Osgood helps deliver supplies to Haiti victims

15 years ago
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Photo courtesy of the U.S. Air Force

    CAPT. MATTHEW T. OSGOOD of Easton, left, and fellow air crew members departed Charleston Air Force Base in Charleston, S.C. last Wednesday night in a C-17 for an airdrop mission over Haiti that delivered much needed relief supplies to the victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake that left hundreds of thousands either homeless or dead. Osgood, a C-17 pilot and aircraft commander at the base, is the son of Ann and Tom Osgood of Easton.

 

By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer

    PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Capt. Matthew T. Osgood of Easton is one of the millions of people around the world lending a helping hand to the people of Haiti.
    Last Thursday, Osgood, a C-17 pilot and aircraft commander at Charleston Air Force Base in Charleston, S.C., piloted a C-17 for the airdrop that delivered much needed relief supplies to the victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake that left hundreds of thousands either homeless or dead.
    “When the earthquake happened, the U.S. Air Force went into response mode,” said Osgood in a phone interview last Friday. “We have crews from every C-17 base in the Air Force involved in the mission.
    “The top priority is getting supplies to the people,” he said, “and the airdrops help get food, water and medical supplies into remote villages. The roads and infrastructure are heavily damaged, so airdrops are one way we can help.”
    Osgood said his C-17 dropped 24 pallets of meals ready to eat (MREs) and 16 pallets of bottled water over Haiti. Last Thursday’s airdrop was the second since the earthquake; the first was last Monday.
    “That’s 70,000 pounds of supplies that we dropped from our cargo plane alone,” said Osgood. “This whole operation is called Operation Unified Response because everybody’s taking part in it. We loaded up and took the three-hour flight down to Haiti. We dropped the supplies in the drop zone right next to the village so the locals could come out and pick them up.”
    Calling the Haiti airdrop a “humbling experience,” Osgood said the area remains in chaos.
    “There’s still smoke and random fires in some places,” he said. “We couldn’t see much from the air because we were up so high – 600 feet to 800 feet – but you could tell there wasn’t much infrastructure, so you could only imagine how hard it was getting supplies to them.
    “We flew 5 miles from Port-au-Prince. It’s tropical but there are a lot of mountains … like Hawaii,” said Osgood. “We could see helicopters going back and forth from the ships carrying supplies. It was organized chaos, and very surreal to see it on the news one day and to be there the next.”
    One of the reasons Osgood was selected for the Haiti airdrop was that he had several successful airdrop missions in Afghanistan and Iraq – 14 to date – and his airdrop scores were very accurate.
    “The major difference in Afghanistan was that we were re-supplying our own troops,” he said. “They called them ‘beans and bullet’ missions since they primarily dropped munitions and food to the troops manning the remote outposts in the mountains. Accuracy in these air drops was very important and the re-supply missions were ‘high morale’ for both the air crews and the troops on the ground.”
    A junior captain just four and-a-half years out of the U.S. Air Force Academy and a year and-a-half removed from pilot school, Osgood has accumulated more than 1,500 flying hours and is qualified in every mission the C-17 is capable of including airdrop missions and special operations missions. Osgood said that’s why he chose the C-17; because of the varied and valuable missions that the C-17 can perform.
    Osgood, the son of Ann and Tom Osgood of Easton, departed again Sunday for a 15-day multi-mission deployment to Iraq/Afghanistan. Matthew’s brother, Michael, is also training to be a C-17 pilot and will join Matthew at Charleston Air Force Base in June and be assigned to the same squadron; both brothers are very excited about this. Matthew’s sister, Michelle, is a junior at Husson University and is taking a double major in biology and chemistry. After graduation, Michelle is planning on going to medical school to become an OB/GYN doctor.
    The Osgoods are the grandchildren of Floyd and Reta Flewelling and Fred Osgood, all of Easton.

 

ImagePhoto courtesy of the U.S. Air Force
    C-17 CREW MEMBERS from Charleston Air Force Base in Charleston, S.C. hook up one of the parachutes for the 40 pallets of food and bottled water to the static line prior to an airdrop over Haiti last Thursday. The static line, a thick, metal wire cable, is what deploys the parachutes as the pallets roll out of the back of the plane. The C-17 was piloted by Capt. Matthew T. Osgood of Easton, who is an aircraft commander at the base.

 

 

 

Photo courtesy of the U.S. Air ForceImage
    THIS C-17, piloted by Capt. Matthew T. Osgood of Easton, prepares for a three-hour flight to Haiti from Charleston Air Force Base in Charleston, S.C., for an airdrop that delivered food, water and medical supplies to the victims of the Jan. 12 earthquake that left hundreds of thousands either homeless or dead. The crew members left South Carolina last Wednesday in preparation for Thursday’s airdrop.

 

 

 

 

ImagePhoto courtesy of the U.S. Air Force
    TWENTY-FOUR PALLETS of meals ready to eat (MREs) and 16 pallets of bottled water – weighing a total of 70,000 pounds – were dropped near Port-au-Prince, Haiti last Thursday as part of Operation Unified Response to help the people of Haiti who were devastated by a Jan. 12 hurricane. Capt. Matthew T. Osgood of Easton, son of Ann and Tom Osgood, piloted a C-17 from Charleston Air Force Base in Charleston, S.C. for the airdrop. One of the reasons Osgood was selected was that he had several successful airdrop missions in Afghanistan and Iraq – 14 to date – and his airdrop scores were very accurate.