Mark Conley
Active member
Tactical Air Command…TAC for short. Some of the best stories I know involve this organization, which I belonged to for ten years prior to its demise during the great US Air Force reorganization of 1992.
And one of them is on the way….
TAC was known for its long, drawn out exercises involving your trusty, packed personal bag and mobility folder. And it was always the same: shuffle through the mobility line, get your bag examined randomly by the inspector, catch up on a few shots, and get your mobility bag. Then a long four hour wait and then going out to your aircraft which would taxi to the start line…and return to the mobility section to discharge its passengers. Always a drill. Not once in the two year stretch at the base had we ever done any thing but drill. Exercise after exercise…and it always stopped just short of the runway, with the C-130 turning back to the mobility processing center.
We had this young staff sergeant on our exercise group that after a while, just stopped bring his fully packed personal bag, and just brought a duffle bag stuffed with a pillow, his thick field jacket, and a six pack of beer, cleverly disguised as a six pack of coke. He would drink the beers during the four hour wait for the aircraft, and use the pillow for naps in the building and on the aircraft during the wait. He did this for about four exercise drills that I knew of.
Then, one Sunday morning, there came another exercise. We went through the line. We waited. He drank his beer, and took his nap. We shuffled out to the C-130. He fell asleep as usual in his favorite side seat. We taxied to the end of the runway…and then we took off.
In between the time the exercise was called and our getting on the aircraft…some TAC commander ordered a flight of fighter aircraft to Chad to help it out because of a Libyan attack. And since a flight needed so many ground support personnel to assist it on the ground, it would necessitate a recall for the medical, maintenance, and logistical people right away. And after finding out at our base had just such a group ready for the aircraft…they sent us to support that outing.
Our sergeant, strangely enough, woke up in the air to discover he was on his way to Chad with a mobility folder, a pillow, an empty six pack of beer, a field jacket, and the clothes on his back. Oh he had his mobility bag with its sleeping bag and all, but we were expected to be in Chad for about a month…and we figured out he was going to get gamey pretty quickly.
You just couldn’t keep something like that hidden for long; too many of us were laughing our tail ends off for the detachment commander not to notice it. Of course, when the commander found out about it, he ripped the sergeant a new one. What was funnier was how he got his clothes. The commander actually sent a radio message, from the plane, to this man’s commander asking for assistance. They sent his First Sergeant to his house, got his real bag, ran it out to the airfield, and got a deploying F-15 pilot to put in a small storage compartment in his aircraft to bring it to him. How’s that for service?
Strangely enough, He did wash a lot of dishes on that deployment. For a while, we nicknamed him Admiral, because he was in charge of all the vessels. And after the deployment was over, he definitely didn’t bring a pillow or a six pack to the lines any more during exercises.
:type:
And one of them is on the way….
TAC was known for its long, drawn out exercises involving your trusty, packed personal bag and mobility folder. And it was always the same: shuffle through the mobility line, get your bag examined randomly by the inspector, catch up on a few shots, and get your mobility bag. Then a long four hour wait and then going out to your aircraft which would taxi to the start line…and return to the mobility section to discharge its passengers. Always a drill. Not once in the two year stretch at the base had we ever done any thing but drill. Exercise after exercise…and it always stopped just short of the runway, with the C-130 turning back to the mobility processing center.
We had this young staff sergeant on our exercise group that after a while, just stopped bring his fully packed personal bag, and just brought a duffle bag stuffed with a pillow, his thick field jacket, and a six pack of beer, cleverly disguised as a six pack of coke. He would drink the beers during the four hour wait for the aircraft, and use the pillow for naps in the building and on the aircraft during the wait. He did this for about four exercise drills that I knew of.
Then, one Sunday morning, there came another exercise. We went through the line. We waited. He drank his beer, and took his nap. We shuffled out to the C-130. He fell asleep as usual in his favorite side seat. We taxied to the end of the runway…and then we took off.
In between the time the exercise was called and our getting on the aircraft…some TAC commander ordered a flight of fighter aircraft to Chad to help it out because of a Libyan attack. And since a flight needed so many ground support personnel to assist it on the ground, it would necessitate a recall for the medical, maintenance, and logistical people right away. And after finding out at our base had just such a group ready for the aircraft…they sent us to support that outing.
Our sergeant, strangely enough, woke up in the air to discover he was on his way to Chad with a mobility folder, a pillow, an empty six pack of beer, a field jacket, and the clothes on his back. Oh he had his mobility bag with its sleeping bag and all, but we were expected to be in Chad for about a month…and we figured out he was going to get gamey pretty quickly.
You just couldn’t keep something like that hidden for long; too many of us were laughing our tail ends off for the detachment commander not to notice it. Of course, when the commander found out about it, he ripped the sergeant a new one. What was funnier was how he got his clothes. The commander actually sent a radio message, from the plane, to this man’s commander asking for assistance. They sent his First Sergeant to his house, got his real bag, ran it out to the airfield, and got a deploying F-15 pilot to put in a small storage compartment in his aircraft to bring it to him. How’s that for service?
Strangely enough, He did wash a lot of dishes on that deployment. For a while, we nicknamed him Admiral, because he was in charge of all the vessels. And after the deployment was over, he definitely didn’t bring a pillow or a six pack to the lines any more during exercises.
:type:
