplomatic clearances which take up to a month for some countries.
My issue is that these duty individuals are treated like another crew to fly missions. Bullshit!!!! I signed on for a hard crew. I came to fly. These guys signed up to sit in the office. The only justification for flying them is currency requirements. They don't need to fly more than once a month to do that. The crew position I have the most problems with is the loadmaster section followed by flight engineers. Why would I attack the enlisted? I am not attacking the individuals, who happen to be enlisted, I'm attacking the concept.
We have landed after a long mission and our loadmasters are downloading the airplane while the duty loads are in there blabbing their mouths and drinking a latte. Their job is to download that fracking aircraft and seeing the passengers off!!! Our job as duty crew is to make sure that the airplane is loaded and ready to go so the crew flying her can jump in and go asap. All crews could have rotated people in on their off days to answer phones, preflight and load the planes and help with the offloading once someone landed. We don't need additional crewmembers to sit around and complain that they never get any time off. REALLY?? What the F do you have to do when we're in Africa or the middle east for eleven days at a time? We are on hard schedules so you don't even have to be in. We're not in when there is no crew to launch.
The other day we were duty crew and a crew went to Kosovo on an out and back. They actually came back early and didn't let anyone know via the computer we carry on board to stay in touch. They didn't phone back. So, the crew is 30 minutes out and they can't raise anyone the phones. The commander calls people on our crew and tells them to get in there. By the time they show up everything is taken care of and one of the duty loads mouths off and says, "it's about time you guys decided to show up." He got a royal ass reaming from one of the crew who basically told him to have a nice hot cup of shut the F up!!!
We could be lean and mean and take care of ourselves. That's how other deployments have gone. I think that command has gone off it's rocker. The other big issue is the size of our crew.
A Herk flies in combat. Two pilots, a nav, flight engineer (that'd be yours truly), and two loads. Well the powers that be at the numbered Air Force's that dictate our missions wanted four maintainers on our missions and when we go into civilian fields with iffy security they want four Ravens. Ravens are security police specially trained to protect the crew and aircraft at all costs.
So we can't take the six pallets we're built for we can only take five because we have an additional eight people with us. Yesterday morning ATOC came down to load the airplane for that day's mission and got in an arguement with the mission loadmaster. The supervisor informed him that there were six pallets to go and if one was bumped the mission would be scrubbed. I couldn't believe what the loadmaster told him. "Cancel the mission!" REALLY? These are pallets going to the war zone. They are probably much needed given that lots of hazardous material was on them. And this guy is going to say no way?
Did the extra loads we brought fix the situation? Nope. An experienced loadmaster off my crew who was pulling duty load got with the supervisor and said, "wait a minute lets see what we can do." He learned stuff about the Herk that he didn't know and he's been doing it 25 years. In the end he made it work and that involved bumping some of our maintenance people.
Our commander made the final decision and wanted two crew chiefs on the plane to refuel at enroute stops. He took off the engine troop. For the first time in over 150 hours, this particular aircraft broke in Italy for an engine problem. In my opinion it should have been one crew chief and one specialist. For this aircraft an engine troop would have been a good choice as there are four motors on a Herk and all four of this Herks motors have issues!!!!! He wanted to leave the crew chiefs on to refuel. I can do that with one of the loadmasters. I don't need a crewchief to pump gas. It makes my life way easier, but I didn't hit the EASY button when I signed on the dotted line.
On the Africa mission one maintainer brought a huge three foot tall peice of luggage and had to do laundry after eight days. I brought a Kelty backpack and had enough clothes for 13 days and never had to wear anything twice. It was ridiculous traveling to and from base in Djibouti. We had a mountain of luggage and most of it was the maintainers and our Ravens. Pack for war gentlemen. Everyone knows the Air Force is generallly Gucci, but don't show our fellow services it's true. I was so embarrassed because the soldiers running base security probably packed one bag for a six to eight month rotation and the Paris Hilton's on our crew had luggage big enough to house five or six Djiboutians and only had enough clothes for eight days!!!! What a bunch of divas!!!!
The Ravens are diva extraordinaires. They slept every leg, the entire way and ate everything in sight. We had four on board and only two had to spend the night on board one time. At Comores we had a national attempt to get on the aircraft and it was the interpreter with the spec ops guy that stopped him by yelling at him. Then one of the Ravens comes over and guards the door. ARE you SHITTING me? That's why you see us unarmed in the pictures. Our 9's are locked in the gunbox because we have the fire breathing Ravens!!!!! The consensus amongst the crew is we should arm up and leave these boys home. Or at least two of them. But the generals swear by them. Wow!!! If Patton were alive today he'd kick some of these generals in their private areas and call them a bunch of $%^&*#!!!!
Seriously, when you fly in the combat zone everyday, you have body armor, your packin' heat. There is no protection except what you bring. You go down and it's all up to you. It would be the scene from Pearl Harbor where they crashed in China and had to defend themselves. I could see a movie in the future. It would have a scene where a 130 went down and the crew was defending the aircraft and a Raven would climb out of the wreckage looking half asleep with a chocolate brownie from an MRE in his mouth.
I just want to do my job the best that I can and get home safely to my wife. If I'm working more, the time passes more quickly. I know I should just shut up and appreciate what I've got. Who complains about not being beat up and overworked. Those who live to serve. Where are you when I need you Patton?
6.24.2010
Bastogne
Most people know it was cold, but I know that only those who served there will ever know how cold it was. Bitter cold by all accounts and one of the worst winters on record for snowfall. Many of the soldiers were called to the front so quickly they had no proper clothing, very little ammunition, and even fewer rations. I think that I'll trust those who served. One of the soldiers who served in Easy Company, 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, said in an interview that on winter nights when he looks outside he tells his wife,"I'm glad I'm not in Bastogne." It was amazing that they lasted a month in that frozen hell and that they were able to repulse the Germans. As I mentioned earlier 81000 Americans were killed, wounded, or missing.
Today, Bastogne is a lively little town. It's center is filled with lot's of little pubs, restuarants and shops. The day we were there it was Armed Forces Appreciation Day. Only one American Colonel was present, no doubt due to our preoccupation with another war. Mostly it was Belgian soldiers and former soldiers. Lots of people hiked in a march from the memorial to the town center. I mean LOTS of people!! Mostly middle aged people. In thinking about it know it is disappointing that there weren't any youth present. Oh, they were present. We saw many young men and women hanging out at a local club when we sat down for dinner. To be fair they may be inundated with the history and signifigance. Perhaps they are too young to care. That would be to bad. They will be the ones to carry on the memory of what happened.
The people of Bastogne have done a lot to memorialize the American troops who freed them. There is a Sherman tank placed prominently on the edge of the town square, alongside a bust of General Anthony McAuliffe, the commander of the 101st Airborne Division, the unit that held Bastogne. When asked by the German general to surrender he wrote the following:
To the German Commander:
NUTS!!!!
That is his exact reply. Merry F'in Christmas Jerry!!!!
So, his bust is placed prominently in the town. Along the roads there are markers painted red, white, and blue with the word Liberty on them. There are two museums. One in the town not far from the center and one adjacent to the memorial. Both do a great job of telling the story of Bastogne. You would never know around town that it had been at the center of a maelstrom during the winter of 44-45. You would think it odd that throughout town there are turrets of many Sherman tanks and stores carrying memorabilia of the 101st.
The memorial is absolutely stunning!!!! Stunning is not adequate to describe it. It is a five point star that points in all the directions of the major army units and engagements. Along it's top are the names of all the American States during World War II, and on the sides are listed all major American military units engaged during the Battle of the Bulge. Inside on the walls there are nine panels detailing the battle and they tell an amazing story of courage, bravery, and resolve. Outside of the memorial is a crypt dedicated to the major religions with a beautiful mosaic.
There is a stone at the center of the memorial in Latin that reads:
LIBERATORIBVS
AMERICANIS
POPVLVS BELGICVS
MEMOR
IV.VII.MCMXLVI
Translated it means: The Belgian people remember their American liberators – 4th July 1946
There are literally hundreds of memorials dotting the countryside. We found one at a castle in Vianden. We took a road across from the castle. On a scenic overlook above it was a tribute to an engineering battalion that defended what was left of the town surrounding the castle.
What I took away from my visit is that there are at least two entire nations that feel a special bond for America and its people, and that hold a special love and admiration for what our soldiers did for them. They acknowledge a debt that can never be repaid, one that is not required to be repaid because it is not theirs to do so. But they try anyway and we owe them our thanks as well for the manner in which they remember what our loved ones did. I just wish more Americans could/would visit and realize the wonderful reputation that we earned means more than our wealth and prosperity. You can buy any worldly good made by man, but it would be worth nothing compared to the honor and respect our ancestors earned over a half a century ago. We owe it to that generation to hold on to that honor and not tarnish it's luster by being foolhardy when it comes to how we behave with the world today.
German Cemetary in Luxembourg
My previous post was about the American cemetary in Luxembourg and this post will detail how vastly different the German cemetary is compared to any of the allied cemetaries.
You notice one giant difference immediately. It's lack of structure and facade. It is located two kilometers from the American cemetary down a small two lane road that follows along the perimeter of the American cemetary. Regular sized white road signs with black lettering point the way, but there is no flag on the sign, only black crosses. When you finally arrive, the parking lot is a quarter of the size of the American cemetary's lot. It is a beautiful little spot. Most of the parking lot is shaded by trees and there is a small crushed gravel path a couple of hundred yards long that leads you to the entrance.
The entrance is nothing more than a small stone building with an open doorway that leads you into a small porch in front of the cemetary. There is a small room that explains the cemetary, with a very rudimentary map and a listing of the dead and their location on the cemetary grounds.
As you walk onto the grounds you notice immediately the upkeep is nowhere near the level of the other cemetaries. The grass is not like a golf course; it is green, but it does not appear to be cut regularly because it was longer than most cemetaries I've seen. There are ant hills in several areas and a couple of moles or gopher holes were evident too. There was bird crap on several of the bronze name plaques and the crosses were looking weathered even though they are not more than 65 years old.
The most startling difference is the lack of any identification of who is buried in the cemetary. Had I dropped you off and no sign existed, you wouldn't be able to tell it's a German cemetary unless you could identify German names. There is no flag anywhere on the grounds save for a blue flag of the German war graves commission, which oversees German cemetaries in 100 countries. There is no grave of any of the thousands of graves with an iron cross, or rank, just the names and dates of death. The dead are buried three and four to a grave and the cemetary has one monument. It is a large stone cross upon a pedestal at the back of the cemetary. No writing on the stone cross whatsoever. On the pedestal there is a memorial to the war dead who fell during the Battle of the Bulge; they call it the Winter Campaign. There are just stark black bronze plaques to mark these men's passing. There are very few flowers and no sculptures. No maps. No prayers chiseled in stone. The crosses are dark and small.
There is a good reason for the lack of care and accoutraments. These men fought on the loosing side. The people of Luxembourg lived under the Reich's oppressive hand for five long years; it is evident that the German flag will not fly on Luxembourg soil as an official symbol. These men are literally exiled in death to be eternally punished for crimes against humanity.
I am not saying they don't deserve to be buried this way. At some point in many of their lives they had a choice to make. Many people knew soon after Hitler took Germany to war that it was folly. Many Germans were aware of the existence of the concentration and work camps, no matter well hidden they were; a captured German map on display at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. shows the thousands of locations around Germany that these camps were established at. There were also the mass executions of Jews and I'm sure that many of the SS troops told friends and relatives of their deeds. Many nations put up with Germany taking their wealth and resources and treating them like slaves. Whether you chose to believe it or not, the rest of the world knows. These soldiers aren't on the side of good, or right. They fell on the side of evil and they will be remembered for it.
In spite of this, as a matter of reconciliation, and perhaps the recognition that some had no choice and others should be forgiven, this cemetary remains on Luxembourg soil. It is obvious that it gets very few visitors. It is not well maintained and it offers no thanks for faithful service and courage under fire. I have no doubt many of those soldiers showed extreme courage while in the course of following orders. I am sure that some showed compassion to the civilians they came in contact with and mercy toward the allies they fought. I think it is a shame that they will be remembered as villians and that they will rest in eternity with little care or honor. I sincerely feel bad for their families, especially the future generations that have had to bear their burden of shame. But if I was in a position to change it all, I would bury them in the same nondescript cemetary, with very little pomp and circumstance and no trappings of any kind. I would not even put a sign on the trail explaining what was there. The sign at the entrance to the parking lot would say it all: Cemetary for German war dead.
You notice one giant difference immediately. It's lack of structure and facade. It is located two kilometers from the American cemetary down a small two lane road that follows along the perimeter of the American cemetary. Regular sized white road signs with black lettering point the way, but there is no flag on the sign, only black crosses. When you finally arrive, the parking lot is a quarter of the size of the American cemetary's lot. It is a beautiful little spot. Most of the parking lot is shaded by trees and there is a small crushed gravel path a couple of hundred yards long that leads you to the entrance.
The entrance is nothing more than a small stone building with an open doorway that leads you into a small porch in front of the cemetary. There is a small room that explains the cemetary, with a very rudimentary map and a listing of the dead and their location on the cemetary grounds.
As you walk onto the grounds you notice immediately the upkeep is nowhere near the level of the other cemetaries. The grass is not like a golf course; it is green, but it does not appear to be cut regularly because it was longer than most cemetaries I've seen. There are ant hills in several areas and a couple of moles or gopher holes were evident too. There was bird crap on several of the bronze name plaques and the crosses were looking weathered even though they are not more than 65 years old.
The most startling difference is the lack of any identification of who is buried in the cemetary. Had I dropped you off and no sign existed, you wouldn't be able to tell it's a German cemetary unless you could identify German names. There is no flag anywhere on the grounds save for a blue flag of the German war graves commission, which oversees German cemetaries in 100 countries. There is no grave of any of the thousands of graves with an iron cross, or rank, just the names and dates of death. The dead are buried three and four to a grave and the cemetary has one monument. It is a large stone cross upon a pedestal at the back of the cemetary. No writing on the stone cross whatsoever. On the pedestal there is a memorial to the war dead who fell during the Battle of the Bulge; they call it the Winter Campaign. There are just stark black bronze plaques to mark these men's passing. There are very few flowers and no sculptures. No maps. No prayers chiseled in stone. The crosses are dark and small.
There is a good reason for the lack of care and accoutraments. These men fought on the loosing side. The people of Luxembourg lived under the Reich's oppressive hand for five long years; it is evident that the German flag will not fly on Luxembourg soil as an official symbol. These men are literally exiled in death to be eternally punished for crimes against humanity.
I am not saying they don't deserve to be buried this way. At some point in many of their lives they had a choice to make. Many people knew soon after Hitler took Germany to war that it was folly. Many Germans were aware of the existence of the concentration and work camps, no matter well hidden they were; a captured German map on display at the National Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. shows the thousands of locations around Germany that these camps were established at. There were also the mass executions of Jews and I'm sure that many of the SS troops told friends and relatives of their deeds. Many nations put up with Germany taking their wealth and resources and treating them like slaves. Whether you chose to believe it or not, the rest of the world knows. These soldiers aren't on the side of good, or right. They fell on the side of evil and they will be remembered for it.
In spite of this, as a matter of reconciliation, and perhaps the recognition that some had no choice and others should be forgiven, this cemetary remains on Luxembourg soil. It is obvious that it gets very few visitors. It is not well maintained and it offers no thanks for faithful service and courage under fire. I have no doubt many of those soldiers showed extreme courage while in the course of following orders. I am sure that some showed compassion to the civilians they came in contact with and mercy toward the allies they fought. I think it is a shame that they will be remembered as villians and that they will rest in eternity with little care or honor. I sincerely feel bad for their families, especially the future generations that have had to bear their burden of shame. But if I was in a position to change it all, I would bury them in the same nondescript cemetary, with very little pomp and circumstance and no trappings of any kind. I would not even put a sign on the trail explaining what was there. The sign at the entrance to the parking lot would say it all: Cemetary for German war dead.
US Military Cemetary Luxembourg
****WARNING: This post contains the opinions of a RAVING PATRIOT****
Yesterday I had the honor, and privilege, to visit the American cemetary in Luxembourg. This post will detail a lot about the visit as well as some personal observations, which to some may not be agreeable.
We made a decision on Tuesday that we wanted to get the hell out of Dodge for at least a day and see something as we have been here, everywhere else as well, over a month and have yet to trek outside the environs of Ramstein. Many of us, including myself, have been here hundreds of times in our careers and we've seen a lot of the places we've been, but no matter how many times you see some places you find yourself drawn to return. The military cemetaries are without a doubt some of those places.
I want to get off my chest something that hit me the moment I saw the rows of white granite crosses. Many Americans complain excessively about everything most days of their lives. I have seen the avarice, arrogance, pettiness, selfishness, of other nations I have visited, but to be fair I don't live there for a significant length of time so I may be witnessing behavior peculiar to that location or at that point in time. As for my observations of Americans I believe these observations to be dead on accurate and will stand by them under any circumstances.
As I stated, Americans are a bunch of whiners. Take your pick. Their taxed too much, they don't have enough time off, they should be getting paid more, their possessions should be bigger and better than everyone else's. Their kids are smarter and should be protected over other's children, they stick their noses in everyone's business, but get upset when someone inquires into their own misguided behavior. To these Americans I say, "Shut the FUCK UP!!!!!" Sure all humans complain about the human condition. We all have our own needs according to Maslow and we do our damndest to fullfill those needs. Often we do it forsaking other's needs and rights. I could say so much more, but it wouldn't dignify the details I am about to tell you. Suffice to say if you are an American who lives, as most do, a comfortable life replete with technological devices, cozy shelter, more food than you really should be eating and lots of time to pursue happiness, STOP and think about those who made it possible and what life would be like without their sacrifice.
It is emotional for me to think of all the young Americans who gave their lives to stop Tyranny. Look it up in the dictionary if your unsure whether it applies to World War I and II. Hitler was a despot. By the time he took his own life he had killed 10 million people alone for their beliefs and ethnicities not to mention all of the other collateral victims. Had the Allies not banded together to stop the Axis powers we would live in a different world today. One I am sure even the most ignorant among us would quickly recognize as a terrible world to live in. I want to be clear before I continue. America is not the only allied nation to experience tragic loss on an enormous scale. All of the allied nations paid a terrible price for freedom; it is evident by the over 17 cemetaries in Europe that contain the war dead of all allied nations. My wife is Canadian and she once asked me, "Really, what did Canada ever do?" My answer is they lost more soldiers per capita than any other allied nation engaged in World War II. I am not promoting the suffering of any one nation over another, I just don't want Americans to keep thinking we could have whipped Adolf Hitler and the largest, most advanced military machine the world had ever seen to that point, ALONE.
The cemetary at Luxembourg was set aside by the very grateful nation of Luxembourg and it is both haunting and extraordinarily beautiful. I will let the pictures I have posted on Picasa speak to that and I will tell you something about the cemetary. It was established during the campaign for the Ardennes in December of 1944. Many of you may have heard of the Battle of the Bulge; it was Hitler's last big attempt to stop the Normandy invaders from reaching the fatherland. over 81,000 Americans were either killed, wounded, or missing in action as a result of the battle which took place from December 16th to January 25th. That's right. A little over one month of brutal combat!!! 5076 Americans are buried here, their passing marked by stark white granite crosses.
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, New Jersey, Oklahoma, New York, California..........18 years of age...19, 22, some about to turn 20. 440th bomber group; Easy Company,506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Battalion (Band of Brothers, Currahea!!!). 4th Infantry Division. Infantrymen, flight engineers, tank drivers, cooks, supply clerks, medics. Husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, sisters. They all lie here in solitude, together for eternity as witnesses to the greatest cause humanity had ever seen. Many came willingly and gave selflessly.
Two among them won the Congressional Medal of Honor. It is the highest honor that can be bestowed on a United States servicemember for selfless acts of heroism. I will tell you of their selfless acts of bravery.
Day G. Turner, US infantryman. He fought off a German offensive while holed up in a house with his squad. He repulsed numerous attacks with his own weapons until he ran out of ammo and then used German weapons. At times the fighting was so intense as German soldier breached the house. He fought them room to room, hand to hand, and repulsed them for several hours. In the end the Germans surrendered not knowing that his squad only had three healthy members left (the other nine were either dead or severely wounded). He was killed one month later and never knew that he had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
William D. McGee, US combat medic. McGee's unit was engaged in heavy fighting when several members of his platoon entered a minefield. With complete disregard to his personal safety (which is always a prerequisite for the MOH) he entered the minefield twice carrying out the wounded to safety. On his third trip he stepped on a mine and was unable to get out because of the severity of the wounds. Knowing that it meant certain death, he admonished members of his platoon not to enter the minefield to save him because he knew it would mean that others would be wounded and killed. I get choked up thinking about the kind of love for your teammates, and the inner strength and courage you must have to consign yourself to certain death. Remember my post on heroes? These two are perfect examples. Both displayed a willingness to give of themselves so completely so that others would live. I just wish the thousands of troops who exhibited this behavior all got this medal, but the world is cruel. Besides non of the MOH recipients ever did it for the medal, it was truly a selfless act.
What makes this cemetary special, as does all of the allied cemetaries on foreign soil, is that it has been given to America in perpetuity, without cost whatsover, by the people of Luxembourg. It is maintained by the American Battlefields and Monuments Commission. The head of the cemetary gave us a personal tour and told us that the people of Luxembourg give a great deal of time, money, and manpower to keep this cemetary immaculate. He said they do so out of a feeling of gratitude to the American nation and to the loved ones of these 5076 souls who gave their lives to liberate Luxembourg. Those who come do so out of love and admiration and a deep feeling of thanks. Lest you think that this is overexaggerated, you should come and visit. The people of Luxembourg will welcome you with open arms and they showed me respect knowing that I was an American servicemember even though I did not liberate them. It feels a little uncomfortable, like I am an imposter, but they are so gracious and they know that if it ever came to something like that again, we would once again answer the call. It makes me feel good and embarrassed at the same time. We have squandered our good name, and good fortunes, recently, but no matter because they love us just the same.
As proof of this gratitude I will tell you about the burial of the most famous American General of World War II, and undoubtedly of all American Generals, General George S. Patton, Commander, 3rd Army, European Theater. He fought Rommel in North Africa, liberated Rome, and fought in Normandy. He broke through the German lines at the Bulge and beat back the famed crack Panzer Grenadiers in the Ardennes liberating Belgium. He was killed in an automobile accident on December 21, 1945. It was his wish that he be buried among his men. General Dwight D. Eisenhower granted this wish and he was buried, literally, between two of his men with the same plain cross. What happened next is crazy. So many people from Luxembourg and Belgium came to visit his gravesite that it got out of hand. They were trampling the cemetary. The Duchess of Luxembourg decided that he would be reinterred in the Cathedral in Luxembourg city. Knowing Patton would have had a fit, they eventually agreed that he would be buried at the head of his troops in his own spot overlooking the cemetary. He rests their today.
I have several posts to make today about my trip to Bastogne as well as my journey to the German military cemetary located less than two miles east of the American cemetary, but that itself is a whole blog post of observations. I leave you with this quote from a dedication by Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. This quote is engraved on the stone walk, just ahead of Patton's grave.
We made a decision on Tuesday that we wanted to get the hell out of Dodge for at least a day and see something as we have been here, everywhere else as well, over a month and have yet to trek outside the environs of Ramstein. Many of us, including myself, have been here hundreds of times in our careers and we've seen a lot of the places we've been, but no matter how many times you see some places you find yourself drawn to return. The military cemetaries are without a doubt some of those places.
I want to get off my chest something that hit me the moment I saw the rows of white granite crosses. Many Americans complain excessively about everything most days of their lives. I have seen the avarice, arrogance, pettiness, selfishness, of other nations I have visited, but to be fair I don't live there for a significant length of time so I may be witnessing behavior peculiar to that location or at that point in time. As for my observations of Americans I believe these observations to be dead on accurate and will stand by them under any circumstances.
As I stated, Americans are a bunch of whiners. Take your pick. Their taxed too much, they don't have enough time off, they should be getting paid more, their possessions should be bigger and better than everyone else's. Their kids are smarter and should be protected over other's children, they stick their noses in everyone's business, but get upset when someone inquires into their own misguided behavior. To these Americans I say, "Shut the FUCK UP!!!!!" Sure all humans complain about the human condition. We all have our own needs according to Maslow and we do our damndest to fullfill those needs. Often we do it forsaking other's needs and rights. I could say so much more, but it wouldn't dignify the details I am about to tell you. Suffice to say if you are an American who lives, as most do, a comfortable life replete with technological devices, cozy shelter, more food than you really should be eating and lots of time to pursue happiness, STOP and think about those who made it possible and what life would be like without their sacrifice.
It is emotional for me to think of all the young Americans who gave their lives to stop Tyranny. Look it up in the dictionary if your unsure whether it applies to World War I and II. Hitler was a despot. By the time he took his own life he had killed 10 million people alone for their beliefs and ethnicities not to mention all of the other collateral victims. Had the Allies not banded together to stop the Axis powers we would live in a different world today. One I am sure even the most ignorant among us would quickly recognize as a terrible world to live in. I want to be clear before I continue. America is not the only allied nation to experience tragic loss on an enormous scale. All of the allied nations paid a terrible price for freedom; it is evident by the over 17 cemetaries in Europe that contain the war dead of all allied nations. My wife is Canadian and she once asked me, "Really, what did Canada ever do?" My answer is they lost more soldiers per capita than any other allied nation engaged in World War II. I am not promoting the suffering of any one nation over another, I just don't want Americans to keep thinking we could have whipped Adolf Hitler and the largest, most advanced military machine the world had ever seen to that point, ALONE.
The cemetary at Luxembourg was set aside by the very grateful nation of Luxembourg and it is both haunting and extraordinarily beautiful. I will let the pictures I have posted on Picasa speak to that and I will tell you something about the cemetary. It was established during the campaign for the Ardennes in December of 1944. Many of you may have heard of the Battle of the Bulge; it was Hitler's last big attempt to stop the Normandy invaders from reaching the fatherland. over 81,000 Americans were either killed, wounded, or missing in action as a result of the battle which took place from December 16th to January 25th. That's right. A little over one month of brutal combat!!! 5076 Americans are buried here, their passing marked by stark white granite crosses.
Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas, New Jersey, Oklahoma, New York, California..........18 years of age...19, 22, some about to turn 20. 440th bomber group; Easy Company,506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Battalion (Band of Brothers, Currahea!!!). 4th Infantry Division. Infantrymen, flight engineers, tank drivers, cooks, supply clerks, medics. Husbands, fathers, brothers, sons, daughters, sisters. They all lie here in solitude, together for eternity as witnesses to the greatest cause humanity had ever seen. Many came willingly and gave selflessly.
Two among them won the Congressional Medal of Honor. It is the highest honor that can be bestowed on a United States servicemember for selfless acts of heroism. I will tell you of their selfless acts of bravery.
Day G. Turner, US infantryman. He fought off a German offensive while holed up in a house with his squad. He repulsed numerous attacks with his own weapons until he ran out of ammo and then used German weapons. At times the fighting was so intense as German soldier breached the house. He fought them room to room, hand to hand, and repulsed them for several hours. In the end the Germans surrendered not knowing that his squad only had three healthy members left (the other nine were either dead or severely wounded). He was killed one month later and never knew that he had been awarded the Medal of Honor.
William D. McGee, US combat medic. McGee's unit was engaged in heavy fighting when several members of his platoon entered a minefield. With complete disregard to his personal safety (which is always a prerequisite for the MOH) he entered the minefield twice carrying out the wounded to safety. On his third trip he stepped on a mine and was unable to get out because of the severity of the wounds. Knowing that it meant certain death, he admonished members of his platoon not to enter the minefield to save him because he knew it would mean that others would be wounded and killed. I get choked up thinking about the kind of love for your teammates, and the inner strength and courage you must have to consign yourself to certain death. Remember my post on heroes? These two are perfect examples. Both displayed a willingness to give of themselves so completely so that others would live. I just wish the thousands of troops who exhibited this behavior all got this medal, but the world is cruel. Besides non of the MOH recipients ever did it for the medal, it was truly a selfless act.
What makes this cemetary special, as does all of the allied cemetaries on foreign soil, is that it has been given to America in perpetuity, without cost whatsover, by the people of Luxembourg. It is maintained by the American Battlefields and Monuments Commission. The head of the cemetary gave us a personal tour and told us that the people of Luxembourg give a great deal of time, money, and manpower to keep this cemetary immaculate. He said they do so out of a feeling of gratitude to the American nation and to the loved ones of these 5076 souls who gave their lives to liberate Luxembourg. Those who come do so out of love and admiration and a deep feeling of thanks. Lest you think that this is overexaggerated, you should come and visit. The people of Luxembourg will welcome you with open arms and they showed me respect knowing that I was an American servicemember even though I did not liberate them. It feels a little uncomfortable, like I am an imposter, but they are so gracious and they know that if it ever came to something like that again, we would once again answer the call. It makes me feel good and embarrassed at the same time. We have squandered our good name, and good fortunes, recently, but no matter because they love us just the same.
As proof of this gratitude I will tell you about the burial of the most famous American General of World War II, and undoubtedly of all American Generals, General George S. Patton, Commander, 3rd Army, European Theater. He fought Rommel in North Africa, liberated Rome, and fought in Normandy. He broke through the German lines at the Bulge and beat back the famed crack Panzer Grenadiers in the Ardennes liberating Belgium. He was killed in an automobile accident on December 21, 1945. It was his wish that he be buried among his men. General Dwight D. Eisenhower granted this wish and he was buried, literally, between two of his men with the same plain cross. What happened next is crazy. So many people from Luxembourg and Belgium came to visit his gravesite that it got out of hand. They were trampling the cemetary. The Duchess of Luxembourg decided that he would be reinterred in the Cathedral in Luxembourg city. Knowing Patton would have had a fit, they eventually agreed that he would be buried at the head of his troops in his own spot overlooking the cemetary. He rests their today.
I have several posts to make today about my trip to Bastogne as well as my journey to the German military cemetary located less than two miles east of the American cemetary, but that itself is a whole blog post of observations. I leave you with this quote from a dedication by Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander at Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. This quote is engraved on the stone walk, just ahead of Patton's grave.
ALL WHO SHALL HEREAFTER LIVE IN FREEDOM
WILL BE HERE REMINDED THAT TO THESE MEN
AND THEIR COMRADES WE OWE A DEBT TO
BE PAID WITH GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF THEIR SACRIFICE AND
WITH THE HIGH RESOLVE THAT
THE CAUSE FOR WHICH THEY DIED SHALL LIVE ETERNALLY.
6.22.2010
How time flies, pun intended
I was discussingis this deployment with members of the other Youngstown crews and I was lamenting about the lack of flying since we've been here. But during the discussion I realized that our crew will have flown 90 hours in the month of June alone (we have one more mission this month). The max in a 30 day period is 110 so we actually have flown a ton of hours!!! It illustrates the differences in perception when you fly different aircraft that fly at different airspeeds.
Not all planes fly the same types of airspeed either. The C-5, KC-10, C-17, and other turbojet aircraft (including your commercial ones such as the 737) all fly using Mach numbers, which is the ratio of the object traveling through the air divided by the speed of sound. On a standard atmospheric day of 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Farenheit) and sea level pressure, the speed of sound is roughly 761 mph. A C-5 routinely cruises at Mach .77 or .79 (the Air Force prescribes .74 to .77, but unless they are going to install a tracker that transmits the speed, crews are gonna go peddle to the meddle). So a 5 flies around 585 mph on average.
In the Herk world we fly cruise profiles using TAS (true airspeed). True airspeed takes into account air density and compares it to sea level density and computes a number. All fuel planning takes into account true airspeed because you need this speed to determine how winds will affect your fuel burn. The Herk flies around low level utilizing indicated airspeed, which is what it says it is: the speed detected by the pitot tubes and read off the gauge. The C-5's use something called calibrated airspeed, which is actually a computed airspeed based on indicated, but then corrected for compression errors as it flows into the pitot tube. The C-5 has spanky central air data computers that utilize this speed for things like autopilot, augmentation (power assist for the flight controls so you can account for the air pressure on the flight control surfaces based on airspeed), and navigation.
You can convert all of these speeds into another, but we don't. Herks cruise at roughly 290-310 true and that is what all of our performance numbers are based on. We don't even think in terms of Mach as we fly at much lower altitudes. C-5's use TAS to determine groundspeed, which requires TAS to calculate how wind direction and airspeed relate to the actual speed of the aircraft in reference to the ground.
A side story about groundspeed before I relate how different flying the Herk is than a C-5. I was once flying a Cessna 172 between San Angelo and Del Rio, Texas. By jet it's a 20 minute flight and about 157 miles By Cessna it's about an hour and a half. I had been flying for ten minutes or so when I noticed a yellow pickup to my right driving on highway 277 below me. Not thinking anything I kept flying along and hit a little turbulence, which almost rolled me over on my back. I called up center and asked if there was any forecast turbulence at my altitude since the dumbass at the flight service station didn't mention any when I went in and got my weather brief and filed my flight plan. Houston replies that there is moderate turbulence from 4,000 to 20,000. Wow!!! I'm at 6 and I'm about to get completely fracked and end up on some crash report. So I terminate flight following and tell the controller that I'm going down to 3000. I get down there and I'm being bumped by the roiled air coming off the desert rocks below me, but it was much more comfortable. It killed my groundspeed though. Instead of doing a 100 mph over the ground with an airspeed of 100 mph indicated, I was now doing 54 mph with an airspeed of 104 mph. The yellow truck was beating me to Del Rio!!! Talk about humiliating. I actually thought about landing on a dirt road and hitching a ride!!!!
The Herk flies lower than jets. We are routinely at 18-20,000 feet. A C-5 is routinely at 29-35,000 feet. BIG difference!!! Up there you catch the jet stream and if your headed to Europe in the winter flying over the top you can make it from Delaware to Germany in 4.5 hours. Never in a Herk will that happen unless it's a sci fi movie. Many a night flying over the Atlantic on the NATS (North Atlantic Tracks), or airways that all aircraft flying to Europe follow, I have routinely seen groundspeeds in excess of 600 knots!!!!!!!!!!! Craziness!!!!!!!!!!! You get to the gulf or Europe in no time. If your headed toward the gulf your screwed coming back.
In a Herk, we see grounspeeds of 300 knots. I just realized I mentioned the knot, or nautical mile, and haven't defined it. We don't use mph flying big guys, we refer to the standard nautical mile. A knot equals 1.151 statute miles thus a knot is a faster unit of measure of speed. Often our groundspeed is lower than 300 because we're getting beat up by the winds at the lower flight levels. Many times we're getting hit with a headwind, which reduces our groundspeed. Rarely do you get a good tailwind, which speeds up your ground track.
How does this all fit with my opening paragraph? When your groundspeed is substantially lower at lower altitudes, it takes you longer to get where your going. If your out on a C-5 mission for two weeks with min ground times between flights and maximum crew duty days, you can fly 90 hours in those two weeks and be gounded because you will most certainly go over your maximum flying hours in a 30/60/90 day period because of how trips are scheduled in strat airlift. In a Herk you can build up hours like crazy, but our days are shorter so you can't fly as far. Your still flying 90 hours, but you do it with shorter legs and a lot more of them in the same period of time. A lot of times it takes you two and three days to get somewhere. Into the gulf it takes three days via Herk, one via C-5. In the Herk you crew rest in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Prestwick, Scotland and Souda Bay, Crete. There are other routes 130 units take to position/deposition into and out of the war zone, but this one is pretty popular.
I've only flown 13 days for June and I have 75 hours. I have been off the other 17 days or so for the month, or will be since the month isn't over, so it feels like we're not flying. Also the longest day I've had was 16 hours, which I've only had three of those so it's not hard flying. In the strat airlift world your days are routinely 20 hours or more long, with several 26 hour days on missions. Our max day length with our current crew compliment is 16 waiverable, by US, to 18. It takes 11 hours to get from Ramstein, GE to Djibouti and you can't do it all in one leg because of gas requirements. You fly an occasionally long leg, lots of short legs and days with multiple hops that add up to more hours because you take longer to get there. I hope that we average 90 hours a month as that would make the time pass, but I wish we were flying more days out of the month with shorter legs. Not going to happen because going into the middle east on a Herk from Europe = a sore ass from sitting in the seat for long hours droning over the sandbox!!!!
There is another drawback to flying at lower altitudes as well. I have never flown in so much icing in my entire flying career. In the C-5 you don't have anti-icing capabilities except on the engines so when you encounter ice you climb or descend your way out of it. In the Herk you have anti-ice on the wings, tail, and engines so you just fly through it. It's a little disconcerting to watch ice build up on the wiper blades until it's so thick you could add Kool Aid for a slushy!!!!!! If your flying in ice in the summertime, that must mean your flying through a line of afternoon thundershowers. No getting above them so we have to penetrate them quite often. That's where our low power, color radar earns kudos!!!!!!! We just pick our way through the giant clouds. Sometimes the clouds look really ominous, but the returns indicate that the rain velocity is very slow and so we can fly right through it. I have posted a few thunderstorm pics on Picasa and I will be taking more. I hope all of you can see the Picasa album. If not comment on the blog and I'll fix it.
Tomorrow we're going to the cemetary and Belgium. I'll take plenty of pics for you.
Not all planes fly the same types of airspeed either. The C-5, KC-10, C-17, and other turbojet aircraft (including your commercial ones such as the 737) all fly using Mach numbers, which is the ratio of the object traveling through the air divided by the speed of sound. On a standard atmospheric day of 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Farenheit) and sea level pressure, the speed of sound is roughly 761 mph. A C-5 routinely cruises at Mach .77 or .79 (the Air Force prescribes .74 to .77, but unless they are going to install a tracker that transmits the speed, crews are gonna go peddle to the meddle). So a 5 flies around 585 mph on average.
In the Herk world we fly cruise profiles using TAS (true airspeed). True airspeed takes into account air density and compares it to sea level density and computes a number. All fuel planning takes into account true airspeed because you need this speed to determine how winds will affect your fuel burn. The Herk flies around low level utilizing indicated airspeed, which is what it says it is: the speed detected by the pitot tubes and read off the gauge. The C-5's use something called calibrated airspeed, which is actually a computed airspeed based on indicated, but then corrected for compression errors as it flows into the pitot tube. The C-5 has spanky central air data computers that utilize this speed for things like autopilot, augmentation (power assist for the flight controls so you can account for the air pressure on the flight control surfaces based on airspeed), and navigation.
You can convert all of these speeds into another, but we don't. Herks cruise at roughly 290-310 true and that is what all of our performance numbers are based on. We don't even think in terms of Mach as we fly at much lower altitudes. C-5's use TAS to determine groundspeed, which requires TAS to calculate how wind direction and airspeed relate to the actual speed of the aircraft in reference to the ground.
A side story about groundspeed before I relate how different flying the Herk is than a C-5. I was once flying a Cessna 172 between San Angelo and Del Rio, Texas. By jet it's a 20 minute flight and about 157 miles By Cessna it's about an hour and a half. I had been flying for ten minutes or so when I noticed a yellow pickup to my right driving on highway 277 below me. Not thinking anything I kept flying along and hit a little turbulence, which almost rolled me over on my back. I called up center and asked if there was any forecast turbulence at my altitude since the dumbass at the flight service station didn't mention any when I went in and got my weather brief and filed my flight plan. Houston replies that there is moderate turbulence from 4,000 to 20,000. Wow!!! I'm at 6 and I'm about to get completely fracked and end up on some crash report. So I terminate flight following and tell the controller that I'm going down to 3000. I get down there and I'm being bumped by the roiled air coming off the desert rocks below me, but it was much more comfortable. It killed my groundspeed though. Instead of doing a 100 mph over the ground with an airspeed of 100 mph indicated, I was now doing 54 mph with an airspeed of 104 mph. The yellow truck was beating me to Del Rio!!! Talk about humiliating. I actually thought about landing on a dirt road and hitching a ride!!!!
The Herk flies lower than jets. We are routinely at 18-20,000 feet. A C-5 is routinely at 29-35,000 feet. BIG difference!!! Up there you catch the jet stream and if your headed to Europe in the winter flying over the top you can make it from Delaware to Germany in 4.5 hours. Never in a Herk will that happen unless it's a sci fi movie. Many a night flying over the Atlantic on the NATS (North Atlantic Tracks), or airways that all aircraft flying to Europe follow, I have routinely seen groundspeeds in excess of 600 knots!!!!!!!!!!! Craziness!!!!!!!!!!! You get to the gulf or Europe in no time. If your headed toward the gulf your screwed coming back.
In a Herk, we see grounspeeds of 300 knots. I just realized I mentioned the knot, or nautical mile, and haven't defined it. We don't use mph flying big guys, we refer to the standard nautical mile. A knot equals 1.151 statute miles thus a knot is a faster unit of measure of speed. Often our groundspeed is lower than 300 because we're getting beat up by the winds at the lower flight levels. Many times we're getting hit with a headwind, which reduces our groundspeed. Rarely do you get a good tailwind, which speeds up your ground track.
How does this all fit with my opening paragraph? When your groundspeed is substantially lower at lower altitudes, it takes you longer to get where your going. If your out on a C-5 mission for two weeks with min ground times between flights and maximum crew duty days, you can fly 90 hours in those two weeks and be gounded because you will most certainly go over your maximum flying hours in a 30/60/90 day period because of how trips are scheduled in strat airlift. In a Herk you can build up hours like crazy, but our days are shorter so you can't fly as far. Your still flying 90 hours, but you do it with shorter legs and a lot more of them in the same period of time. A lot of times it takes you two and three days to get somewhere. Into the gulf it takes three days via Herk, one via C-5. In the Herk you crew rest in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Prestwick, Scotland and Souda Bay, Crete. There are other routes 130 units take to position/deposition into and out of the war zone, but this one is pretty popular.
I've only flown 13 days for June and I have 75 hours. I have been off the other 17 days or so for the month, or will be since the month isn't over, so it feels like we're not flying. Also the longest day I've had was 16 hours, which I've only had three of those so it's not hard flying. In the strat airlift world your days are routinely 20 hours or more long, with several 26 hour days on missions. Our max day length with our current crew compliment is 16 waiverable, by US, to 18. It takes 11 hours to get from Ramstein, GE to Djibouti and you can't do it all in one leg because of gas requirements. You fly an occasionally long leg, lots of short legs and days with multiple hops that add up to more hours because you take longer to get there. I hope that we average 90 hours a month as that would make the time pass, but I wish we were flying more days out of the month with shorter legs. Not going to happen because going into the middle east on a Herk from Europe = a sore ass from sitting in the seat for long hours droning over the sandbox!!!!
There is another drawback to flying at lower altitudes as well. I have never flown in so much icing in my entire flying career. In the C-5 you don't have anti-icing capabilities except on the engines so when you encounter ice you climb or descend your way out of it. In the Herk you have anti-ice on the wings, tail, and engines so you just fly through it. It's a little disconcerting to watch ice build up on the wiper blades until it's so thick you could add Kool Aid for a slushy!!!!!! If your flying in ice in the summertime, that must mean your flying through a line of afternoon thundershowers. No getting above them so we have to penetrate them quite often. That's where our low power, color radar earns kudos!!!!!!! We just pick our way through the giant clouds. Sometimes the clouds look really ominous, but the returns indicate that the rain velocity is very slow and so we can fly right through it. I have posted a few thunderstorm pics on Picasa and I will be taking more. I hope all of you can see the Picasa album. If not comment on the blog and I'll fix it.
Tomorrow we're going to the cemetary and Belgium. I'll take plenty of pics for you.
6.21.2010
Turkey Trot
The first leg of the mission took us to Sigonella, Sicily a naval air station situated near the town of Catania on the island of Sicily. I've flown in and out of this base many times in my career, but this was the first time in a Herk. What a difference!! In the C-5 they usually parked you almost up to the cargo building, which meant when you left you had to do a push back tow just like the airlines do when your backing out of the gate. Which meant they had to have a tug big enough to push us and a tow bar with extra shear pins because they didn't exactly know what they were doing. If they cranked the wheel to hard and over extended the nose gear you'd be stuck there. Or they'd get going and do something odd and if you stopped the aircraft with the brakes they'd shear the pin on the tow bar. To be fair it only happened to me once, but it was still a pain in the ass. Also, taking off heavy out of Sig you usually did a 62.5 degree flap setting with all the bleed air turned off to extract as much power from the C-5s turbofan engines as you could muster. In a Herk they could park you up against the building with your nose touching it and it wouldn't matter. Upspeed all four engines and throw the props into reverse and back out of there like your backing out of your driveway for a Sunday drive. As for getting out of there fully loaded in a Herk it's no sweat because the runway is long enough. There's a difference between a fully loaded Herk at 155,000 lbs and a mostly loaded C-5 at about 635,000 lbs (I think that's what I took off out of there with last time, but don't quote me).
Getting loaded there is fun because the loadmasters deal with the Italians at ATOC and the Italians even drive the K-loader and do the loading. Which was eventful because they told Shawn, our senior loadmaster, that they had a pallet 45" tall that could go on the ramp. Shawn said, "if it's 45" that should be no problem!" Then out of nowhere the K-loader shows up with a P-3 Orion propeller assembly on it! 45" it was not; not unless I shrunk several inches in heighth! The Italians were unfazed. They knew what they were bringing out, but they wanted us to give it a go. That was an interesting lesson I learned that it fit! Shawn put it on and closed the ramp while we watched the clearance on the propeller blades and hoped for the best!!
That actually wasn't the most eventful thing to take place at Sig on that Saturday morning. Yours truly was starving and since the talking heads (Air Mobility Directorate AMD) wanted us to leave on time we had two hours to wait. So we went to Big Al's pizzeria on base. After a 15 minute walk with the sun beating down on us, we arrived in the air conditioning and I could smell the heavenly aroma of authentic Italian pizza!!!!!! So I get in line immediately and order a large tomato and cheese pizza (alla Margherita) and proceed to salivate patiently. My ticket number was 65. We waited and each number was called. 62, 63, 64......69...Say What? The nav gets up and gets his very large pizza and sits down and proceeds to eat. I didn't know it, but he ordered the same thing I did only 5 minutes later.
I went up to the counter because I saw no more delicious pie coming out of the oven and inquired about the good ole' number 65, which comes before 69. They couldn't figure it out. Big Al sent his gal out to inspect the nav's pizza. When he saw her coming he realized he had my pizza, but was wondering what her intentions were. I'm watching her approach him and I see her opening his pizza box and I thought, "what the hell, she's going to snatch his pizza and give me a pie minus two slices?" Then Big Al calls her back and he starts making one, but by this time we have to go. So I ask for my muola back and she just keeps apologizing. Finally she was able to understand what I wanted and gave me my money back. Then I ordered a half a chicken and fries 'cause it was quick. While I waited the nav offered me a slice and when I tasted it I knew instantly how badly I'd been screwed. No chicken was going to make up for the loss of that delicious pie!!!! Sure enough, I busted out the greasy chicken on climbout and the fries were like rubber!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Damn it Al hire some competent people because your daughter's an idiot!!!
Off to Incirlik AB, Turkey after my pizza debacle! We took off again and with our precious, important cargo of household goods aviated toward Turkey. The cargo wasn't anything important, unless your the family who is waiting on these goods to start your life at your new station. I know as a kid experiencing this, having a few familiar items such as books and toys made the move a little easier so I'll live knowing some family got their pots and pans upon their arrival at Incirlik. The flight was uneventful. The controllers route you off your filed flight plan and threaten you if you don't make contact with them right away. That is truly uneventful when your flying in Greek and Turkish airspace.
We arrived in the evening and I was stunned by what I saw on approach. A quiet little air base with nothing going on. I can't express to you what it was like five years ago. It was a hub of activity for Iraq and Afghanistan. They had a tent city, fighters populated one side of the base flying missions 24/7. Billeting was hit and miss; sometimes you got your own room and sometimes they stacked you together. This time there were no fighters and very little airlift assets on the field. In spite of this they managed to park us as far away from the hub as possible so support sucked and you had to pack a lunch for the bus ride to billeting.
I would have taken pictures of the base, but getting caught would have allowed me to personally live the movie Midnight Express about the guy who lands in a Turkish prison. The Turks are the ultimate bureaucrats!!! They are very strict about everything. The air base is actually Turkish and no American flags are visible anywhere. I don't have a problem with that it's their country, but I have a serious problem with how they treat us given we also provide a presence that warns others not to frack with them.
With their bureaucratic nature in mind, we went into the terminal and processed through their passport police. You must have an original set of orders identifying you as a NATO member with authorization to transit Turkey. That, a military id card, and a set of crew orders gets you a stamp on your NATO orders allowing you into Turkey. Lose it and all hell will break loose!!! What's funny is they have now allowed you to enter their country, but that really only means you can go to billeting and maybe the chow hall. If you want to go downtown you need to pass bureaucratic hurdle #2: getting a pass. That involves going to pass and id and if your lucky the Turks behind the desk will grant you a pass after they run you through the grinder for a while. The maintenance guy who met our plane told us that it's been taking almost two hours sometimes for crews to get a pass to go offbase. Imagine, Turkey losing out on lots of income due to a pissing match. Oh well. It's their country and they have the right to lose as much money as they want. If your Turkish and want to spend your money in America come on in.
The crew went to the bowling alley for a snack and some cold beers. Me and Shawn stayed in our flightsuits because if we changed it would have been lights out (It was already 11:30 at night). After a Heiniken and some onion rings I called it a night. One thing about being on the road is that you have a difficult time eating healthy. Since you eat when you can you get pizza, wings, whatever is available, wherever it's available. I must say those onion rings were tasty after a 12 hour day!!!
After a six and a half hour flight the next day we arrived back home to a cold and rainy Germany. I took advantage of a lull in the weather and ran six miles on my favorite woody path. Then it was movie night with crew #3 (crew #2 is doing the duty in Djibouti). That is the part I like the most. The camaradirie of the group. We're all seperated from our loved ones going through similar experiences and we have a lot of fun when we're off duty (unless we're getting punched in the mouth).
I hope all of you have gotten the link to my pictures. Unfortunately I have to caption them in Picasa, which I had already done in my pictures folders so maybe I will do that this week. Anyhow I will post them in their own folders by trip now so you have an idea of where they are.
Hopefully tomorrow will bring a trip to the American and German cemeteries at Luxemborg!!!!!!
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