Air Force Workhorse Is No Showhorse

Aero-Views OPINION By Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien

Have you ever been off-roading? Is it a blast or what? But what about in an airplane? Gotta admit I came close last week when I had a blowout on landing, but by and large, I'm a pavement kinda guy.

The FBO where I rent planes is picky about where folks land them (especially given, er, proven proclivities for breaking the things). "No to Hampton, no to Basin Harbor. No to anyplace that isn't paved, except Katama. That's as smooth as they get, like a golf course -- even you can land there," the owner says, ticking off a variety of interesting -- but turf -- destinations, and saying a big nyet to all, except tony Katama, where I'm in danger of being mistaken for the yard boy. For a minute, I thought he was channeling Nikita Krushchev, but he didn't take his shoe off and bang it on the FBO counter. Ah well. His planes, his rules; it's only fair.

Even more, you would expect the US Air Force doesn't go off-roading. They got rid of all their STOL hardware, and smaller cargo aircraft like C-7s and C-123s that could handle a grass strip with aplomb, decades ago. They took their freewheeling C-130 crews and did to them with AFIs and regulations what the loadmasters do to the crew's golf clubs with one of those ratcheting cargo-straps. Heck, they even view their helicopter pilots with the same kind of tolerant condescension an admiral reserves for his steward.

When David Jones was Chief of Staff of the Air Force, he was upset about the high cost of the C-5A Galaxy. "Most of the cost of that was due to two requirements imposed by the Army," he used to say: Army planners insisted that the plane drop paratroops and be able to land on unprepared fields. For a while, Air Force crews maintained proficiency in both, but the General felt that this was a terrible waste. "I need those planes for strategic airlift," Jones would say. "I'm not dropping paratroops with them, and if one of my pilots lands one anywhere but a paved airport I'll have his wings!" When more C-5s were built in the eighties, after Jones retired, they still landed on pavement.

No word on how many sets of wings the general collected before his career ended. Probably none; C-5 pilots are good pilots, but military service is a poor fit for mutineers.

In Afghanistan, the Air Mobility Command didn't even like landing tactical airlift C-130s on runways that had damage (and Air Combat Command had taken great delight in cratering every runway in the country). Until the craters were filled to Air Force standards, the 130s wouldn't land, and forget about anything larger than that. So one tends to think of strategic airlifters as pavement-pounding, airport-bound behemoths.

Until one sees the C-17 Globemaster II do its thing. These pictures were taken this month at Ft. Irwin in the California desert and show, well, the C-17 doing its thing. (If you were at Oshkosh a few years ago, you saw another C-17 stunt, as it backed down the runway to takeoff position with its thrust reversers). The plane, from the 452nd Air Mobility Wing at March Air Reserve Base in California, was demonstrating its suitability for landing on primitive strips. on the rough dirt airstrip at Bicycle Lake in the outback of Irwin.

The pictures show it coming to a stop under heavy braking and reverse thrust (note flaps are up), and then turning around at the runway's end (it should be easy to tell which picture's which). Both pictures were taken by Air Force Tsgt. Joe Zuccaro. You can't see the pilots, but you just know they're grinning.

This isn't a one-off demonstration, like the few C-5 unimproved-strip landings, early in its long career, were. C-17 crews maintain proficiency in landing on unimproved runways. For instance, at Fort Bragg near Pope AFB, there's a pretty crude airstrip on Holland Drop Zone. C-17s are regular visitors to a strip that was for many years frequented mostly by Twin Otters, C-47s, and other contract lift working for special operations forces.

Yet, the C-17 cleans up enough that the spit-and-polish Air Force likes it, too. The formation picture was shot over Charleston Harbor by Tsgt. Richard Kaminsky last year and shows C-17s from two airlift wings based at nearby Shaw AFB. The pilots in the formation are too busy to be grinning... they probably wish they were kicking up a roostertail in the sand, like the crew from March.

The Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon's major planning document, noted this year that the C-17 was coming to the end of its production run... and directed that the tooling not be scrapped, but instead be carefully stored. That way, the production line could be set up again later (as happened with the C-5).

You never know, after all, when some future Air Force general will be a fan of off-roading.

FMI: www.af.mil