35. Inside the Hanger

Sunday, April 20th

Happy Easter! Spent the day packing up all our tents and gear. Not only did we have to pack our own gear (and too much of it at that..) but we also had to pack all the gear for 6 of our pilots and crew chiefs who are stuck in Doha, Kuwait. As we packed, we endured more sand storms as if the desert was trying to send us off with one final lasting impression while we tore down our living area over the past 30 days.

Once we had all the gear picked up, we moved to our aircraft, loaded them and eventually got ready for bed. We set cots up outside our aircraft and slept under the stars. Before going to bed, we set up the laptop and watched “The Bourne Identity” outside by the aircraft before going to sleep (for hopefully the final night in this part of Iraq).

Monday, April 21st

We woke up to rain at 0500z and got ready for the crew briefing for today’s flight to Balad Southeast Airport. It is 30 miles north of Baghdad and we are all very excited at the possibility and prospects of living on a real base instead of deep in the desert.

Ate some Spam, mini sausages and Tuk crackers thanks to Matt! I also “found” some Mountain Dew and we all drank them…actually, I took them from the Medevac tent. They were all in Doha and had been gone a while (living the good life in Kuwait) so we figured they wouldn’t miss them and helped ourselves to them. We asked though. Well, we walked in the tent, said, "Can we have some Mountain Dew? If not, say NO." No one answered so we figured it was ok.

We spent the rest of the day waiting on the aircraft to return from Kuwait and while we waited, we got rained on in small spurts. They were supposed to arrive by 0800z but didn’t make it until 1145z. When they showed up, we started packing all the aircraft to make a proposed 1400z take off. SGT Almeda returned with my X-Box and 2 games: Halo and NHL Hitz. Good stuff, now we still need to find a t.v. Kenny bought 2 extra controllers and the DVD playback kit. I

t took a while to pack, but we were still able to stick close to the timeline. We took off at 1405z. CPT Cushwa and I were flying as chalk 3 out of 6. Today was the first time that anyone remembers that we had all 8 of our company aircraft up and flying in one day! The other 2 took off earlier in the day.

Knocked my shoulder out of socket while loading a table in the back of the Humvee. It got stuck out and I yelled for CPT Cushwa to hold my arm still while I rolled it back into place. He said he could feel it roll back in and was pretty sickened by the whole incident. We took off at 1405z and worked our way north.

The flight was pretty uneventful until we got over Baghdad International airport. Prior to that, we passed a field that had a few blown up S-60s (anti-aircraft gun batteries) in it. Then we crossed the Euphrates river. After passing Baghdad Internation we turned north and noticed a large explosion out the left side of the aircraft. Then, a huge mushroom cloud rose to about 1,000 feet in the air. One of the guys saw a small explosion on the ground, something shot out of the explosion then the huge mushroom cloud erupted. We were about 9 miles north of Baghdad International when this happened. We diverted a bit off our flight route and then got back on course once things settled down a bit. Not sure what it was but it certainly worried us for a few minutes as we passed over the western part of the city.

We flew over western Baghdad. The buildings appeared to be made out of clay or mud and they don’t seem to be more than a few stories tall, if that. We saw lots of people in the streets and also saw U.S. tanks in the city streets as well. We flew over many fields of destroyed equipment--we saw tanks and infantry vehicles, missiles and transport trucks. The fields were riddled with Iraqi military equipment both destroyed and not. I was very suprised to see hoards of surface to air missiles and their launch racks. Glad we knocked their military out! Overflew a cement factory or gravel yard with 4 or 5 destroyed tanks in it; flew by Taji airport with a lot of Iraqi artillery and tanks all blown up.

On the approach into Balad, we over flew some Iraqi jets that were camouflaged in wheat fields. They were sitting there, in tact, with camouflage nets draped over them. Pretty interesting. On shutdown, I was sitting in the right seat and when I pulled the engine power control lever off, I knocked my shoulder out of my socket again. I let CPT Cushwa finish the shutdown. He said he felt a pop in the controls and then heard me yelling and cussing.

We moved our stuff down into a jet hangar then hung out before going to bed. We saw tracer fire very near to us. Star clusters going up in the air. Uniform floppy hats and masks--in the middle of continuing combat! Sure beats being in the desert of Rams!

After we arrived, a few of us went exploring some of the bunkers. Found some papers to bring back and write letters home on. The airfield has not been cleared yet so they (the Command) doesn't want us venturing off into the dirt. I am ok with that. The 4th Infantry Division and the Marines rolled through this airfield a day or two ago and there is a lot of debris and rubble on the runways. All the runways are unusable (by airplanes) because there is a bomb crater every 1,000 feet. The holes are about 20 - 30 feet deep and it is amazing to see how much precision we used to destroy them. In addition to the rubble is a lot of shell casings and random fighting positions (small bunkers, trench lines etc).

Moved our gear inside the jet hangar and slept inside for the night.