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- At 0630 President Bush announced that the ground war had final-
ly begun.  Now more than ever, our job is important to save lives
in the air as well as the countless coalition forces on the
ground. People are ecstatic and the mood upswing is like it was
when the air campaign started. The folks can smell the end in
sight and thus far it looks like we are ripping through Kuwait at
an unprecidented pace.

- For the first time today you could actually see the smoke and
oil in the air. The sky had a blackish color and the day carried 
an overcast tint.

- Today was another smooth one. By Day 39, we have most of the
bugs worked out. Not much catches us by surprise at this stage,
whether it be cranking out three phases a night, or dispatching
teams at a moment's notice to anywhere in the AOR when a jet di-
verts. CENTAF is handling our requests professionally and get-
ting results.

- We lost 4 lines due to weather. Our total for the day was
126/130. We technically added one because we sent 1244 up North
as a spare on a mission for 1159 who air aborted for chaff/flare.


FEB 25: DAY 40

- We got our hard copy date on the 543 time change allowing us an
additional 90 days in each category. The new grounding date for
the 120 day category is 29 May, not 27 Feb which saves us a
couple of engine changes and should see us returned stateside.

- The FOL turns were not dropping today. The bad weather coupled
with the intense air and ground traffic hampered our targeting.
It is a simple case of overkill, but it is a great feeling to
know that we have so much air power in the area, it won't all
fit.

- Due to the start of the ground war and our anticipation that it
will be a short one, we have stopped the rotation of personnel to
the FOL for this week. We will play it on a week to week basis,
but hopefully the next time a C-130 goes up it will be to bring
everyone back.

- The FOL called and requested us to pay extra attention to the
tires we send up there. They must be able to sustain three
landing and take offs, possibly with heavy loads because their
munitions will still be intact.

- We flew a perfect day today with no deviations in the schedule.
We also flew an FCF and OCF which brought our total to 130 out of
128.

-  The mood is considerably up. Although the press is rightly
being kept in the dark as to ground force movement, the briefings

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