In October 1973, I was assigned as an FB-111 Aircraft Commander in the 393rd Bombardment Squadron of the 509th Bomb Wing at Pease AFB, New Hampshire. The 509th was a major unit of the Strategic Air Command and was playing a significant role in the day-to-day conduct of the Cold War with it's twelve aircraft alert force and the capability to rapidly generate additional strike sorties. On October 6th Syria, Egypt and Jordan began a coordinated attack on Israel timed to occur at the onset of the Yom Kippur religious holiday. Apparently, the Israeli military had received no intelligence warning of this attack and were caught at a fairly low state of readiness. Armed with some of the most advanced weapons to be exported by the USSR the Arab forces met with considerable initial success. In the first few hours of the conflict the Israelis lost a substantial part of the Israeli Air Force (IAF) and the attacking ground forces made territorial gains in the Golan Heights and in the Sinai Desert. With the diminished capacity of the IAF, the outcome of the conflict was in doubt and the United States began a massive resupply effort. Efforts to relieve and resupply Israel were severely hampered when all U.S. allies except Portugal refused landing rights to aircraft bound for Israel. This left Lajes AB in the Azores as the only enroute refueling stop available. Against this backdrop, Pease AFB played a crucial role in providing refueling support to both American and Israeli resupply flights.

THE CALL,

I had stayed up late one evening to watch a television news special report on the situation in the Mid-East and had retired at about 2330 hours. At exactly 0134 the telephone rang and I received the following message: "This is activation of the pyramid alerting system. Complete your notifications and report to your duty station immediately." I only had to notify my assigned Navigator, so I was ready to go fairly quickly. Calls of this sort were made fairly often and usually were the initiation of some type of training or evaluation exercise. The only thing out of the ordinary was the timing of the call as most exercises were kicked off at about 0600 hours. Quickly recalling military personnel was one of the critical factors in any evaluation of the unit and the standard instructions were not to waste time in shaving, brushing teeth, ect. but rather to get to the squadron as fast as possible. I therefore always had a flying uniform set up and ready to be worn, my flying gear where I could reach it rapidly and a mind set to move quickly. I was out the door less than five minutes after the phone rang.

GENERATION,

I was living off base about six miles from Pease, and by the time I arrived at the squadron many of the officers living in base quarters were already there. I was immediately informed this was no drill and that the unit had been placed in an advanced readiness posture. The 509th was directed to generate an additional six alert sorties to bring the alert force total to eighteen bombers along with several additional tanker sorties. I was assigned to the last bomber sortie to be generated, sortie eighteen. An alert generation is a well orchestrated ballet in which about 1,500 people perform the thousands of individual steps necessary to turn aircraft configured for training into complete weapons systems ready for combat. The FB-111 is an extraordinarily complex aircraft and even for these well practiced professionals it would take a number of hours to complete these tasks. On this particular day, the flight line was not a very pleasant place for the maintenance crews who would shoulder much of the responsibility for the generation. It was raining with the temperature approaching 40 degrees and the forecast called for of rain, low ceilings and winds from the northeast increasing in intensity to 30-35 knots. It has been said that flying consists of hours of boredom punctuated by rare moments of stark terror. "Real world" generations are also much like this. During my 28 years in SAC I only know of a very few of them and each was in response to some very serious international crisis. To kill a bit of time, my partner and I checked our flight publications for currency and drank entirely too much coffee.

At about 0530 we were directed to report to Combat Operations to be briefed on the tactical situation and to study the flight plans for our assigned sortie. The intelligence portion of the briefing indicated that major Soviet units were about to board transport aircraft and were presumed to be going to the Mid-East to augment the Arab forces attacking Israel. The increased readiness in SAC was intended as a message to the Soviets that the United States would not tolerate this sort of interference. Within a matter of an hour or so Soviet satellites would pick up the increased activity at every SAC base in the world and the message would be obvious. I don't know if President Nixon was really prepared to fight World War Three on that day. I never got to ask him, but SAC units all over the world were preparing for that possibility. At about 0700 the briefings and target study were completed and we were issued our combat mission folders (CMF). These documents are stored in two containers that would be placed in the aircraft when it was 'cocked' on alert. Their issue so early turned out to be a mistake. The documents comprising the CMF are among the most highly classified in our country and when the complete CMF is outside of an approved storage location it must be accompanied by two authorized and armed officers. The aircraft would not be ready for preflight for several hours and the possession of the CMF meant that neither I or my Nav would be able to get any rest. In fact, if one of us needed to use the 'john' it was necessary for both of us to go carrying the CMF with us. By mid afternoon both of us were having trouble keeping our eyes open.

At about 1730 our aircraft was ready for preflight and we carried the CMF out, installed it in the cockpit and began the alert assumption preflight. At about 1830 we had 'cocked' our sortie on alert and were finally free of the CMF. Our aircraft and CMF were now under armed guard. We returned to the alert facility hoping to get some badly needed rest. Rest was becoming critical because if the crisis worsened the next logical step would have been to disperse some of the alert aircraft to other air fields to keep from having 'too many eggs in one basket'. We had had less than two hours sleep in the previous 36 hours, the weather both at Pease and at the dispersal base was near minimums and the aircraft was heavier than I had ever flown it. I was becoming uncomfortable with the odds!

Apparently the intended message was received loud and clear because at about 2000 hours we got the order to stand down and proceeded to turn in the CMF and go home. Of course maintenance worked all night returning aircraft to their training configuration.

The Israelis fought a very hard 22 day war that resulted in victory but at a very high price.

LESSONS LEARNED,

1. At local level we learned that it was not a good idea to issue CMFs so early in a generation. Plans were changed to allow crews to rest until they were needed.

2. Until March 1974 the Arab states refused to sell oil to any of the western nations allied with Israel and we all learned to wait in long lines for gasoline.

3. The Air Force learned that we could not depend on our foreign bases for support of all contingency operations. This resulted in a capability to conduct global operations independent of foreign bases.

a. The decision was made to install air refueling systems on all transport aircraft.

b. To further increase global air refueling capability some KC-135 tankers were outfitted with receiver air refueling systems.

c. The KC-10 heavy tanker was procured.

4. The Soviets learned their freedom of action in the world had limits.