by Lynne Cox
General Combs agreed to meet with us, along with J. D. Brown, who was a Black Hawk instructor pilot and ran the airstrip connected to the base. General Combs spent an hour with us and gave us background on the base, mentioning that after he had served in Vietnam, he worked for the O’Neill wet suit company doing research on the effects of cold water on the body, and later he rejoined the army. The base he served on now was a training base for all branches of the military and offered programs for training at-risk youths and was a base for flying drones and served as a staging area for natural disasters, and the U.S. women’s water polo worked out in the base pool also.
J. D. Brown offered to show us the helicopters and the airstrip.
With the rotors and all the moving parts that kept the helicopter aloft, J.D. made it very clear that the Black Hawk was challenging to fly. He let us climb into the cockpit, where there were buttons on the roof, instrument panel, and on the instruments. It was amazing how much a pilot needed to know to fly. J.D. said that the first time he climbed into a helicopter, it took him an hour to start it up; now it took him seven minutes.
I asked him what some of the most challenging conditions to fly in were. And suddenly he gave me the link between Black Hawks and LC-130s. J.D. said he had flown in Iraq and that it was tremendously difficult to fly in brownout conditions in the desert. This happened when there were sandstorms, and the visibility was reduced to nothing. He said that even when using instruments, it was difficult to judge where the ground was. If a landing wasn’t done correctly, the helicopter could hit hard, bounce, and roll. He equated brownouts to whiteouts in Antarctica, when the winds were so strong that they blew the snow, and visibility dropped to zero.
Laura, my sister, knew how focused I’d been on this project. She suggested calling Troy Devine. Troy had played water polo with Laura and our sister Ruth. They were tremendous athletes, and when they played as a team, they were extraordinarily connected, and often their moves and plays, their passing and teamwork, were utterly beautiful.
Laura, Troy, and Ruth were selected for the U.S. national team; it was the equivalent of the U.S. Olympic team, but at the time women’s water polo wasn’t allowed in the Olympics. Many people thought water polo was a sport that was too tough to be played by women. Often the U.S. team scrimmaged against some of the best men’s teams. Sometimes they won, sometimes they lost, but they always seemed to learn and improve.
The U.S. women’s water polo team didn’t have a manager, so I volunteered and helped out for six years. Laura, Ruth, and Troy were starters. Ruth once said that it took a lot of intensity to play on the U.S. team, but Troy had something more.
Laura reminded me that Troy was in the U.S. Air Force and that was why she had suggested that I contact Troy.
A few years before, I’d received an e-mail from Troy telling me she’d read my first book, and she thought it inspiring. She mentioned that she was in the air force and married to an air force pilot.
Laura told me that she remembered Troy had graduated at the top of her class and had become the first female U.S. Air Force U-2 pilot.
Through Troy’s husband, Lieutenant Colonel Chuck Cunningham, who also flew U-2s out of Beale Air Force Base, I reached Troy, and we caught up quickly.
When Troy attended the Air Force Academy, she had swum the long-distance events for the team. She had met Chuck while they were in U-2 training, and after they graduated, they dated, married, and had four active children.
When Troy first graduated from the academy, women weren’t allowed to fly combat aircraft, but when the politics changed, Troy tried out for the job. Pilots who tried for that position were given three flights, three chances to demonstrate that they were capable of doing the job.
Troy said that she didn’t do all that well on her first flight, but she listened very carefully to her instructor and tried to take in all his suggestions, and she improved a lot on her second flight and did well enough on her third flight to qualify for the U-2 program.
She told me to call anytime to talk with her or Chuck about flying or anything else. Like great athletes who are often fascinated with other great athletes, they were intrigued with the 109th Air Wing, and when Chuck told me that the U-2 and the LC-130 were both built by Lockheed and that they had the same control yoke, I wondered if there might be a lot more similarities in their flight world.
Troy wanted to put me in touch with Cholene Espinosa. She said Cholene was an incredible person. Cholene was the second female U-2 pilot, but had now retired from flying U-2s. She was based in Dubai and flying for a commercial airline. She was a writer and a war correspondent for Talk Radio News Service, and she was philosophical, articulate, and had a lot of heart. She would be the perfect person for me to talk with.
When I called, Cholene immediately offered her insights. I explained that I needed to know more about flight to be able to understand the challenge and art of the 109th’s mission and tell their story more completely. Cholene offered to help, but first we talked about swimming. She was more of a runner than a swimmer, but she had seen the tremendous need for public swimming pools in the South. It was then that I understood why Troy said Cholene had a lot of heart.
Cholene explained that when Hurricane Katrina occurred, she was compelled to do something to help. She discovered that many of the victims of the hurricane were African Americans, and most of them were the elderly and children. They had drowned in the floods because they had never learned to swim. They never had the opportunity.
During the 1950s, many of the public swimming pools were filled in and covered over and made into basketball courts because the white people in the community didn’t want to share the swimming pools with black people. This act had kept several generations of African Americans from learning how to swim and had made them vulnerable to floodwaters.
Cholene wanted to do something that would change that. She saved money, bought property in DeLisle, Louisiana, teamed up with the YMCA, and through grants and donations raised enough additional money to have a new swimming pool built. A basketball court was donated by the NBA.
Cholene explained that the U-2 unit was very similar to the 109th, because they were specialty groups within the air force. Their missions were very different, but each unit dealt with the challenge of flying into uncharted areas. The 109th flew into unexplored parts of Antarctica, and the motto for the U-2 mission was “Toward the unknown.”
The U-2 and LC-130 were very different aircraft. Cholene said that the U-2 was nicknamed the “Dragon Lady” because pilots never knew what to expect when they took the planes into the air, no matter how much experience the pilots had. This was because of the way the aircraft was designed. It had to be light enough to fly above seventy thousand feet and it was almost impossible to control. And at thirteen miles above the ground, the atmosphere is so thin that the envelope between stalling and “overspeed”—going so fast that the pilot loses control of the aircraft, which results in a unrecoverable nose dive—is razor-thin. Minor disruptions and turbulence could be as deadly as a missile. The aircraft also had a very long wingspan, like a glider, and was very susceptible to crosswinds.
There are real advantages to flying in the pilot’s seat of a reconnaissance aircraft, though. She said that U-2 pilots could troubleshoot problems in midflight, creatively, in ways computers and remote-control pilots never could, and they could distinguish promising details that a drone would have missed.
She said that she would never forget the adrenaline rush of landing a multimillion-dollar jet-powered glider. Just before she touched down, another U-2 pilot followed her down the runway in a high-performance BMW or Mustang convertible and called out the plane’s descending altitude, just as the navigator in the LC-130 assisted the pilots during their descent. And in each case, base operations monitored their entire flights and supported the pilots whenever they need help.
Cholene recalled what it was like for her to fly a mission. She said, “There was a sense of peace that began fo
r me exactly one hour before takeoff. That is the time that a U-2 pilot goes on one hundred percent oxygen in order to prevent getting the bends during the mission. The closing of the double lock on the faceplate of the space helmet ushered the first stillness—the first sense that I was no longer of the world everyone else belonged to—surviving on oxygen from a tank and unable to hear anything except the sound of my own breath.
“The takeoff was more like a launch than a takeoff. Depending on the weight of the particular airplane, the U-2 can climb high enough to see the earth’s curve in less than twenty minutes.
“I always wondered what it would be like to be in space—real space—and be able to look back at earth. I think that would be the ultimate ‘perspective moment.’ But for me, the U-2 was close for the simple reason that I was completely alone.
“Alone in my thoughts with distant images of war below, I would try to visualize what it was like for the men and women on the ground who were fighting and dying. The disconnect between those images and the images of the beauty I was beholding perched in the stratosphere brought tears at times.
“It was these days of being completely disconnected from life, human life, when I learned to fully appreciate the beauty and sanctity of life.”
Because of that understanding of the sanctity of life, she was studying to become a physician. Most people told her she was ten years too old to become a doctor, but all through her life she had done things people said she couldn’t do. She had created her own life, and she knew she would create her own course. She would find people who would support her dreams and become a physician and draw on her experience to fly to remote parts of the world and help people in need. She reflected again upon flying the U-2 and how important it was to her life. She had flown ten thousand hours in the U-2 and many other aircraft, including in C-130s as a passenger in the cockpit, and she completely appreciated the way that the aircrews worked together as a team. She said that at some point, for many pilots, the aircraft becomes an extension of themselves.
Finally, I felt like I understood more and could talk with members of the 109th and ask questions that would reveal their world of polar flight.
CHAPTER 24
AGAP
It would always be Antarctica. One hundred years could not change that. Antarctica was as remote, dangerous, unpredictable, and ever changing as it had been in Amundsen’s day.
The 109th Airlift Wing, New York Air National Guard, under the command of Colonel Anthony German, knew that. They had flown eleven thousand miles from their base at Schenectady County Airport, New York, to support the U.S. science mission in Antarctica. They were the men and women fulfilling Amundsen’s vision—using flight as the way to open and explore the wild and unexplored regions of Antarctica.
The U.S. Navy continued Admiral Byrd’s legacy by establishing Operation Deep Freeze I under his command in 1955. The following year, Lieutenant Commander Gus Shinn, a U.S. Navy pilot, was given orders by Admiral George J. Dufek, the admiral commander of Operation Deep Freeze, to fly to and land at the South Pole. Admiral Dufek chose Shinn because of his reputation as a top-notch pilot and because of his experience flying in Antarctica. Shinn said that the navy wanted to prove that it was possible to fly to the South Pole and back. Their goal was to build a base at the South Pole. Shinn said that they knew that the South Pole was the coldest, windiest, and most remote place in the world, and no one knew if it was possible to live there. No one knew how the aircraft, the Que Sera Sera, an R4D, would perform. They knew the aircraft would be operating in conditions beyond its test specifications.
Shinn said things were different in 1956. The navy didn’t do any advanced planning in Antarctica, and they didn’t create any backups. There was no safety net if something went wrong. Shinn devised his own backups. He carried extra fuel aboard the aircraft, the Que Sera Sera, and he flew with Lieutenant Dick Swadener, a great navigator, and John Strider, a top flight engineer.
On October 31, 1956, as they came in for a landing at the South Pole, Shinn circled once, and he and Dick Swadener looked for a landing spot. They found one, and Shinn skillfully touched down on the rough surface of the Polar Plateau. When they stopped, the Que Sera Sera’s skis immediately froze to the ice. Shinn said that they had no idea this would happen, and while Admiral Dufek and some of the other six passengers climbed out of the plane, Shinn figured they only had one chance to get the aircraft off the 9,300-foot-high Polar Plateau. First Shinn dumped the extra fuel out of the Que Sera Sera to reduce the aircraft’s weight. Then he knew he’d have to fire the JATO (Jetfuel Assisted Take Off) rockets just to get unstuck. When the passengers were back on board the aircraft, he ignited all of the JATO bottles, four at a time, until the last three remained. And the Que Sera Sera blasted free of the ice and built enough airspeed to lift off at sixty knots.
Gus Shinn, the first man to land and take off from the South Pole, with the Que Sera Sera aircraft at the National Naval Aviation Museum, Pensacola, Florida, 2009.
The ignition of the JATO rockets in minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures instantly caused ice fog and reduced Shinn’s visibility to zero. It was a total whiteout. Shinn hadn’t anticipated anything like this to happen, and he had never had a similar experience, but he relied on his flight instruments, and he got the aircraft into the sky. The aircraft was performing in an environment that was way beyond its limits. He wasn’t sure if he would be able to get the landing gear up, but he said they were very lucky. They raised the landing gear and soon touched down at base camp. Their first flight helped to open the interior of the continent and helped the United States establish a research site at the geographic South Pole.
After the cold war ended and the military Antarctic operation was realigned under the U.S. Transportation Command, the 109th Air Wing was selected to take over the LC-130 operations as the single point manager of deep ski lift for the Arctic and Antarctic mission for the United States. Operation Deep Freeze continues to support the National Science Foundation with research and scientific exploration in Greenland and Antarctica with ski-equipped aircraft, heavy-lift C-17s, and naval support forces for ship operations.
The 109th were the pros of polar flight. They were the only military unit that specifically trained and prepared to fly in Greenland and Antarctica in LC-130s. The 109th studied the polar missions of those who had flown before, like Shinn and Swadener. This unit became so knowledgeable and skilled that they wrote the flight manual for the U.S. Air Force on polar flight.
The men and women in the 109th Air Wing knew that flying in Antarctica was different and could be more challenging than anywhere else in the world. Extreme cold played havoc on the aircrew, the maintainers—people who kept the aircraft in top shape—and the LC-130s. To function and survive in that environment, the maintainers had to have a heightened sense of awareness. One small mistake, such as touching a tool with a bare hand, could cause frostbite as quickly as touching a hot burner on a stove. The cold coupled with wind could cause hypothermia in a matter of minutes, and it could also kill.
The Antarctic cold made the aircraft metal more brittle, and that made the aircraft more apt to break. Breaking at JFK International Airport meant being delayed; breaking in Antarctica meant pulling out the survival gear.
The extreme cold could cause insulation, like aircraft door seals, not to seal completely. The cold could cause the hydraulic systems used to lift and lower the landing gear and control the plane to freeze. It made takeoff, flight, and landing very difficult and sometimes just plain dangerous. Below minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit, the aircraft fuel and hydraulic fluid could begin to turn into a gel-like substance, and that could make the aircraft unsafe to fly. Mechanics were specially trained for recovering aircraft in Antarctica, and sometimes it was so cold that the longest they could be outside was six to eight minutes, without running the risk of hypothermia or frostbite.
Surface conditions in Antarctica also affected flight. There were “land sharks”—ice runways that
could crack and crevasses and that could swallow an LC-130 and its aircrew whole. There were sastrugi and snow mounds that on takeoff or landing could chew off parts of an airplane. And there were “air sharks”—weather systems that struck so quickly they blew small granules of snow into the air and reduced visibility to a point where the aircrews felt like they were looking at the world through a bright white paper cup. Flying without any visual cues was very difficult. But that’s why the flight crews trained, prepared, and did everything they could to put as much as they could in their favor before they flew. Amundsen would have been impressed with the 109th’s research, training, and preparation, especially for their “put-in” mission.
USAF Nansen sled carrying JATO bottles to a 109th Air Wing crew LC-130 on top of the Greenland ice cap, supporting scientists at NEEM doing ice-core research.
A put-in was the first flight of the season to a remote camp or the first flight to establish a new research camp. The mission was inherently different, and far more challenging, than flying to an established camp, such as the South Pole Station.
The people in the 109th Polar Tactics Section spent at least one year doing research before they flew a put-in mission. They used satellite imagery, reconnaissance, ground-penetrating radar surveys, and satellite radar surveys to check conditions on the ground, and they made sure there weren’t any crevasses or obstructions. Whenever they could, they first flew out to the remote area in a Twin Otter airplane and put someone on the ground—a ski landing area control officer, or SLACO, who was an authority on surface conditions. The SLACO walked around the area, tested the snow with a variety of scientific instruments, and sometimes used a large mallet and hammered the snow to test the hardness of the surface. The SLACO worked to get as much information as was practically possible.
