2003: 711th SOS aircrew honored for heroic mission

  • Published
  • By Sandra Henry, Midnight Express - August 2003
  • 919th Special Operations Wing
DUKE FIELD, Fla. --  (Editor's Note: This story is republished as a historic tribute to the 919th Special Operations Wing's Midnight Express newspaper, which goes out of print beginning this month.)

There it sat miserably buried to its belly in the thick Afghan mud on the night of March 4, 2002, after landing "lights out" on what was expected to have been hard-packed dirt. The crew successfully completed their mission that night, bringing badly needed medical support closer to the battlefield, but they were unable to fly out the $80 million aircraft because of the mud. The crew was removed by helicopter and a security contingent brought in to protect the MC-130E Combat Talon I until a team could be brought in to attempt to recover it. If it couldn't be recovered quickly, it would most likely have to be destroyed to keep it from falling into enemy hands. 

Recovery of the aircraft the next day earned a nine-man aircrew from the 711th Special Operations Squadron here one of the Air Force Reserve's highest honors, the Maj. Gen. Thomas E. Marchbanks Jr. Memorial Award. The Reserve Officers Association, which represents officers of the U.S. uniformed services, bestows this award upon the Reserve's most distinguished flight crew each year. 

A 711th SOS crew won the award last year. This year's chosen crew shared the honor at a June 27 ceremony in New Orleans, La., with the 315th Airlift Wing, a C-17 unit at Charleston, S.C. 

Col. George F. Williams, now the 919th SOW vice commander, was the MC-130E mission commander in the deployment area at the time of the mission that earned the crew the award. 

"I asked Major Nicholson and his crew, along with Senior Master Sergeant Phil Bahm and his maintenance recovery team, to perform a nearly impossible task. We only had a small window of opportunity of just a few hours to affect the aircraft recovery," he said.
Maj. Joseph K. Nicholson, aircraft commander and 711th SOS pilot section supervisor, and Bahm, 919th Maintenance Squadron, began putting a plan together immediately. The plan included bringing equipment to try to jack the airplane out of the hole and shore it up, said Nicholson. 

The recovery team consisted of the aircrew, six maintenance people and additional security forces to assist those already at the site. They were flown from Bagram, Afghanistan, to the muddy airstrip by a British CH-47 heavy transport helicopter.
The Brits said they would return to get the team if they couldn't fly the aircraft out, but only if before last light, said Nicholson. 

The team, with very few hours of daylight to complete the mission, was briefed that several hundred enemy troops were in the vicinity, Nicholson said. As the digging and excavation work progressed, mortar rounds started coming in and getting closer to the field. 

"As the rounds kept getting closer, I was feeling like I was up against an enemy imposed time line. We had to remove the plane or leave before the mortars got any closer," he said. 

Master Sgt. Bobby Barton, 711th SOS loadmaster, said the mortar fire was not what he was concerned about at the time. "I was more concerned with getting the plane out of there," he said. "Phillips, Fister and I were working digging out the nose gear. Dirt was packed so tightly between the nose wheel tires that we had to break it loose with a crash axe. We were digging the extra debris out with shovels," he said. 

Everyone was digging and working towards the goal, said Barton, but we couldn't have accomplished the mission without the maintenance guys. They dug out the left main gear, inspected the aircraft for damage and helped configure and load the aircraft. They also helped move an old 500-pound concrete marker block that was in the way by using tie down chains from the aircraft and a local national truck. 

After much digging, it was time to start engines and see if the aircraft, with minimum weight aboard, could be moved from the hole. When that was accomplished and the plane loaded, it had to be backed up for about a mile because the landing strip was still too soft to turn around, said Nicholson. 

"With engines overheating, we had to stop about every thousand feet to let the engines cool down until we got to the end of the runway backwards. By then, there were about 100 or more Afghan locals at the site. We didn't know if they were friend or foe, so we got our weapons ready," Nicholson said. 

Unable to take everyone on the ground, the team arranged for some of the security people to be picked up by the British CH-47s. That left the crew, at takeoff, with an extremely heavy load of about 70 people and their equipment. 

"The aircraft accelerated very slowly. I was wondering if we were going to make it because the end of the runway was coming up and flying speed had not been reached," said Nicholson. 

As the runway ran out, liftoff was accomplished and the aircraft began the slow climb out of the valley along the mountainsides to avoid enemy fire from people in a nearby town. Nicholson said the airplane wouldn't climb any faster than the ground was rising and was concerned that it would not climb fast enough. 

"We flew about 200-250 feet above the ground for about five miles until we could turn around. After turning, we flew back over the airstrip and the helicopters had arrived to extract the remaining security personnel," he said. 

With everyone off the ground and the aircraft headed home, the extraction mission was complete. 

"With just a few hours to prepare, the team flawlessly performed their mission at great personal risk under extremely hazardous combat conditions and recovered an irreplaceable special operations asset. It was an amazing feat of shear determination and superb airmanship," said Williams. 

In addition to Nicholson and Barton, other 711th crew members on the mission were Capt. Michael S. Fister, pilot; navigators Maj. James M. Phillips and Maj. Christopher Stegner; Maj. Eugene Hardy, electronic warfare officer; Master Sgt. Paul A. Mollura, flight engineer, Master Sgt. (retired) John Garrett, loadmaster; and Tech. Sgt. Patrick J. Walker, radio operator.