Manas’ air refueling a vital link to war effort

[unhappycamper]

A KC-135 crew goes over some pre-flight discussions before preparing the aircraft for flight. The mission at Manas Air Base is critical to refueling fighter jets over the skies of Afghanistan.


Manas’ air refueling a vital link to war effort
By Les Neuhaus, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, October 10, 2007


MANAS, Kyrgyzstan — When U.S. Army Air Corps Capt. Robert Crawford wrote what would later become the “U.S. Air Force Song” in 1939, he surely could not have imagined just where, in the wild blue yonder, airmen would serve in the decades to come.

The Kyrgyz Republic has proved to be one of those places where Americans now serve, reaching ever-farther into the remotest of the world’s corners.

“It’s pretty cool seeing stuff you’ve never seen,” said Air Force Capt. Tyler Berge, 26, who co-pilots one of several KC-135 refueling aircraft based in Kyrgyzstan.

The Wenatchee, Wash., native is on his fourth 60-day tour of duty in the country, flying missions over the skies of Afghanistan which help keep fighter aircraft aloft. Sandwiched between Kazakhstan and Tajikistan to the north and south and Uzbekistan and China to the west and east, Kyrgyzstan serves as home to the U.S. military’s most strategic air base in Central Asia.

It is also the main filtering point for troops and supplies heading into the war in Afghanistan — which marked its sixth anniversary on Sunday.

At the heart of Manas Air Base’s mission is the refueling effort, which helps complement the ferrying of servicemembers carried out by U.S. and NATO aircraft.


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=49384