Sunday Newscape Magazine

The month of May is a special month for our military. The entire month is National Military Appreciation Month, giving us the opportunity to honor and recognize the courageous men and women who serve and protect our nation. May 8 was Military Spouse Appreciation Day. May 16 was Armed Forces Day,

The month concludes with Memorial Day, perhaps the most solemn day---a day to remember and honor those who have given their lives for our country, but also to appreciate all those who are serving today and who have served in the past in our uniformed services.

With this in mind, the following story is dedicated to one of those heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice for his country, and for his fellow Marines: Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta.  I have written of his sacrifice and of the honor that is still being denied to him in “Texan Applauds Congressman Filner's Sgt. Rafael Peralta Medal of Honor Campaign,” at the Imperial Valley News.

Finally, on this Memorial Day, this story is in memory of the three brave members of the U.S. Air Force who gave their lives during the tragedy in which Juanyta Ortiz, the subject of this story, “distinguished herself by heroism involving voluntary risk of life” in the skies over Kuwait, nine years ago.

Juanyta Ortiz is a slim, soft-spoken, African-American mother of two, and a long-time Austin, Texas resident. She is also a veteran who retired from the U.S. Air Force after 20 years of more than honorable service to her country.

The Lockheed C-130 aircraft is a solidly built—its take-off weight can be up to 150,000 lbs-- powerful, military transport aircraft, appropriately called the “Hercules.” It has been the workhorse of the U.S. Air Force and of many other air forces throughout the world for more than 50 years.

What does lightly built Ortiz have to do with the mighty C-130 Hercules?

The short answer is fate, luck--good and bad--, human error, and both Ortiz’ and the C-130’s toughness and resilience.

For the long answer, we have to go back quite a bit in time and distance to the skies and deserts of Kuwait. For it was about nine years ago, after traveling some 30 hours from Randolph Air Force Base, Texas, in various commercial and military aircraft, that an exhausted U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Juanyta Ortiz took her seat in a C-130E aircraft bound for her final destination somewhere in Kuwait.

On the night of December 9, 1999, the ill-fated C-130 that Ortiz had just boarded was on the final leg of a “rotator mission,“ designed to distribute newly arrived U.S. military personnel to bases in Kuwait in support of “Operation Southern Watch,” a military operation that was part of the United Nations effort to enforce sanctions on Iraq.

Ortiz, a U.S. Air Force medic at the time, had volunteered for a three-month tour of duty at Ali Al Salem in Kuwait, even though it would mean spending the Christmas holidays away from her family in Austin, Texas.

Along with Ortiz, there were 85 other passengers and a crew of eight on the C-130. By the time the aircraft left Kuwait City International Airport, around 1:45 in the morning of December 10, the crew had already been flying for almost five hours, shuttling troops back and forth across Kuwait. Ortiz’ flight to Ahmed Al Jaber Air Base was supposed to last only 15 minutes. From there, Ortiz would take a 15-minute bus ride to her final destination, Ali Al Salem.

Ortiz was seated near the middle of the aircraft, almost back-to-back to Senior Airman Sean Kirkeby, a firefighter from Randolph Air Force Base. Ortiz did not know Kirkeby, but before the night was over both would share the most horrifying experience of their lives, and both would share the ultimate duty and trust, that of trying to save human lives.

About 15 minutes into the flight, just about when Ortiz expected the lumbering C-130 to land at their destination, a loud “BANG” reverberated through the aircraft. “Without warning, there was a loud explosion and there was debris blowing all about,” Ortiz says. Since they were flying in a part of the world where anything was possible, Ortiz had an understandable fear: “I never considered that the aircraft had impacted the ground,” Ortiz says. “There was nothing that indicated a collision, only a very loud bang, like an explosion. I thought we were under attack or that lightning had hit the aircraft.”

But the aircraft had actually impacted the desert sands--not the runway at Ahmed Al Jaber. As the accident investigation would later establish, the C-130 “impacted the ground approximately 2,895 feet short and about 40 feet left of the runway centerline.”

The pilot fought to immediately get the badly damaged aircraft airborne again, flying for about 1,000 feet with the tail approximately five feet above the ground. The crew finally succeeded to regain altitude and safe flight, but not before hitting a ground-based antenna with the horizontal stabilizer and, sadly, not before an extensive human toll had been exacted within the aircraft.

After recovering from the initial shock, Ortiz looked around and saw most of her fellow passengers just “sitting there with their eyes as big as saucers.” “A few others were slumped over like they were sleeping…Some had blood on them,” Ortiz remembers. Then she saw a gaping hole on the side of the aircraft, close to the people who appeared to be sleeping. Immediately, Ortiz’ human instincts and medical skills kicked in and she rushed to one of those who seemed to be sleeping.

Ortiz kept a journal of her overseas deployment days. An entry in that journal, dated December 10, 1999, describes what happened next:

A young man seated next to the hole had his head leaning on the shoulder of the passenger sitting on his other side. Crew members yelled for first aid bags. I was a bit disoriented, but by now noticed that the young man leaning on his seat mates’ shoulder had blood on his face. I yelled for first aid bag, undid my seat strap crawled over people and attempted to assess this ‘patient’. He had a faint slow pulse (carotid) and no radial pulse. I saw his wound; a deep puncture to the posterior left head.

Ortiz did everything she could to save his life. However, the injuries he sustained when the C-130’s landing gear punched through the sides of the aircraft into the cabin were just too severe.

Although Ortiz, Kirkeby and two other firefighters continued desperately and heroically with their resuscitation and other first aid efforts, three passengers, including the young captain who Ortiz had been trying to save, died as a result of the accident. Another 15 military personnel were injured.

The ordeal, however, was not over yet. Ortiz and the other firefighters would continue to tend to their injured for almost one more hour, as the crippled aircraft flew over the Persian Gulf jettisoning about 3,000 gallons of fuel. You see, part of the main landing gear had been literally stripped off the aircraft during impact and the remaining portions came off when the aircraft hit the ground-based antenna. The crippled C-130 would have to make a crash landing at the Kuwait City airport.

Again from Ortiz’ journal, referring to her fatally injured patient:

“There was no place to lay him, so we did the best we could to prop him up against his seatmate. I had no face mask and no room to do CPR and I was still in front of the hole and could see lights from down below. I attempted chest compressions with no results. I attempted to find a seat strap to buckle myself down, but was unable to find any. I was holding my patient’s legs and feet, which I had elevated with his backpack, but we were in front of the hole. I was aware that others were being treated for injuries throughout to aircraft, but I was in no position to help them. I felt the plane descending in short burst. I looked to my right and saw the faces of my fellow passengers, and then they all moved in towards each other as if in a huddle. I tried, but was unable to lean into that huddle because I was continuing to hold my patient. We were told to brace for landing and I looped my right arm through the cargo net and held my patient with my left arm.”

Finally, the C-130 made a “belly landing” on the foamed runway, and this is the final entry in Juanyta’s journal for that fateful day:

“The plane touched down and slid across the foamed tarmac. Through the hole I saw the sparks, and then the plane came to a halt. Loud bells were ringing and we were told to get out, I hesitated, not wanting to leave my patient, but was told to leave when the emergency personnel boarded the plane.”

An Air Force accident investigation board would later cite pilot error as the cause of the accident. According to the report, “The crew became complacent during the approach to the runway and failed to monitor its instruments, which is critical during night flying with reduced visibility.”

Ortiz, now a community volunteer in Austin, and a grandmother, retired from the Air Force in 2003 with 100 percent disability—mostly due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, because of the accident and its aftermath. She still wakes up every night at around 2 in the morning with frightening thoughts about the accident, and she frequently has what are called “intrusive thoughts” about her experience.

As to her reaction to her performance that night in Kuwait, Ortiz speaks softly and unassumingly about her actions in the skies over Kuwait nine years ago and chalks it all up to “just doing what she was trained for.”

However, the U.S. Air Force thought that Ortiz did more than just answer the call of duty and awarded her the prestigious Airman’s Medal. The citation accompanying the award states, in part:

“Technical Sergeant Juanyta D. Ortiz distinguished herself by heroism involving voluntary risk of life near Ahmed Al Jabar Air base, Kuwait, on 10 December 1999. On that date, Sergeant Ortiz rapidly responded to aid her fellow passengers who were seriously injured when the C-130 aircraft they were passengers on suffered severe structural damage upon ground impact…By her courageous action and humanitarian regard for her fellowman, Sergeant Ortiz has reflected great credit upon herself and the United States Air Force.”

The concluding line of that famous poem by John Gillespie Magee, Jr., “High Flight,” says: