14th EFS -- brown fog, birds making flying difficult

  • Published
  • By Lt. Col. Charles Toplikar
  • 14th Expeditionary Fighter Squadron
BALAD AIR BASE, Iraq -- --  We had a zero/zero day this week. That means there was zero ceiling and zero visibility, just like we have with the summer fog in Japan. However, here it is due to dust, so the "fog" is brown and gets into everything! Of course it was on my day to fly, so everyone had to tolerate the bad attitude I incur whenever one of my sorties gets cancelled.

Last week I talked a lot about the little bugs. This week, I will mention a little about the big bugs. Let me tell you, there are also some very big bugs over here. I sent a photo to some folks back at Misawa of one the 5-inch-long "toe biter" bugs. It looks like a huge roach with big scorpion-like pincers on the front...and it can fly. They seem to come out at night. At least they are not hard to see.

I am slowly catching up to Senior Master Sgt. David Myette's bird count, thanks to my friend, Lt. Col. Chris Ashby, 332nd Air Expeditionary Wing chief of safety, who takes me on an occasional bird depredation outing. The birds are, of course, willing to make suicide attacks on our aircraft, so we have plenty of motivation to include them in our Global War on Terror target list.

Airman 1st Class Timothy Korpolewski, one of our crew chiefs, was honored as the Tuskegee Airman of the Week this week. He has made the Samurai proud with his professionalism and work ethic. http://www.misawa.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123049115.

We were visited this week by Lt. Gen. Gary North, Central Command commander, retired Lt. Gen. Joseph Hurd, his senior mentor, and Mr. Ben Lambeth, distinguished author from the RAND Corporation. Their visit to "Cell Block 50" went very well. The Samurai warriors showed them why we are the world's greatest fighter squadron. General North coined Tech. Sgt. Eliezer Huertas, Senior Airman Daniel Burnham, Senior Airman Justin Moore, Airman 1st Class Demitri White, Senior Airman Dwayne Evans, and Maj. David Hardy. Of note, General North is a former 35th Operations Group commander, and General Hurd is a former Misawa Wing commander.

That's it for this week. Thanks for your support and sacrifice.