Buzz's Bedtime Stories

Tonight’s “Buzz’s Bedtime Stories.” A tale of American airmen in a land far, far away. When I was C-141 pilot, I was cleared specifically to fly highly classified missions. This was before the White House. We had a handpicked crew that would fly clandestine missions for the CIA, State Department, Pentagon, and DEA. The cool thing about these missions was that we went way offline and we disguised our presence best we could. We wore jeans and T-shirts. No uniforms onboard at all. My favorite look was jeans and a Hootie & The Blowfish tee. Used to really confuse Egyptian immigration. 🤣 On one particular day, we were fragged (scheduled) to fly from Cairo, Egypt, to Islamabad, Pakistan, to Rome, Italy. I can’t tell you the cargo. Actually, because they didn’t tell me. Departing Egypt, we landed in Islamabad and had 30 minutes to refuel and leave. When we cranked up our engines to leave, we couldn’t get #2 started (of four). The US Embassy lead started freaking out and told us we had to get out ASAP or it would be a major international security issue. No hotels for Americans, get the fuck out. My crew was sensational. We’d flown together many times and we were friends and brothers. One of my flight engineers said, on the inter phone, “it’s the starter valve. Let me ‘malletize’ it sir!” He banged the starter valve with a hammer and the engine fired up. We boogied out of Islamabad and took off for Rome. A long day was about to get longer. In the middle of the night, flying over Cairo, Egypt, our #2 engine blew. It totally shelled out. Thankfully, we had no additional damage and still had 3 healthy engines. We ran the checklists and we did the calculations. We could make it to Rome on 3 engines with no USAF maintenance or we could fly on to Sigonella NAS, Sicily, with the maintenance to replace the engine. We went there.