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Bombers evacuate Guam

April 17, 2003

By Staff Sgt. Jess Harvey
7th Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs

ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam - Even though Typhoon Kujira never directly hit Guam, all of the B-52 Stratofortresses, B-1B Lancers and their respective support to include airmen, equipment and aircrews were evacuated from the airfield in preparation for the storm April 14.

Starting April 8, weather forecasters and the leadership here began watching a tropical depression forming southeast of Guam, said Lt. Col. Karl 'Buck' Shawhan, 7th Expeditionary Operations Support Squadron director of operations. By April 11, the depression had grown to a tropical storm and was to become a typhoon in the next few days. As usual, the Joint Typhoon Warning Center started projecting where the storm might go, and one possibility was that it would hit Guam.

Colonel Shawhan said that's when Col. Jonathan George, 7th Air Expeditionary Wing commander, decided to evacuate the bombers. vThanks to the 7th AEW's Military Planning Cell or MPC, a plan was already in place to do just that.

"We had almost everything planned out the day the bombers showed up," said Maj. John Touchton III, 7th EOSS MPC team chief. They even had several possible evacuation locations ready.

Colonel Shawhan said the MPC also ensured there was proper parking for the bombers, security for the aircraft, limited maintenance capabilities in case the support packages weren't able to make it and all the other support requirements that go along with deploying aircraft.

The bombers started leaving April 13.

"According to the plan, we'd have all the bombers off by 12:30 [a.m.] or 1 o'clock," said Colonel Shawhan. "So, we set up essentially a 16-hour duty day for people to come in, launch all the aircraft, wave good-bye and then batten down the hatches."

But not everything went according to plan.

"We ran into a couple hurdles," said Colonel Shawhan. "You're trying to launch every bomber in the 7th AEW without a hitch, and that's difficult at best."

"A couple aircraft were harder to prepare, and maintenance stretched out to the next morning," he said. Some of the leadership spent 27 hours straight on the flightline supervising work being done to the aircraft to make sure the aircraft could evacuate.

During a normal training day, a flight may be cancelled if something prevents launching the aircraft within a few hours, according to Colonel Shawhan. "During the evacuation, canceling the flight wasn't an option, so maintenance crews kept working the jets to beat the weather."

Colonel Shawhan said there were other challenges.

"During this entire time, we had to maintain our combat capability," said Colonel Shawhan. Pacific Air Forces and U.S. Pacific Command wanted the 7th AEW to be able to continue our mission "no matter where we were."

He said even though the bombers were at Fairchild AFB, Wash., and Hickam AFB, Hawaii, the 7th AEW maintained its combat readiness.

"We had good communications with Fairchild and Hickam," said Colonel Shawhan. "We kept the 7th AEW commander, Colonel George, in contact with the deployed squadrons and appraised of their status."

He said working with the two bases was fairly easy.

"Fairchild is a former B-52 base and is perfectly set up to support B-52s," said Colonel Shawhan. "And we had a [liaison] at Hickam who was able to smooth over the waters there and make sure the airfield was ready to accept us."

Major Touchton said that, overall, things went well.

"We started with a good plan, and the plan worked," said Major Touchton.

Colonel Shawhan agreed but said they noted some things.

"A lesson we learned for next time is to better plan for delays and bumps in the road so that we can adjust and manage the shift work so that people don't have to stay on for 27 hours," said Colonel Shawhan, but he complimented the workers.

"They did phenomenally good work despite being tired and fatigued," he said.

But he said that next time, things will go even better.

"We went through our procedures," said Colonel Shawhan. "We were able to define and refine some things we hadn't thought of.

"Because of this experience, next time we'll be able to react in a much more rapid fashion," he continued. "If nothing else, it was a fantastic training event. Had the typhoon veered north like the one in December, it would have devastated the island and could have destroyed a lot of combat capability if the aircraft were still here."

"We were lucky," said Colonel Shawhan. "Mother Nature was slow and deliberate on this one, and it didn't [smack] us too hard." Courtesy of Pacific Air Forces News Service.