Airmen fuel flight at record pace

Published June 8, 2007
By Staff Sgt. Cassandra Locke
379th Air Expeditionary Wing

SOUTHWEST ASIA -- With the operations tempo and amount of aircraft sorties being flown a day, how do the flight crews stop for gas?

The volume of fuel moved at this base between receiving it, transferring it and issuing it is more than any other base in the Air Force and the 379th Expeditionary Logistics Readiness Squadron is doing it with innovation in an expeditionary environment.
Fuel comes through the base gate and the quality of the fuel is checked by the professionals in the 379th ELRS fuels management flight.

Then the trucks proceed to the tank truck off-loading facility. The base previously had receiving outlets that enabled four fuel trucks to off-load at a time, taking about 40 minutes per truck. Since January, the base has added an additional offloading facility that can offload eight trucks in 20 minutes.

"This has increased the ability to receive twice as much fuel in half the time," said Chief Master Sgt. Stanley Walker, 379th ELRS.

The chief said the squadron receives about 95 trucks a day. After the trucks are off loaded the fuel is transferred into one of thirty-eight 210,000 gallon fuel bladders or into one of the two newly constructed hydrant systems. Here the fuel is stored until it is needed on the flight line.

"Over 14 million gallons of fuel are stored on base and the Airmen assigned to the fuels flight issue 1 million gallons each day," said Chief Walker.

During the recent AEF turnover, the mission didn't stop and the ELRS members continued to press on through the transition.

"We were able to swap out 91 personnel and have them trained, qualified, and working as a team to meet the increased fuel demand with zero delay to aircraft sorties attributed to fuel support," said Master Sgt. Eric Green, 379th ELRS.

Throughout and since the turnover, the Airmen have been breaking records that were seemingly impossible before.

"We most recently broke our record May 22 when we issued 1,136,396 gallons. This was just three days after we previously broke the record," said Sergeant Green.
"Since the start of this year, our daily average for gallons issued has steadily climbed. We have broken the daily issue record five times alone since I've been here (Feb. 20)."

On top of the record breaking statistics of the squadron, most of the Airmen have to be trained on equipment they have never used throughout their career and have only seen in technical school and career development courses.

"More impressively is that these new folks had to be trained on Pantographs, R-12 Hydrant Servicing Vehicles, and Fuels Mobility Support Equipment," said Sergeant Green.

These record breaking Airmen have made it possible for the flight crews to keep up with the operations tempo and combat sorties. The Airmen have been challenged to perform at a stellar pace and have done so working for a base that moves more fuel than any other base in the Air Force.