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The coolest brew in the Air Force

  • Published
  • By Robert Fox
  • Sheppard Senator
SHEPPARD AIR FORCE BASE, Texas (AETCNS) --  Cryogenics sounds like some future way of recreating life or a search for a cure of an unknown plague. It also sounds like something from the “Star Trek” episodes or possibly even “Star Wars.”

For the Air Force and the 366th Training Squadron here, it means keeping pilots and aircrews alive when they’re flying above the 10,000-foot level.

“The main thing I teach my students is without us, fighter pilots can’t fly,” said Staff Sgt. Fred Whitted, an advanced cryogenics instructor at the 366th TRS. “Without us, pilots can’t fly because after 10,000 feet, if they decompress, they need oxygen.”

Airmen in the cryogenics career field use liquid oxygen, or LOX, as the source for the much needed element to allow pilots to continue the Air Force mission.

Sergeant Whitted said the course is important because, in a deployed situation, the Airmen in charge of issuing LOX containers are also the only ones available to make repairs.

“If they don’t fix them, then the mission suffers,” he said. “If we don’t give them a quality product, a fatality can happen. That’s our job as cryo maintenance people -- to make sure the quality of the product is high.”

Cryogenic Maintenance is a 10-day course designed to prepare Airmen to store, issue and maintain cryogenic containers. The current class has 10 students and it graduates an average of 140 students annually.

The course begins with safety and moves quickly through technical orders, how to issue liquid oxygen, quality control and components and maintenance of the different parts of the system.

The second week of the course is spent learning to operate vacuum pumps, purge units and how to troubleshoot them.

The safety aspect of the course is essential because of the nature of cryogenics. Liquid oxygen, aside from being -297 degrees Fahrenheit, is shock sensitive.

“LOX is very, very shock sensitive, meaning it does not take much to make it go boom,” Sergeant Whitted said.

Liquid nitrogen is also dangerously cold, -321 degrees Fahrenheit, and can cause asphyxiation in a closed environment.

Associated dangers aside, some find the field rewarding.

Senior Airman Ronald Ritter said he wanted to be in cryogenics when he enlisted in the Air Force. He said he looks forward to going back to Anderson Air Force Base, Guam, and teaching others on the job the skills he has learned here.

“It is basically a huge gas station at a strategic point in the South Pacific,” he said.

Anderson AFB has a 5-ton cryogenic production plant that runs a minimum of 16 hours a day. Airman Ritter said he hopes to apply the things he has learned here at the pacific island’s plant.

Staff Sgt. Bradley Childs, from the Delaware Air National Guard, was selected to attend this course. He said he does not mind because it will make him a more well-rounded Airman.

“I volunteer for as many deployments as possible. (After this course) I can work in cryo, if needed. Without it, I would be more one dimensional,” he said.

Regardless of who the Airmen are or where they are is stationed, there is one thing every cryo Airman knows. The Air Force, or its aircraft, doesn’t leave home without them.