1990s: Gulf, natural disasters and worldwide missions

The 1948 Berlin airlift had long been considered the yardstick of successful air mobility operations.

That was until Iraq invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, throwing aside the tiny Kuwaiti army and declaring its annexation six days later.

President George H.W. Bush responded on Aug. 7 by ordering American troops to Saudi Arabia to keep the Iraqis from pushing into that country if they decided to.

Military Airlift Command went on alert and started creating a massive air bridge to the region with every available aircraft, emptying the Travis f light line.

Between Aug. 9, 1990, and Feb. 28, 1991, when Operation Desert Storm concluded, the 60th Military Airlift Wing launched 669 C -5 m issions, 445 C -141 m issions and deployed 1,132 personnel from Travis to the Persian Gulf region.

“One day, we had 111 planes at Dhahran doing resupply,” said

60th Aerial Port Squadron commander Col. Bill Taylor in a 1991 Daily Republic interview. “Nobody has ever done an airlift of this size.”

“I am glad that our airplane is a machine. If not, it could have died a long time ago,” C-5 pilot Maj. David Petzel said in a 1991 i nterview of the long, grueling hours aircrews put in that saw aircraft land on everything from international airports to Saudi sites “that were an airstrip and little else.”

It was just as grueling for ground crews who loaded, unloaded and maintained the aircraft.

“They are out there with so many planes going in and out. It becomes a rhythmic monotony,” said Petzel, who brought in bags of candy for maintainers and loadmasters who would

1990s: KC-10s on the ramp at Travis. (USAF photo) come up to the aircraft, grab a handful of candy and head back to work. help the count ry recover.

A David Grant Medical Center contingent was sent to Nocton Hall, England, to set up a contingency hospital to handle an expected flood of casualties from when Operation Desert Storm kicked off. As he was leaving for England in January 1991, DGMC contingent commander Col. Robert Gilmore voiced the hope the hospital would not be needed, a wish that came true when the Iraqi army simply collapsed under the coalition assault.

It was a Travis pilot who landed the first C-5 i n Kuwait City on March 15, 1991, after the Iraqis were kicked back out. Lt. Col. Larry Prose’s aircraft unloaded firefighting equipment to put out the oil well fires that the Iraqi army lit during their retreat.

Kuwait fell so fast that Air Force troops slated to restore and run the airport there were still in the United States, so Taylor had to collect some of his people from Dhahran to clean up the debris the Iraqis left behind.

Travis involvement did not end with the Gulf War. Travis would continue ongoing support of American forces in the Gulf as part of Operation Southern Watch, the imposition of a no-fly zone over Iraq.

As part of an Air Force-wide reorganization, Military Airlift Command became Air Mobility Command and the 60th Military Airlift Wing became the 60th Airlift Wing in November 1991.

Eighteen months later, in July 1993, the 22nd Air Force furled its flag and left Travis to be replaced by the 15th Air Force from March Air Force Base in Southern California as part of Air Force plans to move air tankers back to Travis to become part of the 60th Airlift Wing, truly making it a complete air mobility wing.

Along with the 15th Air Force came the 615th Air Mobility Group, which was activated at Travis in July 1993 to provide the Air Force the ability to quickly open up and operate airfields anywhere in the world in austere locations that were to range from war-torn Afghanistan to tsunami-ravaged Indonesia.

In September 1994, the 9th Air Refueling Squadron arrived at Travis with 10 KC-10 Extender air tankers and, as a result, the 60th Airlift Wing was renamed the 60th Air Mobility Wing in October. The 6th Air Refueling Squadron showed up in August 1995 w ith 17 more KC-10s.

There was no let-up in natural disasters for Travis and its airlifters.

The steady procession of humanitarian missions, mixed with international commitments, prompted Travis airlifters to come up with the joke that AMC didn’t really mean Air Mobility Command, but Another Missed Christmas.

Two months later, Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines exploded, covering the surrounding area in ash, including Clark Air Base, which had been evacuated when the mountain started rumbling. Travis aircraft help haul evacuees to the United States, including 6,500 people who were brought to Travis.

When the Soviet Union finally collapsed, the Pentagon put Travis commander Brig. Gen. John Sams in charge of the airlift that brought in food and medicine to the new republics of the former Soviet Union, with Travis aircraft flying to locations in Russia, Armenia, Ukraine, Kyrgystan, Modavia a nd Georgia.

In August 1992, a Travis C-141 carried off the first of several missions to Mombasa, Kenya, to support relief operations in war-torn and famine-ravaged Somalia. It wasn’t long before Travis aircraft were flying into Mogadishu, Somalia, to support American and U.N. troops there who were trying to keep the peace.

During the same year, the Travis airlifters also provided relief missions to Florida and Louisiana, which had been hit by Hurricane Andrew in August; to Guam after Typhoon Omar hammered that island later in August; and to Hawaii in September when Hurricane Iniki vented its wrat h on Kauai.

As icing on the cake, Travis aircraft were also tasked with flying food and medicine to victims of the fighting in Bosnia in November after Yugoslavia collapsed. Bosnia would remain a Travis destination through 1993 a nd 1994.

Tech. Sgt. Thomas Senters was on one of those missions to Sarajevo, which was under siege, relating in a Tailwind interview that, “As soon as the loadmaster lowered the ramp, the forklifts would pull up, and then the French and Norwegian troops would help us push pallets off and load more on.”

“After the paperwork is exchanged, we are off again,” Senters said. “We don’t have much time to think, ‘Is anyone going to shoot at us?’ ”

Not only did Travis air tankers and transports support the imposition of a no-fly zone over Bosnia that started in 1993, but a David Grant medical detachment was sent to Zagreb in February 1995 to provide medical support for U.N. forces there.

Travis air tankers supported the NATO air offensive against the Bosnian Serbs that kicked off in August, while Travis transports and the members of the 615th Air Mobility Operations Group were sent to the region to help airlift about 30,000 U.S. soldiers to keep the peace once the offensive forced the Serbs into peace talks.

Between July and September 1994, Travis commander Brig. Gen. Howard Ingersoll directed the large airlift to send relief supplies to the refugees of the Rwandan genocide, which saw Air Mobility Command fly in almost 25,000 tons of supplies and equipment.

If that was not enough, Travis air transports helped fly 15,000 A merican troops into Haiti in September to help get the Port-au-Price airport running again when the United States intervened in that country to remove the military junta there.

Haiti was Travis Tech. Sgt. Fred Alfke’s fourth deployment after Beirut, Somalia and Rwanda, setting up a medical aid station in the Port-Au-Prince ai r terminal.

“This is a better situation and we are pretty happy with what the negotiating team did. We are here to help the people and it leaves me with a pretty good feeling that we didn’t have to tear up a lot of Haiti,” Alfke said in a 1994 i nterview.

In April 1996, it was civil war-wracked Liberia that saw a contingent from the 60th Air Mobility Wing deployed to nearby Sierra Leone to help in a joint special operations effort that evacuated 2, 200 people from Monrovia, Liberia.

The military underwent several rounds of base realignments and closures that spelled the end of Mare Island Naval Shipyard, but meant new construction at Travis as KC-10 Extender air tankers were being assigned to the base. Those projects included a KC-10 simulator, a hangar, three operations and maintenance buildings and an underground fuel supply system to service the aircraft.

The biggest of the projects was the total renovation of the old, now-vacant David Grant hospital to turn it into the Consolidated Mission Support Center, which was completed in June 1995 at a cost of $23.5 m illion.

Travis’ base exchange got a new home in 1995 a fter outgrowing its old facility and being forced to scatter its services to wherever it could find room around base. The new $35 m illion, 190,00-square-foot building was the biggest in the Army and Air Force Exchange Service system when it opened on April 5.

One of the oldest military aircraft made a stop at Travis in August 1994 when a World War I Vickers Vimy bomber landed at Travis to be dismantled and packed aboard a C-5 for transport to Royal Air Force Station Mildenhall in England. The bomber then flew from England to Australia to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the first Australia-to-England flight by another Vimy.

Five years later, another unusual visitor arrived at the base, the KC-97 Super Guppy, a large, bulbous transport used by NASA to haul outsized cargo for the international space station. It was at Travis to test the base’s 40K and 60K loaders.

On Dec. 16, 1997, the last of the C-141 Starlifters based at Travis left the base, ending 32 years of that jet transport’s presence at Travis. They would be eventually replaced at Travis by the C-17 Globemaster III a decade later.

“From Antarctica to Zaire, from Australia to Zimbabwe, we traversed all sorts of gantlets,” said 20th Airlift Squadron commander Lt. Col. Floyd Badsky in a 1997 i nterview about the C-141s that his squadron flew. “We challenge any other squadron to exceed our record.”

“Just as the C-141 replaced the C-121, you see the C-141 retiring to be replaced by the C-17,” Col. Thomas Sayers said in a 1997 i nterview. “It’s like losing an old friend. It hurts.”

Travis wrapped up the decade welcoming a new tenant, the United States Army, in the form of the 91st Training Division’s 3rd Brigade, which moved to the base from the Oakland Army Depot, which was closed by the Base Realignment and Closure Commission.