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Sand Castles
The compressor blades were sandblasted clean by the elements. Finding leaks was easy, though. All the sand would collect on the fluid.
— TSgt. Brett Allen
Patient Frequencies
I spent most of my off time in my room. We could go sixteen hours on a mission, plus two more hours on the aircraft commander's decision. So, I was on for twenty-four hours and would have thirty-six hours off after the flight. Basically, I was on the aircraft an average of every third day. Aircraft flew to Kuwait or Iraq every day and one aircraft remained on standby at Ramstein. We launched the standby aircraft for urgent cases. One time we took a standby flight to pick up six patients and came back with another twenty or thirty ambulatory cases as well.
— Maj. Tom Hanson
Parking At Christmas
The gas situation got easier as the fighting moved north because the tankers had more space to work in. The tankers spread out so they were easier to find. Later on, we also had fewer assets in the air. The first couple nights of the war we had to find our tanker, get gas, and get out of the way as quickly as possible—or we ran out of gas and diverted. A lot of guys diverted. Early missions were like trying to find a parking spot in the mall at Christmas time in a car that is running out of gas.
— Capt. Jim McGlone
 Zapping Coordinates
We flew mixed four-ship formations equipped with HTS and Litening II pods. We became the SEAD and DEAD experts. We found targets with the HTS pods and then zapped the coordinates to the aircraft with the targeting pods.
— Lt. Col. Deane Pennington
Racing Back
We split our operations into two twelve-hour shifts. For the late shift, pilots took off at three in the evening, flew through sunset, and landed at ten or eleven at night. During my twelve hours off, I ate, checked the news, e-mailed, and showered before I went to bed. We sometimes raced back after a sortie to watch the war coverage on Fox News. To fly a mission and then see the results on television was amazing.
— Capt. Quentin Esser
Second-Generation Ordnance
My father is in the Marine Corps as an aircraft ordnance man. I used to go into work with him. He worked on F/A-18s. I was fascinated with his job.
— SrA. Katie Bowling
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