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everyone’s being able to do what we got paid to do.
        Early the next morning we headed over to the Mildenhall operations center. The mission crew made the trek on foot because the crew van was nowhere to be found. Mildenhall ops was set up completely differently from Sembach ops. Here everything was crammed into tight quarters and buildings a hundred years older than any of us.
        The schedule for the morning was pretty much set in concrete. We’d be flying as part of an integrated package in a mini-exercise. Planning the mission was the responsibility of the mission crew. The eight of us each had separate tasks to perform, which involved planning and mapping out our orbit box, orbit times, jam windows, simulated targets, and the times over target for the simulated packages we would be supporting. The front-end crew would go over the flight plan and the mission route then make sure our windows of opportunity and orbit times corresponded with the navigator’s plans.
        The final stage of mission planning was reviewing the communications plan. After that we were ready for an onslaught of briefings. During the preflight brief given by the members of the mission crew, we reviewed the mission plan and maps. The big map displaying all pertinent target information was our best visual aid—it told all. After the preflight brief, the aircraft commander gave his spiel. He told us the estimated length of the mission with transit times figured in, skimmed over emergency procedures, and detailed other significant factors. Today the mission would be over water; life preservers and poopy suits needed to be readied. I hated the poopy suits, the black rubber that stretched from head to toe was nearly impossible to get into and even worse to get out of.
        The navigator briefed us on weather, which didn’t look good. The runway was sopped in and the cloud deck was thickening. Weather was always a critical factor; and if it didn’t clear, we wouldn’t fly. It’d be a No-Go.
        Next the MCC gave his briefing. He coordinated our windows of opportunity with the front-end once more. Planning and coordinating the jam windows was tricky business. We didn’t want our orbit box to be too short, so we were constantly making turns. We didn’t want it to be too long either. We didn’t want to be in the middle of a turn when a package element was coming in over target. We also wanted to make sure we used our jamming array effectively, switching our jammers on when necessary and switching them off when unnecessary.
        After the MCC brief we were ready to fly, but only if the weather improved. Flying a mission was always like that—planning, briefings, checklists and lots of waiting. When we were humping the zone, the adrenaline surging through our veins always compensated for all the fuss.
        Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, the weather worsened and the fog rolled in. It was then that we knew we were in England for sure. Four hours of waiting crept by. The weather didn’t clear and eventually we were put on standby. We could go eat and whatnot but had to report back.
        Fly days were normally long, but they were especially long when, after a long wait, you actually flew. There were limits to the length of the crew day, but we were still well within the window. 12:00 was our return time, so we hurried off on foot to grab a bite to eat.
        I hated weather delays more than anything else. Some days you’d wait six or seven hours; then the weather would clear, and you’d go fly your full flight time. And a day that would have been twelve to fourteen hours turned into one that just wouldn’t end.
        Mildenhall was a base sprawled across the English countryside, and the side of the base we were on was a good clip away from the place where we were quartered. The trudge back to our rooms and to the exchange concessions was long and cold. Needless to say, we