CLASSIFIED: If You Read This, I Will Have To Kill You

A little of the Top Secret stuff I did in the Air Force, but in reality, I can't tell you very much about the secret missions and secret destinations!

  

            Now rather cliché, we retirees of the United States Air Force still tease friends and relatives when they ask what secret military projects we had privy to or had some involvement in.

            Straight faced, we reply, “it was CLASSIFIED, if I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”

            Of course being in the military, we swore not to reveal secrets and the classified information necessary to accomplish our jobs. Much that was SECRET or the higher classification TOP SECRET from back in my Air Force days is now probably declassified, but one cannot be sure. To CMA, (cover my--) those secrets you read here, remain CLASSIFIED. I wouldn’t want to find out later that I told you too much and have to do something I wouldn’t enjoy.

My job or Air Force Specialty was meteorologist or more commonly known as weather forecaster, a profession you'd think would not require a security clearance, but I had a TOP SECRET clearance. I was awarded it after a long, intrusive, and intensive background check including interviews with parents, friends, girlfriends, bartenders, coaches, and teachers including my third grade teacher, Mrs. Yocum. She probably clinched my getting TOP SECRET clearance because she probably remembered me as a quiet introverted child who never spoke to my classmates, so she figured I'd never give any military secrets away.

            As a meteorologist, I thought I would never actually use my clearance, when considering the Intel (Intelligence) folks, Comm (Communications) guys, OSI, flight crews, and the many other branches of Air Force gurus that handle secret stuff everyday. I found I was wrong about weather people needing clearances personally with a flying attack mission wittily entitled CLASSIFIED-CLASSIFIED that basically saw B-52 bombers locating and chasing down CLASSIFIED and dropping CLASSIFIED by CLASSIFIED means. Yeah, I provided CLASSIFIED meteorological support over a period of CLASSIFIED months back in the year CLASSIFIED at the well-known CLASSIFIED airfield. You get the picture, I hope.

            I progressed in rank and found the frequency of needing my TOP SECRET clearance increasing ten-fold. When I became a Wing Weather NCO, I obtained access to B-52 crews whose mission was to fly the heavy bombers loaded with CLASSIFIED as they sat CLASSIFIED ready to drop CLASSIFIED over CLASSIFIED territory. My meteorological reports were even CLASSIFIED except for the forecasts over the United States, beyond that, well, even my forecasts could say too much. My duties included briefing the aircrews during CLASSIFIED exercises where the B-52s and KC-135s flew to CLASSIFIED locations mimicking real wartime missions over CLASSIFIED. As you can maybe imagine and you have to imagine, being a meteorologist with this kind of responsibility was stressful, but I have to say fun and fulfilling after the missions were successfully completed. But it wasn't always fun and games.

My involvement in Desert Shield/Desert Storm turned into a personal fiasco because not only did I deploy to the war zone without Middle Eastern climate weather training, there was no specific location selected for me to work. Between you and me, I think my home station just wanted me gone. By C-130, I hopped sightseeing-like from place to place across the Saudi Arabian Peninsula until I finally ended up in the Forecast Center located in Riyadh, but that's another story. The assignment allowed minimal CLASSIFIED access, and so I had nothing much to write home to mom about. Because of my multiple misplacement, my OIC (Officer In Charge) felt pity on me and put in a good word for a cherry assignment to Holloman AFB, New Mexico.

Holloman Air Force Base sits in the desert scrublands connected to White Sands Missile Range in the middle of nowhere not far from Alamogordo, which is nowhere you’d want to be if you are exercising your own freewill. The Air Force doesn’t allow a whole lot of freewill, so there I was. Well, at that particular time, I became the Weather Station Chief in charge of Holloman’s weather support including weather observations, forecasts, advisories, and flight briefings. This assignment normally wouldn’t have been cherry or mentionable except that Holloman was slated to receive the F-117 Nighthawk Stealth Fighter/Bombers.

The F-117’s were pivotal during Desert Storm, and we of the Forecast Center provided planning weather information for our entire AOR (Area Of Responsibility) including the F-117s flying their CLASSIFIED missions. Before, during, and after the war, they existed in the Skunk Works Black World somewhere out in the Nevada Desert where those CLASSIFIED AREAS were hid including the legendary AREA 51. Everything about the F-117s, the plane, the crews, and their missions were TOP SECRET CLASSIFIED. When they came to Holloman, it would be the plane’s first exposure to the light of day in the real, public world. My job was to ensure the aircrews received the very best weather support from my meteorological team--a challenging responsibility for sure.     

            To ready our meteorological support, my new OIC and I were invited by the F-117 Weather Squadron Commander to visit the crews and the meteorological people who worked in the Black World somewhere out there in the Nevada desert. All we knew ahead of time was that we had to fly to Nellis AFB and receive instructions once there. We boarded an Air Force C-12 Gulfstream, a fourteen seat, twin-turboprop plane, and found we were the only passengers--how very secretive. Nonetheless, we felt special.

        I always pitied the pilots of these low, slow C-12's in the high-tech, high-speed, high-altitude Air Force because these poor pilots were relegated to airborne taxi driving. It should have been an uneventful, forgettable flight, but it didn’t end up that way.

            As we approached Nellis AFB, we noticed a few fighters on afterburner departing the airfield in a god-awful hurry. One after another there were flights taking off in pairs of F-15s, triples of F-16s, A-10s, Mirages, and so on. We could watch our own pilots right up in front of us doing their jobs, and they shouted over their shoulders that the Red Flag Exercise was currently in progress and that we were placed in a holding pattern. 

        Red Flag was largely a CLASSIFIED exercise that combined our services with other countries into one big CLASSIFIED exercise. Our co-pilot told us that we’d have to stay in the holding pattern until the airfield opened up. After a few minutes, he shouted back that we were put in a slot to land sandwiched between arriving F-15s and departing B-1B bombers. How fun. In a few moments, he called back again with a simple, “Hang on!”

The little plane banked over hard, and we went into what felt like a crash dive, about forty-five degrees pitched nose down, so the runway complex ahead and below filled the windshield view. We headed rather quickly towards the field, the turbo-props screaming like two P-51 Mustangs on a power dive which we were in, but when the F-15s blew past us on their way down, they drowned out our pitiful buzz bomb. S**t! Enough to--! I decided I needed to take the pilot's advice and hang on! Upfront, the pilots seemed rather busy, and I watched the altimeter grind down through the hundreds of feet like a blender set on puree. All I could see out the front windscreen were runways, grass medians, and taxiways drawing closer--in a hurry! My boss looked green with fingers embedded in the gray plastic armrests.

As we screamed in closer toward the runway, the pilot started to pull up, and my stomach oozed down to my ankles. The horizon came into view, and there the two B-1Bs sat on the far end of the runway facing us--on the same runway we were landing on! Behind them heavy smoke and heat boiled up into the air. We screamed in closer to the runway’s approach end. A couple of hundred feet from the ground, the pilot backed off the throttles and pitched the nose up. The runway ahead of us disappeared, and I saw sky. Looking out the side window, I watched the concrete runway rise up to meet our wheels--hard. The pilots backed off some more. The tires squealed once, twice, and the gear settled down. Instantly, the pilot pushed the throttles back on hard, and we accelerated down the tarmac!  

Not knowing if we were taking off again or on our way toward an impending head on collision, the roar and rumble of the B-1’s vibrated the tiny C-12's fuselage. There, the  imposing pair of deadly warplanes sat square in front of us and we continued to approach them head on! Suddenly, we swerved off onto a connecting taxiway. Looking out my side window, the heat boiled across the tarmac and the smoke rose from the B-1B’s massive afterburners with a roar that made our little tin can plane compress and throb. As we coasted, the B-1s rolled and roared past with their afterburners spewing bright orange flame twenty-thirty feet behind. They lifted off into the sky in a matter of seconds. We pulled fingers from our ears.

After we pulled to a stop, the copilot popped the door. As we disembarked, my boss tried to casually thank him for the flight, but he had a tremble in his voice. I had a new respect for these guys, and I said simply, “nice landing, sir.” He smiled broadly; obviously they had a good time. Even airborne taxi drivers have a little fun, and this wasn’t the last time I had a chance to ride along when they were having fun like the rides out above the Alaskan wilds, but that's another story! Let's get on with this one.        

Well, we obtained temporary lodging and spent a few hours losing money in a couple Las Vegas casinos. The next day dawned early with us boarding a CLASSIFIED contracted commercial airliner with a load of F-117 support people. We departed out of Nellis amongst the fighters and bombers still coming and going. We flew CLASSIFIED minutes to Area CLASSIFIED out to somewhere CLASSIFIED in the desert. This area would eventually be referred to as Tonopah Test Range. We obtained our bearings and legs, and a pair of F-117s flew overhead--quietly and covertly. What a sight; I had never seen one before especially so low overhead.

We met with the F-117 weather people, but they seemed a bit standoffish. Of course, they were elite Air Force weather people for CLASSIFIED years, not to mention knowing full well the F-117’s CLASSIFIED and CLASSIFIED missions. Now we were taking over their special weather support duties, and they’d have to go back into some humdrum, mainstream Air Force weather station. I felt for them because they were losing their positions of merit, but I had my own new job to do.

Meteorology-wise, I acquired all the CLASSIFIED weather sensitivities of the F-117s, what meteorological conditions warranted special CLASSIFIED handling, and so on. We signed for and hand carried the CLASSIFIED specifications we required to set up our weather station accordingly. That evening, the F-117 Squadron Commander drove us down to one of the Quonset Hut hangars. Walking inside the hangar, we were privy to what amounted to a aeronautical wet dream. As the high-intensity fluorescents brightened, a F-117 sat there in surreal illumination. Very chilling, like a hair-raising movie. It was amazing to walk up to the dull black, angular jet, underneath it, and climb into the CLASSIFIED cockpit. Now, I could go on and explain the CLASSIFIED details of the F-117’s CLASSIFIED outer skin, the CLASSIFIED instruments, its CLASSIFIED armament, and CLASSIFIED missions, well…maybe not.

Notwithstanding all that CLASSFIED stuff, nowadays most public air shows have an F-117 on display or even a flyby, and by now they're all put away in mothballs. My particular era of CLASSIFIED glory is long gone, but I still dream about the other CLASSIFIED aircraft projects that were just beginning when I retired!   

Years since I retired from my Air Force career, friends and relatives still ask pointed questions about what I did, especially when I mention that I was stationed at Holloman AFB. I can tell them about the unveiling and supporting the F-117s and visiting the Air Force’s CLASSIFIED operations deep in the Nevada desert, but withhold the many CLASSIFIED details. Still they ask:

“Did you see the remnants of the Roswell crash?”

“What do they really have at Area 51?”

“What secret aircraft projects did you see or work on?

 "Is the Aurora aircraft real?”

I always smile and quietly say, “If I told you…”

    

Reviews

[Erin S]

What an exciting time in your career! Thank you for letting us take a peek into the CLASSIFIED.

[wondering]

Smile. :) Guess you had a way more exciting career than one would expect being a weather man. Good story and hey I had Mrs. Yocum in third grade too, who knew! thanks