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Photo by Master Sgt. Mark Bucherl
An F-15C Eagle from the 1st Fighter Wing, receives fuel high over Southwest Asia from a tanker assigned to the 401st Air Expeditionary Wing operating from a forward base located in the Mediterranean region
Photo by Senior Airman Manuel Martinez
Capt. Dave "Smuggler" Johnson of the 485th Air Expeditionary Wing taxies out while Airman 1st Class Jonathan Paul, 485th Air Expeditionary Wing, marshals him for the final steps.
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Behind the pilots and jets, a huge cast of more than 500 support and maintenance people from nearly every unit in the 1st Fighter Wing keeps them flying and provides all the necessities. At the same location, units from other bases all around the world are also supported by Langley people. This diverse group is brought together under the command of Col. Tod “Magoo” Wolters, 485th Air Expeditionary Wing commander and 1st Operations Group commander for Langley while at home. “Every warrior from Team Langley lives in tent city, dines on MREs (Meals, Ready to Eat) and relishes the opportunity to work at least 12 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Wolters in an e-mailed statement. “To date, Langley F-15Cs have been able to secure all of the desired air superiority objectives set forth … (and) thwarted every Iraqi attempt to threaten Coalition assets.”
Several hundred miles North, another group of Langley airmen were also working hard; but not in preparation for war. Many of Langley’s 94th Fighter Squadron and associated support people waited for orders to either come home or redeploy in support of the war after successfully completing the 12-year-long Operation Northern Watch mission. After deploying to Incirlik Air Base, Turkey, and Keflavik Naval Air Station, Iceland, for Air and Space Expeditionary Force 8 in late November and early December, many members of the 94th FS have been gone for much longer than their “90-day rotation.” While most of those deployed to Keflavik returned March 1, the fate of those deployed to Incirlik had remained uncertain, even after they had flown their final ONW patrol March 17.
The now defunct ONW mission was to enforce the No-Fly Zone in northern Iraq and to monitor Iraqi forces to ensure their compliance with United Nations Security Council resolutions, according to a statement released by U.S. Forces European Command. Since the inception of Operation Iraqi Freedom and subsequent loss of the ability to fly missions over Iraq from Turkey, coalition units have been working to either re-deploy their forces to another location or bring them home. The 94th had initially prepared for redeployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, said Staff Sgt. Matthew Robinson, a deployed avionics system craftsman with the 94th FS at Incirlik Robinson, but then found out that many of them were headed back. When asked whether they recognized the full impact of what they had accomplished – successfully bringing to a close the 12-year long mission of ONW – Robinson said the work needed to accomplish the close out of that mission and get ready for the possibility of another kept them from really thinking about it. “It hasn’t really sunk in yet,” he said. |