Posted on 10/14/2018 11:59:51 PM PDT by robowombat
Air Force uncertain how long devastated Tyndall will be closed; F-22s possibly damaged in hurricane
By COREY DICKSTEIN | STARS AND STRIPES
WASHINGTON — How long Tyndall Air Force Base will remain closed is unknown after the coastal Florida installation sustained catastrophic damage from Hurricane Michael, which left nearly every building and some aircraft wrecked, service officials said Friday.
While the vast majority of Tyndall’s operational aircraft were evacuated from the base before the storm, some aircraft were left in base hangars for maintenance or safety reasons, said Erica Vega, a spokeswoman for the Air Force’s Air Combat Command. The extent of the damage to the planes was still unknown Friday, she said, but all of the hangars at the base suffered severe damage.
“We anticipate the aircraft parked inside may be damaged as well, but we won’t know the extent until our crews can safely enter those hangars and make an assessment,” Vega wrote in an email.
Embed code: In Panama City Residents begin to assess the damage left in the wake of Hurricane Michael. For those who evacuated, it means wondering if their homes remain standing.
Many of the planes left behind were F-22 Raptor stealth fighter jets, said a defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. But the official did not known how many planes were at Tyndall during the Category 4 storm. Some of the fighters, which cost more than $130 million each, were likely damaged in the storm.
Other aircraft left at Tyndall included QF-4 drones, former fighter jets that have been converted into unmanned aircraft to serve as targets for training missions.
Meanwhile, Air Force personnel who rode out the storm at Tyndall, which lies on the Gulf of Mexico just between Panama City and Mexico Beach, were still assessing the storm’s impact on the base. Among their primary concerns Friday was establishing reliable communications channels with officials outside the Florida Panhandle, an Air Force official at the Pentagon said Friday.
Much of the base was left in tatters, including the housing, Air Force Gen. Joseph Lengyel, the chief of the National Guard Bureau, told reporters in Washington on Friday.
“One hundred percent of the housing for that base is uninhabitable,” he said, adding Tyndall and the region around it would require assistance for at least weeks.
The cleanup effort began Friday, when a service Red Horse Squadron, an engineering unit, arrived at Tyndall from Hurlburt Field, some 80 miles west of Panama City. The squadron was outfitted with heavy construction equipment.
article continues below
Air Force special operators, also from Hurlburt Field, were able to open Tyndall’s airfield late Thursday to allow aircraft to deliver needed supplies to the area, an Air Force spokeswoman said Friday.
The Air Force said airmen and their families who evacuated before the storm should remain where they are for the foreseeable future and to retain contact with their chains of command.
“Our base took a beating,” Col. Brian S. Laidlaw, the commander of Tyndall’s 325th Fighter Wing, wrote in a letter to the base’s about 3,600 airmen. “By now you already know that Tyndall Air Force Base requires extensive cleanup and repairs. I will not recall you and your families until we can guarantee your safety. At this time I can’t tell you how long that will take, but I’m on it.”
Air Force officials preached patience for Tyndall evacuees, asking them to keep an eye on Tyndall and other Air Force social media for updates. Additionally, the Air Force’s Personnel Center has established a website where the latest information will be posted at www.afpc.af.mil/Hurricane.
Officials pledged the base would eventually return to normal.
“Today is better than yesterday and that is how it is going to continue to be,” Laidlaw said Friday in a statement. “We will continue to persevere.”
By Friday, Hurricane Michael, which tore rapidly across Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia on Thursday, was blamed for at least 11 deaths across the southeastern portion of the United States. Brock Long, the top administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said he feared the number of fatalities would continue to climb as first responders reached areas devastated by the storm.
“Bottom line, it was one of the most power storms that the country’s seen since 1851,” he said Friday during a news conference. “And I think that the TV cameras are revealing what that looks like, particularly in the Mexico Beach area, but there’s a lot of damage inland.”
Some 3,655 National Guard personnel were supporting hurricane relief efforts in Florida and Georgia on Friday, Lengyel said.
“The bottom line is … the Florida National Guard will be in place as long as it needs to be,” the general said. “And that’s the beauty of the Guard.”
Outside Tyndall, most military bases hit by Michael across the Southeast began returning to normal operations by Friday. Tyndall’s neighbor to the west, Naval Support Activity Panama City reported damage on the base but appeared to be in better shape than the Air Force post, said Navy Cmdr. Jay Sego, who conducted an assessment of the Navy base just west of Panama City on Thursday.
“At first glance, we have many trees down and some structural building damage,” he said, adding officials had not determined when it would reopen.
Aircraft evacuated from Tyndall before the storm remained at several bases across the United States on Friday. It remained unclear how long they would stay at those locations in Ohio, Texas and Louisiana.
It also remained unclear how long F-22 pilot training, which is centered at Tyndall, would be suspended. Vega, the Air Combat Command spokeswoman, declined to speculate on the program, but she said the hurricane did not impact the Air Force’s immediate combat readiness.
“The Air Force remains capable of executing its combat mission across the world with aircraft from other bases, as well as those that were evacuated from Tyndall in advance of the hurricane,” she said.
Stars and Stripes reporter Caitlin M. Kenney contributed to this report.
I correct myself...F22 aircraft. No difference in my book though.
““Henderson Field was shelled nightly by the Japanese navy but was always open for business the following day.”
I’m guessing that some physics guy could figure out the amount of energy per shell x 100 shells per hour x 12 hours compared to whatever a hurricane produces.
I imagine it is at a ratio of 1:1,000,000
Of course a military field during wartime just needs some potholes filled to keep the planes moving.”
This about as dumb analogy as I’ve seen on FR. And, there have been some dumb ones....
I saw an interview with Senator Nelson yesterday at Tyndall.
He said the base will be rebuilt. It is too important not to be. They already have the runways operational.
This storm blew in from nothing to a cat 4 hurricane in about 4 days. I Imagine the planes that were left behind we’re unable to be flown. You just can’t put a plane back together in four days if it’s being torn apart for maintenance
Take five generators, ice and gas to family in SW GA yesterday in hardest hit areas. Hard to describe damage and impact on individuals. We counted over 900 power related work crews going down.
The 11 year old killed there called 911 when the house she was in with her grandmother was hit by a tree. After the storm farmers tried to clear way for emergency personnel but arrived to late. They were in a rural area and there were trees across the road every 20-30 feet that had to be cut and pushed aside.
The people there are tough though and dealing as best they can with the devastation.
People are not happy with FEMA not because of lack of assistance but their arrogance, they have convoys of 4-6 black SUV using blue lights moving people off roads as they pass, dressed like businesspeople and not even talking to locals. Not a good image.
A couple of points; all fighter wings have aircraft that are dedicated maintenance trainers. Those jets almost never leave the ground, and many can’t, since (a) they’re used to teach wrench benders how to work on the aircraft and (b), they’ve likely been cannibalized to the point it would take months (and millions of dollars) to return them to operational service.
Likewise, every fighter unit I was assigned to had a certain number of “hangar queens,” jets with a long history of maintenance problems that spent far more time on the ground than in the air. Also worth noting that a certain number of “line” aircraft are undergoing phase maintenance at any given time and can’t be put back together in a matter of hours and flown to safety. And, you can’t just plop an F-22 on a lowboy trailer and haul it away, or remove the wings and load it into a C-5 or C-17.
So far, no one has offered a breakout on the damaged F-22s. You’d expect the maintenance trainers and hanger queens to stay behind, but the real question is how many “line” aircraft—the ones flown on a regular basis—were left at Tyndall because they were undergoing maintenance and couldn’t be repaired fast enough to evacuate.
The real issue here is the strength/availability of hangars at Tyndall and other bases. As a rule, there is never enough hangar space (it’s impractical to build hardened structures for 48 aircraft), but the USAF can expand what it has and build to CAT 5 standards in coastal areas.
Turn it into a prison. Lot’s of clean-up work for the inmates.
Maybe they weren’t in flyable condition. Happens a lot.
When this happened at Homestead they ended up permanently closing the base, and left only an ANG contingent behind.
Eglin is a about 10 miles inland and that makes all the difference. Tyndall was like Patrick, with the flightline running right along the beach.
I’ve heard various reports of between 2 to 6 Raptors were left behind and may be total write offs.
Add to that figure the three other Raptors that have been damaged in the past six months in landing accidents. There have been four previous total hull losses. So out of 187 production aircraft, we’re down to 174.
The article is wrong. There haven’t been any QF-4’s at Tyndall since 2015 (they were transferred to Holloman AFB), and the last QF-4 flight was in 2016 with the last being officially retired in 2017.
The aircraft pictured in the wrecked hangar are the orange tailed QF-16 drones, and those white turboprops are MU-2 trainers.
But why on Earth would an Airforce base located right on the Gulf of Mexico that houses the priceless F-22 not have hardened shelters to house those Raptors that can not fly to escape storms due to mechanical issues?
But hey let’s make sure the golf courses are up to date.
Please don’t confuse people with facts. It seriously interferes with their ignorant opinions.
Tyndall has withstood many hurricanes over the years.
LOL, I was S-4 of an air defense artillery battalion my last 18 months in Germany (80-81). The first directive I received from my battalion commander was, "keep me out of jail."
Just because a defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not know how many planes were at Tyndall during the Category 4 storm, doesn't mean Tyndall base leadership, and Air Education and Training Command (AETC) didn't have records of which aircraft were on the ground. Operations has a record of which aircraft are non-flyable, so aircrew won't be assigned to those aircraft, and Maintenance has a record, so aircraft maintainers will be assigned to those aircraft.
How is it impractical to build hardened shelters?
Every Airforce base in Europe had hardened shelters for all of their tactical aircraft.
We’re not going to need shelters for all the F-22’s at Tyndall. Just figure maybe 10 shelters in order to house those that can not be flown out.
How many of those were catastrophic hurricanes?
And how many of those were since they based priceless F-22’s there?
It probably wouldn’t be a big deal if the production line was still open but it isn’t, and spare parts can not be found.
There should have been zero flyable aircraft left on the field or in hangers in advance of the storm. Dereliction of duty by the command at best, sabotage at worst.
When I pulled up the satellite photo of Michael making landfall and Tyndale was INSIDE the eye, I knew it was gonna be a mess, but, it still staggers the mind.
I’m no expert on the air force, but I do know those darned airplanes are VERY expensive - why the heck weren’t they flown out of there before the storm hit?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.