https://www.airforcetimes.com/military-honor/smoy/2021/08/25/special-ops-continued-despite-covid-19-this-airman-devised-a-way-to-keep-aircrew-virus-free/
Repurposing a chemical and biological contamination tent to protect troops from the coronavirus earned Senior Master Sgt. Jeremy Mayo Military Times’ 2021 Airman of the Year award.
Mayo, the 352nd Special Operations Support Squadron’s operations superintendent at RAF Mildenhall in England, has served in the Air Force for nearly two decades. But 2020 put his years of experience and leadership to the test with missions that don’t stop for a pandemic.
The Arkansas native enlisted in the Air Force in 2002. Though he admired the travel and deployments of the loadmasters he knew, he appeared headed for a career in munitions instead.
Then, as luck would have it, he found a way into the air mobility field through a connection on his brother’s baseball team.
“One of the kids on there, his dad was the guy who divvied up the jobs at [the Military Entrance Processing Station],” Mayo said.
A loadmaster job became available, and the man approached Mayo’s father: “He’s like, ‘Hey, does your son want it? He leaves in two weeks,” Mayo recalled. Mayo’s first flight was his trip to basic military training.
He started out working for Air Mobility Command but wanted something more from his Air Force career. Special operations appealed to him for its life on the road, unpredictability and opportunities to work with elite groups from across the military.
So far, he’s flown missions including refueling, resupply and infiltration and exfiltration on the MC-130H Combat Talon II, MC-130J Commando II and the now-retired MC-130P Combat Shadow.
His current squadron “provides direct support to unified and theater commands in response to U.S. Special Operations Command Europe tasks by orchestrating current operations, planning, weapons and tactics, aircrew training, weather, mobility, intelligence, operational medicine and other abilities throughout Europe and Africa,” according to the Defense Department.
This is his second assignment at Mildenhall, serving first from November 2010 to November 2014 and then returning in August 2018. He’s also been stationed at his hometown installation of Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas; Hurlburt Field and Eglin AFB, Florida; and as an instructor at Kirtland AFB, New Mexico.
Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Jeremy Mayo adapted the chemical aircrew survivability barrier, a tent-like, air-filtering structure for C-130 airframes, for use in the COVID era. He is Military Times' 2021 Airman of the Year. (Air Force)
He was finishing a senior leadership course for career enlisted aviators in Texas in March 2020 while COVID-19 swept through Europe. As the virus gained a foothold in the United States, the course was cut short, and Mayo headed home to a squadron that looked drastically different than the one he left.
Airmen were split into different shifts that wouldn’t overlap to avoid spreading the virus throughout the squadron. Mayo was one of a few mission-essential workers who came into the empty office each day.
“We were pretty tight — did a lot of things together, people always interacted,” he said of the 67th Special Operations Squadron, his unit at the time. “To see people go their own ways and try and stay in touch as much as possible, it was just a very odd time.”
Mayo said Col. Clay Freeman, the former 352nd Special Operations Wing commander, mentioned that the Air Force may already have a weapon against COVID-19: the chemical aircrew survivability barrier, a tent-like, air-filtering structure for C-130 airframes.
Testing showed the contraption could let airmen transport an ill passenger away from the battlefield without endangering the crew’s health. Mayo recognized its pandemic-era value and helped come up with the plans for how airmen would use the system.
“Individuals who get contaminated, we can isolate them,” he said. “Then the [medical] team … can take care of them, and we can get them back.”
