McChord Reserve maintainer helps repair damaged C-17

Published June 29, 2012
By Tech. Sgt. Tanya King
446th Airlift Wing Public Affairs

MCCHORD FIELD, Wash. -- A 141-ton, $180 million C-17 Globemaster III departs the snow-covered runway at a critical Forward Operating Base in the combat zone. The position of the aircraft blocks the runway and prevents other aircraft from landing, thereby limiting re-supply options.

It is clear that the aircraft must be moved. What is not clear is how it will be done. Despite the lack of procedures and numerous other obstacles, the aircraft recovery team must figure out, not only a way to move the C-17, but also a way to make it fly again.

For one 446th Airlift Wing Citizen Airman, helping determine a plan to move the aircraft became the highlight of his career and the challenge of a lifetime.

Master Sgt. Roy Osmon, 446th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron technician, was deployed to Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan at the time of the mishap in January 2012. When the Air Force safety inspection team arrived, they needed him to relocate to Forward Operating Base Shank where the disabled C-17 was.

There, he was tasked with removing aircraft parts to be inspected to determine the cause of the mishap.

"I thought it was just going to be minor damage," Osmon said, as he recalled his first impressions of the situation.

The actual condition of the aircraft was a little more than minor damage, he said.

"You could tell it was going to take a while," said Osmon, who works as a full-time maintenance civilian here. "This is going to be a lot of work, was my original thought, but we all knew we needed to get this aircraft going again."

"Leadership didn't have any doubts we could get it moved," he said, "and neither did I."

From Jan. 24, a lot of groundwork needed to be done to prepare the aircraft for movement--literally. It took until April to prepare it for the move.

"It was going to be quite a task," Osmon said. "I realized what we needed to move the plane and I literally just went for it and went knocking on the Army's door."

Osmon coordinated with the Army not only because it was their base--they were the experts in heavy equipment operation and could provide the assistance to move the dirt to stabilize the ground beneath the 282,500-pound aircraft.

"A lot of the Army experience we needed was in earth-moving equipment," Osmon said. "They had the confidence because they were Guard and Reserve units; they all had a lot of heavy equipment experience in their civilian jobs."

After months of preparation by joint forces and Boeing employees, the aircraft was finally ready to be moved in April.

"What stands the most to me about this whole affair is that it was a mixture of many, many people from many different sources, who all meshed together and worked extremely hard," said Army Lt. Col. Gilbert Mestler, FOB Shank Garrison commander.
"Around 200 people were involved in the planning and execution of this move, from construction engineers, design engineers, Boeing employees, Air Force security forces , Army military police, Army pathfinders all kinds of Soldiers, Airmen and civilians from many different fields have been involved in this effort."

"For a lot of those people this will be the culminating point of many weeks of effort from people of divergent fields," Mestler said. "And we're really proud of having successfully moved the aircraft without doing any more damage to the aircraft. As well as getting a C-17 back into the fleet, the runway should be back opened up to C-17 use for redeployment and deployment for Soldiers making use that more combat ready."

Gen. Norton Schwartz, Air Force chief of staff, visited the base April 22-23 to survey the recovery efforts and commend those who assisted with the move on a job well done.

The aircraft is being reconditioned and prepared for the flight back to the U.S. and repairs are scheduled to be completed in October.

"No one would have ever thought this plane would fly again," said Osmon, whose deployment orders were extended until the plane is fixed. "But it will."

C-17 repaired