KAF Airmen on frontlines of retrograde efforts

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, AFGHANISTAN

09.25.2014

Story by Staff Sgt. John Etheridge 

ISAF Regional Command South

KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, Afghanistan – The service vehicles scurried about the Kandahar Airfield flight line as the C-5M Super Galaxy slowly rolled in from the runway. Workers prepped combat vehicles and drove them to the front of the jumbo aircraft and waited for the front end to open. After the airplane’s nose was lifted and the ramp lowered, the action started as the vehicles and equipment were loaded.

Due to the down-sizing of forces and the end of the combat mission in Afghanistan, the work tempo for some units at KAF has slowed. For Airmen assigned to the 451st Expeditionary Logistics Squadron, who are responsible for the redeployment of equipment returning to the U.S. via air, the work tempo has ramped up.

Through its Air Terminal Operations Center and Ramp Services sections, the 451st conducts passenger movements, loads planes, configures cargo load plans and disseminates flight info to commands and organizations around KAF. The 451st is on the frontlines of the downsizing, also known as retrograde to Service members.

“We were dead when we first got here,” said Tech Sgt. Keith Sweet from Erie, Pennsylvania, about his crew when an aircraft needed to be loaded during the first month of their deployment in May. “Everyone was jumping over each other and saying ‘I want to go to the plane!’ The last month, it’s picked up which has been nice. Now we are spread thin.”

Sweet and the other members of the aircraft loading crew are Air Force reservists from the 914th Airlift Wing, Niagra Falls, New York, assigned to the 451st while deployed to KAF.

The vehicles were driven slowly onto the aircraft one at a time and were led up the ramp by the plane’s loadmaster. Before the vehicle stopped, the Airmen from Ramp Services were already waiting for it with their chains. They wasted no time securing the vehicles to the aircraft floor as each mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicle came to a stop inside the cargo area.

“We’re loading a C-5 with retrograde cargo,” said Senior Airman Douglas Kellogg, a native of Rochester, N.Y., with the 451st’s ATOC. “We’re trying to move some of our back-logged rolling stock vehicles and trailers. This is a big load,” he said of the seven combat vehicles being loaded.

Kellogg, whose main duty is as a facilitator between the aerial port, the ramp and air-crews, said sometimes he’s amazed at how much cargo can be fitted into a C-5.

“You pull out the vehicles and say ‘This is never going to fit’ and then somehow we just make it fit,” he said, referring to the day’s load.

Sweet said it usually takes between an hour-and-a-half to two hours to load a C-5. His team also regularly loads C-130 Hercules, C-17 Globemaster IIIs and occasionally civilian contracted Boeing 747s, too.

“Once in a while we load a 747 just to help out the contractors,” he said.

According to Kellogg, the job is somewhat routine. They all work twelve-hour shifts and go from aircraft to aircraft loading and unloading. Since the beginning of August the pace has picked up and they load up to 12 planes per day, he said.

He also said he gets job satisfaction seeing the complete mission of loading a plane from start to finish, and he doesn’t mind the long hours and the faster work tempo since retrograde operations have ramped up.

“I think it’s great that we are getting people out of here and back home, and when we’re busy, time flies,” he said.

• Date Taken: 09.25.2014
• Date Posted: 10.04.2014 02:50
• Story ID: 144277
• Location: KANDAHAR AIRFIELD, AF
• Hometown: ERIE, PA, US
• Hometown: ROCHESTER, NY, US