Bangor Guard and Iraqi Freedom, 2003, part one Operation Iraqi Freedom (that I later renamed Operation Let’s Do Something Stupid, even though I initially approved of it) kicked off in April 2003. The squadron was activated and the missions came hot and heavy with a wearying pace of day or two at home between ten-day missions. On three consecutive missions I had to fly an air refueling leg from various stateside pickup locations to Moron, Spain. The refuelings were scheduled off the coast of Maine with the Bangor ANG squadron. They did not go well. On the first mission the Bangor tanker never got off the ground so we had to divert into Goose Bay Labrador for the night before proceeding to Moron the next day, and then on to Kuwait. The second mission almost repeated the first until I decided to risk proceeding unrefueled to Moron, a move I would soon regret. As we approached the refueling track, the Bangor command post began their litany of alibis about their inability to produce a tanker for us. The first plane was broken, the crew was pre-flighting the spare, and could we possibly wait for them? I wasn’t about to hang around for an hour to be told they still could not meet the requirement, so I told them to forget it. Since I had not descended from cruise altitude down to air refueling altitude, however, I had not suffered the increased fuel burn the air refueling would have required. As I reached the End A/R point, I discovered I had exactly the minimum about of gas required to continue the mission. Not wanting to hang out in Goose again, I decided to proceed across the Atlantic to Moron. If the minimum is sufficient, I don’t have a problem, right? Our navigation computer of the day, FMS, encouragingly informed me I would arrive over Moron with 35,000lbs of gas, well above the minimum of 20,000lbs., when the gear must come down because you will shortly be landing somewhere before you flame out, which you hope would be on a runway. I knew that the computer fight plans were predicated on always having optimum conditions, and always being allowed to climb by ATC as soon as able, events that rarely occurred in the real world. For some reason I didn’t consider this. The FMS projection was predicated on current conditions or better existing throughout the flight. My fight plan said this would probably be the case and, besides, I could climb higher, and burn less fuel, as I got lighter from declining fuel weight as we proceeded enroute. We had it made, I thought, optimistically. I got my clearance from Gander center to enter the trans-Atlantic track system at FL 310, an optimum level that would allow a low fuel burn. About twenty minutes later, however, Gander Oceanic control threw the wrench into the works. “Reach (my call sign), you will have to descend to FL260 to pass under the NAT Tracks (the main aerial highway for commercial jets from the States to Northern Europe).” Oh, great! Now I’d be burning fuel like mad at the lower altitude and my fuel reserve would be in jeopardy by the time I reached Spain. I considered my options if I ran low on fuel. I would have to make a decision to divert to Lajes AB, in the Azores, about two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic if I didn’t get a higher cruise altitude that would reduce the fuel burn. Maddeningly, Gander never let me climb in the first half of the crossing, and Santa Maria, the Spanish agency that controlled the last half, initially would not allow a climb, either. I was screwed. All three of us in the pilot’s seats stared continuously, and increasingly nervously, at the FMS “Fuel Overhead” estimate as it declined below the 20,000lb minimum. Marianne, the copilot, was basically a staff officer depending upon me keep us safe, and we were rapidly becoming unsafe. The fuel overhead estimate steadily sank, along with our spirits, to 11,000lbs., a catastrophically low number since the fuel gauges became unreliable as each of the four fuel tanks dropped below 4,000lbs each, or 16,000lbs total. As panic began to rise in my throat, I declared we would divert to Lajes for fuel. However, ill-advisedly, I called TACC on HF radio before I had totally thought out the move, another blunder. After telling headquarters I was diverting, I finally thought to ask if anyone had gotten the weather forecast for Lajes. They had not since that was my job and I had not done it either. If I had refueled I would have had plenty of fuel, and I was going to refuel, I assumed, so why check the Lajes weather? A call to Lajes destroyed my divert plans. The crosswinds were out of limits for landing, forty-five knots direct cross. Damn! We had to proceed to Spain and hope we made it. I estimated we might be able to make Lisbon more easily than Moron, but that would be a diplomatic fiasco since we didn’t have diplomatic clearance for Portugal. Further, the accursed winds were not as advertised on my flight plan. They perversely refused to shift to a tailwind as predicted, shifting just enough to remain a crosswind and denying me the higher groundspeed of a tailwind. Finally, in the last hour, the winds turned to our tail, and Santa Maria cooperated by allowing us to climb to FL350. This got us overhead Moron with the magic 20K in fuel, and left the cockpit filled with the “bullets” we had all been sweating for the previous five hours. I had nightmare visions of landing on the beach in Portugal. (Excerpt from Flying the Line, an Air Force Pilots Journey, book three, not yet published).
Posted on: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 13:43:41 +0000
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