1980s Sales Parts Service

C-5 on an ice runway in MacMurdo Sound, overcoming fears about the ability of the sea ice to carry the weight of the heavy airlifter.

The aircraft commander, Lt. Col. Oakly Risser, later said it was like landing on a snow-covered runway in Alaska.

Wherever the president went, so did Travis aircraft – carrying whatever he needed, from staff to bulletproof limousines.

In 1985, four Travis aircraft accompanied President Ronald Reagan to China and, in 1988, a C-5 went with Reagan to Moscow for the summit with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. The next year, it was with a new president, George H.W. Bush, when he went to China and later to Malta to meet Gorbachev.

In a somber epilogue to the Vietnam War, the Unknown Soldier of the Vietnam War arrived at Travis in May 1984 to be kept at the base chapel overnight after a ceremony, and then on to Washington, D.C., aboard a C-141 from the 7th Military Airlif t Squadron.

The 1980s had a series of international crises and Travis was involved in ma ny of them.

When Libya attacked Chad in 1983, Travis sent a C-141 to that region in July while Travis personnel were deployed to several locations throughout West Africa.

The American invasion of Grenada in late October 1983 i nvolved Travis airlifters, as well as the base’s security police, who were sent to the island to help transfer POWs to Barbados.

When Ferdinand Marcos was forced to resign as leader in the Philippines in February 1986, it was a Travis aircraft that collected Marcos’ entourage and followed the aircraft carrying Marcos to Guam. It then carried Marcos into exile in Hawaii.

After a Kuwaiti tanker struck a mine in 1987 as the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq

Operation Ernest Will, the deployment of mine-sweeping equipment and people to the Persian Gulf.

The latter half of the 1980s saw a series of natural disasters that Travis responded to, starting with the base’s C-5s and C-141s flying 190 tons of aid to Mexico City in September 1985 a fter it was hammered by a massive earthquake.

Three years later, in September 1988, Travis C-5s collected members of the 3rd Marine Division from Camp Pendleton and carried them to Yellowstone National Park to help battle the wildf ires there.

When the Exxon Valdez struck rocks in Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989, spilling its oil into the sea, Travis C-5 t ransported landing craft, helicopters, chemicals and cleaning equipment to Elmendorf Air Force Base, Alaska, to start t he cleanup.

Only a few months later, extensive damage caused by Hurricane Hugo in the Carolinas, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands saw Travis aircraft winging their way to that region with relief supplies and personnel.

The base’s biggest military operation of the decade came when U.S. forces invaded Panama in December 1989 to oust Manuel Noriega.

Travis had already airlifted 2,000 7th Infantry Division troops and their equipment to Panama in May to bolster American forces there.

Poor weather on Dec. 20, 1989, did not stop Travis from launching everything it had to collect and transport more soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division to knock Noriega from power. By the end of the year, Travis had flown 50 C -5 a nd 46 C -141 m issions.

Operation Just Cause was the biggest American military operation since the Vietnam War, but an even bigger one was just around the corner. Travis would play an invaluable role in it.