New Hampshire Guardsmen get 931st mission back in air

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Jason Schaap
  • 931st Air Refueling Group Public Affairs
MCCONNELL AIR FORCE BASE, Kan. --  Somewhere over Canada, inside a KC-135 Stratotanker, came an unwanted wake-up call for Tech. Sgt. Trevor Derenthal's maintenance crew.

The hydraulics on the right side of the aircraft were gone, they were told.

"We're not going to Italy," thought Sergeant Derenthal, a crew chief assigned to the 931st Aircraft Maintenance Squadron.

What was a 931st Air Refueling Group mission from here to pick up 30 Airmen at Aviano Air Base had turned into a rare "in-flight emergency." The pilots were no longer in control of the tanker's nose wheel, rudder and flaps. Landing was going to be tricky.

"(With the hydraulics) gone," Sergeant Derenthal said, "the only way you can steer when you land is with your brakes."

The atmosphere on board was a bit "tense" at first, he admitted, but then "everybody was calm." There was work to be done. Decisions to be made.

"It seemed best to land as soon as possible," Sergeant Derenthal said.

The crew decided to head for Pease Air National Guard Base, N.H., home of the 157th Air Refueling Wing, a KC-135 unit. It was, they would soon learn, a very wise decision.

The tanker landed safely and Sergeant Derenthal's crew immediately went to work, pulling off the tanker's outside panels in search of the problem.

"There was hydro-fluid everywhere," he said.

The plane had lost 14 gallons of hydraulic fluid. It landed in the middle of the night with rain pouring down and a major leak hidden inside its belly. Mandatory crew rest was also creeping up on the 931st Airmen. The fix would have to wait.

But not for long.

The 157th ARW, strategically located on the New Hampshire coast to support deploying aircraft, has 24-hour maintenance operations.

"They were already working when we (returned the next morning)," Sergeant Derenthal said. "They had been for a couple hours."

With 30 Reservists in Europe still waiting for a ride home, the Reserve and Guard maintainers teamed up. The 157th ARW Airmen replaced vital hydraulics components while Sergeant Derenthal's crew troubleshooted the leak.

A cracked fluid line in the forward fuselage was discovered in the early afternoon. It was Friday, about the time Staff Sgt. Michael Kellerman said most Pease Guardsmen start closing up shop for the weekend.

Sergeant Kellerman was one of the initial Guard maintainers to work on the McConnell jet. He was part of a 157th ARW team that "went way above and beyond to help" the 931st mission, Sergeant Derenthal said.

Repairs continued well into the evening, as did the help from the 157th.

"They could have said, 'Alright, we're packing up and coming back tomorrow,'" Sergeant Derenthal said. "But they didn't. They sacrificed their Friday night, and Saturday morning, to get us fixed."

"That's the way we've always done business," said Sergeant Kellerman, a 157th veteran of 15 years. It's part of a Golden Rule for the unit: do for other Airmen as you hope they would do for you.

The McConnell tanker left Pease late that night. The same plane went to Italy, picked up some Buckeye Reservists, and returned them to their families in Ohio. All thanks to some total-force teamwork between weekend warriors.

"Those guys really knew their stuff," Sergeant Derenthal said. "If they hadn't supported us the way they did, we wouldn't have been able to continue the mission."

Late on a Friday night, a very-thankful Sergeant Derenthal had four of his new Air Guard friends write down their names. On a piece of paper in his wallet, it reads: Master Sgt. Barry Graham, Staff Sgt. Mark Bohac, Senior Airman Kenny Newel, and Master Sgt. Kevin Mead.