We got to Fly

Last night they alerted us after dinner, yea we were the alert crew so if something happened it would be us, but it was just for a super short flight to Baghdad and back or so it sounded but like everything it was too good to be true.

On the way back the airspace was closed as some real life video games were being played out so we had to hold, then after an hour the weather really took a dump, tower was saying visibility of 100 feet. Now is where I said to myself they must mean Vertical Visibility of 100 feet but that we would shoot the approach and see. The USAF books say we have to have the minimums (ceiling and visibility) before we can begin the approach, well we are flying under a mix of rules and the army says we CAN shoot the approach and see if we can land. So long story short we shot the approach.

For those of you flying type it was an NDB that we can’t fly at night unless we are aided with night vision goggles, not the most precision approach out there. Well I briefed the copilot on what to expect as we started to land, expect fog.

On the approach we could see the runway and everything fine but I knew what was coming, at about 30 feet the runway lights started to dim and the far lights at the departure end of the runway started to disappear. As the lights started to fade I concentrated on the 3-4 lights ahead of the aircraft that I could see and landed on centerline. We could always see the runway until less than 30 feet where we could only see a few hundred feet in front of us. Then as we slowed down it got pretty bad, OK real bad. If you looked under your night vision goggles you could see that they were helping immensely to cut though the ground fog, without them we were staring into a sea of white. As we parked, very slowly I might add and walked out of the plane it was an odd feeling, it was like we were in some other world. No one on the ground thought we could land in this but as I told them to look straight up we could all see the stars above our heads. The fog was not thick up and down and that allowed us to see fine until we touched down.

So our short night turned into a long night as we didn’t get back to our rooms till after 0300 and then the internet was down on top of that. I tell you war is hell. So I went to bed and passed out. Hopefully we will have a less adventuresome flight tomorrow, till then, Aloha!