Combat Flying, part II

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God. 

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr

I'm fairly certain that Magee wasn't referring to flying over Iraq when he wrote this. It would've sounded quite different. How many words can you rhyme with dust? Before I even start talking about the flying, a brief history of the McDozen is necessary to understand what the jets are like here in Iraq *Note: This is not the expressed view of the United States Air Force. This is the expressed view of Will Dowd and all thoughts and historical data herein contained are possibly inaccurate, wrong, and overall merely hearsay passed down from the slightly disgruntled pilots of this program.* OK now that THAT is out of the way, here's how the program started: 

Around 2007ish, Chairman Gates got pissed that the AF wasn't doing enough for the tactical ISR realm. A lot of officers got yelled at and it fell to one group to "fix" the hole in our air assets and come up with a manned ISR asset that would rectify the situation. I think a bunch of colonels probably sat down with a couple of bar napkins and said "How do we stop getting yelled at about this?!?" And thus developed the MC-12 Project Liberty Program.

The basic idea they came up with (a remarkably good idea I must say) was get a King Air Beechcraft 350 and gut it, put in a whole bunch of intel, recon and surveillance tools that the Air Force could use to support ground forces as an airborne tactical MANNED ISR asset. So obviously, the first step was to talk to Beechcraft and get some jets to do this. I feel like the conversation went like this:

Air Force Guy (after explaining their idea): OK, so that's our plan, do you think y'all can help?

Beechcraft Guy: Yeah! That sounds awesome let's get right to it. How many jets do y'all want?

AFG: We're gonna need like (insert number here) total.

BG (seeing a large bonus looming in his immediate future): AWESOME! We can definitely do that. I'll start putting the paperwork together.

AFG: Great, this is such a relief. When can we get the first jet?

BG: Umm, lemme see. OK, it looks like the first aircraft will be delivered to you in July of 2010 (or some arbitrary date really far away).

AFG (panicking): WHAT!?!?! No no no, I think you misunderstood me, we need these jets NOW for retrofitting. Like yesterday quick.
BG: Hahaha, yeah right, that's not really how this works. You give me an order, we build the airplanes, we ship them to you, then you can do whatever you want with them. Did you think we had a bunch just sitting around?

AFG (obviously aghast that his plan is falling through): Well, no...or maybe... But regardless, we need some jets right away. What can we do?!?!

BG: Well, there is one thing you can do, but... you might not like this...

AFG: Tell me, PLEASE. Anything will work for now.

BG: Anything?

As a result of this exchange the Air Force ended up buying a number of Beechcraft off of the general market...Ebay for all intents and purposes. Those first jets that they bought from the public (doctors, lawyers, oil companies, etc) became the initial MC-12 fleet. Some of those jets are still here in Balad. It is into this world I now take you.

So since the jets here were bought off of the general market, there are some very small differences between the tails that we have here. Some of them are inconsequential and meaningless, but some of the differences make going from one jet to another kind of like time traveling. A few are brand new with ridiculous avionics, then you step into another, and beyond looking the same on the outside, the cockpit is much older with completely different avionics. My very first combat sortie was in one of these jets, that I've NEVER SET FOOT IN BEFORE. So we're getting ready to roll to the airplane, and the acting mission commander asks me, "So did you get to fly one of these birds in training?" My response was full of confidence: "Ummm...no. I've seen pictures though, I'm sure I'm good to go." We get out to the jet, I get settled into the seat and immediately say to myself, "Where the HELL IS EVERYTHING!?!?" Every switch seemed to be in a completely different location. Ground ops for a combat mission is fast paced and the last thing you want is a pilot holding everything up for the back enders. This was my greatest fear come to fruition. I started sweating profusely (more than I already was due to the oppressive heat) and tried my damnedest to find everything. To my own credit, I did get most of the checks accomplished in time mainly through sheer force of will, but there were a lot of these questions: "Where is this switch exactly? OK, and what does it do--you know what, nevermind...I'll ask later." We finally get the engines spinning and are taxiing out for takeoff and the weather is HORRIBLE. I'm talking about howling winds and blowing dust to the point of obscuration. The tower couldn't even see us when we made it to our runway. It was, in short, a beautiful Iraq day. I'm thinking to myself, "Great, different airplane, horrible weather, first flight in a combat zone. If I mess this up, my balls are gonna get punted all the way back to the states." But I remembered I am Will Dowd, and I imbued myself with my overwhelming self-confidence that has gotten me this far, and pressed on. We take off, and no kidding were in this sand storm immediately and stayed in it until we finally leveled off. Thank God the jets all fly the same way or else I would've really had my hands full. 

We make it about halfway to where we're supposed to work, and we get a call from base saying to pack it up and turn around for a weather recall. Apparently the dust storm was kicking up even harder and visibility was going to drop down to only a quarter of a mile for a couple of hours. For those non pilot types reading, that's REALLY BAD. We head back and try to loiter over the base for a little so some sort of training can take place, but another jet calls that the visibility is dropping faster than anticipated, so we needed to land NOW. We got vectors around for an approach which we shot down to the bare minimums with some howling crosswinds and luckily got the airplane on the ground before the sandstorm really rolled in. All in all it wasn't a real big issue, it was just a touch too hairy for my very first sortie in Iraq. It counts though right? I guess it has too.

So while everyone has visions of grandeur for their first combat sortie --another particularly special pilot actually told us that he was going to practically save the world from Al Qaeda, nuclear armed conflict, global warming AND zombies on his first mission. We laughed in his face and told him to go peel labels off of Gatorade bottles -- I was just happy that I didn't mess up my first ride in a different jet, and that I then got it back on the ground safely. While I didn't think that I was going to solve world hunger while flying (my delusions of grandeur only go so far), I was at least hoping to experience some of the day to day ops that we execute. But I'll take a safe recovery any day and call it good enough for now. Take care, more updates to follow.

-Wellen