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Kerry Barrett ReportingOne of the most amazing things to see, and you do at every air show, are the tactical maneuvers those small little show planes make.
Now imagine doing that in an enormous cargo jet. It's an incredible sight to see.
During our trip to Iraq we had the opportunity to fly on several miltary jets, a C-5, a C-17 and this C-130 we took as we rode along for a combat mission north of Balad.
Once you're outside of Baghdad and some of the other larger, hot-bed cities, it's relatively quite. But pilots are always on the look-out, especially near Balad. F-16 fighter jets out of Hill help.
"Giving us protection on the ground and securing the airspace for us so we can get up and get out of here to wherever it is we need to go. They cover for us, I guess is what you really want to say."
But, even that is not enough. So, they're constantly monitoring out the windows, from the cockpit and the back, looking for snipers, changing airspeed to avoid as much as possible, being an easy target a sitting duck.
These heavies do things they really don't look capable of, like dropping altitude-- hundreds of feet in the blink of an eye-- practically nose-diving onto the runway, pulling G-'s enough that you can't stand upright, literally twirling down through the sky. It's called a corkscrew descent.
After landing, ground crews do a quick walk-around to check for bullet holes in the fuselage. And then, as quickly as they landed, they're back up again.
Coming up Friday, what it's like gearing up for a combat mission and trying to prepare for something you know can change in an instant.
