Month: February 2018

Barksdale AFB, located in the northwest corner of Louisiana, has a history as colorful as its namesake.

Located on a former cotton plantation east of Shreveport, construction began in 1931, with mule teams used to turn under and grade the landing areas.  The first aircraft, which included the Boeing P-26 Peashooter*, arrived in 1932, and when the airfield was officially opened in 1933, it was the largest airfield of its time.  The outlying lands were ideal for gunnery and bombing practice, and during WW2 entire units trained there for the war, including General Jimmy Doolittle’s 17th Bomb Group (famous for their raid on Tokyo).  After the war, the base was assigned to the newly independent Air Force, christened Barksdale after a local son, and assigned the airport identifier BAD.

Lieutenant Eugene Barksdale joined the Army in 1918 and quickly volunteered for the aviation section. He earned his wings with Britain’s Royal Flying Corps and became a founding member of the 25th Aero Squadron, a group of day pursuit pilots who patrolled the skies over the Western Front (Luxembourg, Belgium, and north-eastern France).  After the war he became a test pilot, and in 1924 he and his navigator performed the first instrument (above-the-cloud) flight using a flight (turn-and bank) indicator and earth indicator compass**.  Lt. Barksdale was killed two years later during a spin test of the Douglas O2 observation aircraft.

Since World War II, Barksdale AFB has served as an anchor for Strategic Air Command’s bomber fleet.  Over the years, its dedicated service training and hosting air crews and later, defensive Strategic Air Missile (SAM) sites, were peppered with a series of notable events.  Its long runway (11,753 feet) served as a stopover for the Shuttles during their Boeing 747 rides from Edwards (the alternate Shuttle landing site in California) back home to the Cape.  In the early 1990s, they hosted (aircraft) as part of US-Soviet Open Skies for Peace surveillance operations***.  The first strike of the first Gulf War, a record breaking 35-hour sortie, was flown by B-52s that alighted from the field; forward-deployed personnel performed the first strike of the subsequent Desert Strike and Desert Fox missions.  And in September 2001, the base provided safe haven to our president after planes were piloted into the World Trade Centers and Pentagon.

I had arrived the evening before, and after a quick stop at the BX, a nice walk through base housing (which had a surprisingly French flavor), and some time spent watching a family play a game of catch in the courtyard, I had turned in for the night.  Now I was wandering the static displays of the Barksdale Global Power Museum, which is home to most of the aircraft stationed at the base over the years.  Wandering its paths brought back fond memories of my early flying years: Rusty Gardner and his P-51 White Lightning doing a low pass at my home airport, watching one of the (then) few flying B-17s at Castle AFB’s annual airshow, the six blips of a NASA SR-71-equivalent on a radar screen as they passed through our ranges during Air Traffic Control training.  They even had a well maintained B-47 Stratojet, the common ancestor of most swept-wing, multi-engine jets flying today.  It was heartening to see the airframes of my aviation childhood up close again, and that they were still respected and loved.

All too soon I was back on the road, headed west towards my next waypoint.

* Really.  The P-26 “Peashooter” was the first all-metal monoplane pursuit (fighter) aircraft.  More info here: http://www.aviation-history.com/boeing/p26.html

**https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=985&dat=19240412&id=_YwrAAAAIBAJ&sjid=VvcFAAAAIBAJ&pg=464,4000730

*** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIGJw-h0F-U

I was back on the road again.  This day’s destination: Barksdale AFB, Louisiana in the northwest corner of the state.  I woke up with the sun and was on the road shortly thereafter.  I had one quick stop en route, and expected to arrive mid-afternoon, in time for a stop at the BX* and a nice long walk.

I began my drive headed north along Bayou LaFourche, glimpses of water and boats visible between the businesses lining its shore.  At Raceland I turned west on Route 90 and began my trek in earnest, across the pine forests of the bayou, through Morgan City and the Atchafalaya River via elevated expressway, and then past miles of cane-field lined highway to New Iberia (home to fictional detective Dave Robicheaux).  At Lafayette the state route became Interstate 49 as it crossed Interstate 10; it was just after noon and I was well ahead of schedule.

At Opelousas, I glided down the exit for Route 190 for my quick stop at a friend’s house.  During a visit earlier in my travels she had expressed dismay that, due to a family emergency, she had not been able to make jam earlier in the year from the cornucopia of figs from the trees that bordered her backyard.  To cushion the blow, I had picked up a pot of fig jam for her at the farm store in Sarlat.  My plan was to leave it on her kitchen steps with a note, and be on my way.

She must have seen me pull up, because by the time I reached her door it was open, framing Minerva in fancy dress, arms wide and ready for a hug.  I had caught her and her daughter on their way to a church function.  After a certain amount of peer pressure I joined them, my car trailing behind hers as we made our way through town and into the surrounding fields.

Back in the day, when I was a young airman at Air Traffic Control school in Biloxi, I liked to frequent a night club favored by locals that was housed in a barn far about a half hour’s drive from the base.  It was loads of fun: we would dance to local southern rock and country bands well into the night far from the gaze of our military stewards.  One night a multicultural group of us hopped in a mini-van and headed out; as we turned on to the graded road that led to the club’s door, a darker-skinned colleague became agitated.  “Where are you taking me?” he queried, “The name of the movie is Mississippi Burning!”  As Minerva’s car made yet another turn that took us deeper into the countryside, I gained some insight into his trepidation.

We drove and we drove, with an occasional red octagon (stop sign), red flashy light, or turn slowing our progress. After about thirty minutes there was a house, then another, then a bar. Ahead was a school, and just past it, white lines stenciled across the pavement formed a crosswalk.  This is where we turned in, to a well-ordered parking lot between the school and a small, white church.  Cars parked, my friend and I regrouped and joined other worshipers making their way into the building.

Occasional visits to Protestant churches with friends both in the northeast and the south had me accustomed to simple, occasionally austere sanctuaries, and this was what I expected as I entered the building.  But I had missed the name of the parish: St. John Berchmans, after a sixteenth-century Flemish Jesuit associated with a Reconstruction-era healing miracle that had occurred in nearby Grand Coteau.  Once through the mud room, program in hand, I crossed the threshold to find myself in a small basilica filled with golden light.  The four rows of gold-wood pews were arranged in the traditional form: split two-by-two by a wide center aisle with natural-wood columns (topped with arches lined with verse, ornamented with hand-pained images**) dividing the columns again.  The pews were filled with men, women, and children dressed in festive Sunday-best, the air above them teased with colors from the leaded windows that lined the gallery.  At the head of the church was a simple white triptych, with a lectern, wooden chair, and altar arranged between it and the congregation.  Jesus on the Cross, with flames on the glass behind him, looked down the aisle over all of us.  Minerva, her daughter, and I took a seat in the back left corner, and it seemed like everywhere I looked, I found some new detail to take in.  I spent the hour alternating between listening to the liturgy and taking in the rich visual field.  When the service was complete, we continued to a second town for the post-celebration meal.

As the sun drifted to the horizon, my schedule pulled me back to the highway.  As I picked my way north, the wheels of my truck ka-thunk-ing on the concrete slabs of the highway, my mind marveled at the twist of fate that had brought such an experience to my door.

* Base Exchange, sort of like a Target, see https://www.aafes.com/about-exchange/

** Photos and history of St. John Berchmans here:  http://www.stjberchmans.com