MTMC moves helicopters for stateside upgrades - Brief Article

Translog: Journal of Military Transportation Management, July-August, 2001 by David A. Kay

By truck, barge and ocean carrier, the Military Traffic Management Command has moved 30 AH-64 Apache helicopters from Europe to the United States for upgrading.

The helicopters arrived in Charleston, S.C., on June 25, aboard the Fidelio.

From Charleston, the helicopters were transshipped for factory upgrades to the Longbow avionics system.

The shipping coordination and synchronization was completed by the 838th Transportation Battalion's Rhine River Detachment, Mannheim, Germany, and the 841st Transportation Battalion, in Charleston, S.C.

Our customer was the 6-6 Calvary unit, in Illesheim, Germany.

Moving these expensive pieces of equipment back to the United States involved a lot of hard work and coordination.

The Apaches were flown from Illesheim to Coleman Barracks, in Mannheim, for preparation.

The Army's contracting office in Stuttgart awarded a contract to Ned Lloyd to move the helicopters down a 10-mile stretch of highway, between Coleman Barracks and the Rhine River, by truck. From there, the helicopters were loaded on a roll-on/roll-off barge and moved to Rotterdam, the Netherlands, for ocean shipment.

We worked closely with the 293rd Base Support Battalion and the 2/502nd Aviation to make this a seamless move.

The 293rd provided traffic control, medical support, military police and fire safety support.

The 2/502nd made sure the equipment was properly configured and prepared for an ocean voyage. The unit also provided the contractor with technical assistance on how to handle the aircraft.

When the helicopters arrived at Coleman Barracks, they were disassembled and shrink-wrapped. The disassembled pieces of the helicopters were then boxed up and sent to the commercial port in Mannheim for loading.

The barge then went to the NATO ramp in Lampertheim, Mannheim, for the loading of the aircraft.

The Apaches were loaded May 30 and arrived in Rotterdam the following day. From Rotterdam, the helicopters were transshipped to the United States aboard the Fidelio.