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The minute the mission changes inflight is the minute you need to sit back and carefully evaluate everything that's going on.
The day began just like any normal duty day for a Kodiak, Alaska, Coast Guard C -130 crew. We got to the station at 0745, checked the aircraft book, and got the weather brief from the marine-science techs (MSTs). The weather forecast for this lovely Sunday in July would be, well, terrible. All the airports we could land at in Alaska - aside from Anchorage were at approach mins, had large doses of Alaskan "liquid sunshine" (rain), and had high winds, which dominate the Aleutian chain.
Our flight schedule called for an afternoon trainer. I contacted the operations officer (Ops O) and recommended we cancel the trainer because of the marginal weather. "Roger that," he said, and we all retired to our offices, checked e-mails, and spent the next eight hours doing battle with every JO's nemesis: collateral duties.
About an hour into the effort to turn the tide in battlefield collateral, "C- 130 aircraft commander, contact operations center," blurted from the overhead piping system.
I picked up the phone and fully expected to get briefed on an upcoming search-and-rescue case that would whisk me away from home station. Then I'd be gone for the next three days because of poor weather.
"Ops wants you to see if it's feasible to get into Saint Paul today," the duty officer said on the other end of the horn.
Rewind two weeks. Earlier that summer in St. Paul, the Coast Guard had lost its second C-130 since the service began flying the Here. The St. Paul under discussion is not the great city in Minnesota. No, St. Paul, Alaska is a very small island, smack dab in the middle of the Bearing Sea. ("Deadliest Catch" TV-show fans will be familiar with this little slice of Alaskan heaven.) And where have the only Class-A mishaps involving USCG C-130s happened? You guessed it: Alaska. (A note attesting to the skill of that crew and the toughness of the Here is that, although the aircraft was destroyed, the entire crew walked away from the accident, uninjured.)
Ops wanted me to see if I could get into St....