If, for example, you were transporting the F-16C Fighting Falcon-equipped 363rd Tactical Fighter Wing at Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., to a new home in the Persian Gulf – Al Dafra airfield at Sharjah, in the United Arab Emirates – where did you start? On some crews, nerves were frayed and tempers flared. Downrange, there was no place to rest, so the crew would have to bring their C-141B or C-5 back to Torrejon before they could sleep.

The eastbound stage, they started calling it, evoking memories of stagecoaches, which, moving in the opposite direction, had opened up the American West. The Torrejon flight line was so choked with aircraft, a pilot had to be given a map to find his plane. At bases in Europe –Torrejon, Zaragoza, Rhein-Main, Ramstein – transient quarters became so swollen that men and women slept in hallways, bathrooms, or tents.

Maintenance people coaxed extra capabilities out of the aircraft. 29, kept their aerial supply line moving around the clock, sometimes by pushing themselves close to exhaustion. The crews of giant transports, many of them reservists and Guard personnel flying on a voluntary basis before being called to active duty on Aug. By October 1990, 220,000 troops and their equipment were moved. The Desert Shield lift exceeded the tonnage of the eleven-month Berlin Airlift of 1948-49 in its first 22 days. Soon, a C-141B or C-5 was landing at Dhahran Air Base every seven minutes, around the clock. Johnson used virtually all of his 265 C-141B Starlifters and 85 C-5 Galaxies and activated elements of the CRAF (Civil Reserve Air Fleet). Johnson, MAC commander, created an air bridge that hauled people and equipment on exhausting, 38-hour missions. No one knew whether Iraq would invade Saudi Arabia, too, so the Eagles and the Airborne needed to hit the ground ready to fight. Moving this vanguard called for dozens of C-141B Starlifters and C-5 Galaxies. 7, eighteen hours after the Desert Shield “execute” order. The F-15C Eagle-equipped 1st Tactical Fighter Wing from Langley Air Force Base, Va., and the “Ready Brigade” of 2,300 82nd Airborne Division paratroopers from Fort Bragg, N.C., moved to Saudi Arabia on Aug. A C-130E Hercules transport aircraft from the 314th Tactical Airlift Wing, Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., does an assault landing on a desert runway during Operation Desert Shield.

T mac 3 dessert storm