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From: David Baker
Date: 22 Jul 2001
Time: 05:34:23
It was a weekend, I remember. Our one LOGAIR had long since departed, and we sat half snoring and half staring uninspired at the parade of banality which constituted late-night TV. The GS200 LABS printer snapped to life, and I dutifully rolled my chair to the position to find out what the message was. It was an IFR inbound from BLV, Scott AFB, in Illinois. Holy Smoke; it was a MedEvac C-9! What the heck??? The ETA was 0900Z. That's 0100L, bub. I called the numbers to my tired partner, and we set about making calls to the agencies that would service and support the aircraft and crew. Not many MedEvac C-9s came our way, much less in the wee hours of a saturday morn'. The landline beeped, and I slurred through the standard greeting with practiced indifference. "This is colonel Smith (not the actual caller) from ----- Hospital. Do you show any planes coming in from Scott?" the caller seemed anxious. "Yes sir. We've got a C-9 inbound...looks like 'evac' (E) 00000. He's due in about O one hundred". "Thank you"...click. Colonel Smith was the first of many officials asking about this plane. We found out why. Our neighboring base had suffered a power outage, and their base hospital power generator had failed (fuel exhaustion, I believe). Within the premature baby ward, the incubators were becoming dangerously cold. One of the staff suggested that emergency chemical heat packs should be utilized to keep the "preemies" warm. A young airman, unfamiliar with these devices, layed one baby directly onto the packs. She didn't realize the amount of heat these things generated, nor did she know the vulnerability of a premature baby's skin to burns. By the time a nurse reached the ward, the little girl was...literally...toast. A special burn unit in Cincinatti would handle the delicate surgery required to repair the baby's paper-thin flesh. I was quite impressed with the efforts of these people to save this little poop. Soon, the mother, father, nurse, and a "full bull" (O-6) arrived via an ambulance, and we made them welcome in our VIP lounge. The plane arrived, the special incubator was loaded onboard, and off they went.
Soon after, some Air Force bean counters were pounding their calculators, figuring out how much this operation cost. The C-9 is an airliner, and it drinks fuel like elephants pee. It has a crew of four; pilot, copilot, nurse, and...co-nurse. It's an expensive proposition to fly that asset all the way from the midwest to California and back. Someone decided to look into smaller evacuation aircraft that could be dispatched much quicker, much cheaper, and without wasted capacity. It just so happens that the Air Force had recently retired it's T-39 fleet, the last remnants of which were being "IRAN-ED" in an adjacent hangar. These twin jets were VIP transports for many years, and the airframes were getting pretty close to cycle life-limits. This particular era was marked by cutbacks in government spending, especially VIP designated aircraft. In congress, these planes were singled out for elimination. "Commanders can ride on airlines or their own mission aircraft", was the consensus. Air Force commanders were adept at circumventing cutbacks, especially when their perks were on the chopping block. Just in the nick of time, Gates LearJet had come out with a snazzy CEO Mailing Tube entitled the model 35. This was a hot little number, with lots of whistles and bells as standard equipment. A light bulb lit up over someone's head, and it was determined that the Air Force would take a bevvy of these Lear Jets on lease for four years, with maintenance and servicing included in the contract (how neatly this escaped the notice of those congressional misers...) to test the feasibility of using them as "Premature Baby Transports". Special units could be plugged in to the cabin, and a nurse/doctor seating arrangement would complete the configuration.
Squadrons of these planes were scattered, amazingly, near divisional level commander's bases, though the actual deployments coincided with bases that had large hospital facilities. Business was pretty slow, though. It seems the preemie rate was ebbing, and these crews were playing lots of solitaire on their Palm Pilots. Currency requirements dictated cross country flight every 7 days, at least. In an amazing twist of fate, several cross country proficiency flight itineraries matched those of said commanders. How convenient! In short order, the entire spate of cross-country "training and currency" junkets were attended by a very appreciative complement of brass. If anyone wants to know how the Air Force operates...Voila!