Airmen, rare planes zoom disaster relief to flooded Ecuador
 by Staff Sgt. John B. Dendy IV - 24th Wing (Deployed) Public Affairs
     GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AFNS) -- As President Clinton observed the
 Berlin Airlift anniversary in Europe recently, a handful of airmen
 were running a humanitarian cargo airlift in Ecuador that's sustain-
 ing residents of the flooded north coast in that Colorado-sized
 nation.
     The airmanship of personnel from the 24th Wing in Panama has been
 the lead story in Ecuador's press since they started flying wheelbar-
 rows and plastic sheeting May 10 from Quito to the flooded mangroves
 of the Manabi region on Ecuador's border with Colombia. The air hub
 moved May 11 to Guayaquil's airport, where tons of medicines, mat-
 tresses and bananas have since left on U.S. flights for Manabian air-
 fields, on-scene representative Air Force Capt. Juan Ocasio, said
 May 18 from Guayaquil. Ocasio is deployed to the U.S. Embassy in
 Ecuador from Howard Air Force Base, Panama.
     Floods and mudslides caused by six nonstop months of rain have
 wiped out enough sections of major coastal highway and farm-to-market
 roads to tax Ecuador's infrastructure. The key transport of the air-
 lift has been the Air Force's little-known fleet of seven small C-27A
 cargo planes that get materials from large airfields in steel-and-
 glass cities like Guayaquil to pinhole-sized airfields in the region.
 Flown by three-person crews from their hub in Panama, the C-27's main
 business in Ecuador of late has been supplying a few U.S., Brazilian
 and Argentine forces deployed there on remote goodwill and peacekeep-
 ing missions. The C-27 crews have seen each other more in passing
 recently at Guayaquil than back in Panama, as almost half the fleet
 has shared the ramp simultaneously here.
    THEIR AIRCRAFT
    C-27    Spartan
     Brief: A converted commercial airlifter used primarily for cargo
 operations on short, unimproved airstrips.
     Function: Theater airlifter.
     Operator: ACC.
     First Flight: July 18,1970.(
     Delivered: August 1991-December 1992.
     IOC: October1991.
     Production: 10.
     Inventory: seven.
     Ceiling: 25,000 ft.
     Unit Location: Howard AFB, Panama.
     Contractor:    Chrysler.
     Power Plant: two Fiat-built General Electric T64-GE-P4D
 turboprops; each 3,400 shp.
     Accommodation (C-27A): crew of three; various configurations,
 mci provision for 34 fully equipped troops or 14,850 lb cargo.
     Dimensions: span 94 ft 2 in, length 74 ft 5 in, height 34 ft 8in.
     Weight: empty 35,500 lb, gross 56,878 lb.
     Performance: max cruising speed 288 mph, ferry range with max
 fuel 1,727 miles.
 COMMENTARY
     C-27A. Ten commercially available Alenia G222 medium airlifters
 were modified to C-27A short takeoff and landing (STOL) intratheater
 transport standard. Modifications include new HF/VHF communications,
 autopilot, and INS. C-27As provide rapid-response airlift of person-
 nel and cargo to remote location accessible primarily through unim-
 proved airfields with short, unprepared landing surfaces.
 ---Continued------------------------------------------------------
     Replacing roadways and restoring land gobbled by El Nino will
 cost Ecuador $2 billion, said the Associated Press quoting a govern-
 ment council source there May 18. Recovering cattle and land flooded
 or buried under mud will run $500 million-$800 million, according to
 the press report. The rest of the money will fund help for hundreds
 of families still living in refugee shelters and for incidental costs,
 the council said. Rains fueled an El Nino weather phenomenon that
 arrived at Ecuador's coast in November. The resulting floods and
 landslides killed 251 people and left 59 people missing.
     "Our people have shown outstanding airmanship to support this
 emergency mission," said Lt. Col. Tony Lowe, 24th Operations Group
 deputy commander for airlift. "From planning to execution, we have
 worked well with our hosts in Ecuador."
     The crew of Capts. Rob Zerbe, Greg Reinhardt, and Staff Sgt.
 Charles Hale pulled an uninterrupted week of airlifting action, rare
 in the out-and-back routine of C-27 flight plans. Already in Ecuador,
 they were redirected in mid-mission to support the disaster relief
 response. The crew not only performed public affairs duties as ambas-
 sadors for the United States by flying Ecuadorian officials and
 reporters who needed to observe the relief process up close. With
 the plane to themselves and a few travelers watching, they executed
 a rare drop-it-out-the-back-without-stopping combat offload of green
 bananas in the flood zone, before returning to Panama with that val-
 uable operational experience. In between, the crew was one of several
 serving diplomacy from morning to sundown, ferrying through partly
 cloudy skies from the south to airfields in Manta, Portoviejo and
 Bahia de Caraquez.
     "I'm going back tomorrow for another three days," Reinhardt said.
 "We're running three shuttles a day now, so the stuff is getting up
 to the people sooner. I'll do more in three days than we did in the
 first seven days. The crews are reporting that they can see that
 we're providing more relief more efficiently with more people
 deployed."
     The mission continues to require U.S. airlift assistance, and
 its do-it-all C-27 crews are the transport of choice until require-
 ments change, officials in Panama and Ecuador said. The crews are
 on-scene and they fly the only aircraft in the inventory capable of
 transiting any of the previously noted fields, offering optional
 wiggle room for emergency response planners, even if larger-capacity
 U.S. aircraft are deployed to assist.
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