{"id":2672,"date":"2017-12-11T16:08:13","date_gmt":"2017-12-11T21:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/doctoraviation.com\/?p=2672"},"modified":"2023-08-14T09:22:44","modified_gmt":"2023-08-14T14:22:44","slug":"tanker-trip-to-guam-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doctoraviation.com\/tanker-trip-to-guam-ii\/","title":{"rendered":"Tanker Trip to the Island of Guam II"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog continues the saga of my memorable Tanker Trip to Guam 30 years ago.\u00a0 As chronicled in the previous blog (https:\/\/doctoraviation.com\/tanker-trip-island-guam\/<\/a> ) we had been selected to be part of the Pacific Tanker Task Force.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

The crew assembled early in the morning with enough personal gear to last for 42 days.\u00a0 Our alert bags served nicely in this role.\u00a0 An alert bag carried the gear we would need should be dispatched on short notice on our nuclear deterrent mission.\u00a0 The items were well specified in our regulations and publications. They were inspected periodically so we essentially kept them packed at all times.\u00a0 I had emptied the permanently packed bag, the day before and began to stuff it full of clothes, equipment, toiletries, scuba gear and swimsuits that I would need to sustain life on a tropical island.\u00a0 This was going to be more than \u201ca three hour tour\u201d with Gilligan.<\/p>\n

I was going with a great, but relatively inexperienced crew.\u00a0 I had been checked out as a fully proficient copilot (Co) for about 15 months.\u00a0 The aircraft commander (aka AC) was Kevin.\u00a0 Kevin was a good AC, flew well and saw the situation well.\u00a0 However, he had been fully qualified as an AC for only a few months. Dorothy was the navigator (Nav).\u00a0 She was positive, upbeat and from Chicago.\u00a0 She had proceeded me at the Air Force Academy by a year and had been a Nav for fully qualified Nav for about two years.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

Loading the KC-135\u00a0<\/em>(Note Alert bags closest to viewer)<\/em><\/p>\n

What we lacked in experience, was made up for by Mac.\u00a0 Mac was a boom operator and was probably the most knowledgeable and capable Boom in the whole squadron.\u00a0 Mac had been in Vietnam in the 135.\u00a0 I used to joke with him, \u201cMac when you were flying over North Vietnam, I was in elementary school watching you on The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite.\u00a0 The Boom Operator was responsible for everything behind the cockpit cabin.\u00a0 Mac could refuel anything, load anything (the Boom Operator also served as a loadmaster) and could use the sexton to shoot celestial navigation bearings better than anybody.\u00a0 I remember Kevin\u2019s wife hugging Mac before we left and whispering, \u201cTake care of them\u201d.<\/p>\n

We departed from Fairchild with a bunch of cargo, four crewmembers and about a half a dozen Space A (Space Available passengers, “catching a hop”) heading for Hawaii.\u00a0 I remember a young couple (he was a Lieutenant) and his new bride being on board.\u00a0 He came up front to talk flying, she followed about 30 minutes later looking for her groom.\u00a0 His \u201cflying talk\u201d time had expired.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

As we headed past the coast of Washington and out over the Pacific I was not to see another large body of land for over a month.\u00a0 About 100 miles past Seattle, I dialed up the HF radio.\u00a0 We were getting out of radio and radar range of US based controllers.\u00a0 Over the US airliners generally use VHF radio frequencies, while the military uses UHF.\u00a0 Neither system transmits far enough over the water, hence the need for HF (High Frequency) radio.\u00a0 The HF radio bounces it signals up against the atmosphere.\u00a0 As a result, there is a lot of extraneous static and noise on the HF radio.\u00a0 Airlines have a dampening system that removes the static.\u00a0 The Mighty KC-135 had no such system.<\/p>\n

<\/figure>\n

To make matters worse, the controllers over the Pacific have a strong \u201cOriental\u201d accent.\u00a0 I use that term purposefully, as it seemed to be a mix of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.\u00a0 It was not easy to understand (at least for me).\u00a0 The favorite phrase by the controller was, \u201cRoger, Roger\u2026\u201d (Roger, means, \u201cI hear and understand\u201d)<\/p>\n

After a while, the whole thing could give you a headache.\u00a0 It is the pilots\u2019 duty to monitor the radios.\u00a0 Monitoring the HF generally falls to the junior pilot, the Co, in this case me.\u00a0 Kevin was kind, he took a couple half hour stints to give me a break.\u00a0 \u00a0After several hours of listening to a lot of \u201cRoger\u201d and static, we came within UHF radio range of Hawaii.\u00a0 The 50th<\/sup> State was only 100 miles away.<\/p>\n

The adventure will continue in my next blog.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog continues the saga of my memorable Tanker Trip to Guam 30 years ago.\u00a0 As chronicled in the previous blog (https:\/\/doctoraviation.com\/tanker-trip-island-guam\/ ) we had been selected to be part of the Pacific Tanker Task Force. The crew assembled early in the morning with enough personal gear to last for 42 days.\u00a0 Our alert bags […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":338,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[35],"tags":[570,569,573,571,568,574,142,572,557,94],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nTanker Trip to the Island of Guam II - Doctor Aviation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This blog continues the saga of my memorable Tanker Trip to Guam 30 years ago.\u00a0 In this segment we gather the crew and depart over the Pacific.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/doctoraviation.com\/tanker-trip-to-guam-ii\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Tanker Trip to the Island of Guam II - 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