Expert: James Bell - 8/30/2006

Question
Hi James, Well, lets see, right now I do B-52 avionics, and am set on crosstraining as soon as my window opens up next spring into an enlisted aircrew position. The only problem is that I cannot make up my mind as to if I want to be a Flight engineer, or Loadmaster, both sound very appealing, but I am not sure what I would enjoy more, I have tried researching these careers, but have only found limited information. Hopefully your input could help me choose the correct choice. Thank you!

Answer
Greetings Eric -

Having walked in the shoes of both career fields, I can definitely give you my opinion.  I started out as a loadmaster (straight out of Basic) then retrained to F.E. seven years later.  The fact that I LEFT the loadmaster career field to become an engineer, and stayed in that capacity until my retirement 17 years later, should tell you where my loyalties are.

Here are the basics: Both career fields are intellectually challenging, and will require you to be able to think on your feet and rapidly adjust to changing situations.  For the loadmaster, those changes happen during the upload and download, as the load plan changes by the minute.  The flight engineer's challenges are ongoing throughout the flight.  Being a loadmaster is a more physically demanding job, whereas the flight engineer is heavily relied upon more for his systems knowledge and experience than physical abilities.

As for the ability to think on your feet, those challenges can come at any time.  Examples:

On a flight from Japan to California as a C-5 loadmaster, an elderly man gets up to go to the bathroom and collapses in the aisleway.  He suffered a heart attack.  His wife was right there with his nitro pills.  We made him comfortable and diverted to McChord AFB.  My quick actions to get him on oxygen prevented the situation from getting worse, and kept his brain from oxygen deprevation.

On another flight from Japan to California (many years and two aircraft later) as a KC-10 engineer, we made VHF contact with Oakland Center and were given a set of coordinates to fly to and a radio frequency.  We were told to contact the Coast Guard on that radio.  It turned out a C-130 had gone down in the Pacific and they needed us to perform radio relay duties.  I immediately had to calculate our maximum "linger" time over the target, then be able to make it to the nearest airport (San Francisco) and land with minimum fuel.  Try making those calculations in the heat of the moment without a mistake.  Out of more than a dozen on board, one survivor was found.

More recently, while flying over Iraq (just prior to my retirement in 2004) I had several instances where fighters had overextended themselves over target areas and we needed to get to them for refueling before they ran out of gas.  In the case of another crew, an 18 year old boom operator on her first combat deployment, had an F-16 coming up for an unscheduled refueling because they were low on fuel.  The wingman did not relay the urgency of his fuel state to the boom operator, and just a few feet from the boom nozzle his engine flamed out and down he went.  He ejected at 10,000 feet and was picked up by SAR forces just a few hours later.  He actually called the boom operator at our base that night and apologized for not telling her how short he was on fuel.  As you can imagine, she was pretty distraught thinking it was her fault for losing a plane.

Each job has its ups and downs, and make sure to include the type of aircraft you could be assigned to, and the base, in your decision process.  The current cargo choices are C-130s, C-17s, and C-5s.  As a flight engineer you can also go C-130s, C-5s, and KC-10s.  Each aircraft selection has multiple bases in which you could be assigned.

Don't rule out the possibility of becoming a Boom Operator (official job title Inflight Refueling Specialist, AFSC 1A0x1).  They have all the training, duties and responsibilities of a loadmaster, along with the unique task of inflight refueling.  Now THAT is a fun job, and the only one I considered other than flight engineer.

I have a family website set up with pictures of my last few years as a KC-10 engineer.  You can see it at ...
http://64.41.64.113/home/Air_Force.html

There are lots of pictures of what it was like to fly all over the world, along with spending many a month in "tent cities" all over the sandland known as the Middle East.

I hope I have given you some good information.  If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to write back.  Good luck on your quest.

Sincerely,
James Bell