'The Mighty War Wagon:' KC-135's replacement is near, but 50-year-old aircraft still has a few years left to carry AF fuel

An F-16 Fighting Falcon is refueled by a KC-135 Stratotanker during a cross-country flight. The KC-135 also provides aerial refueling support to Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps and allied nation aircraft.

About 20,000 feet above Valdosta, Ga., Capt. Matthew Swee and Master Sgt. Nancy Primm complete their checklists to prepare their tanker to link up with six A-10 Thunderbolt IIs for a training refueling mission.

KC-135 Stratotankers like the one flown by the 6th Mobility Wing crew from MacDill Air Force Base, Fla., will eventually be replaced by the KC-46A Pegasus. But the 50-year-old airplane the old Strategic Airlift Command alert crews nicknamed “The Mighty War Wagon” still has some years ahead of it and planes to fuel.

“I think the latest generation of tanker crews have kind of lost that concept of ‘The War Wagon,’ because the majority of crew members never sat on alert for SAC. The majority of those boom operators have retired, so the concept of ‘The War Wagon’ and what it was designed to do has been kind of lost over the years,” said Master Sgt. Ernest Burns, the superintendent of a 418th Flight Test Squadron detachment that is testing the KC-46 in Seattle.

Early in his career, Burns was a boom operator with many of the SAC alert crewmembers who came up with the nickname because of the KC-135’s original mission.

“The nickname stems from what the KC-135 was designed to do. It was designed to re-fuel a SAC bomber, specifically the B-52 (Stratofortress), to go to war. So that was where ‘The War Wagon’ came from, it was designed to go to war, to re-fuel the B-52.”

Tech. Sgt. Stephen Shin inspects KC-135 Stratotanker nose gear doors before taking off a training mission. Shin is a crew chief with the 927th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.

The KC-135 has been at the core of the Air Force’s aerial refueling mission for more than five decades. The first one flew in 1956, and the Air Force received the latest models nine years later. In the past 13 years, the tankers flew 33,500 sorties and refueled more than 135,000 aircraft with more than 12 billion gallons of fuel, according to Air Force statistics. In addition to refueling, KC-135s have also been used in command post and reconnaissance missions. Life-cycle upgrades, including communications, auto-pilot and surveillance equipment, to the KC-135R/T models expanded their capabilities and made them more reliable.

In 1993, MacDill AFB lost its flying mission when the Defense Base Closure and Realignment Commission moved the F-16 Fighting Falcon mission to Luke Air Force Base, Ariz. But it began to change with the arrival of the 6th Air Base Wing a year later, followed by the refueling mission in 1996, said 6th Air Mobility Wing historian William R. Polson.

“MacDill was chosen as the site for the KC-135 air refueling mission, in part, because tankers flew fewer flights than the fighters and were less noisy, the tankers were more compatible with the aircraft of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the tankers were compatible with the predominant types of aircraft using the nearby busy airports in Tampa and St. Petersburg,” Polson said.

The 1995 BRAC sent the Malmstrom Air Force Base, Mont., refueling mission with 12 KC-135s to MacDill AFB, and the 6th ABW became the 6th Air Refueling Wing, Polson said. In 2005, the Defense Department’s streamlining effort moved four more KC-135s from Grand Forks Air Force Base, N.D., to MacDill AFB. The base’s active-duty and Reserve KC-135 crews continue to support aircraft in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility with about 1 million pounds of fuel daily, Polson said.

Senior Airman Rowdy Moore washes a KC-135 Stratotanker. Moore is assigned to 6th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.

Before Swee, Primm and the rest of their crew took off to meet the A-10s from Moody Air Force Base, Ga., Staff Sgt. Estefano Estrada, Airman 1st Class James Wild-Garcia and other 6th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron members prepared the KC-135 for the mission. As they drew near to the area where they would link, Primm began talking to the pilots and observing how they were flying their aircraft. Handling multiple planes requires the boom operator to become somewhat of a conductor, said Primm, a 91st Air Refueling Squadron boom operator and 6th Operations Support Squadron combat support flight superintendent.

“Aerial refueling is an aerial ballet,” said Primm. “It also takes on the aspect of the boom operator becoming something of a conductor, in that I’m telling this musician that his piece is coming up, and this is how I want you to play it. Once this person has played his piece of music, I’m going to direct him over here, and I’m going to direct you. So I become somewhat of a musical conductor.”

Even as the two planes draw near at 232 mph, Primm keeps her conversation to her pilot at a minimum, maybe telling him over her radio, “He is flying a little low,” or “He is flying a little to the right.” She learned the lesson of both minimal words and a moderate tone from an experienced pilot during boom operator training at Altus Air Force Base, Okla. “I try not to be a chatty Cathy because after a certain point, they’re going to start to tune me out, not because they want to, but because their brains can only handle so much,” she said. “So if I keep my updates to a minimum, then when I do start talking, they’re going to be listening to what I have to say.”

When the planes are linked for refueling, Primm is sometimes close enough to read the pilot’s name tag, she said.

The boom of KC-135 Stratotanker is connected to an A-10 Thunderbolt II during an aerial refueling mission. Once connected, fuel is transferred from the KC-135 to the A-10.

Once the KC-135 disconnects from aircraft it refueled, there isn’t a lot of emotion, whether they just completed a training mission or have given gas to a fighter aircraft in a war zone. All attention is still on the plane, and on the checklists that help make each mission successful and safe.

“Traditionally, we do this a lot, so it’s pretty routine for us because we train every day,” said Swee, a 6th OSS instructor pilot. “In terms of thoughts, what you’re doing is making sure all your safety checklists are complete, that you’re thinking ahead of the airplane, what the weather is down-track and trying to anticipate any issues that might come up while you have airplanes roughly 10 to 12 feet apart like we do.

“As you’re flying through the air, a lot of times you have to overcome turbulence that’s associated with flight, and you have additional air dynamics created from two airplanes interacting with each other,” he said. So, emotions don’t really come into play. There are plenty of things in terms of checklists and safety checks, and basic air traffic control that keep you busy.”

Burns is working on the developmental test for the KC-46A with Boeing and the 418th FTS detachment in Seattle. The new tanker’s first flight is scheduled for this summer in Washington, but Burns believes the KC-135 will be around for a few more decades.

“If you think about it, that airplane first flew 50 years after the Wright Brothers,” Burns said. “It’s really amazing how technology kind of went from the Wright Brothers to the KC-135 in just those 50 years. The first KC-135s rolled off the assembly line in 1955, and the last one was made in 1964, and they’re still around, very capable and reliable.”

From a pod in the rear of a KC-135 Stratotanker, Master Sgt. Nancy Primm connects a refueling boom and transfers fuel to an A-10 thunderbolt II during a training mission over Valdosta, Ga. Primm is a boom operator with the 6th Mobility Wing at MacDill Air Force Base, Fla.

    

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Panama City Police Officer Recalls Famous Sheriff

This is an office not unlike one of any other law enforcement official. On one wall are the various medals and awards Lt. James Sauls has earned during his 24 years with the Panama City Beach Police Department.
There’s also a plaque with the words, “A Bad Day Fishin’ Beats a Good Day Workin’, combined with deer and fish trophies and even one of a mountain lion.
But what sets Sauls’ office apart is what is located on the wall to the left of his desk: a replica of legendary Buford Pusser’s stick, popularized in the “Walking Tall” trilogy, and a photograph of the legendary Tennessee sheriff and Joe Don Baker, the actor who portrayed him in the first motion picture.
Sauls befriended Pusser during his many trips to Panama City Beach with his family in the late-1960s before the first “Walking Tall” was released in 1972.
“I got to know him after he talked to one of our officers, and every year after that, he would give me a call and look me up,” Sauls said. “He was a big man, but really friendly. You felt like you had known him all your life. I don’t think he ever met a stranger.”
Pusser was a McNairy County, Tennessee sheriff who became a legend for his efforts fighting bootleggers, gamblers, prostitutes and cutthroats who profited for years along the Tennessee and Mississippi state lines.
He was shot at least eight times, stabbed seven times and killed two people during his six years as sheriff. His wife Pauline was killed in an early-morning ambush on Aug. 12, 1967. Finally, an automobile accident claimed Pusser’s life as he was returning from California and preparing to play himself in “Walking Tall, Part II.” Bo Swenson eventually starred in the final two films in the series.
Sauls recalls that after “Walking Tall” was released, that Pusser told his Northwest Florida fans that the movie overplayed much of the events in his life.
The last time Pusser was in Panama City Beach, Sauls said he felt something was wrong, that he might never see him again. He had planned to bring his daughter back for Labor Day, but was killed in the wreck.
“I had a strange feeling that somebody who had been through what he’d been through, something was going to happen to him,” Sauls said. “to this day, I don’t know why.”

Braves' Smoltz Savors '91 Season

John Smoltz calls 1991 the greatest year of his life, both athletically and personally.
The 23-year-old right-hander pitched in the pennant-clinching victory over the Houston Astros and the seventh game of the National League championship series as the Atlanta Braves drove toward the World Series. And to top it off, two months ago, his wife gave birth to their first child.
Yet, as happy as Smoltz has been lately, one question gnaws at him as he and his teammates look forward to beginning spring training later this month in West Palm Beach, Fla.: What would happen if he pitched as well during the entire 1992 season as he did in the second half of 1991?
Smoltz almost lost his spot in the starting rotation, as he won only two of his 13 decisions in the first half of the season. But following the All-Star break, he was a different pitcher. He went 12-2 with a 2.62 earned run average to help Atlanta to a 94-68 record, an improvement of 29 victories over 1990.
With the help of a personal psychologist to help his mental approach, Smoltz didn’t lose a decision after Aug. 15. He recorded the two clinching victories for the Braves in the pennant race and pitched well enough to win the seventh game of the World Series. Smoltz left a scoreless game in the eighth inning, and Minnesota’s Jack Morris beat the Braves 1-0 to give the Twins the world championship.
In the past two seasons, Smoltz is 5-24 in the first half of the season and 23-4 in the second. This tale of two seasons in something Smoltz would like to put behind him.
“I wonder what could happen if I put together two second halves in the same season,” he said. “But very few guys do that because it’s so tough to do. It’s a 36-game season. The reason I believe it’s so tough to be dominant all year is you go through 18 games in the first half of the season and 18 games in the second half, so you’re realistically starting all over after the All-Star game. This year, I’m not setting any major goals as far as numbers. I just want to retain the same focus all year.”
Whenever the subject of the Braves’ 1991 season comes up, the word miracle isn’t far behind. But everything didn’t fall neatly into place as Atlanta made its trip to the World Series. The Braves endured injuries to David Justice and Sid Bream and lost lead-off man Otis Nixon to a drug suspension during the final stretch.
Yet, the one constant was pitching. In addition to Smoltz’s 14-13 record, Cy Young winner Tom Glavine was 20-11, 20-year-old Steve Avery won 18 games, and Charlie Leibrandt won 15.
The Braves hope to find a fifth starter this spring, and it is expected to be either Pete Smith, Armando Reynoso or Mike Bielecki, a winter acquisition from the Chicago Cubs.
“We believe we have the core of personnel in place to be a contender at the very least,” said Atlanta manager Bobby Cox. “We think we have a pitching staff that compares favorably with any in the game. (The starters) went virtually all of 1991 without missing a turn. That took some luck, sure, but it also reflects their top-flight conditioning and work ethic.
“Maybe they can’t do it again, but I think they can put up similar numbers.”
Smoltz agrees with Cox. But he expects Braves’ pitching to be better than it was in 1991.
“I think it can be better,” he said. “We’ve got the best five starters in the game. The bullpen is solid. We’ve become one of the best-run teams in baseball, and it’s taken us a long time to get to this point.
“We’ve got the maturity, experience and some awesome talent coming back. To my knowledge, nobody else will have that.”
The Braves acquired Smoltz from the Detroit Tigers on Aug. 12, 1987. He was called up from Triple A-Richmond the following season. Since coming to the major leagues, Smoltz has compiled a 42-29 record.
Smoltz’s best year got even better last week. He agreed to a one-year contract with the Braves to avoid arbitration. Smoltz was asking for $1.75 million, but signed for $1.525 million.
“It’s really been a different kind of off-season than it’s been in the past,” Smoltz said. “It’s been the greatest year of my life so far. When we won the division, I thought that was the best thing that could happen to me. Then, we won the pennant, and I thought that was.
“I thought the game after we won those World Series games in Atlanta. Then, my son was born, and that beat everything.”

Overcoming Adversity: MS Victim Realizes Dream of Coaching Baseball

Houston County High School’s baseball team hasn’t hit a lucky streak in Bill Lovrich’s first season at the school. But the coach tells himself wins will come.
He also knows the mere fact that he’s back on the baseball field is a victory itself.
The 34-year-old Lovrich has multiple sclerosis.
“Every morning, I wake up and check to see if my eyes open and if my hands work,” he said. “If they work, I say, ‘Thank goodness. The day’s going to be good.’
“Every day is an adventure.”
But the days are also often long. His wife Annette said Lovrich usually gets out of bed at 5:10 a.m., leaves their home near Wicksburg at 6:20 for work in Columbia, and there are nights he doesn’t get in until after 11:30 p.m. He also must give himself injections of Betaseron every other day.
Lovrich played baseball at Jacksonville State University and comes from a family of baseball coaches. His father Frank, a former vice president of Troy State University at Dothan, was also head coach at JSU. His brother Marty is an assistant at Auburn University at Montgomery.
About one-third of Americans, including comedian Richard Pryor, have been diagnosed with MS. Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, often disabling disease of the central nervous system, according to the Multiple Sclerosis Society Alabama Chapter in Birmingham.
Symptoms may be mild, such as numbness in the limbs, or severe, causing paralysis or loss of vision. Most people are diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40.
The diagnosis was tough for Lovrich’s family, especially his brother and his wife. But it as Annette Lovrich who helped bring her husband out and take a positive attitude toward his disease.
“I was driving my family crazy,” he said. “She was the one who helped bring me out of my depression.”
“He went through almost a three-year period of really being negative,” Annette said. “Basically, I just told him I wasn’t going to let it control my life, and he needed to take a different outlook.
“He had to have adequate time to go through all those emotions to deal with it. But there also comes a time when enough is enough. After all of the changes in our lives from the time he began teaching and coaching, he’s gotten back to being more of the person I originally got to know.”
Lovrich’s problems began in October 1995 when he felt numbness in his left arm while working on the Cubmobile Derby for the recreation department. By the next morning, the sensation had spread across his chest and back, and he thought he might be suffering a heart attack or stroke.
Doctors first thought it might be a pinched nerve, then maybe carpal tunnel syndrome, but the symptoms worsened as the couple was on the way to spend Christmas with Annette’s family in Boone, N.C.
Neurologist Dr. Alan Prince was the first to mention MS, and the diagnosis was confirmed by Dr. John Whitaker at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Kirklin Clinic.
“I didn’t know what my future was,” Lovrich said. “I thought I might be in a wheelchair. I certainly never thought I’d be coaching again.”
 Although Lovrich feels fortunate to have the relapse remitting form of the disease (meaning the symptoms go from active to dormant), his diagnosis eight years ago forced him into a career change. He had to give up his job in the recreation department, which demanded he spend much of the day in the heat, and decided he wanted to teach.
So Lovrich went to Montgomery and shared an apartment with his brother while he worked as an AUM baseball assistant coach and earned his master’s degree in 1996.
“That was when he became like a big brother to me,” Lovrich said.
He first landed substitute teaching jobs in Headland and Enterprise before he took a teacher-coach position at New Brockton. There, he led the Gamecocks to its first winning season in its baseball history. He moved on to Columbia last year.
Lovrich describes himself as an intense coach. In his first year at Houston County, the team defeated Ashford for the first time in several years, although the season has gone somewhat sour since.
But Lovrich is learning to keep the game in perspective. The past couple of years have taught him that.
“I like to let the team know it’s not life or death,” he said. “There was a time when I was playing when I thought the game was life or death and had to learn it’s just fun.
“When you’re young and an athlete, you think your body’s going to last forever. Now I listen when my body tells me it’s time to slow down. Even though I’m pretty healthy, I know something can go wrong at any time. It’s like a time bomb – you just don’t know when it will happen.
“So I want to be positive, upbeat and be the best teacher, coach and husband I can be.”

Lessons from Space: Retired Pilot Col. Eileen Collins Relates Shuttle Concepts to Everyday Life

The year 1978 was almost as big a year for the space program as it was for disco. That was the year NASA officials hired their first space shuttle
pilots and also opened the field to women.
Retired Col. Eileen Collins was one of four women who were chosen that year for
undergraduate pilot training at Vance Air Force Base, Okla.
Eleven years after Colonel Collins completed her pilot training, a Seattle Times article called her “as hot a property as the Air Force had.” She eventually became the first woman to pilot and command a space shuttle.
Despite Skylab’s demise and Voyager’s rough start that year, 1978 proved to be a pivotal year for NASA and the 21-year-old training pilot who would accomplish so many firsts for the space program during her 16-year career as
an astronaut. While that year was the beginning of a string of firsts
during her Air Force and NASA career, Colonel Collins never considered anything impossible because of her gender, dating back to reading about famous pilots as a child. She assumed no woman had done it yet because none had tried.
She would try.
“About a week before I got there, NASA sent some of their shuttle astronauts to Vance for parachute training,” Colonel Collins said. “I remember reading
about it because it was in all the newspapers: ‘the first women astronauts at Vance Air Force Base.’
“That was when I thought I was learning to be a pilot, so there was no reason I couldn’t apply for a pilot’s job on the shuttle. That was the first year
I had a no-kidding, realistic chance at becoming an astronaut. Everything prior to that was just a pipe dream. So, 1978 was a real turning point for men and women at NASA.”
Interest in airplanes and astronauts began early for Colonel Collins, who grew up in Elmira, N.Y. She remembers her mother getting her out of bed when she was 12 to see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon in 1969. In fourth grade, she read a Junior Scholastic article about the Gemini program.
As a teenager, she read books about Amelia Earhart, Jackie Cochran and Women’s
Airforce Service Pilots, but also books about male pilots, particularly those in combat.
“I would read about the military side of flying, mostly because there was so much written about it,” she said. “I just couldn’t get enough, not just of flying, but also of POWs and how the war was fought. I had this interest in military history and strategy.”
After Colonel Collins completed pilot training, she stayed at Vance as a T-38 Talon instructor pilot. Three years later, she volunteered for duty in combat fighters: the F-106 Delta Dart, F-15 Eagle and A-10 Thunderbolt II, but she had to revise her wish list because of the combat exclusionary law, which limited women’s participation in combat.
She flew the C-141 Starlifter at Travis AFB, Calif., and left in 1989 for Edwards AFB, Calif., where she became the second female pilot in the Air Force
Test Pilot Program. Before long, NASA officials selected her as an astronaut. Colonel Collins always believed her experience in the T-38 and C-141 gave her a major advantage with the selection board.
“I can’t emphasize enough how extremely important it was for me,” she said. “The T-38 is a high-performance jet aircraft trainer. You can
do acrobatics, formation and instrument flying. It’s the real thing. It has an ejection seat. You can kill yourself if you make bad decisions, or if the
aircraft has a malfunction and you’re not prepared to handle it. I got to talk on the radio, fly and navigate, all at the same time. That training is critical for flying in space.
“The C-141, on the other hand, while it wasn’t flip upside-down acrobatics,
the important thing about a crew airplane like that is you learn to manage a mission and you manage a crew. As an aircraft commander, your position is very important, not just to make sure the mission is safely completed, but you
have to lead your crew and manage your mission. When the astronaut selection board asked me that question, I tried to be as humble as I could, but if you think about the shuttle mission, it’s actually closer to the C-141 mission than it is to flying a fighter.”
Colonel Collins first piloted a space shuttle in 1995 on Space Transportation
System-63, a mission that involved a rendezvous and close-approach flight test of Discovery and the Russian space station Mir. She received the Harmon Trophy
for completing the historic mission as the first female shuttle pilot and returned to space two years later as pilot for STS-84 on Atlantis.
In July 1999, Colonel Collins became the first female shuttle commander on STS-93 with Columbia, which deployed the Chandra X-ray Observatory, the third of NASA’s four major observatories. She and her crew had to deal with two serious
incidents in the first few seconds of the mission.
“The first one was a hydrogen leak in one of our engines that started prior to liftoff,” Collins said. “The second problem was five seconds after liftoff. We had an electrical short that was due to all of the shaking. One of the wire
bundles had been rubbing against a screw head during maintenance, and some of the insulation was worn off.
“The wire-to-metal contact caused an interruption of power that caused some
of our water pumps to slow down and the two main engine controllers completely failed. The short was intermittent, so the power came back and the pumps restarted, but once a main engine controller fails, it’s gone. Fortunately, there are two main controllers on each engine, so we didn’t lose an engine. But we lost the redundancy of the controllers and that scared a lot of people. The shuttle was grounded for six months until they fixed these problems.”
After the Columbia disaster that killed all seven astronauts in 2003, NASA grounded the shuttle program for more than two years. In July and August 2005, Colonel Collins commanded the Return to Flight mission on STS-114 that tested a series of shuttle safety improvements, inspection tools and fuel tank
modifications, and restocked the International Space Station. She also became
the first astronaut to fly the shuttle through a complete 360-degree pitch maneuver so astronauts on the space station could photograph the shuttle’s underside to ensure there was no debris-related damage that could destroy the
shuttle upon re-entry into the earth’s atmosphere.
Although the mission was successful, a large piece of foam still fell from the tank. The shuttle program was grounded for another year until NASA engineers completely corrected the problem.
“The big decision was whether the shuttle was ever going to fly again,” Colonel
Collins said. “To me, the answer was obvious: the shuttle should fly again. The mission of the shuttle was to build the space station and resupply the space station. Now, we’ve done that; the space station is 99 percent built. The shuttle will stop flying now because the mission is essentially over.”
As when Colonel Collins was named the first female shuttle commander, she faced
a whirlwind of media interviews before the Return to Flight mission. However, the tone had changed because of the nation’s concerns over the space program after the destruction of Challenger in 1986 and Columbia 17 years later.
“Back in 1999, when I became the first woman commander, and in 1995, when I
was named the first woman shuttle pilot, a lot of it was kind of hokey,” Colonel Collins said. “‘How does it feel to be the first woman?’ ‘What do people think?’ It was a lot of fluff, and I didn’t like doing that.
“But when we got the Return to Flight mission, people at that point didn’t care if it was a woman commander or not. Things were much more serious. It was all about, ‘Did we learn from the accident?’ ‘Are we getting the shuttle back
into space and are we going to get it back safely?’.
“I knew there was a need to get our message out to the country [about] what we
were doing, so I did every media request I could possibly do. We just had a horrible accident, and that changes people. It changed me.”
Since she retired from NASA in 2006, Colonel Collins has maintained a presence in the space program. She serves as chairperson of the NASA Advisory Council Space Operations Committee and has remained busy on the consulting and speaking circuit, along with spending time with her husband and their two children.
Colonel Collins also hopes to
write her autobiography soon and thinks the timing is right, as the shuttle program comes to a close. One of her biggest concerns, whether she’s sharing
her expertise as a space shuttle expert on the major news networks or speaking to audiences, is whether or not lessons were learned from
the Challenger and Columbia tragedies.
“Many of the lessons learned from Challenger were forgotten, leading up to the Columbia accident in 2003, which is why NASA needs to keep teaching those lessons,” Colonel Collins said. “I don’t care if you’re working in science, aeronautics, Earth observation or human space flight, you’ve got to learn
those lessons. They are very good lessons and apply to your family life, as well as your school or work life, even if you aren’t in the space program.
They are also very heartbreaking lessons.
“These lessons include being a better listener and approaching your job with a
sense of humility, relying on your co-workers, thoroughly testing all the hardware and creative thinking. Yes, foam can break a heat shield. We thought there’s no way this light piece of foam could break a heat shield, but it can if it’s going fast enough.
“Those are very big lessons I think we need to make sure we learn.”

PTSD: Facing the Monster

The sound of a helicopter hovering above a Boston park snapped Maj. (Dr.) Derek Speten's thoughts from a relaxing day with his family back to a trauma bay in Iraq. For Capt. Kevin Lombardo, the sight of blood on his face in a recurring nightmare convinced him his mind was still struggling to cope with witnessing a deadly rocket attack on a Humvee. Master Sgt. Justin Jordan found himself disassociating for hours and driving 20 mph on an Albuquerque interstate.
Their symptoms and triggers may vary, but all three men were among the many Air Force members who have experienced post-traumatic stress disorder after returning from deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Something's going to trigger it," said Dr. Speten, commander of the 66th Medical Group Diagnostics and Therapeutics Flight at Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass. "That trigger could be a smell or a sound. You might hear a helicopter or the backfire of a muffler and see somebody jump to the ground and lie there for a second. Other people may laugh and think it's funny, but the thing that's not funny is that person has gone back to their trauma."

When Dr. Speten first saw the two Soldiers who were brought to the Joint Base Balad hospital trauma bay after being hit with an improvised explosive device Feb. 14, 2007, he initially thought his patient's wounds weren't as severe as the other patient's. The Soldier had third-degree burns, but he'd applied tourniquets to his companion's leg to keep him alive until they could reach the trauma bay.

When Dr. Speten looked into his patient's throat, he saw the Soldier was severely burned internally. the doctor's head trauma surgeon decided the burns weren't survivable, so the patient was moved to end-of-life comfort care. While they know they're easing the patient's suffering, playing a role in end-oflife comfort care is usually traumatic for any medical professional, Dr. Speten said.

"It's psychologically devastating to most people who are involved in it because you're in the career field to save people, not to euthanize patients out in the combat zone," he said. "You want to save everybody. The problem you have is you don't get that opportunity all the time. You just have to remind yourself you're not the reason they're there."

Before the patient was moved, he told Dr. Speten he didn't want doctors to cut off his wedding ring. Because the doctor didn't yet know the severity of the injuries, his main concern was the risk of cutting off circulation and losing the finger. This would haunt him later after he returned from Iraq.

"Before I looked into his throat and saw what his airway looked like, I would've thought he was going to come out of that trauma bay," Dr. Speten said. "The guilt factor came in for me when I had to stop him in midsentence. I told him we needed to secure an airway and he could tell me everything once he woke up. The problem was he didn't wake up."

Thirteen months after Dr. Speten treated the IED victim, on March 12, 2008, Captain Lombardo responded to an attack on an armored Suburban near the main gate at Contingency Operating Base Adder in Iraq. The attack killed three of the five Soldiers in the vehicle, but Captain Lombardo, an Air Force security forces officer serving as provost marshal for the base, saved one of the two survivors. He moved Army Sgt. Joel Tavera a safe distance from the truck, put a tourniquet on his leg and talked with him for the next half-hour to keep him conscious.

Later, Captain Lombardo dealt with the aftermath of the attack, including a memorial service for the three Soldiers killed in the explosion. Several months after he'd returned to his home station at Peterson Air Force Base, Colo., he began to feel the emotional repercussions of seeing three comrades die so violently. The captain felt guilty because he wasn't able to save all five soldiers. He knew he was suffering from PTSD symptoms, but he was concerned the stigma would put his security clearance and ultimately his job in jeopardy. Recurring nightmares of blood streaming down his face, explosions and soldiers dying convinced him to get help.

"The smell, sounds, sights, touch and even taste are still there from that day," said Captain Lombardo, now the Security Forces Academy director of operations at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. "You go from being in Iraq to the normal day-to-day setting on an Air Force base. Physically, I was fine, but I knew I wasn't as mentally sharp as I was."

Recent Air Force efforts to address PTSD include the Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy Application for Post-traumatic Stress, now available at mental health clinics at Andrews, Eglin, Elmendorf, Lackland, Langley, McGuire, Travis and Wright- Patterson Air Force bases. The virtual-reality program addresses the patient's avoidance to re-visit violent and other unpleasant memories from their trauma. In a controlled setting with a therapist's guidance, patients put themselves back among the sights, sounds and smells of the original trauma with either a scene of a foot patrol in an Iraqi city or a Humvee convoy in Afghanistan or Iraq. Therapists can add in sounds of helicopters, explosions and dogs barking and even smells such as burning rubber, body odor, diesel fuel, and weapons firing.

"The intent is to be able to utilize a variety of senses whenever you're doing the exposure," said Dr. Kellie Crowe, director of Wilford Hall Medical Center's PTSD Clinic at Lackland. One of the PTSD clinic's missions is to train psychology interns in PTSD treatment, so they can treat it at their next duty station and in Afghanistan and Iraq, Dr. Crowe said.

"Some people are unwilling or unable to do the imagining part that's necessary," she said. "The virtual reality assists those people in bringing back those senses. Avoidance is the primary symptom that maintains PTSD. This kind of puts it right there in front of them and allows the therapist to work with them to start abating that emotional distress."

Sergeant Jordan's PTSD service dog, an English bulldog named Dallas, helps him fight the avoidance behaviors he's learned are part of his PTSD. Before he became the Air Force Inspection Agency's lead checklist program manager at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., the sergeant worked on numerous mortuary affairs cases at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ariz.

"On my last deployment, I sent 71 guys home in a box," he said as Dallas slept at his feet on the floor. "You just have to put it into a place in the back of your brain."

The one death Sergeant Jordan couldn't compartmentalize happened in September 2007 when a friend was killed in a forklift accident on base. He sought help and was treated with a form of rapid eye movement therapy. He thought he'd put his PTSD behind him after he left his mortuary affairs duties for the AFIA assignment, but within months after arriving at Kirtland, he witnessed a shooting at a building just outside the base gate. Two people were killed and four were wounded before the shooter killed himself.

"It reverted me right back to where I was, and the flashbacks were worse," Sergeant Jordan said. "I was driving home 20 mph down the highway because I was positive the tires were going to pop. It seems silly and juvenile, but you could be sitting right next to me and tell me, 'Dude, everything's going to be fine.' It wasn't going to be fine to me. This was about to happen now.

"The overwhelming thing that I think we all have in common is the unwillingness to want to have PTSD. Everyone of us expresses guilt because as young men and women, we're taught to suck it up and quit being less of a man or woman. With PTSD, that's impossible."

Just as the original traumatic events that trigger PTSD and the symptoms vary, each patient responds differently to treatment. The two most common effective types of treatment, according to a number of PTSD experts, are cognitive processing and prolonged exposure therapy. The WHMC PTSD Clinic staff predominantly has used these approaches with the approximately 170 patients who have been treated.

Cognitive processing allows patients to understand how their thoughts about what happened can intensify their symptoms. Often, this helps patients who somehow blame themselves for a traumatic event. Through exposure therapy, patients learn to change how they react to painful memories.

"Both therapies are exposure-based," Dr. Crowe said. "Prolonged exposure has the individual access the memory, both in imagining while in a session with the provider, but also in real life, where they go out and do homework assignments to start re-engaging in things they were avoiding, like restaurants and movie theaters. That allows them to build confidence in reintegrating back into the things they enjoy.

"The face of PTSD has changed so much. PTSD is treatable, and we have evidence-based treatments to support that. Generally, there's not a career impact just from seeking treatment. The career impact comes when the symptoms get out of control. It would be unfortunate for someone to get to that point when there are treatments available."

Sergeant Jordan has found that his PTSD service dog, which was trained through the Paws and Stripes nonprofit organization, helps him curtail his symptoms before they can get out of control. He received permission from the AFIA commander to bring Dallas to work each day. Dallas has her own area near Jordan's desk and will tug on his shirtsleeve several times an hour to keep him from "zoning out."

"She can sense my brain chemistry," Sergeant Jordan said. "When it changes, if I'm having an attack, she'll climb in my lap or bark at me because it scares her. She won't let me stay in that situation. A lot of times, I have to keep her calm, so I can't go to that place."

Both Dr. Speten and Captain Lombardo benefitted from cognitive processing therapy as they gradually accepted their PTSD. With Dr. Speten, the breakthrough came when he found a therapist who'd actually experienced life in a war zone. They also each found something they considered special outside of counseling that had a direct impact on their recovery.

Captain Lombardo built a friendship with the Soldier he saved and found himself inspired by Sergeant Tavera's attitude through his long rehabilitation and numerous surgeries. Through his own therapy, Captain Lombardo learned the blood on his face in his recurring nightmare belonged to Sergeant Tavera. On the day of the attack, a firefighter poured a bottle of saline over his head and hands to wash blood from his face after the sergeant was taken from the scene.

"His inspiration and fight made me realize I needed to stop second guessing myself for that day," Captain Lombardo said. "Obviously, you have that line with officer and enlisted. The line's still there with us, but it merged a lot on March 12, 2008, just as the line did between Army and Air Force. He's my new wingman, and I'm hopefully his battle buddy now."

Dr. Speten took the wingman concept to a new level after losing his patient in the Balad trauma bay. When he learned the Soldier had been an avid runner who dreamed of running the Boston Marathon, Dr. Speten decided to run the race in his honor. The doctor trained for more than a year and competed in seven smaller marathons before he finished the Boston Marathon in April 2010. Whenever training became tough, he thought of the Soldier who'd not only endured a horrific attack before succumbing to his injuries, but helped save the life of his companion by applying tourniquets to his partially severed leg.

"Whenever I thought about quitting, I just thought about what this person went through," Dr. Speten said. "Then, [my discomfort] became almost insignificant. It actually made me feel better and I think it was part of the healing process."

After Dr. Speten completed the race, he mailed his Boston Marathon jersey, T-shirt and medal to the Soldier's family. He continues to run races in honor of fallen service members and often runs with his 5-yearold son in a stroller in some of the smaller events. He believes this also has helped his recovery.

"Whenever you get deployed, your family's on the back burner, and when you come back, it's nice to be able to do something that allows you to be involved with them," Speten said. "He doesn't need to know why right now. He understands that we run, and we'll give the medals to people who are deserving of them. Every time we do this, it gets people out there to know that there are people still coming back. These are people who had goals and dreams, and they're not just going to go away. Just because that person is no longer here to compete it doesn't mean somebody else can't pick up the torch and carry it for them."

One thing Airmen returning home from deployments can learn from stories like those of Dr. Speten, Captain Lombardo and Sergeant Jordan is to be proactive about their own treatment. Active-duty members can request an evaluation at their mental health clinic and have rights to confidentiality as long as they do not pose a threat of injury to themselves or others, Dr. Crowe said.

Simply because Airmen haven't identified symptoms yet doesn't mean they escaped unscathed from trauma they experienced or witnessed. The worst thing they can do is to try to hide their challenges for fear of losing their career, family and friends. After finding the help they needed, Captain Lombardo found peace when he learned the source of the blood in his disturbing dreams and Dr. Speten is no longer afraid of helicopters.

"It's a scar," Dr. Speten said. "Somebody's put holes in me, and you can't cover them up. The holes are still visible, but it doesn't affect how I live the rest of my life."

'Angel Is Next:' Ex-Air Force One Pilot Recalls Crew's Response to Threats on 9/11

Retired Col. Mark Tillman knew two commercial airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center when he took Air Force One into the sky above Sarasota, Fla., the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. But soon President Bush’s Air Force One pilot heard the warning Vice President Dick Cheney gave the president, and three words began the series of evasion flights throughout the country that day:
“Angel [the presidential airplane’s call sign at the time] is next.”
“It’s a big sky, so for anybody to attack us, you’re normally thinking it’s going to be somebody on the ground with some kind of man-powered rocket or some kind of fighter coming in to shoot you down,” Tillman said. “But on this day, it was in your own country. On Sept. 11, it was America.”
The president’s staff and Air Force One crew learned later that it was a false alarm, but at the time Tillman was taking no chances. Information at the time was that there could be as many as seven to 10 hijacked airliners.
President Bush learned that American Airlines Flight 11 had crashed into the North Tower before a scheduled stop to promote his education bill at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, Fla. When Chief of Staff Andrew Card told the president, “A second plane has hit the World Trade Center. America is under attack,” Tillman was watching the events unfold on TV on board the Boeing VC-25.
“That’s when the staff starts getting into gear, advising the president of what is going on,” Tillman said. “You can actually start hearing the radios between the Secret Service, the staff and a lot of agencies around the world.
“I have to assume the worst. I assume the president was about to be under attack, so we got everything ready with the plane. All I was trying to do was make sure that when it was time to get the president on board, I knew exactly where to take him, how much gas, the right support, as well as the right firepower to make sure the president would be safe the whole time.”
Air Force One left Sarasota at about 9:55 a.m., with an armed guard at the cockpit door while Secret Service agents double-checked identities of passengers. Just before departure, Tillman saw a man at the end of the runway with a video camera, so he took the VC-25 in the opposite direction.
“Air Force One, you have unidentified aircraft behind you,” Jacksonville Center told Tillman as he made his ascent above Florida. “They’ve shut their transponder off, they’re above you and descending into you.”
But as Tillman turned toward the Gulf of Mexico, the plane didn’t follow. It turned out to be just an airliner that had lost its transponder.
“But the whole day was like that,” he said. “The whole day, there were threats that weren’t really threats, but you still had to counter them. On that day, we were concerned somebody had followed us, and we were the next target. We were told Air Force One was going to be next, so we had to counter that.”
The president decided not long after that false alarm that he wanted to be on the ground so he could address the American people. The staff considered Pope Air Force Base, N.C., but decided instead to leave the East Coast for an Air Combat Command or Strategic Air Command base. Tillman and military aides chose Barksdale Air Force Base, La., because of the high security due to the B-52 Stratofortress mission. Air Force One radio operators notified the Barksdale command post at the last second, and the wing commander had to prepare the base within minutes to receive the president.
“The Air Force rocked that day,” Tillman said. “They did everything perfect, but that’s the beauty of the Air Force. You don’t need to get the [crisis action team] together and spend hours working a checklist. When something happens, everybody knows what their job is to make it happen. That’s what they did that day, and not only there, but all across the country.
“Offutt Air Force Base [Neb.] did the exact same thing. Andrews Air Force Base [Md.] knew they had to receive the president of the United States. They’re used to doing it every day for the president, but on that day, it was different. On Sept. 11, there was an actual threat against the president.”
After leaving Barksdale, the fighter support Tillman requested arrived at 11:30 a.m., with four Texas Air National Guard F-16 Fighting Falcons from the 147th Fighter Wing based at Ellington Field in Houston. Air Force One landed at Offutt, but took off again at 4:33 p.m. after staff determined the situation in Washington had settled down enough to bring the president back.
“Everybody on the plane was preparing for what needed to be done for the country,” Tillman said. “What a lot of people don’t understand was on Air Force One, the president had all of his top leaders with him. He had the ability to connect with any of the military leadership. He had his chief of staff and Secret Service with him. Everything was on board in a self-contained package, so he could make a lot of great decisions for the country on board, and that was what the president was doing.”
As Air Force One made its journey across the Midwest, the Texas ANG F-16s were joined by other fighters, including F-16s from Andrews and Langley Air Force Base, Va., as the president’s plane approached Washington. Lt. Col. Marc Sasseville, one of the pilots from the D.C. Air National Guard, gave the president a thumbs-up from just off Air Force One’s wing.
“I can’t speak for the president, but for me to look out and see a fighter pilot right there with you, that’s the classic Air Force mission,” Tillman said. “You’ve got the fighter on your wing, and he’s protecting the president of the United States. It just doesn’t get any better than that.”
But Tillman made a 360-degree turn over the Shenandoah Valley to allow the Texas fighters to catch up because he wanted the F-16s from President Bush’s home Guard unit to lead Air Force One into Andrews.
“My message since Sept. 11 has been the military trains day in and day out,” Tillman said. “But we don’t train for airliners hitting buildings, and we don’t train for fighters to escort Air Force One. It’s the beauty of the U.S. Air Force and the military as a whole that we can adapt to all the changes that can occur.”
During the next seven years, Tillman returned President Bush to New York numerous times, including for Sept. 11 anniversary ceremonies. But he wasn’t able to attend Ground Zero himself until after he and the president retired following President Obama’s inauguration in January 2009.
“Everyone needs to go there to see that and remember the thousands who were killed that day,” Tillman said. “The procedures that President Bush, his administration and the military have put into place have saved us, and the same with President Obama and his folks.
“But no one can forget what happened on Sept. 11. A lot of people were killed, not only in the towers, but also at the Pentagon, and that was unacceptable. We’ve got to be ready, and we will continue to be ready, but we lost a lot of our brothers and sisters that day.”