A little pre-story before I begin this post. While I was in the U.S. Air Force, I was stationed at Shemya AFB, Alaska. Shemya is out on the Aleutian Islands. There is a very good story about Shemya, with about a dozen excellent pictures at this location. This assignment was considered a remote assignment so my family was not allowed to come with me. I reported to Shemya in September 1989. While on a remote assignment, you are allowed to go on leave approximately half way through your 1 year tour, if you have enough leave time saved up, or if you will accumulate enough while you are on leave. This story is about my adventure going from Shemya Alaska to San Antonio Texas in mid-March 1980. The beginning of my journey was simple. There was a flight that went from Shemya to Elmendorf, on mainland Alaska, at least once a day. I simply scheduled like I do any other flight, show up at the terminal, get on and go. The ‘only’ plane that was on Shemya was a little prop plane with only 2 engines. This would be only the 2nd time I was on such a small plane. The first time was when I went to Shemya to begin my tour.
Shemya Island
So I got to Elmendorf, after a what seemed like hours of flying, not being able to hear myself think, and headed for the terminal to sign up for a flight heading for the lower 48.
I was waiting for a flight to get as close to Texas as I could. Unfortunately, nothing was going even remotely close at that time except a jet fighter plane. They don’t usually carry passengers, but the pilot didn’t have a co-pilot and he didn’t want to make that long trip alone. That would have been cool to do, but to ride in the fighter you had to have only 1 small bag of luggage. My bag was too big, besides I was second on the list for a flight and the guy in front of me qualified and he took it. I don’t blame him. Before he volunteered and I still had a shot at getting the ride, I even considered ditching my large bag and just going without it. I wouldn’t care where the jet was heading, I would have just gone for the ride. As it turned out, he was going to Randolph AFB in San Antonio. That’s way on the north side of San Antonio, but I could have had someone come pick me up, or take one of the many buses or taxis home. The next flight leaving out of Elmendorf going to the lower 48 was a flight going to Seattle. I was already tired of waiting in Alaska and figured any sort of advancement towards San Antonio was good, so I volunteered for the flight. I was #1 on the list, so if there were seats available, I was going. It did and I did. Maybe I should explain a little bit about military flight transportation before I continue. Flights are affectionately called HOPS. They are called this because they hop from one place to another. The way it works is not complex, but it is pretty detailed, so for simplicity, I’ll just say that, if they are accepting passengers you can sign up to travel with them. There is a priority system in place, with active duty on mission personnel at the top and retirees and dependents (traveling alone) at the bottom. Now riding a HOP is usually alright, it’s basically just like a regular airline, except the service is usually not very good. Sometimes there is no passenger service. The worst and best flight I was ever on were both actually the same flight. I’ll explain that later in this article.
- Cobra Dane, where I worked on Shemya.
Once in Seattle, I didn’t have to wait long for a flight heading for Travis AFB, California. This was the place I was hoping to get to because I knew that they had a DC-9 medical flight that went from there to Kelly AFB in San Antonio. It was a long shot to get it, but I was on what they call “Environmental Leave”. You can get that when you are at a remote assignment trying to get home, they don’t want you to be unhappy because you are missing your family. When I got to Travis AFB it was late and there were no more scheduled flights leaving until late the next afternoon. But as I was settling in for long nights wait, an unexpected flight came in. It was a C-130. Okay a C-130 is a gigantic plane and it is also NOT a jet. It has 4 big propellers. Here is a picture of one.
Jump Seats
This flight was going to Little Rock Arkansas. A prop plane takes like twice as long to get someplace then a jet does. Well I wasn’t for sure that a plane would be coming in the next afternoon that had open seats. Even though I had a lot of priority, I still was below any passengers that were duty related and IF there were seats and IF they didn’t all get filled by the active duty personnel first, then I could have gotten on. That was too many ‘IF’s’ for me and I didn’t feel like taking that chance, I only had 30 days leave including travel time, so I signed up for the C-130. I got on and this is the flight that turned out to be my best and worst flight. It turns out that even though more passengers could have gotten on, they didn’t. I was the only passenger.
I’ve never been on a C-130 before, so I was a bit surprised to find out that they had only jump seats. You know the seats that the people sit in when they are getting ready to make a parachute jump. Basically, it’s a long line of hanging chairs made out of straps. Naturally, since I was the only passenger, I got my choice of seats. I could lie down across 3 or 4 of the seats, but it wasn’t very comfortable.
C-130
They do have normal looking seats on a C-130, but the “C” in C-130 stands for cargo, and this plane was full of it. All the seats were pushed in and large pallets of equipment and supplies were placed there.
Everything was going fine until they started the engine and the air conditioner kicked on. I knew right then that I was very happy that Shemya required me to carry my parka with me while on vacation. This was definitely going to be a very cold flight.