I served at Aviano AB from 2008-2010 as an F-16 crew chief, and have wondered about this for a while. I’m sure that embedded in our Status of Forces Agreement, are provisions for emergencies such as this that would allow us to take off at any hour day or night. I have faith in my fellow maintainers and load crew members that they could have gotten those jets loaded, re-configured, and operationally checked in record time. But refueling, where would they have gotten a tanker, or set up a hot pit for refuel?
The one thing that bothered me about 13 Hours were the two shots of Aviano, particularly when the jets were shown “put to bed”. Flight lines are like 7/11, a 24 hour operation never really closed, except for weekends (rarely) and holidays. On a Tuesday night, there would have been a lot of people getting the jets ready for the next days flying.