Chapter 14
Back at Pope, there were rumors of an exotic TDY coming to our squadron. In short order these rumors became facts. Sub Saharan Africa was in crisis. A severe drought was rapidly expanding the desert and driving the nomadic people, the Tuaregs, south. The Tuaregs were sheep and goat herders and their normal water supplies were disappearing fast. The herds were dying and the Tuaregs would soon follow. The squadron asked for volunteers and I jumped at the opportunity. Three airplanes would go, two to Mali and one to Chad. Two crews were assigned to each aircraft for a total of six.
My aircraft would be going to Bamako, Mali, located in northwestern Africa. On my crew were: Co pilot Jack Taylor, Navigator Ed (Headwind) Hill, Flight Engineer Albert Moses, and Loadmaster Billy Tate. Jack was a very experienced co pilot who had already been on two rotations and he played a mean guitar. Major Hill earned his nickname while at Pope. He was flying a large triangular flight pattern one day and the crew noticed that every leg had a headwind. They jokingly blamed this on Major Hill and the nickname stuck. SSgt Moses was one of the sharpest engineers in the squadron. He arrived at Pope in January 1973 right out of training school. Sgt. Billy Tate had been on the Rhine-Main rotation the previous year.
We left Pope and the first stop was our old standby, Lajes, Azores. We spent the night there, refueled, and left Lajes the next morning for Africa. The weather was beautiful and clear all the way. Our route took us directly to the west coast of Africa near Dakar, Senegal. From there we turned directly for Mali.
Bamako is located in the southwestern part of Mali. What struck me most about seeing this part of Africa for the first time was the brown flatness of everything. You could see an occasional village with conical grass huts scattered about but not much of anything else. Bamako itself stood in stark contrast to the surrounding countryside. We could see its buildings from miles out. The city straddled both sides of the Niger River. Just south of the city was the airport. Navigation aids and air traffic control facilities were primitive in sub-Saharan Africa in 1973. All this flying would be visual flight rules (VFR). This meant that if you could see it, you could go. These flying rules were the same ones we used in Gauhati, so we were experienced in this type of flying.
As we made our approach to the Bamako airport we could see that the city consisted of mostly flat-roofed single story structures with one big exception. There was one high-rise building, the Hotel De L’Amitier. This would be our home for the next six weeks.
After landing we taxied to our parking ramp and were met by a delegation from the Malian government. They gave us a warm welcome and repeatedly thanked us for coming to their aid in this time of crisis. We climbed on a large, ancient bus that pulled up to the aircraft and we were off to the Hotel De L’Amitier.
The view from the ground confirmed what we had seen from the air: flat, brown and dusty. The hotel was the exception. It was 15 stories high and so new that it wasn’t completely finished yet. We maneuvered our equipment and luggage around sawhorses and sand piles and finally checked into our rooms. I was pleasantly surprised by the opulence of my room. It had air conditioning, a bath with a tub-shower combination, a toilet that actually worked, a beautiful double bed, and the most unusual chair coverings I’d ever seen. The chair and small sofa were covered with real animal skins. The chair was done in zebra; the sofa in leopard skin. This was definitely not the PETA suite. I had a great view of the entire city from the 12th floor.
We cleaned up and I met Jack and Ed for drinks. We noted that there were a lot of candles around the hotel. After the sun went down we found out why. Electricity was an iffy proposition in Mali. Sometimes it worked, most of the time it didn’t. After a nice candle-lit dinner in the hotel restaurant, we adjourned to our rooms. Just prior to leaving the restaurant the electricity came back on so we were able to use the elevators. I opted for the stairs, just in case.
After getting back to my room I started reading a book that Jack had shared with me. I had to read by candlelight since the power went out…again. The book was, “The Exorcist.” Now I’m not easily rattled by spooky stories, but there was something about sitting in a room alone, in the middle of Africa, reading this ghastly story by candlelight. I was on edge all night and didn’t sleep at all.
One piece of good news was that the hotel had priority on the electric grid. It was the last to lose it and the first to get it back. But when the power went out, the blackness was total. Looking out my window I saw a vast sea of nothingness with only an occasional twinkle from the scattered peasant huts below my window.
Chapter 15
The borders of present day Mali were drawn in 1890 when the country was known as French Sudan. Mali remained a French colony until it achieved independence in 1960.
Our mission was to deliver grain to small outposts on the edge of the Sahara. Distribution points for the grain were set up around five destination airstrips. We were part of a massive international relief effort. Successive dry years killed both crops and livestock. The Sahara crept southward and thousands of people faced starvation. Existing means of transportation couldn’t move the grain inland quickly enough. Most waterways were unsuitable for barges to reach the northern areas. The only workable solution was to airlift the grain in to where it was needed.
Those hardest hit by this drought were the Tuaregs. They lead a nomadic, pastoral life in the Sahara desert. In 1973, the severe drought conditions drove the Tuaregs out of their traditional grazing lands and pushed them south where they sought food and water.
My lasting impression of the operation was the unremitting heat and sand. During the day, the temperature rose into the triple digits. The highest I witnessed was 116 degrees. It would cool off somewhat from evening through early morning however, and this had a direct effect on how much we could carry. There were two launches per day. The 6:00 A.M. flight carried 13 ½ metric tons of grain and the afternoon sortie carried 11 ½ metric tons. The load difference was due to the outside air temperature. The cooler temperatures allowed us to carry a greater load. Cooler air was denser, which meant more lift.
We were based in Bamako, and all of our destinations were in the north: Timbuktu, Goundam, Gao, Nioro, and Nara. All these destinations had runways consisting of dirt and a red, residual product of rock decay called laterite.
All the airports had control towers. This was good — except for the language barrier and faulty equipment. The tower operators were supposed to communicate with us in English, the international language of aviation. But French was the official language of Mali and its natives rarely got to use English until we arrived. As time went on their English got better and so did our French.
The control towers used old radios that had high failure rates. Many times the radio operator’s transmission would just stop in mid-sentence. Sometimes they fixed the problem and came back on the air, sometimes not.
Though there were radio operators in the towers there were no air traffic controllers. In the U.S. and in Europe, air traffic controllers had all the planes on radar screens and guided the traffic to avoid conflicts with other planes. When we were flying in Mali in the 70’s there was no radar. Once cleared for takeoff by the tower, we were on our own; not only to navigate to our destination, but also to avoid other airplanes. We never had any near misses, or near hits, as George Carlin called them. We used the “see and avoid” principle of flight and self sequenced for every approach and landing.