Posted on 12/12/2024 5:26:17 AM PST by Feckless
On this day in 1985 I climbed aboard an ill fated Arrow Air DC8 Stretch at McChord AFB with a fresh gamma globulin shot in my ass (if you've ever had one you know) and 10 inches of snow on the ground, embarking on an adventure that would be both fun, exciting, and tragic. We spent 35 hours on that POS, several landings for re-fueling but they never let us off, and finally landed in Cairo. It was over 100 degrees in the shade... had there been any shade. They marched us into the terminal where we were fed a tablespoonful of scrambled eggs, a slice of fried goat and 4 French fries. Four French fries that were so soggy you could have tied them in knot without breaking them. Four. I'm bitching now but at the time I had just got off of a 35 hour flight eating MREs and the goat was pretty good.
The Egyptians claimed the runway at Sharm el Sheik, our final destination, was under repair and would not handle the DC8. Just milking Uncle Sam for more money in this boondoggle who’s only reason for existing was to keep Egypt from committing suicide by attacking Israel again. Thank you Jimmy Carter. They moved us onto an Egypt Air 737 and we took off like a C130 leaving Da Nang... straight up. After we reached cruising altitude the plane banked hard right, dove for several hundred feet and banked hard left. My fingerprints are still in the arm rests, I'm sure. We were told later that all Egypt Air pilots are Egyptian Air Force reserves and that this was "training". I asked how much training was required to go down in flames with an IAF missile up your ass, which is how most Egyptian pilots "retired". They were not amused.
We landed at the “airport” near Sharm el Sheik, loaded up in deuce and a halfs and rode the 10 miles to South Camp, our home for the next 6 months.
Two days later, 248 members of the 101st Airborne, who we were replacing crashed on takeoff after re-fueling at Gander, Newfoundland, killing all aboard. It was the same DC8 I rode to Egypt on. We got to know some of them pretty well in the 2 days of overlap where we had to get up to speed on operations quickly. Rest in Peace, Screaming Eagles.
Should have posted this on the 10th, sorry.
Saturday, when I participate in a wreath laying ceremony at a local veterans cemetery, I will say a prayer for those brave young soldiers. Rest in Peace.
I was in my plebe year at USNA when this happened and for the life of me - despite reading the front page religiously as part of my haz...ahem, training regimen I can’t remember this incident. I can only assume I was overwhelmed with everything else that was going on.
meant to add God rest their souls.
Thank you for sharing this bit of history. It’s a lot more real when someone like yourself was there. God bless all of you.
You guys were real men, in the best sense of the word.
Thank you.
I had friends on that aircraft :(
Days earlier I had PCS’d to Monterey, CA from Ft Campbell. When I heard the news I was sure it was a mistake. A call to my old unit confirmed my fears.
“”””248 members of the 101st Airborne, who we were replacing crashed on takeoff after re-fueling at Gander, Newfoundland, killing all aboard.””””
That was a startling loss, it was also a busy year for me and everyone in Reagan’s military.
I have a friend who was an Army QM Mortuary Affairs specialist stationed at Campbell then. She was sent to the crash site to help with recovery of remains. I think that event had a very deep impact on her. She said she was never the same after that.
I was out of the 82nd Airborne and back in PA when that happened. Lost a high school friend on that plane.
May God bless their souls.
The Arrow Air crash on takeoff at Gander Intl. is covered (particularly the greed and graft of the charter contractors the DOD hired, and still hires others today)— in an excellent book by a conservative author.
Saul M Montes-Bradley II (2016). Gander: Terrorism, Incompetence, and the Rise of Islamic National Socialism. Thomas Osgood Bradley Foundation. ISBN 978-0-9859632-5-5.
The book was praised by Lt. General Flynn extensively.
Site is quodverum.com— and is often censored on different platforms as 404 Forbidden- by the spook state.
https://social.quodverum.com/@Debradelai/with_replies
I am so sorry.
In light of the uselessness of the last 60 years of our best young people dying for political reasons in reasonless “wars”, I cannot say “Thank you for your service”.
Instead it comes out something like “I respect and am sorry for your effort and your sacrifices”.
That’s not exactly how I mean it to sound but it’s the closest I can come to expressing the anger and heartache I have that our young men and women who have signed up in the name of protecting country have been nothing bu ill-used, ill-treated, and forgotten when they come home with grave injuries.
I hope you take my meaning and don’t find too much fault with it. I don’t actually say it out loud very often.
“Thank you for your service” just isn’t enough.
Thanks for sharing your story...Bless you and all who answer the call...Curse those who abuse the military.
Thank you for you service.
Thanks for posting that. We need to remember.
They were going to send us home on Arrow Air but loads of family wrote their Congress Critters and we came home on C141, slowest, noisiest, coldest, but safest bird in the air.
On December 12, 1985, Arrow Air Flight 1285, a chartered Douglas DC-8 aircraft, crashed shortly after takeoff from Gander International Airport in Newfoundland, Canada. The flight was carrying 248 members of the 101st Airborne Division, returning home from a six-month peacekeeping mission in Sinai, Egypt, to Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
Thanks for the sharing that event, that I suspect most not involved had forgotten or not heard about it before. Just curious though as to why you blame Carter, when Reagan was the president at that time.
I flew on the 10th. Carter, Sadat, and Begin did the Camp David Accords which begat the MFO. It has been a boondoggle from the beginning. We pay 99% of the funding. We got $.50 a day TDY while there. The Dutch got over $50 a day just for one example. A mini UN where American troops are under foreign command most of the time. The only thing the MFO does is keep the Egyptians from committing suicide by attacking Israel.
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