USAF practice manouvers above Shannon.

national | miscellaneous | news report Saturday June 01, 2002 02:22 by Tim Hourigan Limerick

Aer Lingus stoppage leaves more room for military.

In what appears to be an escalation of military use of Shannon, the US Air Force have been sharpening their skills out at Shannon. I got a call to go out there today and witnessed some surreal scenes. If you've never seen a pair of USAF hercules making low tight turns over an Irish town, and making high speed touch-n-go landings at Shannon, believe me, it is a bit unsettling. With Aer Lingus flights grounded by a strike, one could easily have assumed we were at a US Air Force base and not Shannon airport today, because there was little else moving besides military personnel and hardware.

Shortly after 3 today I got a call that there was some overtly military aircraft landing at Shannon.
I grabbed my camera and binocs, and jumped on the next bus out.

I got out there and met my colleague who told me that the grey military aircraft he first spotted had disappeared, but that there was another military aircraft near the westair hangar.

So, I walked down and sure enough there's a big old DC-9 just sitting there.
It's marked United States NAVY and registered
RS 4605 part of VR-61 with the name 'City of Everett'

VR-61 is another NAVY Fleet Logistics Squadron, normally based on Whidbey Island, in Washington State (that's on the Pacific Coast of the US) The squadron consists of FOUR DC-9-33s. By the sounds of it 3 of them came through Shannon today.

While I was taking photos, another plane spotter comes up to me and tells me that this was the third US NAVY DC-9 through Shannon that day.
He told me that Shannon was becoming 'more and more popular with the US Air force and Navy'and that two C-130s had already been through (one which had 'broken down' and another to collect the passengers from the first one)
and that two more hercules were coming through shortly. [So make that 7 aircraft for now okay.]

We waited around for them, and expected them to land and taxi to a stand point.
Instead, we saw the first one come in fast, touch down briefly and then pull back, while pushing up the power.
It climbed steeply for a few seconds and then banked into a turn, and flew east about 500ft up, before turning tightly for another approach.

I thought maybe the pilot had aborted the landing
but when I saw the second hercules do the same, I knew they were practising what is called a 'touch-and-go' landing.

This is used sometimes in war zones where it is not safe to land and stop, so the cargo plane will instead touch down briefly, and drop cargo out the back door while still moving, then increase power and take off again.

It's a tricky manouvre. a wrong move could end up in a crash landing on the airfield.
More worrying are the low level passes over Shannon and the tight turns that they do for the approach.
I watched these two aircraft make high powered climbs, then bank sharply and fly back over Shannon town, make another tight turn and come down for another touch-and-go on the runway. for about 30 minutes, we had this going on above our heads, both of them up there at the same time, sometimes in opposite directions, sometimes approaching each other above the town. Really wish I had the video camera.

Eventually they finished and then parked on the centre taxiway, behind an Aer Lingus A330.
most of the crew got out while the planes were refuelled.
They were serviced by FBO Shannon [http://www.fbo.ie]
I got pictures, but they're stills. These are similar to the ones I last posted, except these hercules are US AIR FORCE C-130s, not US MARINE CORP KC-130s.
The aircraft registrations were RS 887 and RS 947.
Didn't spot a squadron patch.

Another not-so-subtle visitor to Shannon today was a 757-200 belonging to North American Airlines. This 757-200 was registered as N750NA and I haven't seen it at Shannon before.
I'd be sure to remember because it has a very bright, artful paint job.
North American Airlines do not normally fly through Shannon.
They have 5 aircraft, 1 Boeing 737-800 and 4 Boeing 757-200s. North American normally fly to Guyana, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, not SHANNON.
Like American Trans Air and World Airways, North American is currently providing charter services to the US military.
According to their own website the provide services for "U.S. and foreign military charters, as well as the White House Press Corps." [http://www.northamair.com/]

The long and the short of it, there were at least 8 military flights through Shannon today. 4 US airforce, 3 US Navy and 1 civlian jet chartered to the US military.

There's a big build up going on somewhere, and my local bookies reckon it's going to be Iraq.
Whatever the odds on the attack, I wouldn't bet any harm will come to Saddam, but I'm sure lots of Iraqi citizens will be "redesignated as collateral damage" by the Pentagon.
I hope not, but if they do, then we can't say that Ireland didn't play a part in that.

If you don't want that to happen, speak out now.