I’ve only been out of the Air Force for four months and I am already reminiscing?! Buy my books from the shop to ease my transition and fatten my wallet.
The first two years of my tenure at Detachment 175, our Operations Officer, Major Alleman, put together opportunities for our cadets to ride in the back of C17 Globemaster III cargo jets. These were amazing opportunities, not easy to coordinate, and I was excited to cram as many cadets as we could into the back of these hulking aircraft. We called them “incentive flights” because the point of going on the rides was to incentive/encourage cadets to pursue a pilot slot when it came time to choose their Air Force jobs.
I was surprised at how few cadets volunteered to go on the incentive rides. We couldn’t make the flights mandatory since they occurred outside our normal training hours. Even as a voluntary event, I had expected most of the detachment to show up. Even so, the flight was fun for me, and I had ridden in the back of a military cargo plane before.
The first of our incentive flights in the C-17, we arrived at the squadron building on Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam early in the morning. Our escort brought us all into the squadron’s briefing room, and the attending cadets were treated to a full briefing on the capabilities of the C-17 Globemaster III, the history of the C-17 and the Squadron, and were introduced to our flight crew.
This flight was extra fun for me because one of the pilots was an Air Force Academy classmate of mine, Gio. Gio and I said hello, then he and his flight crew escorted us out onto the runway and to a waiting C-17. We took our seats, secured our ear protection, and buckled in for a flight around the Hawaiian Islands.
The aircrew kept the ramp down nearly the entire flight around the islands, allowing us to watch the ocean zip by below and behind us as we cruised along. Our flight around the islands was almost three hours long, zig zagging across the skies above the Pacific Ocean.
Flying around in circles can be a little tiring, especially if you are up late studying for final exams. I never have to study for final exams anymore, except in the nightmares where I’m failing statistics and the stern Lieutenant Colonel whose name I don’t remember but whose face is etched into my mind’s eye as a hammer and chisel carves stone is standing over me, peering down and watching me sweat the remnants of cheap beer out of my pores as I stumble my way through the last final of my USAFA career as if he knows I did not study and instead went to Haps the night before. So I wasn’t tired on the plane. But this guy was.
Before returning to our launch point, we landed at Kaneohe Bay Marine Corps Base on the other side of Oahu from Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam, and got out to stretch our legs and walk around the tarmac near the big jet. At this point, one of my cadets informed me that this flight was his first time on an airplane and the first time he had ever left Oahu.
That boggled my mind. While not the smallest of the Hawaiian Islands, Oahu is still just a tiny island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. There are farms bigger than Oahu in the Midwestern United States.
Every once in a while, the cadets would drop little tidbits like that on me that really made me do a double take. “I’ve never felt like I need a driver’s license,” or “My parents won’t let me drive in the dark. Or the rain.” “My girlfriend and I are long distance. She lives in Mililani and I live in Honolulu (A distance of seventeen miles).” “Wow it sure is cold out, isn’t it Major Jacobson (it was 69 degrees)?”
We hopped back into the C-17 and were sky-ferried back to our departing air field. We posed for a few photos then hit up the C-17 squadron’s booster club store for some sweet swag and souvenirs of our trip.
The following year, we had a much smaller turnout. This time, aircrew practiced “maneuvers” while we hung out in the back of the jet. “Maneuvers” is pilot-speak for “slapping the airplane around in the sky to practice dodging missiles and such.” Perhaps the promise of maneuvers was a contributing factor to our lower turnout. Whatever the case, our second ride in the C-17 was much more casual.
We arrived early again, this time the pre-flight briefing was delivered much faster and in a breakroom. Our escorts ushered us out onto the tarmac and into the waiting C-17, this one the Hawai’i Air National Guard’s Spirit of Kamehameha and into our seats.
One of the benefits of bringing a smaller group of cadets was that they each got to hang out in the cockpit with the pilots during our flight. That’s an opportunity that few people would get to have, and I think the cadets appreciated the opportunity. At least they better have appreciated the opportunity.
Our flight took us on much the same route as the previous year, with the added dipping, diving, ducking, and dodging of the practice maneuvers our pilots put the plane, and us, through. Nobody fell asleep this time, but one or two cadets looked a little green around the gills. There was no puking, which was a surprise. I was fairly sure at least one cadet was going to lose their lunch.
When we returned to the relative safety of solid ground, we were treated to a flight of F-22 Raptor stealth fighters taking off on the runway next to us. The cadets snagged a bunch of photos and videos, then we were treated to another time-honored Air Force tradition: the bus not showing up.
For our departure, the C-17 had been parked pretty close to the squadron building. We walked right out to the jet to board it, but when we landed we were parked pretty far across an active set of runways and taxi ways and had to wait for a bus to bring us back. After several minutes of waiting for a response from the transportation office, the pilots got bored of waiting and decided to shepherd us on foot back to the terminal.
There’s an etiquette to walking across a flightline, a series of lines, lights, and signals you have to know and follow in order to not get run over, yelled at, or possibly arrested. I knew the etiquette, but I knew the cadets didn’t. I probably should have been more worried about it, but I figured they would either figure it out or I would get to see them get faceplanted and handcuffed. Maybe even tazed!
Alas, we made it across the tarmac without any drama to close out our second C-17 incentive flight.
During my third and final year at Detachment 175, we were unfortunately unable to secure incentive flights for the cadets. The Air Force had a huge exercise, REFORPAC, that took precedence over a couple cadets tagging along in the back of some jets. We even reached out to the Marine Corps and the Army for rides in their aircraft. The Army didn’t respond, but it looked like the Marines would let us ride in one of their C-130 refueling planes. At the last minute, the Marines canceled our flight due to operational needs, and we closed out my last year as a Cadre incentive flight-less.
Not every Air Force ROTC detachment is as lucky as Det 175. Few detachments are as close to major military bases as we were, and fewer detachments still had relationships with operational squadrons that brought their cadets the types of experiences we strove to bring to the cadets. Whether it was incentive flights, paintball, or training with active duty Airmen and Soldiers, I think Det 175 was provided a lot of opportunities that just weren’t available outside of Hawai’i.
To close, my piece of advice to any current or future cadets, AFROTC or USAFA, is simple: Take the damn flight, attend the training, raise your hand for that leadership opportunity. Even if it is optional, even if you have to miss work or school. Now is the time to learn, and you may never get another opportunity like it.
I’ll probably throw a few more of these stories on here. The year is almost over, and Christmas is upon us! Use code holidaycheer in the shop to save some dough on signed books, merch, and reverse fan mail!