Routine annual tour turns to real world contingency

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Jeffrey Williams
  • 934th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
Minneapolis-St. Paul --  It was supposed to be a routine annual tour for 37 members of the 27th Aerial Port Squadron, but due to a devastating earthquake in Haiti, it turned out to be a contingency operation instead.

The aerial porters left Jan. 17 for Charleston Air Force Base, S.C., to perform their long-scheduled annual tour training, but were diverted to Homestead AFB, Fla., shortly after their arrival to augment the 70th Aerial Port Squadron with shipping supplies to Haiti, which suffered the effects of a 7.0 magnitude earthquake less than a week before.

They were challenged with not only building up pallets for the humanitarian airlift operations, but were also responsible for building up a fully functional aerial port squadron in less than a week in order to accommodate the mission's needs.

"It was awe-inspiring that we had seven different Aerial Ports that gelled really quick," said Maj. Heather McCue, 27th APS operations officer. "It's great when you have a mission and it's amazing how quickly everybody gels.

"We had some extra chains, pallets and nets that came in here and there, and we went downtown (Miami) and picked up all the shrink wrap for some of the cargo. A lot of us brought our own kits down with forms and scales," she added. "We were fully functional about a week after our arrival but we were functioning way before then."
Staff Sgt. Chris Platz, air transporation specialist, was on his first deployment and was proud of his team's effort.

"There was no system in place when we got there and we set up the system," he said. "We got everything up and running into a fully functioning aerial port. We had very little equipment and within a week we had it humming. It was a lot of hard work but it was good."

Sergeant Platz was confronted with a language obstacle when he had to load a Japanese aircraft during the mission.

"None of the Japanese spoke English. It was tough trying to communicate with them just to get their plane loaded. They don't do it the same way we do," he said. "But hand and arm signals are universal, so I got their plane loaded that way"
Master Sgt. Bruce Anderson is no stranger to deployments and annual tours. He has been in the career field for 29 years between the Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve, and this was to be his last annual tour as he will retire Mar. 11.

"It was the best and most rewarding of all of it," Sergeant Anderson said. "We had to figure out how to set up all of this - a marshalling area and grid yard - when we were out in the middle of nowhere. It was a lot of work and great training."

Sergeant Anderson knew what they were in for as soon as they arrived at Homestead, since there were more than 100 semi-trailers of supplies that were waiting for them to unload, palletize and ship.

"We got to bed knowing our next day would be bright and early," he said. "We went from annual tour to a full-scale contingency operation. We don't get this kind of hands-on training much."

"We felt that as fast as we could get the product over there, whether it was food, medicine, tents, generators or cots, we were anxious to do as much as we could. It was nice to see the stuff we were doing going down range from us to help someone in need," Sergeant Anderson said.

With the exception of five of the members, the squadron returned home Jan. 30 with the mission complete.