An Air Force Reserve Command C-17 aircrew from McChord AFB, Wash., was flying some Hollywood entertainment industry folks from March ARB, Calif., to Lackland AFB, Tex., and were to take them back and head home. Instead they picked up a specialized Army Burn Center Flight team at Lackland and flew them to Hawaii, where they then stood by as one of four C-17s on call to transport to the Army’s Burn Center in San Antonio eight sailors injured in a steam line accident aboard the USS Frank Cable in Guam. A Hickam AFB, Hawaii-based C-17 had picked up the sailors, six of whom had critical burns, at Guam, flying them the 6,000 miles back to Hickam, where medical personnel took them to Tripler Army Medical Hospital to stabilize them for the trip to Texas.
A three-month continuing resolution that ended in December inflicted less pain on the Department of the Air Force than it had expected, as procurement and construction continue in the new year. The federal government operated under a stopgap spending measure that stretched from the beginning of the fiscal year on…