Navy engineers ingenuity brightens up Kandahar

By William Cole
Advertiser Military Writer

Flying toward Kandahar airport at night aboard a C-17 transport, Rear Adm. Charles Kubic was struck by the bright spot of light he saw miles away on the arid plain below.

Navy Seabees have repaired several Soviet-era vehicles found at Kandahar airport in Afghanistan. Associated Press

"Everything is dark," Kubic said. "The plane is dark, you are flying with night-vision goggles on, and they light up the runway kind of at the last minute with expeditionary lights."

The detention center at the airport, ringed with triple coils of concertina wire and home to several hundred captured al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, was one well-defined exception.

So illuminated was the camp that Kubic, commander of the Third Naval Construction Brigade at Pearl Harbor, joked that "you could have gotten a suntan in that facility at night."

Kubic was in Afghanistan to check up on his Seabees — Navy construction engineers — and their handiwork was evident before he even set foot on the ground.

"I landed there, and I said, 'Where did you guys get the lights?' " he said. "You know, you are out in the middle of nowhere, and this place is lit up brighter than a night football game. And they said, 'Well, that was a challenge.' "

It wasn't the only one. About 40 Seabees from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 133 graded airfields at "Camp Rhino" and patched runway holes at Kandahar airport — arriving within four days of the Marines landing in Afghanistan.

The Seabees got broken-down Soviet trucks running again, provided electricity, and at the airport, built the detention center, put in lights and erected guard towers using what they could rummage and repair.

"That's really where they made their mark — with innovation," Kubic said. "Whatever needed to be done, they found a way to do it."

Kubic, 51, who also commands the Pacific Division Naval Facilities Engineering Command, spent several days in Kandahar this month meeting with construction battalion personnel in his role as commander of Seabees in the Pacific.

There, Kubic also saw some of the prisoners. "These folks had no fear, no remorse — nor had they surrendered," Kubic said. "You could tell this by looking at their eyes."

In the Pacific, two Seabee battalions are always forward-deployed — one to Okinawa, the other to Guam.

"We had a small force initially planned, and if the mission had gotten bigger, we could have backed it up with more (Seabees)," Kubic said.

The C-17 Globemaster III carrying them in represented the first expeditionary landing of the new cargo carrier.

At Camp Rhino, 60 miles south of Kandahar and 400 miles from the sea, the Seabees unloaded bulldozers, a front-end loader, rollers and water trucks.

C-130 and C-17 transports would land at night, and the Seabees would maintain the dirt runway — originally built by a wealthy Arab to accommodate light planes at his hunting lodge — during the day.

The first night, the runway deteriorated so much a C-130's nose wheel got stuck, and the Seabees had to dig it out.

"Without that runway, you could not have sustained this operation, so that was really their key mission," Kubic said.

But the Seabees, whose motto is, "We build, we fight," also had to take their turn at guard duty, and acted to protect the perimeter as well.

The Marines seized Camp Rhino on Nov. 26, and by mid-December, when Kandahar airport was taken, 800 fixed-wing sorties had been flown from the primitive facility. When Kubic arrived, troops had gone 40 days without a shower.

Marine Brig. Gen. John Castellaw, deputy commander of Marine Forces Pacific, recently credited the Seabees for their role at Camp Rhino.

"The reason the Marines were able to get in there was because after every C-17 landed and broke up the runway, we had a group of Chuck's (Kubic's) Seabees that would run out there and fill up the ruts so we could get another C-17 in with (light armored vehicles) on it and other stuff."

At Kandahar, the Seabee mission changed somewhat, but was just as critical.

"We had a better runway — it was an asphalt runway — but we had bombed it in such a way that you couldn't use it," Kubic said.

The Seabees set about filling the string of bomb craters with dirt, and later concrete.

"You could see at one time Kandahar airport was probably a pretty nice place," Kubic said. "They told me it was built in the late fifties by Pan Am as one of its 'gas and go' stops when they were trying to get its Clipper fleet to go around the world."

But now, the airport 12 miles from town is "pretty well destroyed."

Hygiene took a step forward when the Seabees got four wells up and running, and rigged up a hot-water shower. They also acquired a washing machine in town.

Seabees found an old Czech runway sweeper and got that running, and did the same for a water truck that was minus an engine.

"The Seabees got a little V-6 engine and they stuck it back in close to the firewall," Kubic said, smiling. "Even the Marines were saying, 'I don't know how the Seabees do it' — they are driving a truck that doesn't even have an engine in it."

At least 1,500 troops were camped, and 350 al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners were held at the airport.

Building a detention facility "was a mission we really had not planned for when we started into this operation," Kubic said.

But when the Seabees were called upon to do so, they again showed their innovation.

Three rolls of razor wire surrounded tents with flaps that were fixed open so Marines could keep watch on prisoners.

Around that was an earthen berm, and at various points, guard towers constructed by the Seabees from old water tanks, trailers, scaffolding, trees that were cut down — whatever they could find.

For extra security — and to avoid a repeat of the prison uprising at Mazar-e-Sharif — the Seabees scavenged just about every light they could find at the airport, and bathed the detention facility in light, Kubic said.

Kubic noted that the success of the Seabees was possible because of the help they received from Pacific Division engineers here.

Chief Engineer Erik Takai led a group that was receiving satellite photos and other data from the field to help Seabees make decisions, Kubic said.

One issue examined was where Seabees would have to dig a well if the Marine force had stayed any longer at Camp Rhino.

"They actually were able to plot for me what they believed to be the underground water profile," Kubic said, "and they showed me where to dig, and how deep to drill if we had to. That was all coordinated back here."

Kubic said the Seabees unit in Afghanistan was probably one-third the size it needed to be for the mission at hand.

(But) they did it successfully and they did it with very little external support," he said. "It was Seabee ingenuity that pulled it off."

Reach William Cole at wcole@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-5459.