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Letters [email protected] F2T2EA area, real-time sensors make it easy in the bar. Drinking was a deportation One way to simplify the F2T2EA to quickly and reliably assess the offense. [“Find, Fix, Track, Target, Engage, effectiveness of air operations. Most people arrived with little Assess,” July, p. 24] problem is to put Lt. Col. Price T. Bingham, knowledge of the climate except a more emphasis on managing the tac- USAF (Ret.) vague idea it was “hot.” July and tical employment of surveillance and Melbourne, Fla. August [temperatures] were 109 [de- attack assets from onboard the the- grees]—with 119 the absolute max ater [Command and Control, Intelli- It Was Earlier and 42 the lowest the year I was gence, Surveillance, and Reconnais- The USAAF established a pres- there. The Persian Gulf was only three sance] team of AWACS, Rivet Joint, ence at Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, in miles away and provided a shallow and Joint STARS [aircraft], rather than 1946. It was closed out in either 1958 layer of very moist air. During my from an air operations center. or 1959. [See “The Long Deployment,” year, we had an official measure- Thanks to the cross-cuing of their July, p. 30.] ment of an 88 [degrees] F dew point own wide-area, real-time sensors and I was a first lieutenant weather and once zero/zero fog at a [tem- the sensors of other systems like forecaster there from June 1956 to perature] of 85 [degrees] F. Dust was [unmanned aerial vehicles], the the- June 1957. The base organization the worst. High winds are prevalent ater C2ISR team will almost always was the 2nd Air Division. About 800 March to June. The club had a big have the most current and, therefore, people were there. This unit provided box where you could dump the sand accurate information on mobile tar- various kinds of support to US inter- from your shoes. gets, and it is movement that usually ests in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Paki- Considering the supply problems, makes targets time critical. The team stan, and Ethiopia. Three C-54s [and] food was good. Eggs and fresh pro- will also have the most reliable con- three C-47s flew regular missions duce were flown in from Beirut or nectivity with shooters operating deep within Saudi Arabia and to Beirut, Asmara as available. Mail came twice in enemy airspace, and this connec- Baghdad, Tehran, and Asmara (Eri- a week via TWA, which had a great tivity makes a significant contribution trea). Two H-19s provided air res- deal with the APO in New York. Air- to the team’s enhanced situational cue, if needed. One of the H-19s mail was usually only two or three awareness. Still another advantage went down 100+ miles offshore in days old when received; I understand of increased emphasis on airborne late 1956 while on a mission to pro- it was not that good during Desert surveillance and battle management vide assistance to an injured sea- Storm. is that it makes our command and man. We had a 10,000-foot runway and control of aerospace forces more During the first few years the base a 6,000-foot cross runway. The base deployable and survivable. was open, the tour was only six months was built to be a recovery base for A second way to simplify the F2T2EA because the “Dallas” huts used for B-36 missions over the Soviet Union. problem is to recognize that usually billeting had no air-conditioning. When Three “nose docks” had been built to the desired “effect” will be functional I was there, cinder-block [bachelor service the B-36s, but the B-36 was when fighting fielded land forces, e.g., officer quarters] and dormitories had gone for all practical purposes by the effect of stopping an enemy from been built. Two large chilled water 1956, as the B-47s were common being able or willing to operate ma- plants later provided [air-condition- and the B-52 was into full production. chines that are needed to perform ing] for all buildings on base. The tour There were no fences around the militarily significant functions. In this then became 12 months. Base hous- base. Before each aircraft arrival/de- case, attacking and destroying ma- ing was very limited—key people only. parture, the airdrome officer was re- chines that are being operated (mov- The officers club served milk shakes quired to check the runways for wan- ing) and, therefore, occupied be- dering Bedouins, loose donkeys, etc. comes a means for changing the TWA and KLM used the base a couple behavior of enemy personnel not yet of times a week each way, and Swissair attacked, making them unwilling to Do you have a comment about a started up in 1957. MATS’ Atlantic risk operating their machines because current article in the magazine? Write Division and Pacific Division both ter- of their perception of the great dan- to “Letters,” Air Force Magazine, 1501 minated at Dhahran and reversed their ger if they do so. Exploiting the Lee Highway, Arlington, VA 22209- routes. The Pacific Division was op- 1198. (E-mail: [email protected].) Let- enemy’s perception of danger allows ters should be concise and timely. erated by the Navy; the run was called desired effects to be achieved faster We cannot acknowledge receipt of the Embassy Run. I rode it on a Christ- and with less resources than could letters. We reserve the right to con- mas leave to Bangkok with stops in be explained solely by the amount of dense letters. Letters without name Karachi and New Delhi. Those were destruction caused by attacks. And and city/base and state are not ac- the days! when stopping the enemy’s opera- ceptable. Photographs cannot be Lt. Col. W.P. Cramer, tion of his machines is the desired used or returned.—THE EDITORS USAF (Ret.) effect, the theater C2ISR team’s wide- San Antonio 4 AIR FORCE Magazine / September 2000 Letters Understanding that the article was qualified as Boyne would have com- Ross Ice Shelf at McMurdo Sound in about the Gulf War time frame, there mitted such an oversight. Antarctica (Operation Deep Freeze), was an omission. The Air Force has For the record, even though Ol’ Shaky and making the first parachute drop had a military presence in the Gulf as arrived late in the war and, at first, the on the South Pole, making the first early as the late 1970s or early 1980s engineers feared that her great weight intercontinental combat strength and [when] the Air Force was involved in would not be supported by the runway combat ready troop movement en- Elf One. surfaces of Korean airstrips, she dis- tirely by air (Operation Gyroscope), I was stationed in Dhahran for two tinguished herself well, not only ferry- and countless humanitarian missions 60-day cycles in November–Decem- ing troops and supplies to the battle to South America, Asia, and Africa ber 1981 and the June–August 1983 zone but transporting thousands of war- (including Operation New Tape to time frame. weary soldiers and airmen to well-de- the former Belgian Congo). John Mason served R & R in Japan and bringing She was not glamorous, but she Nashua, N.H. back many of the sick and wounded was great. She was perhaps the most POWs during Operation Little Switch. historic cargo carrier of the 20th cen- Loved It, But She also has her image engraved on tury. Let’s not slight her! While I thoroughly enjoyed Walter the wall (the medical panel) of the James L. Seay J. Boyne’s article “Air Force Aircraft national Korean War Veterans Memo- Ex-staff sergeant, USAF of the Korean War” [July, p. 64], I was rial in Washington, D.C. Rantoul, Ill. disappointed and saddened that my After the war, Ol’ Shaky continued old bird, the Douglas C-124 Globe- to distinguish herself by becoming Retired CMSgt. Laddie Ondracek master II (affectionately known as the first heavy aircraft to land on ice from Tulsa, Okla., retired MSgt. Rob- “Ol’ Shaky”) was omitted. She con- (in the Canadian Arctic during the ert B. Walker of Lynden, Wash., and tinues to be the Forgotten Warrior of construction of the [Distant Early retired Lt. Col. Melvin C. Elliott from the Forgotten War. I am genuinely Warning] Line), using the techniques Glendale, Ariz., also wrote to credit amazed that someone as infinitely learned in Canada to land on the Ol’ Shaky.—THE EDITORS Another Shot at “Nine Myths” We appreciate Dr. [Rebecca] Grant’s Kosovo cannot be seen as an ex- played no role is further discredited efforts to highlight lessons learned ception because it was character- by the actual presence of allied ground from Operation Allied Force, but we ized by “a morass of close combat units in Kosovo and in theater. The found the description of each “myth” without a traditional front line.” We arrival of Task Force Hawk and other to be more convincing than the rebut- cannot assume, against all evidence, NATO forces in Albania as well as the tals. [See “Nine Myths About Kosovo,” that our future wars will all be like reinforcement of the Allied Rapid Re- June, p. 50.] The article’s two main the Gulf War. It is unrealistic to ex- action Corps in Macedonia lent cred- points are that airpower was effec- pect future conflicts to be free of ibility to the threat of an allied inva- tive against Serb forces in Kosovo political constraints, noncombatants, sion. and that land power did not contrib- refugee flows, paramilitary forces, These “myths,” then, contain more ute to Allied Force.

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