Airborne (1997) (40 page)

Aft of the flight deck is the fully pressurized cargo compartment. The “loadable volume” is 85.2 feet/25.9 meters long, 18 feet/5.5 meters wide, and 12.3 ft/3.75 m high at the lowest point under the wing carry-through box. The aft end of the fuselage is dominated by the cargo ramp and door, which is similar in design to that of the Hercules. The hydraulic-powered ramp is designed to handle the weight of a heavy tank, so there is no problem loading up to 40,000 lb/18,143 kg of cargo and vehicles on its broad surface. When the long cargo door pulls up inside the aircraft as the ramp is lowered, the cargo floor is approximately 5.3 feet/1.6 meters above the ground. This gives the ramp a gentle 9° slope when it is lowered, which makes loading of bulky cargo and vehicles much easier than on other heavy transports.

Just forward of the ramp are paratroops’ jump doors on each side of the fuselage. Like the C-130, the doors pull in and slide up, and at the same time a perforated deflector deploys outboard to reduce the blast of air experienced by exiting paratroops. A standard airdrop load is 102 paratroops with equipment, though up to twice that many can be accommodated if necessary.

The interior of a 437th Airlift Wing C-17A loaded with cargo for the NATO Implementation Force. C-17s provide a large percentage of the airlift for the peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

There are countless load plans that detail various arrangements of vehicles and cargo, with specific data on tie-down points, and critical aircraft center-of-gravity calculations. For example, the C-17 can carry two rows of 5-ton trucks or HMMWVs, including two right on the ramp. Of course, there also is room in capacity for the heavy iron: things like M1A2 main battle tanks, 60-ton cargo loaders, and even small
DSRV
rescue submarines. Each cargo tie-down ring is stressed to hold 25,000 lb/11,340 kg, and the floor locks are automated so that they can be released from the loadmasters.

The C-17 is also equipped to be a flying ambulance. When rigged for medical evacuation, the cargo compartment can hold forty-eight litter patients plus medical attendants, and is fully plumbed with oxygen so that each patient has a mask if required.

Other load/personnel mixes include loading the center row with cargo pallets or vehicles to be dropped into a DZ first, then paratroopers along the sides. There also are three emergency escape hatches in the top of the cargo compartment, which can be used in the event of a water landing.

All of these features make the C-17A the most capable, versatile, and survivable cargo aircraft ever built. While the Globemaster has had a torturous and expensive gestation, it is rapidly maturing and, I personally believe, worth the high price that the American taxpayers have paid for it. Perhaps most important of all, though, it fills the strategic airlift shortfall that was first projected in the late 1970s at the start of the C-X program. If the full 120 C-17’s that are currently contracted are ultimately built, they will replace retiring C-141s in all active airlift squadrons by the end of the first decade of the 21st century.

A McDonnell Douglas C-17A Globemaster III takes off from a dirt airfield. The ability to operate from short and unimproved runways was a key part of the original C-17 specification.

By that time, there will likely be orders for further production lots of the Globemaster, though. Remember that the original C-X requirement projected an additional ninety aircraft to replace the C-5 fleet, which will be over three decades old by then. There also will be the matter of replacing other types of transport aircraft by that time. For example, the aging USAF force of KC-135s will be almost ready to retire by then, and there is strong support to decrease the number of different airframes within the transport force. A recent GAO study suggests that tanker and electronic support versions of the C-17 would be an excellent value, and are likely to be built after the initial run of cargo versions.

It would not be surprising if there are C-17s still flying in 2050 or even later in the next century, hauling the load in a world we can scarcely imagine. Douglas even is working on a commercial version of the Globemaster, the MD-17, which would be used to compete on the worldwide outsized cargo transport market that is currently dominated by the Russians. This is truly a bird that has come a long way from the dark days of 1989! However you view this big bird, though, it has survived battles that would have killed other aircraft long ago.

I
t had been a long day of talking in the Presidential Palace in Port-au-Prince , Haiti, on September 18th, 1994. All day, a trio of envoys from the United States had been trying to defuse a long-simmering dispute over the transition to a democratic government in the bankrupt little island nation. The poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti was on the brink of invasion if someone did not back off soon. The U.S. delegation, led by former President Jimmy Carter, then-Senator Sam Nunn, and retired General Colin Powell, had been trying to reason with the leadership of the military junta that had taken over the tiny nation many months earlier. The Haitian military leaders had taken this action after Haiti’s first democratic election in history had provided them with a government that they could not tolerate. Unfortunately, this coup had outraged the democratic nations in the hemisphere, with the United States at the top of the list.

What had followed was one of the more miserable exhibitions of international statecraft in U.S. history. Over two separate Administrations, the American response seemed tepid and downright timid at times. The situation became positively humiliating in the fall of 1993 when an American amphibious ship, the USS
Barnstable County
(LST-1197), loaded with peacekeeping troops to stabilize the situation, was driven off by gun-wielding demonstrators (known as
attachés,
they were the enforcers of the military junta) at the Port-au-Prince docks. Now, almost a year later, things had finally come to a head. The delegation, sent by President Bill Clinton, had come to tell the junta, led by General Raoul Cedras, to either leave or suffer the consequences—both personal and military.

The exact details of what was said and done that day have never been fully released, but one thing is known. There was no secret that a vast invasion force had been assembled to take Haiti, by force if necessary, to restore the legally elected government of President Jean Betrand Aristide. Then, at the last possible minute, almost too late in fact, General Cedras gave in and agreed to leave peacefully, going into personal exile.

For most Americans, it is enough to know that when the troops of the invasion force arrived the next day, they walked in peacefully, receiving the cheers of a grateful Haitian populace. Or was it that simple? Such coercion had hardly worked against the likes of Manuel Noriega and Saddam Hussein. They had paid the price for their decisions with demonstrations of American arms that had cost one of them his country and freedom, and the other the ability to freely trade and make war on his neighbors. Perhaps General Cedras had been smart enough to watch CNN and learn a few lessons. Perhaps, but it is also likely that he took the time to listen to a few friendly words of advice from General Powell. Now what, you might well ask, could have been said late that Sunday night to make General Cedras give in? Well, how about: “They are already in the air, the entire division is on the way.”

“They” was the 82nd Airborne Division, and when General Powell said the entire division, he was not kidding. For the first time since the Second World War, nearly the entire 82nd Airborne was in the air with all its equipment. Spread among almost 150 C-130 Hercules and C-141 Starlifter transport aircraft, all three combat brigades were already on the way to drop zones around Port-au-Prince.
⁴⁶
The division was set to achieve by force what world opinion and United Nations resolutions could never achieve. Perhaps most of all, General Cedras was given a basic choice of his future. Either retire to a plush existence off the coast of Panama, or be taken to the ship’s brig of USS Wasp (LHD-1), already waiting off the coast of Haiti. Cedras was noted for being a smart man, and the reputation of that lead unit, the 82nd, probably was enough to tell him which option held the most pleasant possibilities. In Grenada, Panama, and the Persian Gulf, the 82nd had led the way for American force of arms. In fact, the commitment of the 82nd is usually a sign that the United States is really serious about its commitment to a particular situation. So Cedras left into his self-imposed exile, and the 82nd returned home, to get ready for the next time. They had won Haiti on their reputation alone.

What kind of unit has such power to deter the intentions of dictator or strongman? This is the question that we will attempt to answer as we get to know the 82nd Airborne Division and its supporting units in this chapter. In doing so, I hope that you will come to understand, as I do, why America needs at least one unit like the 82nd. To go, when necessary, where diplomacy and reason have failed and only a show of force will do. But perhaps even more importantly, to make those who oppose the will of the U.S. and our allies think twice before they act. Because in its own way, the 82nd Airborne Division is as much a deterrent force as a thermonuclear warhead on a ballistic missile or an H-bomb dropped from a stealth bomber.

You do not forge a reputation overnight; it take years of effort and lots of hard experience. This has been the road for the troopers of the 82nd: hard and bloody. Nevertheless, theirs is a reputation that has been earned the hard way, and it is good enough to scare people into
not
wanting to fight them. However, to fully understand why folks feel this way, we need to take a quick trip back into the past to look at the history of the 82nd Airborne Division’s “All-Americans.”

The dream of assaulting an enemy strong point “from the clouds”—that is to say, of using the air as a vertical extension of the battlefield—is probably as old as mankind. We are all familiar with the ancient legend of Daedalus, who fashioned a pair of wings so he could launch himself into the air to reach Sicily; nor is it hard to imagine some prehistoric cave dweller watching a bird of prey descend upon an unsuspecting rodent, and wishing he could duplicate that nifty stunt the next time his tribe raided those loutish Neanderthals across the glacier. Unfortunately for our primitive tactician, it would take a hundred centuries of technological advances—specifically, the more or less concurrent development of the warplane and the free-fall parachute during World War I—for his dream to become a reality.

As I related in the first chapter, it was Colonel Billy Mitchell, the colorful head of air operations for the American Expeditionary forces in World War I, who led the way with creative airborne thinking in the latter days of war. The close of the war not only suspended his innovative operations, but also put the idea of developing a permanent air infantry in suspension for a generation—here in the United States, that is.

Europe was a different story though. By 1930 Russia had introduced parachute units into its army and honed their jump techniques in extensive training exercises. In 1935 and 1936 the Red Army conducted a series of spectacular and widely publicized airborne maneuvers, in one demonstration awing an invited audience of European diplomats and military observers by dropping more than five thousand men—a brigade-sized group—in a single simulated air assault. This so impressed the heads of the embryonic German Luftwaffe that they quickly opened a military jump school outside Berlin and began training an elite paratrooper, or Fallschirmjaeger, corps.

Around the same time, the French and Italian armies began experimenting with their own airborne units as well. Of all the major nations that would fight the Second World War in Europe, only the Americans and British lagged behind in developing parachute infantry units. However, their efforts were jolted into high gear by Hitler’s Blitzkrieg conquests of Norway and Holland in the spring of 1940, in which his paratroop corps was a critical element. By the following year, German parachute and air-landing units were able to take the entire island of Crete from Commonwealth forces with almost no assistance.