Fly Navy by Alvin Townley

Author:Alvin Townley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

12

ORDERS TO EXECUTION

THE LAST TIME ED HINE AND I had seen each other, he and his wife Brie were together in Norfolk, three days away from this deployment, which was only now nearing its halfway point. We were now halfway around the world from Virginia. In geography and environment, neither of us could get much farther from home. As we left midrats and walked toward the VFA-103 ready room, he told me about the missions his squadron had been flying.

First, they were long. He and his pilot would spend thirty to forty-five minutes on the flight deck, then launch and fly to the coast of Pakistan. They’d proceed up a corridor known as the Boulevard, which would put them into Afghanistan’s airspace an hour and a half later. There, they would find a tanker and fight turbulence and winds to maneuver their fuel probe precisely into the small basket at the end of a refueling line. They’d tank, disengage, and begin circling their assigned area, ready to provide support for soldiers and marines on the ground. Perhaps they would identify buried roadside bombs. They might help a unit see beyond the next ridge or they might unleash their cannon or bombs to get friendly forces out of a jam. Maybe their sheer presence would keep American servicemen and women safe. They might be needed; they might not.

Often, Ed explained, their mission would change several times during a flight and they had to provide unplanned types of support for different units. Their missions had a fluidity that demanded flexibility and on the spot judgment. In their business, you have one chance to make the right decision. You can’t call a bomb back to your aircraft.

Regardless of how they supported the troops, they’d refuel twice more, then return down the Boulevard, passing high over Pakistan once again. They’d cross the coastline, fly out over the Arabian Sea, and land on their floating base, often in the dark, always physically and mentally drained.

“We’re here to support the guys who are pounding it out on the ground,” Ed explained as we walked through the hushed corridors. “If it’s something as simple as jet noise overhead that keeps terrorist heads down—well, then, job well done. If we’re called on to provide something more dynamic then that’s what we’ll do, but the bottom line is we’re out here to be an extension of the marines, sailors, and soldiers on the ground and become a tool for them to use in the best way they see fit.

“Yes, it’s tough to fly these missions and be deployed over here away from our families,” he added. “But let’s be honest, the job we do is not even close to as hard, dangerous, or dirty as the job that’s being done in Helmand, or Kandahar, or any other place in Afghanistan by the guys on the ground.”

We reached a door marked with a black flag bearing a white skull and crossbones and the phrase: FIGHTIN’ 103. When we opened the

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