By Jeff Mullin

Senior Writer



Student pilots at Vance Air Force Base begin their flight training program with varying amounts of flying experience.

Some have very flew flying hours, while some have been piloting private aircraft for years.

But 2nd Lt. Caleb Ramsey is unique among his fellow Joint Specialized Flying Training students at Vance in that he reported to the base with four air medals and a Distinguished Flying Cross.

Ramsey received his DFC, America’s oldest military aviation award, for his actions as an enlisted refueling boom operator aboard a KC-135 tanker Oct. 7, 2001, the first day of Operation Enduring Free-dom.

“I have that, but I was just like any other guy, it was all being in the right place at the right time, I guess,” said Ramsey. “Anybody, I think, when faced with some of the same things would have been able to handle the same situations.”

When the tanker took off, it lost its airspeed indicator and altimeter. But there was no thought of aborting the mission, since a flight of C-17s had just crossed into Afghanistan on a humanitarian mission.

“We continued out, at night, in the dark, lights out, and got out there over Afghanistan, met up them regardless of our malfunction and did the refueling,” said Ramsey. “Because, had we not, they would have had to land in Afghanistan which, at the time was not occupied by the U.S. We saved them from having to land there and they were able to get their gas and go back home.

“It was kind of a hairy operation as far as the refueling procedure and everything went, but we managed to get it off just fine. I had an awesome crew as far as the two guys up front that really supported everything I was doing in the back. They got me back in one piece.”

Now it is Ramsey’s turn to move from the back of the KC-135 to the front. When he finishes pilot training at Vance he will return to the Nebraska Air National Guard as a tanker pilot.



Training in the sims



As part of his training he has spent many hours in the T-1 simulators at Vance, dealing with faux failures instead of real ones.

“Now I’m not sitting behind two pilots,” he said, “now I’m the guy in the front seat making the decisions.”

The most valuable part of simulator work, Ramsey said, is “the chance that if you screw it up to either go back and do it again or to hit pause and kind of stop, take a minute to think of what you did, what you may have done right or done wrong, hit play and start over again. In the jet you don’t have the opportunity.”

Navy Ensign Joe Burns just took his last T-6 simulator ride. He called his time in the Vance simulators “really valuable.”

“Especially emergency procedures and things you couldn’t do in the aircraft you can do in the simulator,” said Burns, “like shut the engine down, engine fires, all kinds of emergencies that they can give you. Just things that push the normal operating range of the aircraft that you are prohibited from doing in the plane.”

2nd Lt. Jake Lillich graduated Friday as part of JSUPT class 07-04. He soon will be flying A-10s at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona. He said instrument flight was the biggest thing he took from his time in the simulators.

“Once you develop good pattern habits and you kind of know what to expect and what you’re doing, it definitely pays off,” he said. “You get a lot more comfortable flying instruments. When you actually hop in the jet it all makes sense.”

All three students also pointed to the experience and expertise of Vance’s simulator instructors as the program’s added bonus.

“These guys have been flying for 20-some years, and they’ve definitely got experience, not only out in the Air Force but in instruction, as well,” said Ramsey. “Really showing which techniques will work and which won’t work.”

“There’s not much that, collectively, the simulator instructors haven’t seen as it relates to aviation,” said Burns.

“You can do your mission, but then it’s just fun to talk with them,” said Lillich, a native of Jay, near Grand Lake. “Some of them just love to sit around and talk about old war stories. In fact, if you can get them talking about that instead of your sims it’s better.”