Tail of the Storm

by Alan Cockrell

  I watched him once while the squadron was going through its annual small-arms refresher training. While half the group was popping away with the pistols, the rest of us lounged lazily a distance away. Tom had fetched a chair from inside the shooting range shack and was leaning back in it, arms folded, legs crossed, eyes gazing out to nowhere in particular. His pose looked like that in old photographs I've seen of Civil War soldiers. A small pocket of chat about taxes, politics, and other such paltry topics was in progress near him, the voices rising and falling to stay afloat over the din of the volleys. Quite suddenly, someone started talking about a new airline engine modification. Tom's ears perked. His head swiveled toward the crowd. He uncrossed his legs and listened to another sentence, then sprang from his chair and joined happily in the discourse on fuel flow efficiency and power-to-weight ratios.

  And his skill matched his knowledge. He had once been dispatched to fly to the large regional air show in Birmingham, his mission being to place the jet on public display. Arriving at the show site, he put the big Starlifter through such a graceful suite of maneuvers that the air show officials marveled and awarded him the esteemed arrival show trophy. Incredibly, he had outshone some of the world's newest and most sophisticated fighter planes.

  To Tom the brotherhood of fliers is not all-inclusive. He cares little for those who settle for mediocrity or less than absolute dedication to the profession. He's especially disdainful of those who use wings purely for monetary or political gain. Those people are like putrid smoke in the pilot lounge, driving him out into the purity of the flight line.

  I tell the crew to hold the bus while I greet Tom. He is inbound and I'm outbound. There's not much time, but we catch up with one another as best we can, and he is eager to tell me about the mission to Riyadh he flew a few days back. It seems that Tom's devotion to the brotherhood was severely tested on that trip. He faced what might have been a dilemma for some of us but not so for Tom. Fellow pilots were in trouble. He knew what to do.

  The airlift control element (ALCE) staff were people under tremendous daily pressure. The flow of the huge jets was unceasing. The ALCE controllers had to see that the jets were parked, unloaded, serviced, fixed if they were broken, and turned back uprange as soon as possible. They worked twelve-hour shifts, around the clock. They were blamed by their superiors when things didn't flow well and were subjected to the grumbling of aircrews when servicing went afoul. Few people envisioned an airlift operation of this magnitude. There was not enough forethought, knowledge, or hardware to handle this smoothly. Mindsets were not prepared for it. The controllers had to innovate and experiment. When they guessed wrong or miscalculated, they caught flack. Nerves were strained to the limit, and as the months went by, the fatigue, the endlessness of the operation, and broken promises of relief brought on despair. Of all the people in the Persian Gulf operation, none were driven so severely and continuously as those who anchored the receiving end of history's greatest air logistical tail.

  And there was no outlet for their tensions and frustrations. There was no officer's club or NCO club at which to unwind. There was nothing to do or see around town. Indeed, much of the time people were restricted to the installation. It was a lousy existence, especially for fliers, which is what they were. The ALCE jobs required pilots, loadmasters, and engineerspeople who wanted desperately to be doing what we were doing.

  The commander of the Riyadh ALCE had found two of his pilots drunk, or at least he suspected that they had been drinking. Alcohol is illegal in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and our military leaders had declared that U.S. forces would honor the host country's laws. Officially, booze was taboo. Many commanders looked the other way, but some took the policy seriously

  It wasn't clear where the guys had procured the booze. They certainly couldn't buy it in Saudi Arabia or on the military base. But occasionally aircrews coming down from Europe would carelessly put a six-pack of beer or a bottle of some sort of firewater into the aircraft's cooler. I know this happened again and again with my crews, and I had to severely discipline them for being so negligent. I considered it my duty to inform the ALCE discreetly when I found alcoholic contraband on my aircraft so that it could be properly confiscated. And I always marveled at how such disclosures seemed to result in quick fuel service. Still, it was possibly from such stocks that the two pilots had chosen to release their tensions.

  Tom knew nothing of the circumstances. Maybe the men had been drunk on duty, or maybe they had been caught having a casual one in their tent. But it was clear that they were being made an example of. Upon his arrival, a colonel had presented Tom with two ampoules of blood and ordered him to take them back to Germany for analysis of alcohol content. The colonel had made arrangements for a medic to meet the aircraft. Tom signed for the samples and assured the colonel that he would deliver them expediently

  The unloading and fueling completed, Tom and his crew started up and departed for the long trip back uprange to Germany. After climb-out he asked if anyone on the crew had any experience in the care and handling of biological specimens, but no one had had any such instruction in the course of their training. Tom reasoned that since humans are warm-blooded creatures, then blood samples must naturally be kept warmwho could argue with such a deduction? So he placed the tubes on his glare shield, where the intense high-altitude sun could keep the blood fresh. But soon night fell across the skyscape and Tom began to worry that the blood would become chilled. He then ordered that the oven in the plane's galley be warmed up to about 300 degrees and placed the tubes therein for the duration of the long trip.

  The medic waited as the plane blocked in at the German base, and Tom presented him with the two ampoules full of a baked brown crusty crud. He shrugged at the puzzled medic's proclamation that the samples were useless. He had done his best. And of course he had. He had, in fact, succeeded. The careers of two brothers had been saved. It was no big deal to Tom, just a simple act of loyalty

  Twelve.

  Herculean Dreams

  We are waiting for takeoff clearance at an airfield in the tiny United Arab Emirates. We have delivered several tons of fresh vegetables, air conditioners, aircraft parts, and mail to the C-130 unit based here. This place is a long way from Kuwait, but I guess the fighters, with their much shorter endurance, get priority on the closer bases. The C-130s here are flying a few intratheater airlift hauls and some training flights. But mostly they wait. I'm exceedingly glad that my stay in this place has only been two hours. Yet I'm envious of these guys in a way that only those who have flown the '130 can know.

  I've grown to love this old jet I'm strapped to. I didn't at first. It was the biggest thing I had ever flown, and its vastness intimidated me. But with airplanes, familiarity breeds affection, not contempt. And as a seasoned colonel once counseled me, "Son, whatever airplane you're flying is a good airplane." Translated, I believe that means "Do not covet another pilot's plane, but delight in what you have been given." Makes sense.

  But as I watch the flight of three C-130s glide overhead and pitch out, fighterlike, I remember what it was like. And I'm not alone in such musings. All of us who flew itpilots, flight engineers, loadmasters, allremember the happy times we had in the Herc.

  It seemed big then. Certainly anyone standing near it wouldn't regard it as small. But the most striking feature of the '130 is its props. Each of the four turboprop engines spins a propeller with four broad paddles. The ponderous props are governed to spin at the same rpm, regardless of whether flying or just sitting on the ground. Only the pitchthe "bite" of air taken by the bladeschanges. This results in the curious propensity of the '130 to be noisier just sitting on the ground at idle power than when flying. You can hear the distinctive drone of a '130 across a great distance, and sweet music it is. But when the noise ceases, the pilots have either shut down or advanced the power to takeoff.

  C-130 Hercules

  It's the props that make the C-130 so much fun to fly. I considered just taxiing the beast
pure pleasure. The big props were my happy servants, ready to respond to the most whimsical twitch of my fingers on the throttles. I found myself often pushing up the power very slightly while taxiing just to hear the props sing their accordionlike whine as they changed pitch. And then I'd pull them back into reverse and listen to them abandon their whine and enter into a great blowing belch.

  And in the air the Herc was a fine handling machine, much more sensitive than the '141. It was good for formation flying because of the instantaneous thrust when power was applied (as opposed to a turbojet engine, which requires "spool-up" time). Often this instantaneous power feature was the savior of the third aircraft in a CDS drop.

  It was arguably our most hazardous maneuver. The CDS, or container delivery system, was a low-altitude drop (about 500 feet) in which pallets loaded with large metal containers slid out the rear of the plane, their huge parachutes opening just prior to impact. We relied on gravity to pull the CDS from the cargo floor, and in order to achieve this, we had to slow the aircraft down to a critical speed with little or no flaps, so that our angle of attack caused a high deck angle. It's very unsettling, doing that at such a low altitude, and the planes in the rear of the formation had the problem of fighting the prop wash and wake turbulence of the planes ahead. Numbers two and three "stacked high" in hopes of flying over the turbulent air, but still it happened.

  You're out there in the dark just a few wingspans above the cottonwoods, with your right hand full of throttles, your left with seventy-five tons of bucking airplane, eyes darting from altimeter to airspeed indicator, from compass to fuel flow indicators, then quickly refocusing on the ludicrously dim formation lights of the guy ahead. Thoughts that should have been left on the ground play around the periphery of your mental focus. You try to forget about the account that you lost today and the boss's foreboding over the business downturn. But the distracting thoughts continue to probe for a crack, an inroad through which to gain access to the critical core of your concentration. And then, as the navigator calls "one minute warning," it happens.

  You feel it before you see it. The airspeed decay causes a loss of lift, a sinking feeling. One of the invisible but devilish curls of wake turbulence seizes your wing tip and rolls you violently. Your mind clears; you're in the survival mode now. You counteract with opposite aileron, but now, because of loss of lift, you've sunk down into the teeth of the raging vortexes, forcing you to fight to keep the Herc upright. Instinctively you ram the throttles forward and feel the four big Allison turbines thrust you into blessed acceleration. And as you battle to maintain altitude and formation spacing, you try to follow the navigator's meticulous heading instructions. He's down on the deck beside your seat, kneeling on all fours, his head pressed against the lower quarter window, watching for his computed release point. Every few seconds he keys his boom mic and directs a heading change. "Four degrees right, steady, two right, two left." It's almost preposterous, fighting the invisible tornadoes while trying to turn only two degrees. You do the best you can.

  The one minute seems like an hour, but finally comes the nav's command. "GREEN LIGHT!" The copilot switches on the green light in the cargo compartment, and the loadmaster jerks the lanyard, which releases the heavy load. You hear an awful roar, like something is ripping the aircraft apart. As the load separates, the '130 lurches forward, rejuvenated, rid of its burden, and pitches abruptly as the center of gravity suddenly shifts about fifty feet.

  Then you push the throttles to max power for the escape maneuver. While you close the distance to rejoin the formation, you listen intently for the drop report.

  "Twenty at nine, three," comes the transmission from the DZ ofricer, who is also a C-130 pilot from your unit.

  Your load has impacted twenty yards left of the bull's-eye. Not bad, but the navigator will blame you for the error. He takes responsibility for the six o'clock to twelve o'clock errors, because those are timing problems, but the three to nine errors are heading problems and thus yours, assuming he has given you the correct heading commands (which of course he always assumes).

  Despite the hazards, we all delighted over the formation airdrop missions. Those evenings were sportive occasions. Three complete crews, totaling fifteen or twenty crewdogs, assembled for premission festivities, which usually included palavering over fast foods picked up on the way over from work. Then the briefing was delivered by the aircraft commander of the lead plane in the formation. Some stayed after the mission for beer or went over to Harvey's, the crewdog hangout. We enjoyed one another's company. The times were good. But one such night still stands out clearly. It was a night when complacency gave wayas is its tendencyto terror.

  A line of thunderstorms was slowly crossing the Mississippi River to our west, but according to the forecast, we would have clear but hazy weather for the low-level route and the drop. The night was very dark with no moon, and haze blotted out most stars, yet the air was smooth. Our call sign was Ruler 12, number two, in a three-ship formation, sitting at the standard 2,000 feet in trail behind the leader. Ruler 13 was another 2,000 feet behind us. This was a visual formation, but we were using our station keeping equipment (SKE) as a backup, to monitor the position of the other planes in the formation. The SKE information was displayed on the radar scope, but our scope was inoperative that night. It was not a problem, though, since the scopes in the other planes worked, and we did not anticipate weather penetration. Visual contact was all we needed. All was well until shortly after we dropped down to our standard 1,000-foot altitude for night operations.

  The warning was ever so subtle. I momentarily lost sight of Lead's lights as some soupy cloud flashed by us. But such conditions weren't unusual this time of year. It must have been some patchy fog. There were no thunderstorms forecast for this area until much later in the night, "Right, Jeff?" I sought reassurance from my copilot.

  "Right."

  We knew that the leader had a good radar and hoped he would not lead us into something nasty. I relaxed as the fog disappeared and the security of Ruler 11's formation lights reappeared. But then Hell paid us a visit.

  Lead's lights disappeared again. Something grabbed us. The huge claws of some giant demon into whose stormy lair we had blundered gripped us and began to shake us savagely. The Herc lurched, jolted, and slammed, as if the weather demons were using us in some sinister demolition game.

  "CLIMB! CLIMB!" yelled Russ Gatlin, my navigator. As he spoke I was thrusting the throttles forward and rotating, knowing that I had to get away from the ground immediately. But the Herc was bucking so hard that I couldn't read the gauges. The pitot-static instruments were fluctuating wildly, what I could see of them. I fought off a twinge of panic, trying to modulate the back pressure to get a climb going but not too much, lest I overrotate and let the airspeed decay.

  As I fought the storm, I tried to remember the procedures for inadvertent weather penetration. Since I was number two, and slightly on the right side, the procedure called for me to turn right forty-five degrees, hold that course for one minute, and then resume the base heading. Three would do the opposite. This would give the formationnow dangerously blinda much safer spacing. But that procedure obviously wasn't going to work here in the throws of a struggle for survival where we couldn't even hold a steady heading.

  About that time I heard the leader's frantic radio call. "Everybody turn south, NOW!"

  South was the direction from which we came, thus the direction of good weather, but there was a big problem with Lead's order: it did not separate us. All of us turning south at once would be like a platoon of soldiers executing a right face. They all turn yet remain in the same proximity to one another. But I knew that Lead was fighting his own battle for control and had no time to devote to separation.

  The plane was climbing, but I did not want to make the turn Lead had ordered, at least not abruptly. Under the rolling, tossing conditions I felt that too much bank would induce control problems. I tried to hold about a ten-degree right bank and hop
ed the awful bucking would slack as we climbed. It worsened. Then the horrifying thought struck me that Lead was turning into us.

  Knowing better, I glanced up. Taking my eyes off the instruments was an invitation to vertigoa state of confusion and disorientationbut it was an instinctive move. I was expecting to see lights emerge from the murk. For a few horrid seconds the storm was the lesser threat. They would be into us in a heartbeat: life ending and eternity beginning in a savage collision; a ripping and tearing of metal; his props devouring us; our wing tip piercing him; tons of fuel detonating; an enormous furnace of twisted metal plunging out of the maelstrom.

  And as I glanced back again at the pitch black gloom, the sky flashed with a nuclear brilliance and the plane shuddered in a deafening blast. The ride became even more violent as the flashes and booms continued to thrash us. At one point the generators faltered under the electrical onslaught, and the cockpit went dark. But the blackout was only momentary. Yet I knew that if we lost power for any longer than a few seconds under these conditions, we would become hopelessly disoriented. We would roll over and enter a high-speed dive and probably pull the wings off in a desperate attempt to recover. Aviation history was replete with such accidents.

  We were too busy to realize how tense our body muscles were, how clenched our teeth were, and how gripped we were with fear until it was over. And over it was, as quickly as it had begun. The gloom departed and the glorious lights of rural Mississippi lay before us. The air smoothed, and we became aware again of the hum of our props. Then the shock set in when we saw Lead sitting out there a couple thousand feet below uson our right side.