Getting out of Lajes Field

Well I'm here! It was a long trip, but relatively good with not too many problems. The biggest hurdle getting over here was getting out of Lajes. More on that in a bit, but here's some info on Lajes. Lajes is an old WWII base out in the middle of the Atlantic. It was used as a stopover point for airplanes going to support the war effort in Europe. Since 9/11, this base has seen a lot of activity again as so many airplanes for so many years now have been transiting the Atlantic Ocean. The island itself is not all that large. We did venture out both nights here to have some sea food and believe it or not, beef. One of the island specialties is beef. No kidding. It was really good I'll add. The base, which is where we spent the majority of our time, was pretty nice. Like most overseas Base's, they are nice. They have to be since, especially in this case, you're all alone out in the middle of nowhere with nowhere to go. We planned on a down day here, then we were going to takeoff for Sigonella on 10 March. So we got up about 430AM Portugal time in order to make our flight over to Sigonella Naval Air Station on the island of Sicily. We went to the jets after eating some breakfast and everything was going ok. The first cell of 6 taxied out no problem. We were scheduled 30 minutes apart since the tanker plan only allow for 6 airplanes at a time. As we are waiting though, I get the always horrible radio call, "1, 5, I've got a hydraulic leak. I'm shutting down now". Shit......now what. You see you can't leave a single airplane by itself as it's against Air Force regulation to fly a single fighter plane across the Ocean. A minimum of 2-ships is required. Who was I going to screw over. Well, the 3rd cell had 6 airplanes just sitting over on the ramp waiting for me to "take one" for my 6 ship. They were not scheduled to depart until the following day so this was great! I was imagining the poor pilot who showed up the next morning only to discover that his plane was gone and he was sticking around on an isolated island in the Ocean! So, #5 hurries up and goes over to another A-10 and starts to get it up and running. While he's doing this, a civilian 737 lands on the runway. My crew chief goes "Sir, look at all that water coming up over that plane!" I look up and sure enough, this plane is engulfed in water. I've landed in heavy rain and I know water comes up over jets, but this was abnormal. But, whatever, we're getting ready to taxi out to move on. However, about 4 minutes later, I notice a bunch of firetrucks, base police cars, and other random, official vehicles rushing out towards this 737. About this time, #5 is up and on the radio and he's ready to go in his new aircraft. I call for taxi, "Lajes Ground, Trend 21 flight of 6 Alpha-10's, ready to taxi with Xray". "Trend 21, hold position"....in a Portuguese accent is the reply I get. 1 hour and 25 minutes later, I finally shut down. I'm not happy, but I also can't help but laugh at what has happened. For once, it was not maintenance (although it almost was), weather, tanker fallout, or pilot not able to fly. We were aborted for a civilian airliner landing on the closed side of the runway (see my below post on landing at Lajes). He damaged the jet badly evidently. 9 airplanes were diverted and Lajes was closed for 8 hours that day. What did we do? We went to Subway on base, walked around, went to the gym, and made many phone calls to people with much more rank than I on what to do now. Remember, we still had a broken airplane to deal with. Getting parts, personnel, etc to an island is not easy nor fast. In the end, we were able to launch 11 airplanes out the next morning. I led a cell of 6; another Captain led a cell of 5. That airplane, tail number 600, is still sitting at Lajes Air Base, Portugal. Eventually, that ole bird will make it's way home!

PS: This site has many details on our movement to Afghanistan. Any pictures you see with aircraft 228 is me. http://www.warthognews.blogspot.com/