Warbirds compete in load competition

  • Published
  • By Senior Airman Wesley Wright
  • Minot Air Force Base Public
MINOT AIR FORCE BASE, N.D. (ACCNS) --  Airmen from the 5th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron at Minot Air Force Base, competed in a bomb-loading competition Feb. 2 to 3.

The competition features the best load crews from five bomber bases, and is part of Giant Sword II, which is a weapons loading and security forces competition sponsored by Eighth Air Force. It is based on similar competitions held in the past by Strategic Air Command.

The purpose of the competition is to increase understanding of the long-range strike's role and impact in today's strategic environment, improve the collaborative capability and teamwork of all long-range strike assets and promote a healthy competition and esprit de corps among the Air Force's long-range strike community.

The event is scored and rated by evaluators from the Eighth Air Force.

For Minot's portion of the competition, load crews underwent a 25-question written test, a dress and appearance inspection, and a timed load of conventional and non-conventional weapons onto a B-52H Stratofortress.

"I'm real proud of my team," said Lt. Col. Patrick Ballard, 5th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron commander. "I thought this was an exciting opportunity for our people to compete and show what we can do. The talent on the team is such that I had every faith they would perform very well and they have."

Chief Master Sgt. Mark Clark, 5th Bomb Wing command chief master sergeant, attended the competition and was equally impressed with the Warbirds' performance.

"I think this is awesome," Chief Clark said. "To me, there is nothing better than watching highly trained and skilled Airmen do what they do best. This gives us a chance to show Eighth Air Force what we can do."

Airman 1st Class Brady Fender, 5th AMXS weapons armament specialist, was one of the Airmen on a load crew in the competition. He stressed that teamwork was key to getting the job done.

"Everyone sticks together," Airman Fender said. "You can't do your job unless everyone else is doing theirs. You get butterflies in your stomach but once the process gets started, you get used to it. Overall, I think we did pretty well. We have a pretty good load crew."

Chief Master Sgt. Donald McElroy, the Eighth Air Force evaluator team chief from Barksdale AFB, La., was also impressed with the Warbirds' performance.

"These guys, you can tell they've done a lot of practice," Chief McElroy said. "They did very well during the competition."

While the team of evaluators has many technical things they look for, Chief McElroy said safety is key to succeeding in the competition.

"We're looking to see that everyone is proficient and that they're doing safe and reliable maintenance; that's the bottom line," the Chief said. "Safety is always first. Things that will hurt them as far as their score, bringing them down the most, would be safety write-ups."

The load competitions go back almost to the very beginning of the Air Force. The Strategic Air Command was activated in 1946 and during its formative years of 1946 and 1947, faced multiple administrative, manning and material challenges (i.e. shortages). Because of these challenges, the command did not devote much time to bombing practice. As a consequence, bombing accuracy fell below desired standards.
As a way to motivate crews and for units to improve their bombing accuracy, the commander of SAC, General George C. Kenney, initiated a bombing tournament, later designated as the SAC Bombing Competition. The name would be changed again to the SAC Bombing and Navigation Competition, or "Bomb Comp" for short.

Over time, the competition grew in size and complexity. What was referred to as "Bomb Comp" became an umbrella term for several competitions initiated by SAC to enhance esprit de corps, readiness and proficiency (i.e. navigation, aerial refueling, munitions loading, etc).

Officially, "Exercise PROUD SHIELD 92," which was conducted in April 1992, was the 34th and final SAC bomb comp. (Air Combat Command conducted its first and only bomb comp in 1994).

However, Air Force leadership recently expressed a desire to bring back the competitions.

"We put together this competition to reinvigorate the nuclear enterprise," said Chief McElroy. "Back in the SAC days, we used to do Giant Sword weapons loading competitions, which ended when SAC went away. We wanted to bring it back to promote esprit de corp between the bomber wings."

Chief McElroy added another goal of the competition is to, "get people back in the books and back to the basics and hopefully share the knowledge they gain by competing."

The Warbirds will officially find out how they scored during a symposium March 4, at Barksdale AFB.