Five weeks elapsed between the start of the air war portion of Desert Storm and the introduction of ground units to the war. 7th Battalion, 101st Aviation Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, remained in the scatter site field position for about a week. We then moved back to King Fahd International Airport for a day before we headed north and established our forward operating base near tap-line road in northern Saudi Arabia.
We actually established a working field base at tap-line road, as opposed to the emergency position we'd been in at the scatter site. Tents were set up, latrines were built, supply and maintenance areas were setup and this was our new home. Back to normal operations, just closer to where things were going on.
Aircraft concerns where high as just prior to our scatter into the desert a CH-47D 89-00165 caught fire during flight. On 11 January 1991, during Operation Desert Storm, the number two engine transmission experienced a catastrophic failure accompanied by an in-flight fire during execution of an emergency landing being conducted as a result of the illumination of the number two engine transmission hot caution light. The aircraft internally loaded cargo, an M102 Howitzer and M998 High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV, aka HUMVEE or HUMMER) and all the equipment of the crew and passengers were totally destroyed in the fire. All the crew and passengers were able to exit the aircraft safely and uninjured. This all occurred in less than fifteen minutes.
Other aircraft maintenance concerns also included sand abrasion wear of the turbine blades of the engines. It was troubling to look in the inlet of the engine and see turbine blades that looked like potato chips. Normally, engines on a Chinook were rebuilt after 800 hours of flight time, Due to sand erosion of the first and second stage compressor blades, our engines were being replaced after only 50 to 100 hours of desert flight time. This caused a worldwide shortage of of replacement engines in the supply system.
The Organizational Readiness Float (ORF) is a supply chain method where critical components are stages in depots world wide to allow for major component replacements to occur quickly while the old component is sent to the repair depot for overhaul. There were over 80 T55-L712 engine base assemblies in the ORF at the beginning of Desert Shield. These were rapidly depleted and the situation became severe enough that engines were removed from aircraft in other regions of the world and shipped to the combat theater.
Our company aircraft maintenance section became engine replacement experts. Normal turn around time for an engine replacement was 48 to 72 hours. Servicing one of our company aircraft, the team replaced both engines on one aircraft, completed all required inspections. Had the aircraft test flown and back into service in less than 24-hours. We held the maintenance team in the highest esteem.
The desert conditions were wreaking havoc on other aircraft components. The rotor systems were connected to the flight controls by a rotating swash-plate. This device transferred stationary control inputs of the flight controls into rotating control inputs to the rotor system. Part of this assembly was a large Teflon slider assembly. During the aircraft run up, one of the things we tested was that the flight controls moved freely and smoothly. Sand causes the slider to shudder and under non-combat conditions, we would not have flown the aircraft. This was where ingenuity of our maintenance team again came to the rescue. They found that application of dry Teflon spray to the sliders during the flight control check, allowed them to slide freely as needed.
Once we left the base at King Fahd International Airport (KFIA) we suffered from a lack of information. Unless we were tasked for a mission, we got little communication from our chain of command. Even then, we didn't get a lot of information on what the tactical situation was in our area. We got most of our information on the high frequency radio one of our crew had sent to them from home. The BBC became our window to the world. (A re-occurring theme.)
The terrain of this area was a surprise to us. There wasn't sand like we'd experienced in the southern region, this was all fragmented limestone rock, dirt and dust. There were these flat rocks, up to a foot in diameter and up to 6 inches thick all over the place. There there were flat pond like areas of dirt. Some only a few feet across, some half the size of a football field. We parked aircraft in the larger ones, and setup tents and other equipment in other ones.
Tents. We lived in 5-man tents that were in theory, designed to house five people. Since we had cots and weapons and our kit and such, this was nominal at best. It was crowded and cozy and mostly smelly. It was cold enough at night that we slept in our sleeping bags, but not warm enough during the day to dry everything out. So the tent was usually a damp zone. We tried to keep things from mildewing at the least.
My pilot-in-command, Mark, brought a couple golf clubs with him and a half-dozen golf balls. So we improvised a golf course and occupied some of our down time playing golf. Pitching balls from one dirt area to another. No drives but we got better at our short game.
Cards, writing letters to send home, reading and of course company duty were other a pastimes waiting for the next ball to drop. That happened soon enough.
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