Yokota comes together for Samurai Surge

  • Published
  • By Airman 1st Class Desiree Economides
  • 374th Airlift Wing Public Affairs
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan --  The 374th Airlift Wing showed its war fighting and flying capabilities Nov. 2, during a Samurai Surge exercise at Yokota.

Above the Kanto Plains, six C-130 Hercules flew in formation and demonstrated their airdrop and large formation capabilities while two UH-1N Hueys and one C-12 Huron flew alongside.

"We were able to launch six C-130 aircraft and practice tactics, techniques and procedures for large formation aerial delivery mission," said Col. David Gould, 374th Operations Group commander. "During the surge, we accomplished low level procedures, navigation and position maintaining amongst the different members of the formation, as well as performed airdrops in a number of different ways."

Although the aircrews took center stage during the surge, it took the combined effort of the wing to get the mission accomplished.

"Samurai Surge allows every one of us the opportunity to go out there and make the wing click as one," said Col. Otto Feather, 374th AW commander. "Whether it's the medical group making sure we are all ready to fly, the logistics readiness squadron and their ability to load up all of our combat airlift load equipment, our maintenance group kicking the tires and lighting the fires or our flyers going out there and flying large formations."

As the sole airlift hub in the Western Pacific, Yokota provides expeditionary forces ready to deploy anywhere in the world, which is why large scale training takes place.

"This was a great learning environment for everybody involved," said Gould. "There were lessons learned and there were many people in the flights who had never flown in a formation this large."