3-engine KC-135R 63-8886 Manas AB 2 Oct 06

Happy Veterans Day 2020! And speaking of veterans, here's an old veteran that's a little worse for wear. So what are we looking at here?

This 3-engine KC-135R, 63-8886, was involved in a ground collision on 26 Sep 06 at Manas Air Base (Manas International Airport) in Kyrgyzstan after returning from a combat mission over Afghanistan. In short, a Tupolev TU-154 that was cleared for takeoff prior to the KC-135 clearing the runway ran into the stopped tanker, damaging both planes. Fortunately (and miraculously), there were no fatalities. Details of the incident can be found here:
aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20060926-1

So how did I come upon this photo opportunity less than a week later, especially since I never deployed to Manas AB, which was typically staffed with Fairchild AFB crews and planes. McConnell crews and tails were at Al Dhafra in the UAE, while Grand Forks crews (like me) and tails were out of Al Udeid in Qatar. For some reason, and my memory is growing foggy with the passage of time, but some Al Udeid crews had to forward-deploy to Manas. I can't remember if it was because Fairchild crews were hung up deploying or if they needed to ramp up tails at Manas. Either way, one of our crews had forward-deployed and was operating out of Manas when, for some reason, the aircraft commander lost track of time or something and was unable to make it back out of Afghanistan in time to meet the daily runway closure curfew at Manas and ended up having to divert to Al Dhafra. Well, military leadership doesn't like it when one of their assets doesn't return like it's supposed to and is now somewhere else in the Area Of Responsibility, The crew flew their tanker back to Manas the next day, but the hammer dropped and that crew was then grounded. That's where I come into the picture. I was tasked with flying a combat mission over Afghanistan, and instead of coming back "home" to Al Udeid, I was to continue on to Manas to pick up the grounded crew and their belongings and fly them back the next day.

Operating out of Al Udeid, 95% of my missions were north over Iraq. The 5% that went to Afghanistan were much different, mostly because you had to deal with Pakistani controllers and the communication with the command and control was spotty at best. I had not been to Manas AB before, but here I was going in there, in the mountains, at night. No big deal, honestly, but it was weird in a couple of different ways. First, everything was in meters over there. All my previous flying time had been in feet, so this was something different...I had to figure out how to make the altimeters read meters rather than feet. Second, tower control was staffed by some Kyrgy guy who typically spoke only in Russian but sputtered out English-sounding words when he was speaking to an American plane that was inbound. Because of that, there was an English-speaking liaison in the tower you had to listen to on a different radio who basically interpreted for you. And that setup is why that TU-154 and KC-135 ran into each other less than a week before.

Because I hadn't been to Manas before, I brought my Canon Digital Rebel XT along to document the scene. It just so happened that as we were being driven off the flight line to our rooms, we were passing by the doomed-to-the-scrap-yard KC-135. I whipped out my camera, opened the sliding door on the bread truck, and snapped a series of photos, paparazzi-style, as we drove by. Highly not allowed, but this shot is seeing daylight for the first time here. I figure the statutes of limitations have long since expired, so here's a rare look at a 3-engine KC-135...still far more amazing than the tri-jet, tanker wanna-be KC-10!

Anyway, I basically spent one night in my entire USAF career in Manas, and it was noteworthy beyond just the weird metric altitudes on approach, the controller with needed-interpreter, and the 3-engine KC-135. For one, Manas AB was the first base in the AOR (I believe) to implement mandatory USAF PT Gear for USAF personnel when not in uniform. At Al Udeid, we were still wearing civilian workout clothes, so this was my first opportunity to wear the USAF's overly-complicated, over-designed, no-thought-to-practicality polyester-plastic PT Gear. And, as you'd expect from a government acquisition process, the PT shirt could not be washed with the PT shorts as one required hot water while the other required cold water.

Anyway, after we got to our rooms and settled, we donned our polyester and plastic PT Gear and headed for the chow hall. Enroute, we passed by a Marine Corps Lt Col who stopped us and asked, "Don't you salute in the USAF?" Forgetting that we were in an actual, designated military uniform, I apologized and we rendered a proper salute. BTW, the food was basically truck-stop sandwiches and granola bars. Shockingly, the food at Al Udeid was better (which isn't saying much). The rooms were much nicer at Manas though.

Then, when we left the next day with the grounded crew, we couldn't just fly straight back to Al Udeid; they wanted us to refuel a B-1B over Afghanistan on the way. No problem, but because of the runway closure at Manas, we had to take off much earlier than we would have to meet the bomber, so we ended up burning holes in the sky for a couple hours waiting for the B-1B's refueling time. Once he was on the boom, the crew informed us that they were dealing with a Troops in Contact situation and were doing shows of force. To translate, that meant the enemy was engaged with our ground troops and the B-1B was buzzing the bad guys on the ground. If you've never been around or had a B-1B fly over at low altitude in full afterburner, you're missing out...and apparently it would scare the hell out of the people messing with our troops. Anyway, the B-1B crew asked for additional gas beyond what they were frag'd for, so, since they were actually involved in combat stuff protecting our ground forces and the command and control communication was so poor over there and would take time to get approved, I made the command decision on the fly to offload what they needed (just make sure we had enough gas left to get to Al Udeid afterwards).

Once the offload was complete, we radioed the command and control guy and gave him the code phrase requesting our departure from the country and he came back saying we were assigned to refuel a pair of A-10s an hour later. "Oh sh*t!" I thought. Nobody told us that beforehand; we didn't have the fuel to do that since we offloaded extra to the B-1B! As we were working with the command and control guy (who was relaying, ironically, back to higher command and control at Al Udeid), I heard another tanker check in over Afghanistan. I asked if he had enough fuel to cover those two A-10s that were assigned to us and fortunately he did. We relayed that down to the command and control guy, and we were given the green light to head "home". During the rest of the flight back, I was writing down notes on all that had happened and why I made the decisions I did based on the information I had at hand because I assumed a couple of days later when the rolling ball of feces from not refueling those A-10s finally got far enough down the hill to my Director of Operations, he'd need answers to give those higher up the hill as to why we were unable to refuel those A-10s. But the call to his office demanding explanations never came and my backside never got bubblegum'd.

So there's the story of my one and only time in Kyrgyzstan along with a 3-engine KC-135R! I figure experiences like that justify the free $5 lunch my work provides us veterans on Veterans Day!

Taken on: October 2, 2006

Tags:

Boeing

KC-135R

Manas Air Base

Manas AB

Krygyzstan

Bishkek

Manas International Airport

376th Air Expeditionary Wing

Fairchild AFB

Fairchild Air Force Base « less

Sets appears in: • Airplanes!

Groups appears in: • Aircraft Spotting • Airplanes and Airports more » • Plane Spotting « less

Camera: Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT, f/6.3, 1/200 sec, 70mm, ISO 400 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT
Aperture:	f/6.3
Exposure Time:	0.005 sec (1/200)
Focal Length:	70mm
ISO:	400
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Auto, Fired
Exposure Program:	Program AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Show full info

Stats: 5,968 views / 3 comments

go back

Link to this photo view:
Link to this photo large view: