2000s: War on Terror, international operations illustrate shifting landscape

The first 18 months of the new millennium’s first decade could be considered almost pastoral for Travis, given the war that the base was plunged into on Sept. 11, 2001.

Travis started replacing its 31-year-old tower in 2000 w ith a much more stable one with more room at the top. It opened for operations the next year.

“No one is more excited than I am,” said Senior Master Sgt. Lee Fiekens, who worked in the old tower. “When the wind blew, it rocked.”

Travis airlifters flew search-and-rescue equipment south to help find an airliner that crashed off the Southern California coast in February 2000 while another Travis ai rcraft flew 105,000 pounds of relief supplies to flood-ravaged Mozambique and South Africa in March.

The biggest news in the month prior to Sept. 11 was the opening of the $12.1 m illion renovated base commissary that boosted the size of the store to 55,112 square feet.

Travis commander Col. David Lefforge was on his way to take command at Travis on Sept. 11, 2001, when the terrorists attacked the Pentagon and the World Trade Center. He watched the attack on a TV in the Minneapolis airport before driving back to Scott Air Force Base, Ill., because all air traffic was grounded.

“I had a pretty good idea that things were going to get tough,” Lefforge said in a 2002 i nterview.

Travis, like every other base, went into its highest security posture since Desert Storm in the early 1990s. A Travis C-5 collected three Army helicopters from Arizona, another picked up a Sacramento-based search-and-rescue team and a C-9 Nightingale loaded three critical care transport teams from David Grant Medical Center. All headed to the East Coast.

The next day, 34 reservists from the 349th Memorial Affairs Squadron volunteered to head to Dover Air Force Base, Del., to help the efforts to identify the casualties of the attack on the Pentagon.

Shortly after the attacks, two F-16s from the 421st Fighter Squadron from Hill Air Force Base were stationed at Travis to fly random combat air patrols over Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. The fighters stayed for eight months until they were relieved by aircraft from the Air National Guard’s 120th Fighter Wing from Great Falls, Mont.

One of the pilots, an East Bay native, said in a 2002 i nterview that he found it unsettling to be flying combat air patrols over his own parents’ house.

“We used to be concerned about security, but we didn’t always consider the base much of a significant target,” Lefforge said. “We have to check our backs everywhere we go now.”

When the campaign began to unseat the Taliban from Afghanistan because of their support of the terrorists, Travis was involved.

Forward-deployed Travis KC-10s refueled the first combat aircraft to strike Taliban targets on Oct. 7, 2001, and went on to pass more than 22 m illion pounds of fuel to Coalition aircraft over A fghanistan.

On one mission early in the bombing of Afghanistan, a Travis C-5 carried in munitions to an undisclosed base, where supplies for the American bombers were quickly dwindling due to the high tempo of attacks. The C-5 a rrived to offload the bombs just in time to allow the scheduled missions to continue.

Travis medical personnel responded to the Afghan war’s first casualty on Oct. 10: Master Sgt. Evander Anderson, who was killed in a forklift accident at a forward deployed location.

Two days later, a 349th Air Mobility Wing KC-10 crew and two aeromedical evacuation specialists helped locate and rescue the crew of a B-1 t hat crashed into the Indian Ocean.

One 2001 Travis deployment indicative of the support was when the 21st Airlift Squadron spent four months in Southwest Asia, flying 4,000 sorties and 11,000 combat hours while moving 142 m illion pounds of cargo and 197,000 m ilitary personnel.

Deployments were to locations in southwest and central Asia that looked like lunar landscapes, one of which was turned into a fully functioning 1,300-person airfield by a 25-man team from the 60th Civil Engineer Flight.

“The initial deployment of B-1s and B-52s put iron on the ramp, but their aircraft flew no missions for the first two weeks of their arrival,” said Maj. Michael Novotny, 60th Component Repair Squadron and deployed logistics commander for the 60th Air Expeditionary Group in a 2002 Tailwind article. “Meanwhile, the C-5 operations were flying around the clock to haul all the personnel and equipment that enabled the warfighters to execute thei r mission.”

With Travis security forces heavily tasked with providing security at Travis and overseas, 111 A rmy National Guardsmen from a Southern California field artillery unit arrived in February 2003 to reinforce base security forces. The Army soldiers departed in November 2004.

In one example of Travis’ support to keep aerial supply lines open, for the first time since C-5s were assigned to Travis 30 years ago, the base’s maintenance crews had every C-5 operational on April 15, 2003. Prior to that day, there had always been one C-5 left on the ground, used for cannibalization.

Travis personnel supported all aspects of the operations throughout the campaign. By 2002, 25 percent of Travis’ personnel had been deployed at one time or another, including nearly all the aircrews and large numbers of maintainers, security forces and civil engineers.

A good number of Travis personnel served in the line of fire and some were wounded.