By Bruce Rolfsen - Staff writer
October 26, 2007
Original
Article
For a bunch of loadmasters, life
will truly imitate art the day after Halloween,
now that the Air Force has agreed to fly Maggie,
a sick elephant, aboard a C-17 Globemaster from
Alaska to California.
Consider it a tongue-in-cheek sequel to that
1995 movie “Operation Dumbo Drop,” starring
Danny Glover. Those were Army guys, but the film
was inspired by a 1968 special operations/goodwill
mission that had U.S. troops ferry an elephant
to a Vietnamese village for a sacred ceremony.
Forty years later, the real mission, dubbed “Operation
Maggie Migration,” is set for Nov. 1.
 The
Alaska Zoo in Anchorage needs to move Maggie,
an 8000-pound African elephant to new digs in
California, and has requested help from the Air
Force.
The Alaska Zoo in Anchorage needs to move Maggie,
an 8,000-pound pachyderm, to northern California,
where Maggie will take up residence at an animal
sanctuary. At 27, the zoo says the African elephant — said
to be Alaska’s only elephant — is
having some health troubles, and zookeepers think
she’ll be better off farther south.
The zoo asked the Air Force if it would fly
the mission, and the service said yes Oct. 25.
The Air Force will fly Maggie from Elmendorf
Air Force Base, near Anchorage, to Travis Air
Force Base, Calif. Elmendorf is home to the 3rd
Wing and a C-17 squadron.
During the flight, Maggie will be packed inside
a 10,000-pound, cagelike crate measuring 18 feet
long, 8 feet wide and 10 feet tall — small
enough to fit inside a C-17.
The Performing Animal Welfare Society, which
runs the sanctuary near San Andreas, Calif.,
will pay all of the Air Force’s costs,
an Air Force statement said. Estimates put the
bill around $200,000.
While the Air Force typically only flies military
and humanitarian cargo, the Air Force can help
when commercial alternatives are not available,
explained the service’s top general in
Alaska, Lt. Gen. Douglas Fraser.
In 1998, a C-17 airlifted the killer whale Keiko,
made famous in the movie “Free Willy,” from
Oregon to Iceland. When the jet landed in Iceland,
its right forward landing gear broke. An investigation
determined that improper maintenance of metal
landing gear supports had weakened the landing
gear. The final repair bill was more than $1
million.
As for the Nov. 1 mission, there was no word
as to whether the Air Force or the animal sanctuary
will provide the shovels. |
