When the Wolf Rises

The crew chief met us as we reached the bottom steps of the bus with the aircraft records. We accepted the book (called the 781) and opened it to the carried-over write-ups from the previous flight. It had not flown since well before our stand down so it had most likely cleared most of the small “discrepancy” items as crew chiefs never let time go by without scrubbing their aircraft’s delayed discrepancies. As we were going over the current and delayed discrepancies we saw little that would require even a question of the crew chief. We saw that there were no “red crosses” which meant that the problem had to be fixed prior to the flight, but that was expected. We also noted that there were very few red diagonals or red dashes, both of which you could fly with. This proud sergeant had not neglected his bird in its down time. It was clean and ready to fly and I would wager he had worked on it despite the time constraints that these maintenance guys faced on a daily basis. He most likely worked on his aircraft most of the night and into the morning and there is no doubt he had helped some other crew chief with yesterday’s launch. He looked refreshed and was pleased by the comment that the aircraft “looked good” and I handed him back his forms for a needed signature. He remarked then that we hadn’t received our bomb load yet, but the load team was on the way. I quickly scanned my watch and had some real doubt that we could make our start engines time. I was a bit miffed that the bombs hadn’t been loaded and I did voice my concern to the Munitions Maintenance Squadron bread truck hovering near our aircraft. There is no doubt that the loading crews had their hands full today, but time was short. The “many striped” sergeant indicated a no sweat attitude, so I moved away in an attempt to make the best of it. I didn’t want to vent, as I knew these guys had been working non-stop for the last three days. We could get the pre-flight out of the way up to the start engines checklist and hope for the best. Everything went smoothly on the preflight inspection and so we crawled out of the aircraft after the checklist was completed. It was hot and humid and even with the forced cool air into the crew compartment I was drenched with sweat. It was a good time to observe some reflection time outside the aircraft. The cockpit was very confining today, as it usually was, but today it seemed to be sucking my breath away. I was experiencing “sweaty palm” time as my gloves seemed to be sliding from my fingers. The bomb loading crew arrived and swung into action. I had watched many a bomb loading, often nuke loading for alert sorties, where everything is done by the book and with a chief master sergeant supervising the action. I had also witnessed a lot of loading here on Guam for our Arc Light and Bulletshot sorties. They were usually done with a methodical and sure air and pace that lets you know they know what they are doing. But this was a scene I had never witnessed before. The loading crew was aware of the time and wasted no time in raising the doors away from the fuselage to allow the dolly with 27 bombs to be fit underneath. I didn’t see a checklist, nor did I see someone watching to insure it was done properly. The tug driver maneuvered the dolly into position and seemed to have no problem at all with clearing obstacles like engine nacelles and landing gear struts by the most narrow of margins. The dolly was then placed in a position to hang the load. They hydraulically raised the entire load into position and were locking them in place on the rack in the bomb bay before you could blink. I know the time they say it takes to put a load of 750# bombs in a B-52, just suffice it to say they beat that time by a very wide margin. I had enjoyed the action and the cavalier, but professional work of this shirtless and tanned team. It sort of relaxed me for the moment. As they swung the bomb doors back into their normal position, the crew chief was signing their load sheet and the Radar was checking the bomb release latches for the pins that were inserted to safe them for the present time. Now it was time to get our act together and crawl aboard. I found it hard to breathe in the now narrow crew space. I pushed open the side window of the cockpit and felt the hot air rush through. The thought went through my mind that this could be the very last time I would suck in the humid island air, or for that matter any air not circulated through the aircraft air conditioning system. It was a chilling thought!