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Greenville Composite Squadron cadets inspect a salvaged Rockwell Commander 685 serving as part of a Halloween display as “aliens" look on.
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Cadets with their Oct. 24 find – (from left) Cadet Airman 1st Class Mary Frietze, Cadet Tech. Sgt. Alexis Phares, Cadet Chief Master Sgt. Sally Anderson, Cadet 2nd Lt. Cameron Taylor, Cadet Airman Rane Hardgrave, Cadet 2nd Lt. Kevin Czajaka and Cadet Senior Airman Hudson Cole.
Photos by 1st Lt. Chris Chapman
1st Lt. Orville N. Eastland III
Deputy Public Affairs Officer
Greenville Composite Squadron
South Carolina Wing
SOUTH CAROLINA – Greenville Composite Squadron members searching for a crashed airplane Oct. 24 as part of a training exercise came across not only a downed craft, but also a flying saucer complete with little green men.
As part of a search and rescue exercise, the cadets and senior members on the ground team were assigned to look for possible signs of a crashed airplane in eastern Greenville County.
"We were told to look for an aircraft possibly coming down in a neighborhood, but we had no type of aircraft, so we were just looking for airplane parts," 2nd Lt. Ronald Hardgrave said.
Mission accomplished … and then some.
In a residential front yard the team found a Rockwell Commander 685 that had crashed in Mississippi in 1991. Greenville resident Kim Varner had bought it to use as part of his Halloween display.
Varner made an accompanying flying saucer by joining a pair of satellite dishes together. The alien craft’s little green occupants were costumes placed on poles nearby.
"My first thoughts were that it wasn't what we were looking for, and we thought it was just something someone had set up there, so we didn't think anything of it, really," said Cadet Chief Master Sgt. Sally Anderson.
After reporting the find to mission base, however, the team members were informed that the scene was, in fact, their target.
Capt. Charles W. Morris Jr., The incident commander overseeing the exercise, knew of the crashed plane in the Halloween display and decided to use it as part of the exercise.
"We became aware of it and realized that we were going to have bad weather in the morning, so we decided to set up an urban search, which is also very realistic," said Morris, also the Greenville squadron’s commander.
While Varner had not known about the exercise, he did appreciate his display’s being used as a search target.
"He was pleased to see them," Hardgrave said.
The exercise later involved a search in a different location for an emergency locator transmitter, which simulated a crashed aircraft.
Overall, "I thought it was a lot of fun," Cadet Senior Airman Hudson Cole said.
Asked if she expected to remember the exercise for awhile, Anderson answered in the affirmative.
“Little green men are kind of hard to forget," she said.
