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Life on Diego Garcia
After completing their mission, Ketchen landed at the forward location he could not identify, but is widely known to be Diego Garcia, a British protectorate now occupied solely by military personnel and civilian contractors. Few outsiders ever visit the 6,270-acre lush corral reef off the coast of India, just seven degrees south of the equator.
That scenery is quite a shift from their usual base in Knob Noster - a single traffic light community where the surrounding farmland has long been dominated by the stealth bomber and nuclear missile silos, each one a half city-block wide square of cement.
Every lightpost on Knob Noster's block-long commercial strip has a sign that says "Home of the B-2." The local library's children bookshelf features a kids' book about the plane. Day or night, residents can glimpse one of the sharp-edged bombers fly over silos filled with grain (the ones housing missiles were deactivated a decade ago). "It's a big source of pride for everyone," says town librarian Julia Ward, who has lived in Knob Noster for 13 years.
With their stay on Diego Garcia precipitated by war, there wasn't much time to enjoy the island's lagoon, 40 miles of wave-swept beaches, 700 species of sea life including dolphins, and what a Navy website describes as "some of the world's finest fishing."
Each day, two or three stealth bombers would take off for Iraq from a runway adjoining the island's beaches. The pilots were lucky to sleep in buildings, in two sets of bunk beds. Other squadron personnel slept four or six to a tent, separated by plywood walls or, in some cases, a sheet. They could exercise in the fitness centers, visit an officers' club, or shop in a small convenience store.
Mostly though, the bomber pilots - including Capt. Jennifer Wilson, the first woman ever to fly a stealth bomber combat mission - passed what little free time they had conducting their own bomb damage assessment by watching tapes of CNN or Fox News. At their usual altitude and speed, the most B-2 pilots can see of their attack from overhead is a bomb flash reflected off clouds. But by watching the news while looking at a clock, they could determine which explosions were from bombs they dropped.
While pilots who flew back to Missouri saw their families that same night, Ketchen could only speak to his wife and three sons via webcam every three days or so. Often, he read his youngest son a book about tigers - the squadron's symbol.
Ketchen says both he and his family were better off apart.
"When you're [on a forward base], there's nothing to distract you from your primary job," Ketchen says. The separation allowed him to focus solely on work while his wife didn't have to worry knowing what nights he was away from home flying combat missions. Ketchen purposely didn't pass back information to spouses about when each pilot was flying.
Fortunately for pilots, says Ketchen, many of them had arrived only a week before the fighting started. Their colleagues flying the B-52s, the granddaddy of strategic bombers that have been in the air an average of 42 years, had to wait weeks for the war to start at Diego Garcia.
The B-2s were serviced in two specially built shelters where Air Force mechanics could work on their external skin free from the heat and humidity outside. At any given time, two of the four aircraft were in the shelters and two were on the tarmac. Ketchen says the aircraft performed "above and beyond" expectations. Few maintenance problems meant the number available for missions exceeded what Air Force planners anticipated.
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