Wings of Blue

In the summer of 1990, a little-known fact of the United States Air Force was that it had no dedicated combat search-and-rescue flying units and hadn't since shortly after the Vietnam War. The Air Rescue Squadrons that became legends in Vietnam with their exploits and sacrifices in Hueys, Huskies, and Jolly Green Giants were a decade and a half later just a shadow of their former selves.

But while rescue pilots spent the fifteen years after Saigon's fall regressing to a peacetime role – following around fighter squadrons as they trained in case some F-16 driver needed to punch out – the ground component of the rescue services stayed ready for combat. These were the PJs, pararescue-jumpers, who were the Air Force's answer to Navy SEALs. Their close companions were combat controllers (CCT), who jumped into hostile territory to reconnoiter and then control forward airstrips.

Both PJs and CCT still trained hard and worked hard. They swam, jumped, ran, climbed mountains, and lived in tropical heat or mountain blizzards if that's what it meant to get a survivor to safety or find a place for aircraft to land. The PJs especially had regular opportunities to practice their skills since someone, somewhere, was always getting into a life-threatening situation and needing to be bailed out. Even in Panama, boating accidents, climbing mishaps, and snake-bites in the jungle kept them busy. Once we took a team 200 miles south of the PearlIslands where they jumped into the water to help a yachtsman who'd been bitten in half by a great white shark. The boater didn't make it but that didn't stop the PJs from trying.

Their equipment wasn't the best. Budget cuts and a decade of forgetfulness by leaders more enamored with new planes and big projects fostered a make-do culture in the rescue world. Yet the quality of the personnel remained high, as did their morale. Both PJs and CCT kept their history alive on a daily basis. They knew the challenge to live up to it was never far away. As a result they were some of the most professional, skilled servicemen you would come across. In a service not known for tough, hard men, PJs and CCT earned the respect of the Army and Navy alike.

We didn't have a permanent squadron of PJs at Howard Air Base, the last remaining U.S. air base in Panama and except for a small airfield in Honduras the only one in all of Latin America. Instead there was a detachment of four or five guys who were supplemented by rotating groups of half a dozen who came through on 90-day tours and operated out of office space behind the parachute shop in Hangar 2. They boated and dove with the SEALs at Rodman Naval Station, which was over on the Canal. And they did recon patrols with our Army neighbors on Fort Kobbe. We only saw them when they wanted to make jumps from the C-27.

In early spring a group of PJs came through that Big Bud McIlhenny recognized. When they recognized him, his nightmares came back. His nightmares had nothing to do with the PJs and everything to do with jumping. More than anyone else in the squadron, I understood why.

Bud was borderline obsessive-compulsive. Obsessive-compulsive because he couldn't close his gear locker in the hangar unless the patches on the flight suits hanging there lined up perfectly; because his life was determined by even numbers – license plate, apartment address, even his social security ID; because all the pots and pans in his kitchen had their handles pointed to magnetic north; because any task started had to be finished. He drove at 20 mph, 40 mph, or 60 mph. He parked his car only on north-south streets. But he was borderline because he had lapses: he didn't get to pick which aircraft to fly on a given day, for example (some had odd serial numbers and those of us behind the scheduling desk weren't going to re-assign crews just to find a number four). Also, when it came to wearing his uniform no one could accuse him of being all right angles and tight corners. When Lowell dropped Pick-up Sticks in front of Bud to see him react, most of the time he shrugged it off.