In later 1990, as the allied forces of Operation Desert Shield, the Canadian military was preparing to send over a second slate of comms specialists to help with the anticipated workload from Desert Storm. I was attached posted to 1 Sigs in CFB Kingston in Ontario back in September and then started our desert special service force combat training, mostly to deal with the unknown response from Saddam's army and Republican Guard.
Still reeling from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the military had a lot of unknowns and one year prior, I had spent 6 months with a UN force inside of Iraq (UNIIMOG) to help setup a comms network as the Iran/Iraq war had ended.
With my Iraq experience and knoweldge, I was tasked to be part of the later force before Operation Desert Shield ended and Storm took place. I spent around 3 months of intensive training to be part of the special service force, establishing Canada's strategic comms link and easy deployment into Iraq if needed. Most of my buds I served with in the UN mission back in 1988 as part of Canada's comms special service force (also intermixed with all former Airborne special forces regiment) were now part of this new support force to be stationed in Doha Qatar.
We headed out from Kingston on the evening of 14 January, 1991 on a Monday night for a flight to . Lahr Germany to pick up our desert military equipment required for in-theatre. At the military commissary at the airport, I had picked up a copy of Flight of the Old Dog by Dale Brown. My buddy had picked up the hard copy months before and raved about how intense it was - almost as good as The Hunt for Red October. It was time to leave, and already while waiting for our plane to arrive, I had dove into the book - in the ole 'hurry up and wait' and it was actually a good story. Hour two and our CC-137 arrives - the souped up version of the Boeing 707 with big engines and 7600 mile range. We all boarded the plane in military style, and being a cargo plane, my unit put our equipment and bags up front and settled into the back 90 seats of the old bird.
The Canadian CC-137 is a basic version of the civilian 707, except it had bigger/stronger P&W engines that gave us around a 620mph cruise and larger fuel tanks for extended range. It has a crew of 3 for the cockpit, and being a cargo/passenger combo, we have two extra flight crew and a aircraft maintenance engineer. You also need to understand that a typical RCAF flight crew is also part mechanic - we cross train the hell out of everyone. While they can't safety an aircraft, they sure can fix almost every technical and electrical issue on every aircraft they fly in so that it can then be re-inspected by a certified mechanic - who are part of the flight crew for over-seas flights (perks of the job).
We take off out of Trenton and climb to I'm guessing FL360 as dusk settles in, and we head north east to fly over as part of our transatlantic flight. I'm now heavy into the later chapters in the book, a good 100-150 pages into the book. It's now around 11pm on my watch, and pitch black outside and I remember getting up to fetch water from the rear when there is a power blip in the cabin lights. Then suddenly, all the lights go out for 5 seconds, then back on. The lights keep flashing inside the cabin and then the plane looses all power and emergency strip lighting now is on. I can also hear the engines slowly spinning down as if someone had cut the throttles and we start to drop/freefall. It was then when the mechanic blows past my seat and then another with a fire extinguisher in his hand, when I noticed the smoke in the ceiling starting to drift over our heads. We're still dropping quickly, and now we can hear a comotion in the front of the aircraft - shouting and cursing. With the cargo section between the passenger section in the rear of the 707, we really can't see anything when the plane violently banks to the right and is now dropping like a stone. The single crew member in our area tells us all to prepare for emergency landing. BTW - we have just one engine.
I'm like, dangit, I'm in a really interesting spot in my book, and I need to finish this chapter - do they manage to rob fuel at the Soviet base or not? So, I grab my pocket light, and continue reading thinking "if the lord is calling my time, he can wait 5 minutes so I can finish this dang chapter".
Now the cabin is quite smokey - after 7 minutes of silence, I hear that single engine spooling up to max throttle. From below I see the lights of what looks like Halifax Nova Scotia, but the airport is a good 30 minutes outside of the city. And the crew inform us we're doing an emergency landing at CFB Sherwater... cool...my sister and brother live close by.
We brace ourselves for landing - and the pilot puts the 707 down with one engine smooth as silk - heck, he doesn't need 4 engines to land nicely! (or the fact the runway was coated in foam).
We stop the plane and the end of the runway and the mechanic finally makes his way back. He was wearing a smoke hood - appearently, the nav computer caught fire and made a big mess up in the cockpit. He had managed to basically dissect the entire section ahead of the throttle quadrant and put out the fire, fix the damage to the throttle section to give some working function, and give the pilots enough working instruments to land the plane.
We debark the airplane on a ladder truck, taking all our gear with us. Germany will have to wait a few more hours.
