ably more personal than anything written in the manual or in a test report. On the day of the airlift, safety of the C-124 and the missiles inside is largely up to the MATS loadmaster and one engineer from Boeing's Missile Delivery Group.
They're both out on the flight apron at 0700. Together they hold a thorough, nit-picking inspection: checking the housekeeping around the loading area and in the plane, determining the exact condition of all loading gear. The next thing is to decide where to put what in the cargo spaces. To have a safe flight, the center of gravity of the plane must stay between certain body stations. Almost always there is extra freight, like batteries and test sets, to be sent along with missiles and airfoils. Tiedown methods have to be agreed on. Both engineer and loadmaster must be able to think on their feet and make rapid decisions and adjustments in case an item of freight doesn't show up, or if more shows up than they expected. Exact placement of cargo and exact fuel requirements are therefore figured down to the last inch and gallon by two heads containing a sum total of years of air-cargo knowhow and experience. Aiding their calculations are the engineer's conventional slipstick, and the loadmaster's load adjuster, marked off in body stations and fuel loads, and serialized to his C-124 and that plane only.
Boeing personnel, supervised by the loadmaster, perform the actual onloading. Their procedures follow the lines set down by the 2 dash 2, with certain sophistications. The loading trailers here at Seattle—referred to, for some obscure reason, as "tomato" dollies—are smaller and lighter than those in use at the other end. This makes for speed and safety in loading, since less strain is put on the loading gear.
Now don't everybody yell at once. We know there aren't any of these out at the bases. And for a very good reason, too. Sure, maybe the light trailers speed things up. But they are too light for safe over-the-road transportation—too fragile, and not built to ICC specifications. This is OK at Seattle, where there is no "over the road"; only a few yards over a smooth flight apron, between the storage area and the '124. But at a tactical base, the distance between the airhead and Bomarc site is often quite a stretch, and the trailer must be rugged enough to take a long haul.
Positive, error-proof communication between load-master and anchor winch is provided at onloadings by a three-light system which looks like an ordinary traffic signal. Red means "stop," green means "wind in cable," amber means "let out cable." One big advantage is that the system works efficiently even around a high noise level area. And with '707s, B-52s, KC-135s and other heavies warming up, taxiing and taking off most of the time, that noise level can get pretty high.
We are not saying that the Seattle end of the airlift is ultra-safe, and can do no wrong, while the other end is a horde of accident-prones. The Boeing crew doesn't wear safety shoes. The bases don't have the three-light system. So who is safer than who?
The thing to remember is that this whole business of airlifting the IM-99A continues under a set of conditions which—let's face it—we all have to live with. For one thing, the loading ramp of the C-124 is inclined 17 degrees to the horizontal. We can figure out from simple trigonometry that a shallower ramp would mean less pull on the hoist cable and its associated gear, and therefore safer operation. The C-133, it so happens, has a shallower ramp. Unfortunately, not many C-133s are available, nor as of this writing are they likely to be. In addition, the '133 does not come equipped with a cargo hoist, which means that even if we could get this aircraft, each missile would have to be shipped on its own individual trailer. So the '124 and its steep ramp are here to stay.
Another thing both ends must realize is that loading crews get used to working together. MATS likes to rotate loadmasters on these airlifts, to spread the experience around. But in places with a low turnover rate, missile stevedoring would be performed by a more or less integrated team, who knew each others' idiosyncrasies, who had evolved certain private hand or verbal signals valid only for the team itself. Up to a point, nothing is wrong with this approach. MATS has been in business since 1948, and airlifts have been going on nearly as far back as the Wright brothers. During that stretch, a lot of knowledge has been accumulated. The rules on missile transportation—safety and otherwise—are based solidly on common sense, and if the same crew has been working together over a period of time, such "in-group" communication can speed things up. But now, take for instance the crewman who nearly got squashed between two missiles. Suppose the man signalled his plight to the anchor vehicle had started dancing around, waving and yelling. Suppose the winch operator had been a new man, not thoroughly briefed on signals. To him, such apparently random signalling could have meant "go faster," "the trailer just ran over my foot," "the general is coming," or just about anything. If he had thought to himself, "maybe he means I should take in more," and thereupon started reeling in cable fast and furiously, the IM-99A airlift would have chalked up its first fatality. The moral is simply that everybody engaged in the operation should be told beforehand what each signal means and the information checked and double checked before on or offloading ever begins.
These are probably the two major problems: slope of the ramp and positive communication. But when you come right down to it, the others are equally as important; areas like trailer and hoist maintenance, safety training, proper use of protective covers. Too often and too easily these areas can be dismissed with the formula: "Not applicable; this is an Air Force problem." At the risk of belaboring the obvious, it would seem that difference between getting killed and living to a ripe old age ought, by every rule of common sense, to be everybody's problem.
Chain Robbins, Safety Engineering Group Supervisor at Boeing, has put it this way: "One of the most unpleasant things about this business is the day you suddenly realize that many of the safety codes the Air Force and Industry have were generated out of tragedy—someone killed, someone mangled for life. You might say one of the objectives of the safety movement, which got under way around 1911, is to generate codes from tests, studies of human reactions, statistical data, near misses, everything we can get, to prevent future tragedies from ever happening."
There has never been a tragedy on any Bomarc airlift. Yet. ★
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