Travis members part of lifesaving, joint-service rescue mission in Africa

Published Jan. 17, 2014
By Senior Airman Charles V. Rivezzo
60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs

TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- Burnt marketplaces and upended billboards bare scars of the violent past the people of South Sudan have endured. This is one of Africa's oldest wars, one that has claimed the lives of millions. But as of recent, what was once a civil war has transformed into a full-blown regional conflict, throwing the nation into turmoil not seen in years.

Violence continues to rip through the region, as South Sudan buzzes with the locomotion of war. People have died, families have been displaced and the country is spiraling out of control.

This prompted several nations to take immediate action, evacuating their citizens and closing the doors on embassies while the war-torn nation braces itself for what lies ahead. U.S. military operations rapidly spun up with the hopes of shielding American citizens from the bloodshed that washed through the streets of the world's youngest country.

As part of the effort, three CV-22 Ospreys evacuating American citizens Dec. 21, 2013, in Bor, a remote region of South Sudan, flew into an area of fighting between the country's military and renegade troops.

While approaching the landing site, the Ospreys became the target of combatant ground forces, who turned their rifles skyward, riddling the aircraft with small-arms fire. Three service members were critically injured during the ambush and aircrews were forced to break off and divert to an airfield outside the country.

To the south, a Travis C-17 Globemaster III rolled onto the runaway at Entebbe International Airport, Uganda. Fully loaded with two aircrews, 30 passengers and more than 14,000 pounds of cargo, the aircraft was en route to the United States with the mindset of making it home before Christmas Eve.

Radio communications abruptly came across the Globemaster's flight deck, instructing the aircraft to hold short of the runway.

"I told them to state their reason," said Capt. Brendan Hopkins, a C-17 pilot from the 21st Airlift Squadron. "We were literally seconds away from taking off and we idled."

After minutes of silence, command and control officials scrambled to relay the message to the idle aircrew. A voice crackled over their airwaves.

"We need you to reconfigure your aircraft for aero medical evacuation, injured military personnel are about to arrive on scene," the voice said.

Across the barren runaway, the aircrew could see three Ospreys crossing into Entebbe International Airport's airspace.

"We started to taxi our aircraft toward their landing zone and as we got closer it become apparent how dire the situation was," Hopkins said. "Very few things get my adrenaline going or get me excited, but I can honestly look back on this moment and still get the chills."

What Hopkins saw was an American aircraft painted in bullet holes and spewing dark red hydraulic fluid as it struggled to land.

"Our mindset went from that lull of going home to everything changing in a matter of seconds," said Capt. Clay Westberry, a C-17 pilot from the 21st AS. "Everyone felt that we had three of our brothers in arms that needed help so we had the mindset that we would do whatever it took at that moment."

More than a dozen men - a mixture of uniformed and civilian personnel - swiftly made their way out of the heavily damaged Ospreys, carrying three litters to the C-17's ramp.

At this point, Entebbe International Airport essentially "belonged" to the U.S. military.

"We had several options we could have done to reconfigure the aircraft quickly," Hopkins said. "But, in reality, the only way that was truly going to be effective was to use a forklift to offload the three-ton pallets."

The ticking of the clock began to slow. This was a setting where life became measured by seconds - lives depended on it.

Combat medics continued to stabilize the critically wounded personnel, one of whom had already gone into cardiac arrest while on the Osprey. Tensions began to mount.

"Things got so crazy that the unit onboard the Ospreys was ready to physically drag the pallets off the aircraft," Hopkins said. "But these were 7,000-pound pallets. No one can physically move these by hand, but that is how desperate the situation was. These guys needed serious medical attention or they were going to die. Right there on the airfield.

"An Army special forces captain with the unit was demanding we unlocked the locks to just combat off-load the cargo and roll it out the back to save time. However, doing so could have potentially damaged the jet, keeping it on the ground and scrubbing the entire mission."

With the aircraft's forklift packed away in the cargo bay, Staff Sgt. Joseph Rivera-Rodriguez, from the 571st Global Mobility Squadron, grabbed the keys and sprinted more than 300 yards to fire up one of the airport's forklifts.

"I looked out over the flight deck window and I just saw Rivera-Rodriguez behind the wheel of a forklift with black-smoke spewing from it as he red-lined it all the way to us," Hopkins said. "He coordinated with our loadmaster Senior Airman Cody Nunez, and the two of them proceeded to off load the cargo and reconfigure the entire aircraft for aero medical evacuation."

Meanwhile, the flight deck coordinated diplomatic clearances and flight plans - something that normally takes days in advance to achieve - to Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, Kenya, where proper medical treatment could be administered.

"You are talking about a $200 million, 580,000-pound aircraft filled with a completely different mission turned in a matter of minutes," Hopkins said. "It's amazing to watch what the Air Force and United States military can do when they put their full weight behind something. It's hard to comprehend that this entire effort took only 30 minutes to accomplish."

With the back door now closing on the aircraft, Hopkins began to coordinate with Entebbe's air traffic controller tower to get takeoff clearance.

"When we started to push the power up for takeoff, I could hear Clay yell to us that the guys weren't stable yet," Hopkins said. "One of the guys had flat lined again and needed to be resuscitated before we could get the thumbs up."

Once cleared for takeoff, the aircrew flew on the brink of the C-17's max speed, focused on getting to Nairobi, Kenya, as quickly as possible. The flight to save their lives took 40 minutes.

Arriving in Nairobi, medical personnel stood by to transport them to a local hospital, accompanied by a police escort through the traffic-filled streets of the Kenyan capital. With the injured service members now en route to the hospital, the aircrew's mission was complete. However its success had yet to be determined.

"Once we got them to Nairobi, you just wanted to know that they were going to be ok," Westberry said. "Everybody is a son of somebody or a husband. You just wanted to make sure they got back to their families."

Hopkins said he instantaneously became connected with them, despite not knowing them at all.

"I just spent probably the most fulfilling hours of my life with these people that I don't even know," he said.

From the initial moments of the attack to the time they ended up on a surgeon's operating table took less than two hours. The only remnants that remained were a blood-soaked cargo area peppered with syringes and used medical kits. But it represented a monumental effort that spanned three countries and saved the lives of three American service members.

"For pilots, what we did was just our normal job, crank jets and go fly. If you ask us to fly at its (C-17) max performance, well, that's what you trained us to do," Westberry said. "But I get humbled to think about the efforts of Senior Airman Nunez and Staff Sergeant Rivera-Rodriguez. What you asked of those young guys was above and beyond."

The aircrew not only carried out its original mission of getting its passengers home in time for Christmas, but ensured the three wounded service members would be alive to see another Christmas as well.