Viper Pilot_ A Memoi..

English, everything was okay. They’d been on their way in country to Dhahran Air
Base, Saudi Arabia, for a 120-day Southern Watch deployment. This was done
through relays of air-refueling tankers, which started out in the United States. The
fighters would then be “handed off” over the North Atlantic to tankers from bases
in Europe. Sometimes they’d spend the night in Germany or Spain, but often,
depending on the situation, they’d fly all the way in to Saudi or Kuwait. Fourteen
hours in a cockpit the size of a desk was about as much fun as it sounded. In either
case, the fighters would meet up over the eastern Mediterranean with U.S. tankers
temporarily based in Saudi, called the Kingdom, that would take them the rest of
the way in.
Apparently, there’d been a big dust storm, a khamsin, that kept these last
tankers on the ground. Unable to make it to Dhahran and unable to return to
Europe, the fighters had diverted into Beni Suef. Now, every such deployment was
planned out to an amazing level of detail. Every leg of the trip, fuel numbers, divert
bases, and radio frequencies are painstakingly arranged so when something like this
happens, everyone knows what to do. These guys weren’t lost—no one gets lost in
an F-16 crammed with electronic wizardry—they knew exactly where they were
geographically, they just didn’t know where they were, if you follow. They were
simply appalled by their surroundings. You don’t see burned-out aircraft, cratered
runways, and donkeys on a U.S. air base.
I got the extremely nervous Egyptian maintenance officer and a crew of his
minions to bed down the jets. This was done amid much supervision by the stillsuspicious
Americans. The Egyptians were shocked when each pilot pulled out
everything needed for his aircraft from a big travel pod slung beneath one wing.
Chocks for the wheels, intake and canopy covers, oil-sample kits etc. . . . The
Arabs were even more surprised when our guys did all of this themselves. Egyptian
pilots more or less shut their planes down, hopped out, and went to drink tea.
My new friends were less shocked when I led them over to the Oasis (as we
called the General Dynamics compound) and into a few of the villas. They got
positively enthusiastic when they saw the pool and the bar. I was so happy to have
buddies again that, I confess, I didn’t work too hard on their logistical issues for a
few days. Don’t get me wrong—Beni Suef wasn’t a bad place, and the two other
officers with me were good guys, but I missed the camaraderie. Thirty other men
who’ve survived the same screening, years of training, and the constant attrition
are generally priceless to be around. Personal likes and dislikes aside, you know
that you will count on them with your life. They’d die for you. There is no real
equivalent to that in life beyond a fighter squadron. It’s like a fanatically loyal