When needs arise in Central Asia, C-17 crews deliver

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Lara Gale
  • 376th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs
The C-17 Globemaster III crewmembers start their day around noon. It will end in about 18 hours, around 5 or 6 tomorrow morning.

Today they will fly to Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, and back twice, taking one group of passengers a step closer to home and another to the first day of their year long deployment supporting Operation Enduring Freedom and delivering about 25 pallets of cargo.

Preflight procedures have to be finished quickly -- another C-17 is idling on the taxiway, waiting to take this jet’s parking spot. Kyrgyzstan’s International Airport has a crowded ramp these days, said Maj. T.J. O’Connell, commander of the 817th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron’s detachment here.

Manas Air Base processed tens of thousands of Airmen, Soldiers and Marines in February, breaking base records for C-17 cargo and passenger movements, and is forecasted to break them again in March.

A safe place for civilian jets to land, the base is “the hub of OEF,” where all servicemembers traveling into Afghanistan board a military aircraft and switch to combat mode for the final leg of their journey.

Preparing for safe flight
Capt. Lauren Palagi walks around her 174-foot jet, straining to see anything out of place on the engines and wings 20 feet above her before crawling into the wheel wells to inspect the landing gear. The jet has a cobweb in one of the engines, which she points out to a crew chief just because it’s so unlikely. Some spider worked quickly, he tells her; this jet was in the air just a few hours ago.

She also notices flares have been discharged recently.

“That means the last crew got shot at,” she said, pointing at the empty squares in the flare grid. That’s not remarkable enough to point out to a crew chief. There are plenty left to take care of this mission should they be needed.

On the flight deck, aircraft commander Capt. Sang Kim and Captain Palagi’s counterpart, 1st Lt. Scott Zicarelli, are checking the flight controls. A cluster of crew chiefs pops in and out, carrying the log book of this particular jet’s quirks and making quick fixes of anything the pilots find out of the ordinary.

In back, Airmen 1st Class Jesse Doyle and Suzanne Van Elk are securing cargo.

“I wonder what they’re going to do with this menthanol,” Airman Doyle said, checking his clipboard and peering through plastic at the red hazardous-material stickers on one of the pallets.

Loadmasters shoulder a heavy responsibility -- no pun intended, he said.

“You have to pay a lot of attention to detail. Some little mistake can cause a huge problem,” he said.

If a loadmaster were to forget to lock a pallet in place, it could go flying into other cargo or the back of the jet itself. If he left a pallet on the ground for some reason, the consequently unbalanced plane could take off and nosedive right into the runway.

“It’s a lot of responsibility,” Airman Doyle said.

Up front, Airman Van Elk winches a belt around five identical duffels -- the crew’s personal bags. “Bag drag” upon arrival at the jet takes the entire crew several trips to the vehicle hauling multiple bags.

The only thing they leave in their rooms when they fly is linen, Airman Van Elk said. They just never know -- something might keep them in Bagram AB overnight, or an emergency medical evacuation could divert them to Germany.

Aircrews are trained to expect the unexpected and be prepared for the worst-case scenario, whether it’s needing a toothbrush and pajamas for an unexpected overnight stay, or needing willpower to withstand beatings and sleep deprivation after being captured by enemy forces, Lieutenant Zicarelli said.

Enjoying the ride
Back on the flight deck, the pilots have finished loading the flight plan into the jet’s computer. After a radio exchange with the tower, the jet is hurtling down the runway, cleared for takeoff.

Kyrgyzstan’s fields quickly become a patchwork. The conversation across the headsets between the pilots and the tower comes in clipped, scripted phrases, and a steady stream of muffled Russian dialogue sounds from another channel in the background.

As the mountains shrink to a mass of snow-covered canyons and peaks below, coordination with the tower is wrapped up and the other channel quiets.

Captain Palagi looks out the window, then at the crewmembers on the flight deck.

“Okay, guys, let’s look for Osama.”

“What’s he going to look like out here?” someone says.

“Cold,” another voice pipes in.

For the next hour and a half, the headset comes alive periodically with control tower contact, and equally often with wry exchanges among crewmembers. All in their 20s, the five banter about politics and future plans. The atmosphere on the jet is one of cohesive camaraderie.

“This is our life,” Airman Van Elk said with a shrug. “We have to be able to have fun with each other.”

Reasons to serve
In the year since arriving at McChord Air Force Base, Wash., from technical-training school, she and Airman Doyle have been deployed for about 250 days. Because they can get much of their training done while deployed, they are tasked more than the pilots, who on this mission average about 200 days deployed in the last year.

“The ops tempo keeps us running,” said Lieutenant Zicarelli, who is taking two weeks off after this deployment to get married.

They have been deploying 14 days at a time and returning home for four to 12 days before getting sent out again. A new schedule is starting in March that will keep them overseas for three weeks and hopefully home for longer between deployments.

It just makes the logistics of keeping their lives in order a little more complicated, Airman Van Elk said. She studies her world civilizations textbook for an online college class before settling down with a copy of Runner’s Magazine. Airman Doyle pulls out a fat book after they finish logging training hours and finalizing paperwork for the flight. They take advantage of downtime en route; when the jet lands they’ll be busy again for a couple of hours.

It’s not an easy life. But none of the five crewmembers are sorry they chose it. Airman Van Elk wanted to see the world before college.

“I joined because of patriotism,” Airman Doyle said. After getting some college under his belt, he felt the tug of Sept. 11.

The plane touches down in Afghanistan earlier than expected, and the crew congratulates themselves. The sun sinks as the loadmasters exchange cargo for passengers and the pilots bring out helmets fitted with night-vision goggles. A firefight breaks out on the mountainside not far away. They watch from the flight deck in silence for a moment. “We’ll take off to the left,” one notes.

Within a few hours they’re headed for Kyrgyzstan.

“Halfway done, guys,” Captain Palagi says as the mountains recede again.

Prepared as they are for the worst, they all hope for the best -- a second leg as uneventful as the first. Whatever happens, it’s just another long day in the life of a C-17 crew.