continued...
"...I had two teams clear tower areas east of town (grid we were based in) then proceed to adjacent grids - Alpha to the east (just north of LKP), Bravo to the south (just west of LKP on flight path). I sent Charlie (my Sqs guys) to a grid just SW of base that was on the primary list, and check an additional private strip that was a possible divert location. And Delta, which was a combination of folks from Dallas & Houston, I sent straight to the probable impact point SW of LKP to line search a four square mile area.
Air was grounded till about 830 or 9. I'm not sure exactly when we launched our first bird. I know we had a ceiling of 1500 at base, but it was 500 in Austin where our first bird was. DPS (state police) called us & offered a helo, but didn't have spotters. We ran it up & got authorization. We had two spare folks on location at that point. Both pilots, but not MPs or rated as observers - one being fellow CAPTalk member & friend dogden. The helo landed & they briefed up. We were putting them on the probable track back to LKP & then grid search, exit grid on route & parallel search out to a pocket of leads we had on route at the next major highway intersect, then RTB.
Delta GT took a while to find the location we wanted them at & then waited a while for LE. I couldn't give them very good directions, nor could the Sheriff when I put them on the phone with him. I drove out there later & it was pretty difficult to get to. So not at all faulting them on that. So they were waiting, we got 8 call in leads all at once in an area about 10min SW on their location, so dispatched them to go look around there real quick. I had Alpha finished with towers & coming into the grid just north of that area, so sent them to pick up that line search activity, but had a **** of a time directing them in on it.
About this time AFRCC called with radar follow up. We had overlapping coverage from two radars, and they looked at western air defense on top of that. Result was bird crossed path of flight 15 secs before altitude loss. Was cruise at 2600, alt loss between 3 radar sweeps as 400 > 1000 > 5000. Their brief was they think he's within 300yrds of the predicted probable & straight in, to which we said (nicely) yeah duh. AFRCC continued, we should put a GT on that point. To which I said, "I briefed that at 630 this morning, they're on scene waiting an hour now for LE to put them on private property so they don't get shot for trespassing." AFRCC continued, I don't know how effective fixed wing will be based on a straight in with real wet ground. It might be best to have a helicopter on this. To which I replied, DPS helo just left with two of our guys on as spotters, they'll be on scene in a few." That was a fun call. I really appreciated that we were already as on the ball as we could possibly be.
Helo reported in grid same time as first CAP aircraft was in grid over our base, second & third CAPFlt enroute to assignments. Several others launching behind to our base for tasking, which we had ready to brief. Helo reported landing to investigate a target. GT Delta sweeping back up to meet up, Alpha still getting directed in on it. I think Delta got back there a hair earlier than Alpha, mainly because they knew where they were going. Both on scene pretty quickly though. Target confirmed. We handed over to DPS & notified up, DPS did as well.
I got very few complaints about the whole thing. The comm rig we had was good, but they had to set up too far away from our ICP, and radio comms were shaky at a lot of points. We used Wing cell phones for the branch directors, comm, & IC. That was okay, but they were ringing off the hook. The city/county/FBO were all excellent. They brought us food, water, tea; they let us take over their location & gave us chairs/tables for the hanger we used for team staging. We had wifi there, it was great. We didn't deploy teams telling them they'd be overnight or longer & we didn't have cots & such, which I could have gotten very easily from the national guard.
We were ready to sustain beyond that first day though. We could have run hard for at least a week. the problem was going to be planes. We've been doing a lot of o-flts & firewatch for the state, so a lot of our air was close to going down on maint. We were about to call LAWG for backup, and needed the crews too. Wg/CC wanted us to try west TX again before asking for out of state resources, but that wasn't going to be enough if we had to keep going very long. The biggest problem was the speed to get the op turned on, and the really slow response for crews - it is mid week & spring break now, but the guy on the ground doesn't care about that.
Chaplain was on scene at the end & CISM in place. Guy's son & several friends showed up/flew in when we RTB'd all air. We did a good job with all that, but it was honestly easier than expected. I would have liked to have a chaplain there the whole time too.
Some of the media were really a pain & some were quite nice. Our PIO for the mission is very good, but he was never on location, and that was a very big problem. In hind sight, if I couldn't get a really good PIO from CAP on location, I would have asked for one from DPS to keep those folks out of our hair & brief on a regular basis. We pulled through there, but really missed a big opportunity. A lot of our folks made the news. There were two newspapers & five TV stations very actively covering the story. Dogden was first on scene with the DPS helo & did the confirmation of target via inspection plate. He did a several minute follow up with the CBS affiliate. I'm sure there will be stories on the CAP side & lots of local media.
Overall, it was good mission. There are certainly some things we could do better. There were several frustrating items that are just the nature of CAP, and there were some factors beyond our control (mostly weather). That's about it I guess. I wouldn't recommend staying awake for 44hrs straight, but it worked out real well. "