Delivery for Baghdad

4/23/2003 - OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM (AFPN) -- Well aware of the threats on the ground around Baghdad, Iraq, a crew of six from the West Virginia Air National Guard loaded up their C-130 Hercules and headed for Iraq.

The crew, who are deployed to a desert air base in Southwest Asia, said the mission was similar to the ones in the past but this felt a little different. It was their first trip into Baghdad, and it was a daytime mission.

"There is a higher level of threat because it is a daytime mission, they can see us from the ground," said Maj. Sea Chavers, the aircraft commander. "But we have been waiting to get into Baghdad.

"For us it is like getting into the game," he said.

"It was different going into Baghdad because there was so much going on on the ground," said Maj. Bart Cavendish, the crew's navigator.

The crew had been delivering cargo mainly to remote locations where there are not a lot of towns and buildings to scan for threats, the crew said. Around Baghdad, however, there were several towns that required scanning.

The crew members said it was great to do what they were actually trained for - missions in combat -- even though before they were deployed they expected to be primarily flying scheduled theater airlift missions. "We train for combat missions about 90 percent of the time," Chavers said.

During Operation Desert Storm, the West Virginia C-130s flew mainly combat support missions and rarely flew into the combat area, he said. So far in Operation Iraqi Freedom, though, almost all C-130 sorties have been combat sorties, said Col. Randy Jones, the 485th Operations Group commander here.

The six crew members not only fly together, they sleep in the same tent, eat at the same dining facility, and spend most of their off-time together, they said.

"This is better than a debrief because if you do something wrong, you hear about it for days," said 1st Lt. Brian Preece, the crew's co-pilot. Crews are kept together in a wartime environment to help establish and maintain consistency among aircrews, he said.

"Crews are selected based on experience level and how they well they gel together," Tech. Sgt. Shane Crum, the flight engineer, said.

"You need to be able to depend on (other crew members), especially during combat operations," Chavers said. Crew members do not have time to worry about what someone else is doing and if they are doing it right, he said.

This deployment did not come as much of a surprise for the crew. It was not a matter of if they were called; it was a matter of when, Cavendish said. The West Virginia crew was activated March 3 and deployed March 6, he said.

After the crew dropped off their valuable cargo to the troops at the Baghdad airport, they received an unexpected return load.

On the runway, one young soldier raised a handful of letters to a crew member. There was unspoken trust that the crew would send them off for him.