For decades, from a base at University Park, our squadron had trained fighter pilots in the skies over Pennsylvania. Now we faced our hardest task: saying good-bye.
An A-10 fighter jet careens through the clouded sky 8,000 feet above Central Pennsylvania. It’s April 20, 2001. “Flyer One”—the jet’s call sign—fires a Sidewinder missile at another A-10. The enemy jet responds by ejecting white-hot flares to lure the missile’s infrared targeting system away from the heat of its twin engines. The missile’s sensors take the bait and the slow, agile A-10s—designed to destroy tanks, armor, and occasionally, helicopters—converge. They’re flying too close now for missiles, so they switch to guns and volley 30-millimeter rounds of smoke and fire through the skies above St. Marys. They spin in corkscrews, battling for advantage, each looking intently for the other’s weakness like wrestlers about to lock arms.
On the ground, in a metal van, near the University Park airport, I watch the action on a radar screen. As a weapons controller, my job is like an air traffic controller’s, but in reverse: they monitor radar to keep aircraft apart, I bring them together. I visualize and interpret what pilots face in battle and then send them commands and information to help them in their attack. But today’s exercise, or “mission” as we call it, is just training—the missiles and bullets aren’t real. But the jets are very real, controlled by the 112th Air Control Squadron, the Air National Guard unit at University Park that has been fighting daily air wars in Central Pennsylvania skies for more than 50 years. After today’s mission, though, everything will change.
Not many civilians even know that the 112th exists. But military pilots come from all over the country to train in our airspace—a nearly 100- square-mile block in the sky north of State College, ranging between 8,000 and 23,000 feet. The pilots are there to prepare for war—shooting simulated guns and missiles, refueling in the air, and bombing imaginary targets. The troops of the 112th—many of us Penn State students, faculty, and staff who volunteer with the Guard—keep pilots oriented and safe while they’re here by watching the aircraft on radar and, over radios, telling them where to fly. Over the years, the 112th has also been deployed worldwide to support aircraft in actual combat. In 1951, President Truman called the 112th to active duty during the Korean Conflict. President Kennedy deployed us during the Berlin Crisis in 1961 to defend the German skies as part of an elaborate radar network. The squadron has controlled flying missions supporting NATO and United Nations no-fly zones over Bosnia and Iraq. We’ve been deployed for NATO exercises in Portugal, Turkey, Denmark, and Italy, and we’ve gone to Colombia, the Bahamas, and Penn State’s Erie campus to use our radar to identify aircraft attempting to traffic drugs into the United States.
But, these days, business is down at the 112th. In the mid-1980s, there were nearly 50 stateside units like ours. Today, the number has dwindled to six—three on active duty and three in the Guard—each controlling airspaces that accommodate the latest aircraft. The military’s newer performance fighters like the F-16 Falcon, F-18 Super Hornet, F-117 stealth fighter, and the next-generation F-22 Raptor need low-altitude training at high speeds, which requires a little privacy and lots of room. Such training is done over the ocean, not over the Nittany Mall. To meet the 21st-century needs of the Air Force, the 112th must take on a new combat role. And that means no more daily air war missions—the part of our jobs we love most.
After today’s mission, we turn in our radar. We leave the “front lines,” leave behind the electronics and the satellite dishes and the generators and the one-on-one work with the pilots. From here on out, we’ll be stationed in the rear of the battlefield, so to speak, where we’ll be assisting military leaders. We’ll be focusing more on assisting in the “big picture” aspects of warfighting—everything from creating bomb target lists to analyzing the tactical, strategic, political, legal, and psychological consequences of attacking those targets. As a result, nearly every person in the squadron must retrain or leave the 112th.
Today's dogfights are part of what the military calls a “sunset” mission. It’s our last.
After the first dogfight of today’s mission, I adjust my radar screen and crank up the air temperature inside the “Operations Module”—a cramped workspace full of electronics, radios, and cryptographic devices. I cover my ears with an oversized headset that’s been nicknamed the “skull crusher.” The A-10s retreat to opposite corners of the airspace. In a few minutes, we’ll go at it again.
The blips and symbols on four radar screens provide the only light in the OM, a metal box of an office crammed with knobs, switches, thumbwheels, and duller dots of light from red and green diodes. The OM, located just outside our new $10 million facility next to the University Park Airport, is pressurized to keep nerve gas outside should we deploy, then endure such an attack. In fact, everything is set up exactly as it would be in combat. Capt. Aaron Vance, another controller, sits at the radar console to my left. He twists the temperature knob up another notch. The OM is cold, to keep the electronics from overheating. It's appropriate, really. Our radio call sign is “Brumal.” It means “belonging to the winter.” Maj. Mark Shields ’82 EMS, our most seasoned controller, sits directly behind me at another scope and supervises as we begin the next dogfight. Senior Master Sgt. Ralph Myers coordinates with the FAA as our aircraft fly in and out of the airspace.
I rotate my jaw and open the sinus passage between my mouth and ears to relieve the air pressure. I’ve grown familiar with this module’s quirky discomforts. It occurs to me today how much I’m going to miss them. Yet it’s more than that. I’ve done a lot of growing up at the 112th. I joined the unit after leaving active duty in 1990. I loved the military but wanted to finish college. The 112th scratched both itches. The Guard helped me pay my undergraduate and graduate tuition while keeping allegiance to my patriotic whims. Through the 112th, I met my wife, Tracey. After I suffered a nasty foot fracture during counter-drug duty in the Bahamas in 1992, the unit flew me to MacDill Air Force Base in Florida for surgery. Tracey was a nurse there; she worked night shift on Ward 3B.
Today, I call that injury my lucky break. As a result of it, I have two families: Tracey and our two children, and the 131 members of the 112th. Through the mentoring of two former commanders, Col. James Herron ’62, ’66 MEd Agr and Lt. Col. Walter Douthitt ’67, ’73 MAgr, and our present commander, Lt. Col. Ted Sebastianelli ’69 Bus, I got into weapons controlling and, while chasing my M.F.A. at Penn State, I began to control full-time. (I’m one of about two dozen full-time employees of the squadron.) A lot in my life has changed in the last 11 years. Through all that, the mission of the 112th had been the one constant, for me and for lots of people in the squadron. It’s the common purpose we’ve all worked toward. I’ve dedicated my life to it, sworn an oath of allegiance. Now that it’s changing, I feel like I need to reestablish my identity.
For the next half hour, Capt. Vance is my adversary. We try to kill each other’s aircraft. We speak to the pilots on separate frequencies, as though miles, not feet, separate Vance and me. During the first few passes, I’m controlling the good guys. Vance has the “bandit,” an A-10 that mimics the tactics and equipment used by U.S. adversaries. Later, we’ll swap roles. All of us, controllers and pilots alike, need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of enemy equipment and enemy strategy to gain the advantage in battle. The more lifelike and intense the training, the better equipped we are to do it for real.
Flyer One and Flyer Two—our A-10s—are running low on fuel. We keep dogfighting until call sign “Team 53”—a modified Boeing DC-10 that functions as a flying gas station—shows up on radar, then radios me on my frequency. I outline my game plan for the refueling as the A-10s finish fighting. I direct them to climb to 20,000 feet. The tanker is at 21,000. After slowing the tanker and A-10s to compatible speeds for the refueling, the rest of the rendezvous is simple timing and geometry. The A-10s fly to the tanker at an angle that allows them, once they’re close enough, to turn to Team 53’s bearing. After the turn, they’re flying directly behind the tanker. Then I get an unexpected radio call from Team 53. Their boom, a long tube with wings that is “flown” into a receptacle on the A10’s fuselage to deliver the fuel, is inoperative. The A10s can’t refuel.
Low on gas, the jets quickly pull away from the tanker and prepare to leave. They have enough fuel to get back to their home base in Philadelphia, but Flyer One and Two were supposed to pass over Happy Valley to make our last mission. No fuel, no flyby.
I’m livid. I stare through the tanker’s symbol on the radar screen. I’d carefully planned this mission in my head and briefed it on paper to make certain that it happened in an exact way. At the culmination of 52 years for the unit, and 11 years for me, I want the last mission to be perfect. I want the flyby. I don’t want us to go out like this.
In 1949, Col. George Haller ’27 Eng, ’35 MS, ’42 PhD Sci (left) was commanding the 153rd Aircraft Control and Warning Group in Harrisburg, and looking for a place in Central Pennsylvania to station a radar unit. At the time, air control was growing. Congress had just authorized an entire network of radar units like the 112th to support our nation’s weighty armada of air defense fighter aircraft. Haller, former dean of the school of chemistry and physics at Penn State, knew the State College area well. He thought that the sparsely populated farmlands would make an ideal training ground, while the more populated State College was ripe with potential staff.
Though officially unattached to the college, the new AC&W squadron really took shape at the hands of Penn Staters commissioned in the Pennsylvania Air National Guard. Maj. Walter N. Brown Jr. ’49 PhD Sci was named the squadron’s first commander, and since then, all of the unit's commanders and most of its officers have been faculty, staff, or alumni. (They included John McLucas ’50 PhD Sci, who later became Secretary of the Air Force, and Maj. Gen. Donald Tressler ’60 Bus, a former Penn State bursar.) In its early days, the squadron held weekly meetings in a vacant parking garage on McAllister Street. As the Korean Conflict began and unit members were being scattered throughout Korea, Germany, Thailand, Canada, and the U.S., the Guard negotiated a land lease with Penn State. In September 1951, 50 years ago, the 112th moved to the old armory on Bigler Road between the Salvage Warehouse and the Turfgrass Research Center.
Just outside, the Blue Band practiced and JoePa ran his quarterbacks through drills. In the late 1950s, the 112th routinely sent its Air Police, decked in dress uniforms, white hats and gloves, and polished boots, out to direct football traffic downtown, near Prospect Avenue and Fraternity Row. The 112th also provided manpower and a communications center for relief workers during Hurricane Agnes in 1972 and the Johnstown Flood in 1977. During the Blizzard of 1993, the squadron plowed roads, transported medical personnel to local hospitals, and assisted the state police in rescuing stranded motorists.
There is such a strong volunteer spirit at the 112th. That’s what I love most about it, and it’s also why I’ve been agonizing so much about the new mission. I thought that a change in our responsibilities would change the place. I let myself believe that the unit’s assignment could define its character. But I realized that the spirit is larger than the mission, larger than the 112th. And it will survive all of the change.
Within seconds of Flyer One’s departure, the tanker fixes the boom. The last mission is back on. I turn the tanker and A-10s back toward each other, set up the geometry, and guide the first two A-10s to refueling. “Push boomer frequency threezero-one decimal six,” I say. “Stand by. New controller.”
I’m finished. I hand off controlling responsibility to Vance. He sets up the second refueling. Maj. Shields takes the third. Typically, one controller would handle all three refuelings, while a second supervised. Today, we alternate to share the honor of controlling the last mission.
Though my part has played out, I still watch the scope. I can’t make myself leave. A local television station is outside waiting for interviews. They want to ask us questions about our new mission as Flyer One circles overhead for the cameras. This was the plan. Still, I stay silent in my cold box in the dark until it ends. We all stay.
As things slow down, the four of us count up our years as controllers and add them together just to see the number. It’s 52—the same number of years that the unit has been an air control squadron. Neither number will go any higher.
Maj. Shields makes his final radio transmission: “So long, gentlemen.”
Brian Lehew is an air battle manager and the chief of standards and evaluation at the 112th. He lives in Rebersburg, Pa.
