2020 Memorial Day "Project Freedom Flag"

"My Warriors Place" Day of Caring

In February of this year, the team of Technical Consultants that my coworker Amanda Dugger and I lead at World Wide Technology had a "Day of Caring" at My Warriors Place in Ruskin, Florida just south of Tampa. If you don't know about this place, look it up. What an awesome retreat founded by my friend and Gold Star mom Kelly Kowall, whose son Corey was killed in Afghanistan in 2009.  We spent the afternoon with our partners from Equinix putting the roof on a gazebo and setting the gravel foundation for another. Wow, what a great day. We feel so honored to help Kelly help others. Surely won't be the last time that we visit.

B-17 "City of Savannah" Volunteer Human Interest Story - Jeff Hoopes

We Are Not Alone

by

 Jeff Hoopes

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The year was 1986.  I was 26 years old.  Assigned to Patrol Squadron 8 (VP-8), our home port was Brunswick, Maine.   At the time of this story, our squadron was deployed to Keflavik, Iceland.  

There were 75 officers and 200+ enlisted men in the squadron.  We had nine $60 million, almost brand new, P3C aircraft, and 12 Combat Aircrews of 12 personnel per crew (5 officers, 7 enlisted).  Three of the 5 officers were pilots.  The other two were NFO’s (Naval Flight Officers), one was the navigator/ Communications Officer, the other was the Tactical Coordinator. That was me.  As the Tactical Coordinator my job was to coordinate the efforts of the aircrew in order to detect, locate, and fix the position of Russian submarines in the area we were patrolling. 

The enlisted aircrew were comprised of two Flight engineers, two Acoustic Warfare Operators, and three technicians with specialties in maintenance of radar, ordinance and electronics. 

 As the TACCO for Combat Aircrew Three, I was the youngest officer in my squadron to hold that title, something for which I was quite proud.  All 5 officers on our crew were junior Officers (O-3 or below) which we liked to think of as being without adult supervision - part of our bragging rights.  Being an all junior officer crew, we got a lot of the short straws, like flying in the dead, dark of night when everybody else was back in their warm racks sleeping.

My story concerns one of our night missions. We were flying north of Iceland searching for a Soviet submarine off of the extreme northwest coast of Norway.  We were operating under the “Big Sky - Little Airplane” theory of maritime patrol aviation, as we did nearly 100% of the time, under strict radio silence so that the Russians couldn’t find us via radio transmissions. 

 Several hours into the mission, my radar operator asked me to re-initialize (turn off/turn on) his ESM pod.  I asked him what the problem was and he told me that he had a constant contact with the bearing of 180 degrees relative….(our six o’clock position).  

At first, I didn’t think anything of it. But after his 3rd request to re-initialize, I began to think that there was a more serious problem than equipment failure.  I got out of my seat and went into the cockpit to confer with the pilot, our crew commander. After less than a minute of discussion we both came to the same conclusion….WE HAD BEEN INTERCEPTED AND HAD A FIGHTER ESCORT TRACKING US FROM BEHIND!    

The pilot immediately turned on our aircraft’s exterior anti-collision and strobe lights and started broadcasting on the open guard frequency, announcing that we were a U.S. Navy aircraft operating in international waters, and for our tracker to break off and leave the area.

Almost immediately the intruder broke off - - and we went back to searching for Russian submarines.  

Later we learned that our visitor was a Norwegian F-16 that came out to investigate what their shore-based radar had located cruising off of their coastline.  

While the episode was exciting, it was frightening as well.  

A couple of years into our City of Savannah adventure, Jeff Hoopes and Guy McDonald got to talking about their time in the military.  They learned that each had served in the late 1980's as aircrew members in their respective branches, Jeff in the Navy  and Guy in the Air Force.  As their conversation developed, they realized that they both served deployments at the same base, in the same alert facility, at the same time!!  The location was at Lajes Field, Azores, in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean.  Jeff's P3 crew was hunting Russian submarines and using Lajes as a forward operating base to put them closer to their targets.  Guy's EC-135 crew were flying CINCEUR Airborne Command Post missions, doing their best to stay far enough away from the Russians to provide a survivable communication platform.  Yes, it is a small world.

B-17 "City of Savannah" Volunteer Human Interest Story - Guy McDonald and Buck Shuler

My friend Jerry McLaughlin has been spending his quarantine time sharing stories and excerpts for the last dozen years of restoring our B-17 Flying Fortress known as "City of Savannah".  Many of the stories he has pulled directly from the book that he wrote chronicling the restoration.  Jerry has recently broadened his daily stories to include recollections from many of the volunteers who spent time in the military.  My contribution was published this week and really is an interesting story indeed.  I hope you enjoy it.

LOOKING GLASS

A Cold War Story with Two CoS Players

Hiatus Update #39

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Guy McDonald, the man who put together the City of Savannah radio room, returned to the museum from his home in Atlanta in June of 2019 to crank up our radios in honor of the 75^th anniversary of D-Day.  At the end of the day, General “Buck” Shuler, a museum founder and ex-Commander of the Eighth Air Force, presented Guy with a certificate of appreciation for traveling from Atlanta to help in the museum’s anniversary activities.  It was amazing to all concerned when Buck and Guy began to talk about their Air Force assignments and learned that they had, in fact, flown as fellow crew members on many Looking Glass 24-hour remote airborne command-post missions between 1987 and 1990.  Looking Glass missions provided an airborne emergency back-up command and control system for the Strategic Air Command should SAC headquarters be destroyed by an attack on the United States.

When Buck boarded the EC-135C Looking Glass aircraft he had the very ominous title of Airborne Emergency Action Officer. As the AEAO, his awesome responsibility, if a nuclear attack were to be launched against the United States, and Strategic Air Command HQ was unable to perform its duties, was to deliver a series of messages to all SAC units as to what action to take, as he was directed by the Commander-in-Chief, the President of the United States.

Guy’s job, in another compartment of the EC-135C, was maintaining, troubleshooting and repairing all on-board communications systems during the mission. It was his job to ensure that General Shuler’s ultra-important communications equipment worked if it was needed, a great deal of responsibility for a young NCO who had to beat out many others for the job.

Thirty years after their Looking Glass assignments, Buck and Guy find themselves on the same crew once again, this time they are working together to fulfill the mission of the National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force.

The Story of Looking Glass

The code name Looking Glass derived from the program’s mission to "mirror" the command and control functions of the underground command post at SAC headquarters located at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska.  Looking Glass aircraft were airborne 24 hours a day for over 29 years, from February 3, 1961, until July 24, 1990.

Looking Glass was originally supplied with five specially modified KC-135 aircraft from the 34th Air Refueling Squadron based at Offutt. All EC-135 Looking Glass aircraft were equipped with an Airborne Launch Control System capable of transmitting launch commands to U.S. ground-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missile sites in the event that the ground launch control centers were rendered inoperable.

In addition to the command responsibility for transmitting the President’s orders to launch U.S. retaliatory missiles, Looking Glass was also designed to help ensure continuity and reconstitution of the U.S. government in the event of a nuclear attack on North America.

Today the Looking Glass missions are flown by Navy E6-B aircraft capable of flight for 72 hours without refueling and with the ability to land on unconventional surfaces.  When on a Looking Glass mission the E6-B is designated as ABNCP (Airborne Command Post) with the dual mission of providing a communications relay platform for ballistic missile carrying U.S. Navy submarines, as well as being the Airborne Launch Control System (ALCS) for the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) that operates from Offutt Air Force Base, where the original Looking Glass missions began in 1961.

SSgt McDonald Onboard the "Looking Glass" 

Lt. Gen E.G. "Buck" Shuler Jr.

Guy and Buck

EC-135C "Looking Glass"