I was in the Air Force 73-93 and retired as a Major. I was a Navigator and most of my time was in C-130s. I had about 9600 hours of flying time. More than half of that was as an instructor or flight examiner. During 81-84, I was in a Special Ops unit in Germany. At the time, what we did was so highly classified that few people in the Air Force knew about it. It's since been declassified. We were flying covert aerial reconnaissance missions in specially modified C-130s with multiple cameras and a FLIR. We were sent to Panama in September 1983 to do photomapping in Nicaragua and several other hotspots in Central America and the Caribbean. First we flew to Pope AFB (a big C-130 base) where they gave us Pope AFB Flight Line Badges, 39th Tactical Airlift Squadron flight suit patches and placed all of our IDs and patches in a safe in the Command Post. They also set us up with a mail drop. While we were in Panama, all mail to and from our families in Germany went through Pope since we were not allowed to tell anybody where we were going. Then we flew to the famous Lockheed Skunkworks facility in the LA area where they changed the tail number to a C-130 that crashed in Vietnam and added a few more things. Then we flew a mission every other day for 4 months. Most missions were about 10 hours long. That's why we only flew every other day. What we were doing was briefed at the White House and CIA weekly. In fact, VP Bush came down to Panama while we were there, and as the squadron's VIP briefer, I briefed him on our operation. When we got back to Germany (after trips to California and Pope AFB) we were all grounded for a few weeks because we had exceeded the number of flying hours allowed in a quarter. This 4-month mission was a high point in my career.
