Learning to fly altered career path for Jensen

Jay D. Jensen grew up in Belleville, Kansas; graduated from Clifton-Clyde High School, and then graduated from Cloud County Community College (CCCC) in 1984.
A proud achievement, but here is what's really impressive: Major General Jay D. Jensen is the Director of Plans, Programs and Requirements, Headquarters Air Force Reserve Command, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia. Jensen is responsible for planning and programming more than $6 billion annually for a force of 70,300 personnel and 300 wings and groups.
"I planned to have a career as an accountant," Jensen said, "but then I took my first flight lesson in Concordia, and that kind of changed my flight path in life."
While Jensen was still in high school and then attending CCCC, he worked at Blosser Municipal Airport. "I would do anything they needed: clean planes, move planes, sweep the floor. Anything to build up free flight time. Bill Fellows taught me to fly."
Once he got his pilot license, Jensen was always ready to fly somewhere. "When you're young and somebody says, 'I'll pay for the plane if you'll fly it', I always jumped at the chance."
Jensen had two memorable experiences from his early days as a pilot. "I once flew to Topeka to pick up someone who had passed away. We took the seats out of the plane. I thought the body would be in a coffin. It wasn't. I had to help load it on the plane. When I landed back in Concordia there was a group of guys waiting for me, grinning. They knew that when you fly, the plane decompresses, and a human body does things."
Another time Jensen flew a woman to Kansas City who had been drinking. "She was too intoxicated to drive. There were no barf bags on the plane." The expected happened. "The smell was revolting."
Jensen joined the Air National Guard in 1984, and then in 1987 graduated from Peru State College in Nebraska with a Bachelor's Degree in Accounting/Management. Rather than becoming an accountant, he stayed in the military.
Over the decades, as his career blossomed, Jensen held a variety of positions: C-130J Deputy Test Director, Headquarters Air Force Reserve Command Division Chief, Office of the Secretary of Defense Policy Advisor, and group and wing command positions in tactical and strategic airlift wings.
Jensen deployed in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (the name used by the U.S. government for the Global War on Terrorism, but primarily refers to the War in Afghanistan) as Deputy Director of Mobility Forces, U.S. Air Forces Central Command, Southwest Asia.
"I spent a lot of time in the sandbox," he said succinctly.
Jensen is a command pilot with more than 6,500 hours of flight time, including airlifts, special operations, electronic/weather collection, and test missions. With each promotion, Jensen was almost always transferred to another Air Force base or command facility. "There's one advantage of moving a lot," he said. "You don't build up a lot of stuff."
In conjunction with his promotions, Jensen's military rank rose throughout the decades. Commissioned a Second Lieutenant on November 19, 1987, he was promoted to a Captain in November of 1999, a Lt. Colonel in 2004, a Colonel in 2008, a Brigadier General on December 7, 2016, and then a Major General on February 1, 2019.
Jensen is rated as a navigator and command pilot, and has flown the T-37B, T-38A, C-12F, C-17A, C-130E/J, WC-130J, and the massive C-5A/B, the U.S. Air Force's intercontinental-range strategic airlift capability.
Just how big is a C-5 Galaxy? Fully loaded, it can weigh in excess of 350 tons. Its wingspan is almost the length of a football field, and it's as tall as a seven-story building. Covering the interior and exterior of the plain requires 2,600 pounds of paint. A C-5 carries enough fuel for the average American car to make 31 trips around the world.
Jensen fondly recalls his years as a Hurricane Hunter, flying a WC-130J Weatherbird. With a crew of five, Jensen flew into hurricanes to gather meteorological data in the vortex, or eye, of the storm. The data collected increases the accuracy of hurricane predictions.
How intense is it to fly in a hurricane? "It's a little nerve-racking. In a Cat 5 (a Category 5 storm with sustained winds of at least 157 miles per hour) the rainfall is intense. You get banged around a lot. It keeps you awake."
Jensen said an average hurricane hunter mission would last about seven to eight hours, with three hours spent inside the hurricane. "Once you break through the eye wall, the center is dead still. It's amazing. But you don't get much chance to enjoy it, because then you punch through the eye wall on the other side, and you're back in the storm."
Jensen said he has returned from some storms that were so intense the paint was stripped off the leading edges of the wings and the nose of the plane.
Jensen has had a storied career, and he can now see retirement on the horizon. "I'll probably retire next summer. It's time to pass it on to the next generation," he said, then added with a laugh: "Those fitness tests keep getting harder."
With all the different locations across the United States that Jensen has worked, he was rarely in the Midwest. In retirement, he thinks he and his wife will move back to Kansas. "I've got relatives near Belleville and Courtland," he said. "It will be nice to be close to family."
Major General Jay D Jensen: thank you for your 38 years of service.