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 Support and Maintenance Teams keep North Carolina Army Guard Apaches flying By Army Capt. Dave Chance and Army Pfc. Kelly L. Widner
                449th Theater Aviation Brigade
 MORRISVILLE, N.C. –  When it comes to aviation, the pilots are often thought of first. But, keeping the AH-64D Apache Longbow helicopters of the North Carolina Army National Guard's 1st Battalion, 130th Aviation Regiment in the air and mission ready requires a cadre of dedicated Soldiers on the ground as well. On a recent sunny and cold Saturday morning, the battalion's flight facility, located adjacent to Raleigh-Durham International Airport, was a hive of activity as Soldiers worked to keep the Apaches flight ready. Overlooking the flight line from the facility's second floor, Army Sgt. Thomas Mullaney stood in the center of the battalion's hub for checking in pilots and monitoring their flights. As he rushed between phone calls, other Soldiers in his section assisted more than 20 pilots with submitting flight plans and risk assessments as they prepared for nighttime training flights. A dozen big-screen TVs lined the walls displaying information about the day's operations, including schedules, pilot training status and weather forecasts. Mullaney, a flight operations specialist—known as a "15 Papa" by his military occupational specialty code— has his finger on the proverbial pulse of the battalion's aviators. "The flight operations specialist entails everything from flight tracking and talking to (pilots) over radios, all the way down to maintaining flight records, flight scheduling and flight physicals," Mullaney said. "As the pilots come in, they'll request when they're ready to get their flight bag and keys ... we'll update their information with their route of flight, and record the flight's briefer and final approval." While the facility's second floor is focused on flight plans, accountability and individual crew member records, the open hangar underneath is manned by a team of Soldiers turning wrenches, evaluating equipment, and making sure the Apaches stay in top condition. One of those Soldiers is Army Staff Sgt. Chang Vang, an airframe mechanic and 12-year Army veteran, who has spent the past six years with the unit. Vang and his team are trained to work on a variety of military aircraft, including Apaches, UH-60 Black Hawks and UH-72 Lakotas. "An airframe is an airframe," Vang said, walking between Apaches while checking their metal fuselages. "We work on pretty much any airframe. We repair and fabricate anything down to the littlest screws (and) we deal with pretty much the whole structural aspect of an aircraft." Airframe mechanics focus primarily on the panels that make up an aircraft's body and their shop on the edge of the hangar includes large tools used to cut and shape the racks of stock metal lined up against the wall. "We're not the aircraft maintainers," Vang said, referring the attack helicopter repairers who handle the day-to-day aspects of keeping the aircraft flight ready, "but we're the backbone of the maintainers. When they find an issue, they get us. If a panel doesn't lock closed properly, we come out and assess and see what we can do, take something off, replace it or just modify it." That means being able to find work-around solutions while thinking on the go. "Even if we don't have the actual parts, we have to find ways to repair an airframe anyway," Vang said, pointing out that their supply section can only stock so many items at a time. "If they don't have it, then we have to be Johnny-on-the-spot. We break out all our tools and figure out how to repair it as fast as we can." That ability to find solutions on the fly became especially needed during Vang's 2009 deployment to Iraq. Vang said his team didn't have the fully-stocked tool shop he works out of at home station in Morrisville. "We had our toolbox, but it was very limited," he said. "I once had to fix a Black Hawk stabilator (part of the aircraft's tail) that's ribbed, but didn't have any ribbed metal. I had to take a broom handle and beat the metal into shape. That's about one of the most creative things I've seen so far." Vang is nearly always on the move while in the shop, dropping under an Apache to bang on its bottom panels, or openning access panels and checking small compartments he's had repair. "When I feel limber enough, I'll crawl up in [the rear of the aircraft] and work upside down," he said. "You really can't be a big person in this job." The airframe mechanics have a good relationship with the aircraft pilots, said Vang, noting the pilots often show they appreciate and respect the airframe mechanics' fast work in keeping the aircraft in the air. "A lot of the pilots we have here in the (unit) are real people, people," he said. "They talk to you and they appreciate what you do." That symbiotic relationship means the pilots can focus on their task at hand while in the air. "Flying is the easy part of the job that we do," said Army Chief Warrant Officer 2 Steven Pratt, an Apache helicopter pilot with the unit. "The hardest part is doing the mission planning and performance planning for the aircraft." That's where Vang, Mullaney and their teams come in. "[When we're in the air] we have a mission and a specific task that we have to do," Pratt said. "[On the ground] someone has to be looking over where we're going, what we plan to do and if it's safe to operate the aircraft in that environment." Vang said being part of a close knit and mission-focused unit like 1st Bn., 130th Avn. Regt. makes it easy to feel part of the team. While Vang and his teammates are capable of repairing the bodies of an aircraft, others keep the  the electronic systems of the aircraft ready to go. For Army Sgt. Bruce Werthan, when he enlisted in 2006 the decision to become an Apache armament-electrical-avionic systems repairer was an easy one —  it "had the coolest sounding title," said Werthen, adding that it also sounded interesting and engaging. "Working on armament systems just sounded fun to me," he said. "It was a bit more difficult than I realized, but everything is in the electronic manuals and wiring diagrams. And, there are plenty of Soldiers around here who know a lot more than I do and we help each other out." During live-fire training exercises, Werthan and the repairers and refuelers also operate as a pit crew of sorts managing forward arming and refueling points in the field. "We load rockets, we load ammo, and if they're shooting Hellfire [missiles], we'll load Hellfires," Werthan said. "And if there's any problem...we can fix quickly, like a pilot having trouble with their helmet or monocle, we'll deal with that there. We do spot checks like that on the (arming and refueling) pad." The focus is on simply getting the job done and keeping the pilots flying. "[Pilots] depend on us, but you don't really hear about us too much. We're not the headline or anything like that, but we get the job done," he said. When the pilots are flying, but not using the aircraft weapon systems, Werthan said he will help launch and recover flights and address routine maintenance issues like cleaning weapons and attaching equipment. "Our time to shine is really during gunnery annual training," Werthan said. "That's when the aircraft are actually going up and shooting." Being able to work on the aircraft's electronic systems is rewarding for the challenge it presents, Werthan said. "I'm not super mechanically inclined – I'm not like an engineer or anything – so it's a good challenge whenever I come in and get to work on the aircraft," he said. "Plus, it's really cool." The job is not only rewarding, but Werthen said it's also given him some great stories to share with family and friends. "There's always a different story to tell – always something fun," he said. "I'll tell them that I've worked on a really cool helicopter. They probably think the stories all sound the same, but to me there's always something new."
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