Cryogenics course keeps pilots, planes on target

  • Published
  • By Robert Fox
  • 82nd Training Wing Public Affairs
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AFPN) --  Cryogenics sounds like some future way of recreating life or a search for a cure of an unknown plague. It also sounds like something from "Star Trek" episodes or possibly even "Star Wars."

In the Air Force, it means keeping pilots and aircrews alive when they're flying above the 10,000-foot level.

Cryogenic Maintenance is a 10-day course designed to prepare Airmen to store, issue and maintain cryogenic containers. The current class has 10 students and it graduates an average of 140 students annually.

"The main thing I teach my students is without us, pilots can't fly," said Staff Sgt. Fred Whitted, an advanced cryogenics instructor with the 366th Training Squadron. "After 10,000 feet, if they decompress, they need oxygen."

Airmen in the cryogenics career field use liquid oxygen, or LOX, as the source for the element that allows pilots to continue the Air Force mission.

Sergeant Whitted said the course is important because, in a deployed situation, the Airmen in charge of issuing LOX containers are also the only ones available to make repairs.

"If they don't fix them, then the mission suffers," he said. "If we don't give them a quality product, a fatality can happen. That's our job as cryo maintenance people, to make sure the quality of the product is high."

A lot of information is covered in the 10-day course.

It starts with safety and moves quickly through technical orders, how to issue liquid oxygen, quality control and components and maintenance of the different parts of the system.

The second week of the course is spent learning to operate vacuum pumps and purge units, and how to troubleshoot them.

The safety aspect of the course is essential because of the nature of cryogenics. Liquid oxygen, aside from being minus 297 degrees Fahrenheit, is sensitive.

"LOX is very, very shock sensitive, meaning it does not take much to make it go boom," Sergeant Whitted said.

Liquid nitrogen is also dangerously cold, minus 321 degrees Fahrenheit, and can cause asphyxiation in a closed environment.

Associated dangers aside, some find the field rewarding.

Senior Airman Ronald Ritter said he wanted to be in cryogenics when he enlisted in the Air Force. He said he looks forward to going back to Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, and teaching others the job the skills he has learned here.

Anderson AFB has a 5-ton cryogenic production plant that runs a minimum of 16 hours a day. Airman Ritter said he hopes to apply the things he has learned here at the pacific island's plant.

"It is basically a huge gas station at a strategic point in the South Pacific," he said.

Staff Sgt. Bradley Childs, from the Delaware Air National Guard, was selected to attend this course. He said it will make him a more well-rounded Airman.

"I volunteer for as many deployments as possible. (After this course) I can work in cryo. Without it, I would be more one dimensional," he said.

Regardless of who the Airmen are or where they are is stationed, there is one thing every cryo Airman knows. The Air Force, or its aircraft, can't leave home without them.