Kodiak Island is one of the largest islands in the Gulf of Alaska and the only larger ones are in the eastern archipelago along the coast near Canada. Kodiak is near the beginning of the Aleutian Island chain and is the home to the largest US Coast Guard base in the country.
After I was promoted to Sergeant, I was re-assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company (HHC) 5th Battalion, 327th Infantry Regiment (5/327 IN) where I went from doing artillery stuff to infantry stuff. 5/327 IN had a battalion consolidated motor pool and I was assigned as the Services Supervisor. To deploy to Kodiak Island, there were two options to get there, plane or boat. Since Fort Richardson was located adjacent to Elmendorf Air Force Base, deploying by plane was a logical option.
Like just about all training the Army does in Alaska, this deployment occurred during the winter months. “Train like you live” was the motto. For the most part, you lived in Winter in Alaska, so training exercises also occurred in Winter.
Airlift operations are the epitome of the army tradition of “Hurry up and wait.” You bust your ass getting the vehicles in tip top shape (the tiniest of oil leaks will get a vehicle barred by an aircraft loadmaster.) Then you have to go through a weight and balance inspection after which you go sit on the flight line, in your vehicle, freezing your ass off, in a snowstorm, and wait for the plane to arrive.
Finally, after what seemed to be an eternity, a C-130 Hercules taxied up and dropped the cargo ramp for you to load. The Small Unit Support Vehicle (SUSV) it great for getting around in Alaska, it can conquer virtually any terrain, but it isn’t the most comfortable thing to spend hour upon hour waiting in for your plane to arrive.
Loading the SUSV on the plane was no problem. We were glad to have the ramp up and the SUSV strapped down and taxiing for take-off. Of all the Air Force planes I’ve flown in, the C-130 is my favorite. It literally jumps into the air and these planes are damn near indestructible. Definitely reliable and they are my choice for most Army operations. We didn’t have too much cargo and only three or four passengers so there was a fair amount of room.
Once in the air and at cruising altitude, we could move about and the crew chief even offered us coffee. (Yeah, they have a built-in coffee pot among other pleasantries.) I got to see the cockpit and one of the more interesting jobs of the flight engineer was to manage the fuel in the various tanks. The view was little to see, as flying over the ocean is not the most exciting view. The only really good parts we couldn’t watch as we were strapped in for takeoff and landing.
We landed at Kodiak Benny Benson State Airport and to my surprise we quickly convoyed onto the Kodiak Island Coast Guard Base and setup a vehicle shop in a bay of a retired power plant on the base. We had lights and shelter from the wind but this was unheated space so we were kinda roughing it, but just barely.
The base itself was built in 1939 -1941 and was a US Naval base until 1972 where it was turned over to the coast guard. We spent a lot of time exploring the building. It was like a museum in many ways as the building for the most part had been left as is on the last day of use. We looked around at these massive generators and the control stations just wondering what it had been like when it was in operation.
Once something is built in Alaska it is rarely torn down or completely abandoned. Most building are continually repurposed. In this case, while it was no longer the primary power station (The original purpose) the building contained a fairly large diesel power backup generator for the base. The 8-cylinder engine was massive, over 12 feet tall and the size of a large delivery truck.
I puzzled as to how the engine was started as I could not see any starting device. That question was answered a few days later during the operational test where generator is fired up and tested for a couple hours every two weeks. (It is started with compressed air and has an operating speed of 400 RPMs if you are curious.) A group of about four Coasties came in and ran the system. It is also quite loud so for that two hours we wore our hearing protection and tried our best to ignore the noise.
This turned out to be one of the most interesting field exercises I did in the army because we really never went out of any built-up area except one trip for supplies after about a week on the island. It felt strange to leave a built-up area and drive to a field site to get supplies from a tent, then drive back to base. It was a novel experience but it beat a five-man tent and snow, we weren’t complaining.
Aside from the Coasties, we also got to meet a maintenance tech for a US Navy Sea, Air, and Land (SEAL) detachment. They were deployed without any support team and he was scrounging parts where he could. He needed a short-shaft that connected the transmission to the transfer case on a 2 ½ ton truck (M35A2) and we had one. In the spirit of inter-service cooperation, we traded the shaft for some Long-range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP’s) rations. Not that they were anything better that what we had, but they were something different to eat (and older, leftover from Vietnam). The SEAL mechanic was a cool dude and really appreciated the help.
The exercise was deemed a success whatever they did. (Except for that one supply trip we stayed in the shop and just fixed things brought to us.) then we loaded back on the C-130 and returned to Elmendorf. The best part of returning from the field was that our Motor Officer was Filipino and after every exercise he’d cook up egg rolls he’d frozen earlier while we cleaned all our equipment during recovery. I never got tired of his cooking.
There was nothing really dramatic about this story, just another interesting (at least to me) part of my life and the only time I deployed by an Air Force asset that didn’t drop me in an actual war zone.
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