Document Page: First | Prev | Next | All | Image | This Release | Search

the one thing that made us jump, and we went to Alarm Red,
and we tried to launch the A-l0s and keep other aircraft
from landing here. At the same time, people were jumping
into their bunkers and running around. It is very difficult
to do things in a disciplined manner when you are jumping
into a bunker. We [learned] to do that pretty well after a
while. We were actually Scudded only three times, and the
Patriots fired overhead.

There was some concern that the Patriot's would inadvertently
hit an aircraft in the traffic pattern. We felt, after some
research, that the probability of that was low enough to
accept. The Patriots were very successful in keeping the
Scuds away from us.

The rain that we experienced during this period of time
produced a lot of mud. The mud made surface transportation
very, very difficult. I'm talking in terms of weapons
trailers or trailers loaded with Mark 84s or Mark 82s, what
have you, needed to drive over these muddy dirt roads from
the weapons storage area out to the flight line where they
would be loaded aboard the aircraft.

These roads were sometimes impassable, and we had to send
them down the taxiway, creating the FOD [Foreign Object
Damage] problem. We would accept that and clean it up as
quickly as we could. The civil engineers came out with some
gravel and made the roads passable. The civil engineers are
certainly heroes in all of this. The mud made it very, very
difficult. The mud would be just as thick and muddy as you
have ever seen in Germany or in other places.

People would get sick because of colds, and I would lose
some work performance due to health problems. People were
excited enough to continue working due to the war effort.

                                                                8

Document Page: First | Prev | Next | All | Image | This Release | Search