Do any of those three airports have ground controlled approaches (GCAs)? If as the piece indicates the aircraft’s displays were unusable, a PAR would be a logical solution to that, potentially to a trap if zero viz. The USAF was moving away from GCA’s when I left active duty, no idea where they are with them now, potentially taking McCord out of contention. Could also be things weren’t as bad as made out to be and they wanted to recover to home base.