“We definitely leaned on each other for support” against fatigue, said the loadmaster, who received an Air Medal for her role in the mission. “But … with it being a real life mission, just the anticipation and the excitement around the entire thing definitely keeps you going for a long time.”
According to Spring’s medal citation, the airman also had to deal with “communication systems degradation” to get the refueling job done, though the Air Force would not say what specific form that degradation took. Like her colleagues, Springs credited her training for the successful night.
“Literally everything we do ties back into our training, just in case we haven’t said that 20,000 times,” she said. “Out of a week of flying here at Kirtland, we go through emergency procedures almost every day in real life.”
Part of that training is learning how to evaluate a problem and determine whether it is significant enough to end the mission, Springs explained. Envelope–pushing missions like the Nigeria rescue mission provide great real-world examples that can be used to help train students back home.
“With experiences like this mission, we can actually sit them down and say ‘this is a scenario where, if this fails and we have the question ‘is it worth it still going on? Sometimes it is still okay to keep going on with the mission, depending on what’s failing,’” she said.
One aircraft did have to call it quits mid-mission. According to his citation for the Distinguished Flying Cross, Senior Master Sgt. Christopher Reedy navigated his CV-22 crew “through the total loss of critical aircraft systems.”