Warplanes On Mission Of Mercy Obscure Military Program Allows Humanitarian Deliveries

Ike Isaacson began his military career working on missiles aimed at Bucharest.

Thirty-two years later, he finally delivered a payload.

The Spokane master sergeant and boom operator unloaded 8 tons of clothing and medicine from a Washington Air National Guard KC135E into the arms of waiting Romanians.

“It’s amazing,” he said. “We’ve gone from the heart of the Cold War to where they’re not even our enemies - and we’re doing something worthwhile with a military plane.”

Thanks to a tiny but potent program, machines of war like Isaacson’s tanker now moonlight as instruments of peace, delivering free market textbooks to Hanoi and corn seed to Mayan farmers in Mexico.

Since the Denton Amendment to the Foreign Assistance Act passed in 1984, military planes have delivered privately donated humanitarian cargo on a space-available basis.

The flight leaving Fairchild Air Force Base on Jan. 14 was the first time the Washington Air National Guard wing delivered international humanitarian aid, and the first time a Denton flight landed in Romania.

It’s among 120 Denton missions arranged this year. Others have included a C-5 loaded with $1 million worth of prosthetics, wheelchairs and radiation equipment for Warsaw, and another with ambulances and fire trucks for Guatemala City.

Each flight saves humanitarian sponsors up to $120,000 in shipping costs, said Heidi Meyer, director of joint relief international for Denton Operations.

“It’s not a program you can use if you want an immediate response, but if all you’re interested in is getting the stuff there free, it’s great,” said Meyer, from her office at Pope Air Force Base in Fayetteville, N.C.

Former Sen. Jeremiah Denton, R-Alabama, proposed the program to take advantage of the numerous scheduled flights to South and Central America during the troubled 1980s. Within a year, flights were going worldwide.

Just a handful of people, working for the defense and state departments in Washington, D.C., and North Carolina, arrange the delivery of nearly 3 million pounds of humanitarian aid a year.

The cost to taxpayers? Almost nothing.

Individual military units absorb the additional fuel and landing costs for trips they’d be taking anyway. A private foundation covers the $48,000 budget for the North Carolina office.

Ninety percent of the flights are flown by Air Force reservists who relish the training they get transporting odd-shaped cargo, practicing refueling, learning about diplomatic clearances and working with foreign governments.

“They’re doing something real. It’s not flying a concrete slab around the state of Wisconsin, which is what some units were doing to simulate cargo,” said Walter L. Doetsch, Denton program officer in Washington, D.C.

On Jan. 14, Isaacson and nine other members of the 141st Air Refueling Wing boarded a tanker, a warplane whose purpose for years was to refuel the bombers that would have obliterated the Communist bloc.

Now the KC-135E is a grizzled war horse of a plane, 40 years old and gray-bodied. A playing card is on its nose, the ace of spades split by a knife.

Inside, oak bookshelves are a curious touch in the warehouselike interior - the handiwork of a crew chief who’s maintained the plane for more than five years. In the cockpit: three lieutenant colonels with more than 60 years experience among them.

“We’re a bunch of old guys,” said Lt. Col. Mike Anderson, an Alaska Airlines pilot who co-piloted the mission. Isaacson developed a navigational system of national importance. Everyone on board served in the Gulf. These guys had done Cairo, Juneau and Pisa. But never Bucharest.

The former Cold War warriors savored the challenge of getting there and helping others.

“I feel privileged to have come along,” said Lt. Col. Landry Smallfoot.

Landing in Bucharest, Guard members leaned forward to identify Russian-made planes, now frozen shells on the airfield. Romania has run out of money to fly them.

A former Romanian fighter pilot, now working at the airport, asked to board. He stood grinning in the cockpit, shaking hands.

The military presence does tend to expedite customs and discourage theft of the aid, Doetsch said.

Once an American community discovers the Denton program and a unit begins making flights, both become hooked, Meyer said.

“It’s a warm fuzzy, and they say they need to go back and do that again,” Meyer said.

Last February, volunteers led by the Rothrock family of Spokane used the Denton flight to deliver Hoopfest basketballs to Rwanda. They’re working on another flight to deliver shoes collected in Spokane for Rwandan refugees.

Chuck Karl, distribution coordinator for Northwest Medical Teams in Portland, said Spokane’s experience is typical of each Denton flight. “Every shipment has a personal story behind it.”

, DataTimes MEMO: Return to Romania