As we are stowing our gear, word arrives that the C-5 has a serious problem with its landing gear. While waiting for it to be fixed we accomplish the "mill-around checklist." The procedure calls for several actions that can be accomplished in any order:
1. SLEEP ON AN AIRPLANE BUNK.
Note
You will enjoy it if you like to sweat.
2. EAT YOUR BOX LUNCH.
Caution
Be careful not to eat the box itself, as it all tastes like cardboard.
3. SLEEP ON PARATROOP SEATS (if bunks are taken).
4. READ WALT'S HUNTING MAGAZINES.
5. SLEEP ON THE RAMP (use your helmet bag for a pillow).
WARNING
It'll be cooler, but stay under a wing to avoid being crushed by a cargo loader.
6. REFIGURE YOUR 30/60/90 DAY FLYING TIME CUMULATIVES.
Note
Bones will argue with your results no matter how hard you figure.
7. READ THE COMIC SECTlON OF YESTERDAY'S Stars & Stripes.
8. EAT THE MYSTERY MEAT SANDWICH FROM ITEM 2.
CAUTION
You swore to leave this alone.
9. PACE TO AND FRO (preferably between the number four engine and the wing tip).
10. ARRANGE FOR A CREW BUS TO PICK UP THE LOADMASTERS (they must go to the chow hall for their third breakfast).
After about an hour we are informed that we have been reassigned to a new mission and a crew bus is being sent out. This news brings on a rash of mixed emotions. We're happy to dispense with the deadhead and the subsequent flight in a jet of doubtful airworthiness; on the other hand we know that this development will add at least two hours to our already lengthy day. We happily bid goodbye to the C-5, return to the CP for a new briefing, and are assigned a mission to Jubail, a Marine Corps helicopter base near the Kuwait border. While the engineers preflight the newly assigned aircraft, we do our flight planning and get the weather forecast.
Walt meets us as we arrive at the jet and escorts us to the tail, where Brian and two young mechanics are looking up at the vertical stabilizer towering four stories above. The jet is hemorrhaging red hydraulic fluid from the tail cone. Brian thinks that a seal in the rudder boost package is afoul. The two mechanics have investigated and tell us that it is simply excessive fluid, not to worry. But Brian and Walt will have no part of it and direct them to dig deeper. The young mechanics call in to their controller with disgusted voices and order additional help. An hour into our next mill-around checklist word arrives that the leak has finally been found, but the ETIC (estimated time in commission) is two hours plus whatever time it takes to locate and get the replacement partsor "parts plus two."
We're facing a twenty-plus-hour day ahead of us still. We have "burned" five hours already and are still two hours from takeoff at a minimum. I call the CP on the jet's radio and tell the controller to send a bus. We're going back to bed. They comply, as they must when an aircraft commander declares a flight safety crew rest but not before we accomplish a few more mill-around items.
Back at the command post we hear the news of CINCMAC's visit. General H. T. Johnson, commander-in-chief, Military Airlift Command, arrived yesterday and has proceeded to clean out the temple.
He wasn't pleased with how the base was treating us. He found that dozens of rooms had been held in reserve for academy cadets on their summer orientation while aircrews were sleeping in the gym. Heads are rolling left and right. One guy saw him in the class six store where alcoholic beverages were sold. He was enraged, believing that the crews were being scalped, and was walking around, personally marking the prices down. This news makes us feel a little better. Perhaps somebody cares.
Back we go, dragging our bags to the hotel to begin the cycle anew. Our first trip to the Persian Gulf is foiled. A whole daya day without flight hourshas been trashed. It's the first of many.
Sitting on the balcony alongside a cooler of San Miguel, we watch the Spanish sunup and judge landing patterns. Bones quotes a popular phrase, something to the effect that adversity, indeed, occurs. And Walt invokes the universally understood term in the airmen's world for bad mechanical luck.
"Boys, we're snakebit."
Four.
Downrange
Still another day has burned us with more maintenance cancellations, but now we are finally poised to go. However, we've been delayed for over an hour. The flight line was quarantined because of a hot cargo problem of some sort. Bizarre though it sounds, a missile had fallen out of its box. Someone feared it would blow up, so everything had come to a halt while some explosives technicians checked it out. It was one of the momentary episodes of chaos at TJ that interrupted an otherwise steady state of confusion.
We stow our bags and begin the familiar ritual known to all pilots as nest building. First I stow my personal kitthe one with the books and tapesin the cubbyhole behind and outboard of the seat. I have to stretch for it slightly but can reach it comfortably if I slide the seat aft a little.
Next, I get out the "pubs." From the large storage bags back in the loft, which contain all the information you need to fly almost anywhere on the globe, I fetch all of the charts and booklets needed for the trek.
Then I sort the approach books, which contain the detailed procedures for making approaches to thousands of airports. The procedures are designed so that a safe letdown can be made in bad weather, but we fly them in most places no matter what the weather.
Next I select the "supplements," which are thick booklets containing all the details of individual airfields and facilities; stuff like latitude and longitude, frequencies, runway and taxiway data, load-bearing capacity, notes telling us to do this and not to do that ad nauseam.
One of my pet peeves being the sight of a messy cockpit, I take care to arrange the material neatly and in the sequence I'll need it. Bones apparently was a dismal failure in Chart Folding 101. He has a deplorable habit of strewing unfolded charts, booklets, flight plans, and such about the cockpit with reckless abandon. He stacks them on the glare shield and casts them on the center console. He wads them up like great spitballs and crams them down into his map case. Despite my scorn, he shows little improvement.
Once, back at home station, while building my nest, I got annoyed at the way some meathead on the previous crew had stuffed the approach booklets down into the map case. Fishing my hand down into the case in search of a booklet I felt something mushy and moist. I jerked my hand back and saw that it was smeared with stale tobacco juice that had been spit into a paper cup.
That tripped my breakers. I thought of that most wicked and hideous instrument of mass destruction known to mankind, strapped back there to the aft bulkheadthe crash axeand how I would use it on the vermin who had done this. I had an idea who it was but called the command post and demanded the names of the underbreeds who had last piloted the jet.
I learned that it was the young farmer from New Hebron, the ever-grinning mustachioed Johnboy Turnage, who grew cows, chickens, and young children who tended the chickens, and who had won the highly distinguished Commander's Trophy for being the absolute undisputed Best in his USAF pilot training class. But he also had a conspirator: our unit's resident rotorhead Judd Moss, a convert from the Army, where he had flown helicopters. They were both disgusting chewers and were both qualified in either seat. The task of finding the culprit was complicated, because I knew that each would blame the other for the ignominious deed. And that's precisely what happened when I confronted them with it weeks later. They made a mockery of my attempt to chew their asses out, claiming innocence, pointing accusingly at one another, snickering, cheeks abulge. Since then I never reach into a crammed map case without carefully checking for repugnant booby traps.