Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, Goldsboro North Carolina – Part 2

Two weeks after Alec was born, I deployed for the first of my 6 (update: # 7 is coming soon) deployments. I would go to a base in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert traveling from NC to Baltimore, MD, though Portugal, Germany and into Saudi Arabia . Prince Sultan Air Base—known as PSAB, home to the 4404th Wing (Provisional), 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing was located 50 miles southeast of Riyadh, the capitol, and housed F-15C, F-15E, F-16, KC-135, KC-10, RC-135, E-3, U-2, C-130, EC-130, HC-130, and C-21 aircraft, along with British Tornados and French Mirages to provide fighter, electronic combat, reconnaissance, command and control, air refueling, search and rescue, and cargo/troop transport capabilities. I would spend the next 129 days at this base outside of the city of Al Kharj from July to November supporting Operation Southern Watch, monitoring and controlling the no-fly zone south of the 33rd Parallel in southern and south-central Iraq during the period following the end of the 1991 Gulf War.

Prince Sultan came to be following the Khobar Towers bombing, a terrorist attack on part of a housing complex used as quarters for Coalition forces who were assigned to Operation Southern Watch. A truck bomb was detonated adjacent to Building #131, an eight-story structure housing members of the United States Air Force’s 4404th Wing (Provisional), primarily from a deployed rescue squadron and deployed fighter squadrons. In all, 19 U.S. Air Force personnel and a Saudi local were killed in this attack on June 25^th, 1996. As a result of the terrorist attack, U.S. and Coalition military operations at Khobar and Dhahran were subsequently relocated to Prince Sultan Air Base. American, British, and French military operations would continue at PSAB until late 2003, when French forces withdrew, and American and British operations shifted to Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar. U.S. officials transferred control of portions of Prince Sultan Air Base to Saudi officials at a ceremony on Aug. 26, 2003. The ceremony also marked the inactivation of the 363rd Air Expeditionary Wing. The base was home to about 60,000 coalition forces during the seven years the base was in operation supporting Operations Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. At the height of OIF, there were more than 5,000 troops and about 200 coalition aircraft based there.

Prince Sultan Air Base’s Boot Hill Cemetery was a continued POL tradition that quietly attracted attention of its own. It was even a stop on the tours for some of the distinguished visitors passing through. Located off the beaten path in the fuels main bulk storage area, Boot Hill Cemetery was exactly that, a cemetery for boots. Local legend had it that if fuels troops buried their boots there before leaving PSAB, they’d never have to return. With the prospect of not returning to PSAB on the line, superstitions about Boot Hill ran high, and one glance told visitors that a lot of care had gone into constructing and maintaining the area. Although the exact origin of the cemetery is questionable, it is known that members of the 4404th Wing Fuels Management Flight constructed the original back when the 4404th was located in Dhahran Air Base. When PSAB ceased operations, Boot Hill was carefully dismantled and moved to Al Udied Air Base. The “new” Boot Hill was set up and continues to serve there today, as a monument to over 20 years of fuels Airmen serving in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility. Tradition now holds that you sign your boots, date them, and toss them. If you ring it [on the rebar] on the first try, the legend is that you won’t get orders to come back to “The Rock!” And so, the legacy continues, one tattered boot at a time.

I enjoy historical events at the bases that I have been stationed at. Here’s one that happened in the early 1960’s that wasn’t completely revealed until 2013. This accident could have completely changed the landscape of Eastern North Carolina and would have had long lasting consequences on the entire east coast of the United States. Read on!

On January 24^th, 1961 an Air Force aircraft crashed just outside of Goldsboro, North Carolina. A B-52 Stratofortress carrying two 3–4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs broke up in mid-air, dropping its nuclear payload in the process. The aircraft, a B-52G, was based at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in Goldsboro. Around midnight on January 23^rd–24^th 1961, the bomber had a rendezvous with a tanker for aerial refueling. During the hook-up, the tanker crew advised the B-52 aircraft commander, Major Walter Scott Tulloch, that his aircraft had a fuel leak in the right wing. The refueling was aborted, and ground control was notified of the problem. The aircraft was directed to assume a holding pattern off the coast until the majority of fuel was consumed. However, when the B-52 reached its assigned position, the pilot reported that the leak had worsened and that 37,000 pounds (5,500 gallons) of fuel had been lost in three minutes. The aircraft was immediately directed to return and land at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base. As it descended through 10,000 feet on its approach to the airfield, the pilots were no longer able to keep the aircraft in stable descent and lost control of it. The pilot in command ordered the crew to eject, which they did at 9,000 feet. Five men bailed out and landed safely. Another bailed out but did not survive the landing, and two died in the crash. The third pilot of the bomber, Lt. Adam Mattocks, is the only man known to have successfully bailed out of the top hatch of a B-52 without an ejection seat. Although the crew’s final view of the aircraft was in an intact state with its payload of two Mark 39 thermonuclear bombs on board, it broke apart before impact, releasing the bombs. The wreckage of the aircraft covered a 2-square-mile area of tobacco and cotton farmland at Faro, about 12 miles north of Goldsboro. Information newly declassified in 2013 showed that one of the bombs came very close to detonating. The two 3–4-megaton Mark 39 nuclear bombs separated from the gyrating aircraft as it broke up between 1,000 and 2,000 feet. Three of the four arming mechanisms on one of the bombs activated, causing it to execute many of the steps needed to arm itself, such as charging the firing capacitors and deploying a 100-foot-diameter parachute. Although the bomb was partially armed when it left the aircraft, an unclosed high-voltage switch had prevented it from fully arming. In a now-declassified 1969 report, entitled “Goldsboro Revisited”, written by Parker F. Jones, a supervisor of nuclear safety at Sandia National Laboratories, Jones said that “one simple, dynamo-technology, low voltage switch stood between the United States and a major catastrophe.” In 2011, Lt. Jack Revelle, the bomb disposal expert responsible for disarming the device, claimed “we came damn close” to a nuclear detonation that would have completely changed much of eastern North Carolina. He also said the size of each bomb was more than 250 times the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb, large enough to create a 100% kill zone within a radius of 8.5 miles.

I arrived at Shady-J as an Airman Basic on November 27^th, 1996. I was promoted to Airman on January 31^st, 1997, Airman First Class on November 30^th, 1997 and promoted to Senior Airman on July 31^st, 1999. I left Seymour Johnson Air Force Base on to the next adventure on May 22^nd, 2000. I would call Aviano Air Base in Northern Italy home for the next four years. The journey continues…..