It’s 1963 at Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina. I’m a 24-year old Air Force lieutenant airlift navigator from Flushing, Queens, New York City. In other woids, I don’t know s—t.
Our Nation has people and interests all over the globe. Those folks need a continuous stream of supplies and equipment to function. The vast majority of their logistic support is from a steady stream of gigantic, slow cargo ships from US ports.
A small percentage of high priority equipment, perishable supplies and a few people need to be speedily airlifted to those locations.
My squadron, the 76th Air Transport Squadron, had a mission focus on The Caribbean, Central and South America and also Europe, The Middle East and Africa. Wow !!
OK Don, tomorrow you’re gonna navigate a C-130 loaded with high priority cargo from Charleston to Puerto Rico to Recife, Brazil, to Ascension Island in the South Atlantic Ocean to Leopoldville, Congo to Johannesburg, South Africa and return. What? Holy s—t.
Just a regularly scheduled mission from our base. What an experience for this young lieutenant with a head fulla mush.
Puerto Rico is beautiful, but not strange to me, so let’s start with Recife, Brazil.
First, it’s located at 8 degrees South Latitude. How many of us have ever been in the southern hemisphere? That alone, made the experience unique.
The Air Force had a contract with a lady named Cora for boarding our aircrews that transited Recife. We stayed at Cora’s Boarding House. We were only there about 12-15 hours, but we ate meals with her as well. It was my first such experience. She also served adult beverages (for a price). And I distinctly remember her saying in perfect, but slowly spoken English. “Nice people like Cuba Libres (rum and coke) but not so nice people like Gin and Tonic.” I ordered a Cuba Libre.
About 4 hours east of Recife in the South Atlantic was Ascension Island, affectionately called “the moon” by my fellow aircrew members. A proper nickname, cause it resembled every picture I had seen of the rocky surface of the moon. There was NOTHING there. A few technicians and scientists were “ stuck” there tracking our space and missile shots. Enough for us to schedule a few missions there every month to bring needed provisions.
After a short stop at Ascension, we flew further east for 4 more hours(ish) to Léopoldville, Congo and then south to Johannesburg, South Africa, a very modern, cosmopolitan, but totally segregated and dictatorial city, if you happened to be black. Apartheid was in full control. I actually attended a production of Broadway’s “Hello Dolly” while crew resting in Jo’Burg.
Now, we made our way back home. Usually just direct Ascension direct Charleston. Quicker getting home than going. Enuf. .