“So I come back in, and about thirty seconds later, this kid comes in, and he’s proudly pronouncing, ‘We got him! We got him! Class So-and-So, we got Charlie!’ And I turned around, and I said, ‘Excuse me, but’ ”—the chief is screaming here—“ ‘last time I checked, only pararescuemen can steal Charlie, and the last time I checked, you are not yet one, and you will not fuckin’ be one unless Charlie shows up here tonight!’ And he said, ‘But, Chief—’ and I said, ‘I don’t wanna hear it. Charlie’s here, or you’re not going to graduate. I’ll fuckin’ promise you that right now.’ So we have dinner. The kids get up on-stage after dinner, the guest speaker comes out, and right when the guest speaker’s speaking, Rick Weaver comes out and he sets Charlie on the stage. And everybody, bless their hearts, maintained until the guest speaker was done. And then it was a huge brawl again. Everybody was on it. The Kirtland O-club used to have a baby grand piano—notice I said ‘used to’—that sat there in the dining room. There was a horrendous mass of humans rolling over the floor, and it ended up on that baby grand piano. There were piano keys—phew! phew!—everywhere. And I forget who actually ended up with Charlie after that whole brawl, but it was one of the wildest Charlie stories I’ve seen.”
Charlie was most recently seen with one of the PJ units flying in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
CHAPTER 4
MH-47E Chinook helicopter refueling from an HC-130P/N. Notice that the rotor blades extend well beyond the end of the refueling probe. (U.S. Special Operations Command photo)
MURPHY NEVER RESTS
FEBRUARY 12-13, 2002
Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of your sleeping bag.
But when Maj. John Cline rolled out of his on the afternoon of Tuesday, February 12, 2002, the thirty-four-year-old pilot had no idea that this day—or rather, night, since the operations he and his seven crewmembers from the 9th Special Operations Squadron support almost always take place under cover of darkness—was going to be one of those days. In spades.
The briefing held no surprises; the mission was expected to be routine. Cline’s MC-130P Combat Shadow, tail number 0213, an aircraft three years older than its pilot, with the call sign Ditka 03, and his wingman, Ditka 04, were going to take off from Shahbaz Air Base at Jacobabad, Pakistan, and fly north into the mountains of Afghanistan. There they’d refuel some MH-53 Air Force special ops helicopters on an administrative repositioning—going from a forward deployed location back to their regular operating base. After that, the two ships were going to split up and, in the parlance of the trade, haul trash. They’d go to a couple of separate forward operating locations, transfer some people, and move some equipment.
The MC-130P Combat Shadow is basically a Vietnam-era HC-130 “King” bird Air Rescue platform modified for special operations missions. Covert helicopter air refueling is their primary mission, but they also train extensively for night airdrops, blacked-out landings to austere runways, and in-flight refueling from KC-135 and KC-10 tankers. Typically neglected in the competition for advanced modifications by “shinier toys” in AFSOC’s arsenal, Combat Shadow crews take bittersweet pride in operating in the night low-level environment without the terrain-following radars and other advanced avionics common to all other night low-level platforms in AFSOC. “Half the Equipment, Twice the Skill” is their unofficial credo.
Just after sunset they took off, watching the desert flatland of northern Pakistan rise slowly into foothills where, barely an hour later, the nav watching their progress on a moving map display announced that they’d crossed the unmarked border into Afghanistan. They didn’t get very far over that border when command and control canceled the plan for Ditka 03, and directed Cline to return to base to replan for an emerging, high-priority mission.
There are many layers of control for the hundreds of aircraft flying in OEF, and headquarters higher up the food chain often exercise their authority to cancel missions that have already launched, and reassign the aircraft based on shifting operational needs. In this case, Cline didn’t need a crystal ball to guess that they’d been tapped for an air-refueling mission. What he needed to know once he got into the operation center located in the only hangar on the American side of the Pakistani air base was where Ditka 03 needed to be, how much fuel they need to get there and return, how much they’d need to pass to the helicopters, and how long they’d have to be on station. Knowing what unit they would be refueling would also be useful, since the skill level of the helicopter pilots at the tricky task seemed to vary with the different units involved.
Ditka 03 Air Force MC-130P
“Combat Shadow” refueling aircraft
Pilot—Maj. John Cline
Copilot—Capt. Jason Wright
Right Navigator—Maj. Don Tyler
Left Navigator—Maj. George Akins
Flight Engineer (FE)—M.Sgt. Jeff Doss
Radio Operator—S.Sgt. Rodney Young
Left Loadmaster—S.Sgt. Chris Langston
Right Loadmaster—T.Sgt. Jeff Pohl
Chalk 1 Army MH-47E “Chinook” Helicopter
Airborne Mission Commander—Lt. Col. John Buss
Special Operating Forces Recon Team
Chalk 2 Army MH-47E “Chinook” Helicopter
Special Operating Forces Recon Team
160th SOAR Medic
Chalk 3 Army MH-47E “Chinook” Helicopter
PJ Team Leader—S.Sgt. Chris Young
PJ—T.Sgt. Keary Miller
PJ—SrA Jason Cunningham
Combat Controller (CCT)—T.Sgt. Gabe Brown
Special Operating Forces Recon Team including SAS Medic
Ditka 04 Air Force MC-130P
“Combat Shadow” refueling aircraft
He also wanted to know the flight plan of the helos, in order to plot where they’d be coming from and when they might arrive. The veteran pilot didn’t need the information engraved in tarmac; he expected it to change, often by the minute, but the more details he had, the more proactive he could be when changes started happening.
“In general, we live out on the tail of the dog,” Cline acknowledges. “PJs and the guys that work ground are usually on the tip of the spear. When the ground plan changes, then it moves the helicopter plan, and then the helicopter plan changes and it finally works its way down to us, usually about half an hour after we’re supposed to be where we’re supposed to be. So we’re always leaning forward, trying to get as much information as we can, because we know things are going to change.”
Flying the Combat Shadow version of Lockheed’s C-130 Hercules, although among the most challenging night low-level operations in military aviation, is not a glorious mission. But Cline is acutely aware that they’re an important cog in the wheel, which means they can be a limiting factor on a mission. And that’s something he never wants to be. Which is why no one was surprised when in a rush to get airborne after three hours on the ground, command and control still had not provided the helicopters’ flight plan or the execution checklist for the mission.
The checklist assigns a brevity code to be used over the radios for every significant step of the mission. With the code, they can call their command and control and instead of saying, “Ditka 03. We’ve got our engines started,” they can say, for example, “Ditka 03 bagel.” If all the aircraft on a particular mission are using the same brevity code, then anyone with the checklist can track the progress of all the players involved. What this means when they’re airborne is that his radio operator can determine—just by hearing these different code words—whether the helos are on time or falling behind, or if things are changing, or on rare occasions, that things are going just as they were planned. The buzzword for it all is SA—situational awareness. (Given that aircrews are made up of bright men and women who quite often have a lot of free time, it’s no surprise there are stories of brevity code words being strung into lengthy sentences and transmitted to controllers at the Joint Search and Rescue Center as payback for what were perceiv
ed as repeated, annoying requests for information at critical times when pilots were on overload just executing the mission at hand.)
Cline also took off without his wingman. The second MC-130P assigned to the mission developed mechanical difficulties on startup, and without a lot of slip time available, Cline opted to get moving and let the other aircraft, which was essentially a backup refueler in the event something went wrong with Ditka 03, catch up. Later, when it became apparent that the repairs were going to take longer than expected, Cline asked control to reassign his wingman from the first mission of the day, who was now on his way back to Jbad. The reassignment approved, Cline got the other pilot on a secure frequency and briefed him about the mission details. On this particular night, the navigators and flight engineer had figured that if everything worked absolutely perfectly and went absolutely on time, one aircraft would have enough fuel to support the whole mission. Everyone knows the value of having a spare airplane on a mission; it means two extra hoses to put out in case something goes wrong. Considering that most of the 130s in the fleet are older than the pilots flying them, things regularly do.
The flight north to the rendezvous point was expected to take roughly ninety minutes for the MC-130P, which can fly high enough to go over the mountains at a speed of approximately three hundred mph. The MH-47E Chinook helicopters they were assigned to refuel can fly only half as fast, and fully loaded they’re unable to fly over the peaks, which forces them to navigate through mountain passes.
Remember those problems in high school math? “If a train leaves Pitts-burgh at nine A.M. traveling west at seventy mph, and a second train leaves Chicago traveling east at ninety mph, and we want them to meet in Cleveland . . .” That was just algebra. In Operation Enduring Freedom, planners not only had to be mathematicians, they could benefit from a doctorate in alchemy as well. They had to factor into their computations the weather at different altitudes, geographic obstacles that prevent flying in a straight line, hostile-fire potential at various points en route, ornery machinery, and the personality quirks of mission commanders.
The three MH-47Es—the troops call them “47 Echoes”—were from the Army’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) based out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Known as the Night Stalkers, the 160th SOAR(A) is an elite special-operations aviation regiment in which every pilot is not only a volunteer, but jump qualified and combat medic qualified as well. The operation, they’d learned, was to infiltrate and exfiltrate a special-ops team on what had quickly developed as a high priority, militarily and politically significant reconnaissance mission. Were they assigned to kill a leader of one of the many rival factions in the area? Was it a snatch and grab mission? The participants aren’t saying anything more than it was a big enough deal to cause other missions to be put on hold.
The team was made up of non-American, English-speaking special forces who, as one source put it, were “in the service of Her Majesty.” British Special Air Service commandos? Australian SAS? Both were in country at the time as part of the coalition forces fighting with the United States in Operation Enduring Freedom. While their nationality remains unknown, what is very definite is that not one of them bore even a passing resemblance to John Wayne in The Green Berets. These special operators were wearing civilian clothing augmented with native scarves, and had apparently gone months without encountering a barber or a razor. Their intent was to blend in with the locals, and there was every reason to believe they were succeeding, since it required a very close examination to pick out the Afghan national accompanying them as a translator.
What they weren’t succeeding at was getting to the rendezvous point on time. For reasons that were never made clear to Cline, the helos initially requested a delay of thirty minutes, then twice more pushed back the meeting time. Ultimately, Ditka 03 would have to loiter for an hour and forty-five minutes awaiting their arrival. Part of the delay was apparently caused by a decision to rearrange the mixture of troops assigned to each helicopter. When it all settled out, the helo designated Chalk 1 was carrying the airborne mission commander (AMC), Army Lt. Col. John Buss, riding in the cockpit seat behind the pilots, as well as a contingent of special operators and that Afghan interpreter. Chalk 2 carried special operators, while Chalk 3 was designated the CSAR bird, carrying a special tactics team consisting of three PJs and a combat controller, in addition to several more SAS types.
On combat missions, these helicopters fly with windows and ramp open to accommodate the machine guns, which means that their interiors are freezing cold. They’re also flying blacked out, so it’s dark inside. Perfect conditions for PJ team leader Chris Young to grab a nap, especially with several hours of flying till they reached their objective. After all, adapting to one’s environment is something the Air Force teaches in the PJ pipeline. And if the thirty-one-year-old staff sergeant didn’t learn it from the Air Force, he learned it in the Marine Corps Reserve, where he spent more than five years while attending and after being graduated from Texas A&M.
It was participating in several joint missions with Air Force PJs that showed him the error of his ways, and caused him to ask what he describes as a “lifestyle” question: “Do I want my wife living on Camp Pendleton,” the desolate Marine Corps base north of San Diego, “or on an Air Force base?” So he made the switch to the USAF, and applied to join the PJs.
In July 1997 he completed the pipeline, donned the elite maroon beret, and moved to Moody AFB, where life was fairly routine until the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Then, it was only a matter of time before he knew that all the training was going to be put to use. In January, Chris and his wife, Rhonda, along with Senior Airman Jason Cunningham, twenty-six years old and barely half a year out of the PJ pipeline, and his wife, Theresa, and the other six PJs on the deployment got the “get your affairs in order” lecture from Major Savino. Then they got special attention from Chief M.Sgt. Donald Shelton, the unit’s highest-ranking NCO and superintendent of all seventy or so assigned pararescuemen, a thirty-year veteran who parachuted in to help seize an airfield during the invasion of Panama. With Shelton’s retirement imminent, he wasn’t being deployed to OEF with his men, and it was tough to see them off. So tough that he didn’t want to say good-bye at the Valdosta base, so he rode with them on the plane up to Baltimore, where he put them aboard the Rotator.
The end of the line for Young and Cunningham proved to be K-2, a former Soviet air base at Karshi-Khanabad, Uzbekistan, where a finger of the former Soviet Republic pushes into northern Afghanistan, several hundred miles northwest of Kabul, across the Hindu Kush mountain range. In addition to being covered with fine-textured dust that turns to ankle-deep, reddish brown soup following the slightest bit of precipitation, K-2 boasts low-level radiation where the former occupants are said to have buried the remnants of one or more nuclear reactors. Maps posted in the dining hall seem to indicate that the radiation is confined to one quadrant, an area thoughtfully placed off-limits to joggers. Since Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally visited K-2 to negotiate American rights to use what is now an Uzbek air base for OEF, presumably those who serve there will not glow in the dark should they snap a leg bone like a chemlight.
Upon arrival, Young was paired with a team leader from the 720th Special Tactics Squadron out of Hurlburt Field. For the first couple of weeks he was in country, he served as assistant team leader, learning from the guy he was going to replace. They’d rotate between special-tactics assignments out of Bagram, where they’d be embedded with Army Rangers, Green Berets, or Navy SEALs as part of a QRF—Quick Reaction Force—and spending time back at Karshi-Khanabad manning the Rescue Coordination Center. Finally, the day came when he got what he describes as his “hominus dominus,” the official blessing that he was good to go as a team leader. He didn’t have to wait long for his first combat mission.
Only hours later, the QRF was given a classified mission flying aboard an MH-47E. Those familiar with the Vietnam War may confuse this sp
ecial-ops version of the Chinook with the aircraft often seen flying over the jungle, a 105mm Howitzer dangling from the cargo hook beneath it, from whence came its too easy yet semiaffectionate nickname, the Shithook. While the exterior profile is much the same, a look under the hood will lead one to the immediate conclusion that this isn’t your father’s helicopter.
In addition to its aerial refueling capability, which didn’t exist in Vietnam, this MH-47E has forward-looking infrared (FLIR) and terrain following /terrain avoidance radar which permits nap-of-the-earth and low-level flight operations in conditions of extremely poor visibility and adverse weather. The twin engines have been upgraded to produce four-thousand-shaft horsepower each, and the advanced avionics give the aircraft the capability of global communications.
One of the most exceptional features of the MH-47E is the construction of its fuel tanks, both internal and the external sponson tanks. They have a honeycomb shell construction and a vapor inerting system that almost eliminates the possibility of fires or explosions when struck by large, nonexploding projectiles. Testing also showed that the self-sealing, crashproof tanks could survive direct hits from .50-caliber machine-gun bullets. All in all, it’s an aircraft the Army designed for precisely the sorts of special-ops missions it’s carrying out in Operation Enduring Freedom.
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