Gas Stations in the Sky

8/14/2019 Gas Stations in the Sky

1/8

1

Spring 2004 Volume 19, Issue 4

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/2004/4

Gas Stations in the Sky

SINCE THE 1920S, EVER-IMPROVING IN-FLIGHT REFUELING HAS LET PLANES STAY IN THE AIR FORHOURS, DAYS, OR WEEKS AT A TIME

BY MIKE MAY

Flying at 300 knots, Capt. Alton (Boots) McCormick feels a slight bump in his F-15C Eagle as he passesthrough the bow wave behind a KC-135 tanker. He stabilizes his fighter jet about 500 feet back and thenaccelerates toward the boom, a rigid, telescoping 50-foot pipe coming off the rear of the tanker. As the boomdisappears over his left shoulder, McCormick turns his attention to a series of lights on the underside of thetanker: Youre kind of watching the tanker for an overall big picture, and the director lights tell you forward, aft,up and down.

Inside the tanker a boom operator, better known to pilots as the boomer, runs the direction lights andmanoeuvres the boom into position with the fighters refuelling port. At contact, fuel surges through the boomfrom the tanker to the fighter. In just a few minutes McCormick takes on 20,000 pounds of fuel. Then he easesback his throttle to disconnect and banks away from the tanker.

When McCormick describes this procedure, he makes it sound easier than parallel-parking a car. Yet in-flightrefuelling is an extremely tricky manoeuvre that demands a high degree of precision, using instruments andtechniques that were developed through a history of experimentation stretching back to the early days ofaviation.

For almost a century now aviators have dreamed of staying in the air longer than is possible on a single tank of

gasoline. Larger fuel tanks and more efficient engines can help, but only so far. The basic problem is weight. Agallon of aviation fuel weighs about six and a half pounds. Thats enough to keep the 1909 Wright Signal Corpsairplane in the air for 16 minutes, a World War II B-24 for 18 seconds, and a modern F-15 fighter for about 6seconds. Unfortunately, carrying a large fuel load makes a plane slow and sluggish; beyond a certain point, itcan make the plane too heavy to take off. In any case, fuel decreases the weight available to carry cargo orbombs. To keep flying on extended missions, aircraft need to receive more fuel while they are in the air.

But consider what it takes to get fuel from one plane to another while both are flying. They must ease into atight formation at high speed and hold their positions, even in bad weather, poor visibility, or gusting winds.Then the plane carrying the extra fuelthe tankermust get a hose to the other plane. The crew receiving thefuel needs to connect the hose to their fuel tank in a way that will keep the flammable liquid contained. As thefuel flows, staying in formation grows more challenging because the tanker gets lighter, which makes it rise,

and the receiving plane gets heavier, which makes it sink. Still the pilots must keep the planes flying close andat the same speed. Once the fuel has been delivered, the flow must be turned off before the hose isdisconnected. Only then can the two planes fly off on their own.

AS EARLY AS 1917, A RUSSIAN MILITARY PILOT PROPOSED A METHOD FOR ONE AIRPLANE TO REFUELANOTHER THROUGH A DANGLING HOSE.

The first documented scheme for in-flight refuelling came from a young Russian aviator named Alexander deSeversky. His father owned a plane and taught him to fly when he was in his early teens. At the age of 21


2/8

2

Seversky, flying for Russia in World War I, attacked a German destroyer. He got shot down before he coulddrop his bombs, which exploded when his plane crashed. Somehow Seversky survived, but he lost a leg. Lessthan a year later, wearing a wooden leg, he returned to military aviation, and he soon downed 13 Germanplanes.

In 1917, now 23, Seversky proposed a method for extending flight: One plane could carry extra fuel and deliverit to another through a hose. After the Revolution, Russias new Bolshevik government sent him to the UnitedStates to study aircraft design, and he stayed there when political developments made his return perilous. Hegot a job as an aeronautical engineer for the U.S. War Department and was awarded the worlds first patent for

air-to-air refuelling, which proposed to provide large fuel tankers to supply fuel to pursuit ships while inflight.

Seversky went on to a distinguished career in airplane design and achieved perhaps his greatest fame as theauthor of the influential 1942 book Victory Through Air Power. He never put his refuelling plan in action,though, and other aviators concocted ideas of their own. In 1918 Lt. Godfrey L. Cabot, a U.S. Navy Reservepilot, dreamed up the idea of placing cans of gasoline on floating platforms in the ocean and picking them upwith a hook trailing from a flying plane, much as express trains of the day snatched mailbags. Although Cabotbecame proficient at picking up cans with this technique, no one ever used it for refuelling.

On November 21, 1921, a completely different method was tried. Frank Hawks (who a year earlier had takenAmelia Earhart on her first flight, and who would go on to set numerous speed records as a promotional pilot

for the Texas Company, which later became Texaco) flew his Lincoln Standard biplane over Long Beach,California. Wesley May, a barnstorming wing walker, crawled up onto its top wing. With a five-gallon can ofgasoline strapped to his back, May started walking toward the edge of the right wing. Meanwhile, EarlDaugherty, perhaps Americas greatest stunt pilot, eased his Curtiss Jenny just above the Lincoln. WhenDaugherty got his lower left wing within range, May reached up and grabbed a loop on its lower edge. ThenDaugherty eased away, with May and his gases can hanging below. May climbed up onto the lower wing andeventually poured the gasoline into Daughertys tank.

In-flight refuelling of a less strenuous sort attracted the attention of some military pilots. In World War I, Lt.John Richter had complained about having to return repeatedly to base to get more fuel during the St. Mihieloffensive in 1918. In 1923 he flew patrols along the Mexican border with Capt. Lowell Smith. Both mengrumbled about the abbreviated flights and seemingly constant refuelling. Smith suggested refuelling the

planes in midair and got the go-ahead to try it. Richter turned out to be a good choice to try out the newequipment because he had tested locomotives for the Santa Fe Railroad. For his part, Smith had flown incross-country races as an official representative of the Army Air Service.

Smith and Richter turned a De Havilland DH-4 two-seater into a tanker by installing a 40-foot hosestrengthened with steel cable. To refuel, a crewman in the tanker would toss the heavy hose overboard, and acrewman in another DH-4 flying nearby would try to grab it as it whipped in the wind. Richter even designed ahand pump to put suction on the gas tank in the receiver.

On April 20, 1923, Lt. Virgil Hines and Lt. Frank Seifert, flying the tanker, came in above and behind Smith andRichter and dangled a hose from the cockpit. (The tanker approached from behind to keep the hose fromtangling in the receivers propeller.) Imagine that someone is whipping the hose at a gas station as you try to

grab it and that the hose keeps flailing as you put the nozzle in the tank and fill up. Thats what Smith andRichter faced on that flight. Somehow one of them managed to grab the hose and hold on to it, and the twoplanes kept contact for 40 minutes in this tethered arrangement, though they passed no fuel.

The basic technique seemed to work, so on June 27, 1923, the same teams transferred fuel between planes.On the first contact, 25 gallons of gasoline were transferred. The receiving plane kept flying until it needed fuelagain, and a second hook-up gave it 50 gallons. Overall, the receiving plane stayed airborne for 6 hours and38 minutes. Beginning the next day, the receiver flew for 23 hours and 48 minutes nonstop, taking on 308


3/8

3

gallons of gasoline. On August 27 and 28, with 14 refuellings, Smith and Richter stayed aloft for 37 hours and15 minutes.

The future of in-flight refuelling looked promising until November 18, 1923, when some aviators attemptedrefuelling over Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas, as part of a carnival exhibition. The hose from the tankercaught in the propeller of the receiver, and the tanker crashed, killing Lt. P. T. Wagner. His death endedAmerican experiments with refuelling for several years.

In the fall of 1928 a group of Army Air Service officers decided to try again. They modified a Fokker C-2 for

aerial refuelling and called it Question Mark because no one knew how long it could stay in the air. Animpressive accomplishment for duration aloft had been set in June 1928 by the Belgian air force, which usedrefuelling to keep a De Havilland biplane in the air for more than 60 hours. (As the aviation historian Richard K.Smith has written, Given the minuscule size of Belgium the purpose of this operation is unclear.)

The tests would demand reliable tankers, which were created by modifying a pair of Douglas C-1s. Each wasgiven two 150-gallon fuel tanks and a trapdoor to drop out a 50-foot hose. (The same method was also used tolower and raise baskets containing food, oil, clothing, messages, and tools and parts for repairs.) To refuel, thetanker crew dangled the hose near Question Mark while the two planes flew at 80 miles per hour with as littleas 15 feet separating them. One of Question Marks crew members would st ick his head and shoulders out ofa hatch in the roof, behind the wing, and grab the fuel hose. Then he would manhandle it through the hole andline it up with the tanks opening.

During the design stages, crew members had feared that pulling the fuel hose through the air could createstatic electricity and cause a spark when the nozzle touched the fuel tanks opening. So the designers wrappeda copper wire around the nozzle and mounted a copper plate near the opening in Question Mark. Beforerefuelling, a member of the receiving crew touched the hose to the copper plate to discharge any static. Theproject started at Boiling Field, in Washington, D.C., but winter arrived before the tests could get under way, sothe group moved to Rockwell Field, near San Diego, in mid-December.

Keeping Question Mark airborne required communication between it and the tanker, but airborne radio was stilin its infancy, so the team devised an array of cumbersome techniques for keeping in touch. For air-to-airsignals between the planes, the crew members wrote messages on blackboards or used hand signals duringthe day; at night they used flashlight signals or attached written messages to the end of the gasoline hose.

When members of the ground crew needed to communicate with Question Mark, they wrote on the side of thetanker. To send a message to the ground, the Question Mark crew put it in a weighted bag and dropped it.

After months of preparation on both coasts, Question Mark was ready for testing. On January 1, 1929, it tookoff from Lot Angeles Metropolitan Airport, in Van Nuys, California, with Maj. Carl Spatz (who in 1937 wouldchange the spelling of his last name to Spaatz to encourage the proper pronunciation, Spots), Capt. IraEaker, Lt. Harry Halverson, Lt. Elwood Quesada, and Sgt. R. W. Hooe aboard. It was quite an illustrious crew.All except Hooe eventually became generals, with Spaatz serving as the Air Forces first chief of staff andQuesada heading the Federal Aviation Agency. Capt. Ross Hoyt, flying one of the refuelling planes, also wenton to become a general, and today the Brig. Gen. Ross Hoyt Award is given annually to the Air Forces toprefuelling crew.

A QUESTION MARK CREWMAN WOULD STICK HIS HEAD THROUGH A HATCH, GRAB THE HOSE, PULL ITINSIDE, AND INSERT IT IN THE FUEL TANK.

The team planned to refuel over the Rose Bowl, in Pasadena, where Georgia Tech and California wereplaying. (This was the game in which Roy (Wrong Way) Riegels, a California lineman, picked up a fumbleand ran it toward his own end zone, resulting in a safety that provided the eventual margin in Techs 8-7victory.) With the hose stretched between the planes and fuel flowing, Eaker held Question Mark steady.Suddenly turbulence forced the planes apart, and the hose swung wildly inside Question Mark. Gushing fuelsoaked Spaatz. Eaker jumped up from the controls, turned the plane over to Quesada, and told him to head


4/8

4

out to sea. Eaker and the others stripped Spaatz and rubbed him down with lubricating oil to keep the fuel fromburning his skin. Spaatz had no intention of ending the flight, so the planes flew out to sea and finishedtransferring fuel there.

Later refuellings were less eventful, and once the crew settled into a routine, they were able to receive fuelevery few hours. During all refuellings, crewmen were required to wear parachutes, so Spaatz, covered only inlubricating oil, put on a chute and got to work with the rest of them. Question Mark stayed aloft for 150 hoursand 40 minutes, flying an oval course between Van Nuys and San Diego. During the flight the two tankerspumped more than 5,000 gallons of fuel in 43 transfers.

Private pilots took up the challenge of surpassing Question Marks feat. By July 1929 the record for durationaloft was up to 420 hours and 17 minutes. A year later it was 647 hours and 28 minutes. And in July 1935 apair of brothers, Fred and Algene Key, of Mississippi, set a record that still stands by keeping Ole Miss, aCurtiss Robin J-1, in the air for 653 hours and 34 minutes, more than 27 days.

The success of Question Marks flight also kindled interest in applying in-flight refuelling to commercialaviation. From August 15 through 20,1929, the Texas Company conducted a nonstop flight of a Buhl AirsedanCA-6 from Spokane, Washington, to New York City and back. That flight required 11 refuelling, including one ina violent storm. Another refuelling, over Miles City, Montana, took place without a regular tanker available.Local residents, alerted to the emergency by a dropped message, filled five-gallon milk cans with gasoline andsent them up in a plane, from which the cans were lowered with a rope onto the top of the Buhls fuselage.

Despite, or perhaps because of, this experience, commercial airlines showed little interest in the prospect of in-flight refuelling.

The U.S. military also stepped back from refuelling technology in the 1930s. Strategists sought other ways tomake planes fly farther, including low-drag steel monocoque skins instead of wood or fabric, larger fuel tanks(which could sometimes be jettisoned when empty), and more efficient engines. In-flight refuelling researchcontinued, however, in other countries, particularly Great Britain.

The technique still needed improvement. One weak link involved getting the hose from the tanker to thereceiver; simply dangling a hose in the air seemed primitive even in the 1920s. After watching an aerial-refuelling demonstration at the 1930 Chicago National Air Races, Lt. Richard Atcherley of Britains Royal AirForce thought he could do better, and he devised a new approach.

In Atcherleys technique, the tanker trailed 300 feet of line with a grapnel hook at the end. The tanker flew infrom behind, at an angle to the receiver, to hook the receivers 100-foot weighted line. The receiver then pulledin the tankers line, which was attached to a fuel hose. Atcherley also added an automatic coupling to the endof the hose, so the fuel line would open when the hose was connected to the receivers tank and close when itwas disconnected.

Atcherleys crossover method earned a patent in 1935. The patent was purchased by Flight RefuellingLimited, headed by Alan Cobham, who had previously been knighted for his work on civil aviation. Thecompany took over Atcherleys work, receiving support from Imperial Airways, which envisioned usingrefuelling in its commercial flights.

By 1939 Flight Refuelling Limited had developed another technique. In this method the receiver pulled aweighted line with a grapnel hook at the end, while the tanker flew alongside and firedsomewhat like awhaling harpoon gunits hooked line across the other to entangle the hooks. The tanker pulled in both lines,attached a hose, and released them. The receiver then pulled back the lines and the hose with a winch. As inprevious methods, the fuel flowed under the power of gravity, requiring the tanker to fly higher than thereceiver.

This technology had its first commercial success on August 5, 1939. On that day two Imperial Airways Short S-30 flying boats flew from England to the United States, refuelling in the air twiceonce over Ireland and once


5/8

5

over Newfoundlandfrom Handley Page Harrow bomber transports. It was not a nonstop flight; in fact, bothrefuellings took place shortly after takeoffs. Refuelling was necessary because the plane was carrying a heavyload of airmail and could not have gotten off the ground with a full tank of fuel. The flight went so well thatImperial Airways repeated it 15 times. Before this advance could change commercial travel, though, World WarII ended these experiments. After the war BOAC (British Overseas Airways Corporation) performed furthertests of in-flight refuelling until the arrival of long-range jet airliners became imminent.

The war rekindled some curiosity about in-flight refuelling in the U.S. military. In 1942 the Army Air Corpsasked Flight Refuelling Limited to outfit a B-24 Liberator as a tanker and a B-17E Flying Fortress as a receiver.

These retrofitted planes performed successful refuelling tests at Eglin Field, in Florida. Nevertheless, the ArmyAir Forces Board concluded that aerial refuelling would have limited use on bombers because long-rangebombers would soon become available, and by that time the United States expected to have occupied islandswithin their range of Japan. Consequently, American interest hibernated again.

WITH REFUELING, LEMAY SAID, WE CAN NOW DELIVER AN ATOMIC BOMB TO ANY PLACE IN THE

WORLD THAT REQUIRES AN ATOMIC BOMB.

Although World War II did not make refuelling seem urgent to U.S. military leaders, the Cold War was anotherstory. Several events spawned this shift in thinking. First, the Strategic Air Command (SAC) came into beingon March 21, 1946. This group was responsible for delivering nuclear weapons anywhere in the world, but all itcould rely on were piston-driven B-29 bombers, which lacked intercontinental range. Then the U.S.

government created the Air Force as a separate service on September 18,1947. Carl Spaatz, now a generaland the Air Forces chief of staff, assigned top priority to in-flight refuelling in January 1948.

The Air Force sent Gen. Jimmy Doolittle to Britain to investigate Flight Refuelling Limited and its apparatus.Doolittle had long been familiar with airborne innovations. In 1922 he had flown from Florida to California,making just one stop along the wayfor refuelling, of course. In 1929 hed made the first instruments-onlyflight, lifting off, flying a prescribed route, and then landing with a hood covering the cockpit windows the wholetime. And in April 1942 he had led the famous bomber raid on Tokyo that boosted Allied morale tremendously.

Doolittle came back with an enthusiastic report. On June 30, 1948, the Air Force activated its first two refuellingunits, the 43rd Air Refuelling Squadron, at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, in Arizona, and the 509th AirRefuelling Squadron, at Roswell Air Field, in New Mexico. Late that year each unit received B-29s modified as

tankers, which were called KB-29Ms. SAC wasted little time in showcasing its new capabilities. In December1948 a SAC B-50 flew 9,870 miles in 41 hours and 40 minutes, during which it was refuelled three times byKB-29M tankers.

SAC didnt stop there. From February 26 to March 2,1949, Capt. James Gallagher flew nonstop around theworld in 94 hours and 1 minute in the Lucky Lady II, a SAC B-50. The plane refuelled four times along the way,over the Azores, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and Hawaii. After that flight Gen. Curtis LeMay, the commanderof SAC, said, We can now deliver an atomic bomb to any place in the world that requires an atomic bomb.

Although SACs system looked good to observers, in-flight refuelling was still unsophisticated. The method inuse required a crewman to connect the hose manually in an unpressurized compartment. That limited thesystem to lower altitudes, where planes fly less efficiently because of thicker air. In addition, the system could

transfer only 200 gallons of fuel per minute, and SAC wanted 600. It also failed in severe cold because thehose froze on the reel.

The shortcomings in the approach led to a long-running duel between refuelling systems. In 1948 Boeingstarted testing its flying boom, an extendable pipe equipped with ruddervatorsessentially little wingsto fly itinto position. A year later Flight Refuelling Limited tested its new probe-and-drogue method. In this technique,a tanker dangles a flexible hose that ends in a drogue, which looks like a giant shuttlecock with its open endoutward. The receiver is equipped with a spear-tip-shaped probe. To transfer fuel, the receiver flies up behindthe tanker and inserts the probe into the drogue.


6/8

6

The Air Force tested the probe and drogue in December 1949 in Project Outing. It put probes on B-29s andRepublic F-84 Thunderjets and outfitted a B-29 as a tanker that pulled a drogue from its tail section. The AirForce also modified a YKB-29T tanker with three drogues, one from the tail and one on each wingtip, so itcould simultaneously refuel three planes (earning it the nickname Triple Nipple). Although these tests wentwell, on October 19, 1949, the Air Force put out a press release about the other system, the flying boom, thatstated: It is expected that the new system, developed for the Air Force by the Boeing Airplane Company,Seattle, Wash., will alleviate some of the difficulties of the existing method. Less than a year later Biggs AirForce Base, in Texas, received the first KB-29P, which was a B-29 converted to a tanker with a flying boom.

By the end of 1950 SAC needed a faster tanker, one that could keep up with Boeings B-47 Stratojet bomber.At that time the aeronautics industry offered few planes that were large enough to serve as tankers and fastenough to keep up with the jet-age military. To get more tankerspeed, SAC selected Boeings KC-97Stratofreighter, which was based on the B-29. The KC-9 7 could outrun previous tankers, but its maximumspeed when fully loaded still lagged behind a B-47s minimum speed. Consequently, some refuellings betweena KC-97 and a B-47 demanded a so-called toboggan manoeuvre, in which the tanker flies at a downwardangle to pick up speed and the jet follows along the same path while reducing its thrust. Besides being hard tocoordinate, the toboggan manoeuvre wasted fuel. The receiving plane could end up using half the fuel it hadtaken on just to get back to its former altitude.

Even as the technology was still being modified, tankers saw action in the Korean War. On July 6, 1951, a KB-

29M flown by a SAC crew refuelled four Lockheed F-8 O Shooting Stars over North Korea. This appears tohave been the worlds first combat refuelling. A few days later a KB-29P used a flying boom to refuel a NorthAmerican RB-45C Tornado photoreconnaissance plane.

A dramatic demonstration of the potential of refuelling occurred on September 28, 1952. On that day Lt. Col.Harry W. Dorris took off from Yokota Air Force Base, in Japan, in an F-80 that was equipped with a 265-gallonfuel tank on each wingtip, and a probe to refill it. Soon after takeoff Dorris refuelled at 15,000 feet because hisheavy load of armaments had demanded a light load of fuel just to get airborne. Then he flew to Kilchu, NorthKorea, where he dropped his two 500-pound bombs on a four-story building that contained enemy supplies.After that he refuelled. Next he flew to the Onjin Peninsula and shot his four 6-inch rockets at a supply dump.Reduced to only the 50-caliber ammunition of his machine guns, he strafed a troop bivouac near Yangdok, incentral North Korea. Completely out of ammunition, he flew reconnaissance. He refuelled for the final time at

night and ended his flight after 14 hours and 15 minutes.

In spite of successes like these, compatibility issues arose, especially when a probe-equipped fighter ran lowon fuel with only a boom-equipped tanker in sight. In hopes of resolving that dilemma, SAC wanted a singlesystem: boom or drogue. But no consensus could be reached. Pilots of fighters, which are small andmanoeuvrable, preferred the drogue, which was simpler to use and weighed less. Pilots of large heavybombers liked the boom, which required less attention from the receiving planes pilot and could pass morefuel per minute.

The most serious problem with tankers, however, continued to be speed and altitude. Early tankers could notfly as high as the improving fighters and bombers of the day. SAC needed a new tanker, something fast thatcould fly high, but the government did not offer any development money. Still, Boeings president, Bill Allen,

knew that the military needed a new tanker, and he wanted to build it.

On March 26, 1952, Allen sent a memo to his division heads, asking if they thought they could fly a prototypejet transport in just two years. Jim Barton in Boeings cost-accounting group said it would cost $13 to $15million. On April 22 Boeings board of directors unanimously approved $15 million for Project X, or the Model367-80, better known as the Dash-80. This project posed an enormous risk, for the military had not describedthe specific performance details that it wanted, and the $15 million investment represented more than twiceBoeings profits from 1951. Although the plane had civilian uses as well, if the Dash-80 failed as a tanker,Boeing could fail too.


7/8

7

At SACs Requirements Conference in November 1953, General LeMay called for 200 jet tankers. The AirForce announced a design competition for a jet tanker on May 5, 1954, and invited Boeing, Convair, Douglas,Fairchild, Lockheed, and Martin to participate. At that point Boeings leaders could only forge ahead with theDash-80, which had its first successful flight test on July 15, and pray that it would win the competition.

THE KC-10 TANKER BOTH A AND A PROBE-AND-DROGUE SYSTEM, SO IT CAN REFUEL ANY PLANE INTHE U.S. MILITARY FLEET.

On August 3, 1954, with the jet-tanker design competition still in progress, the Air Force decided to buy interimtankers. The Air Force Secretary, Harold E. Talbott, announced an order to buy 29 tankers from Boeing. Lessthan two weeks later the Air Force said it would buy 88 more Boeing tankers. It looked as if Boeing was set towin the competition, but it didnt. In February 1955 the Air Force announced that Lockheed had won thecompetition and at least one of its tankers would be funded for construction. In the very same announcement,however, Talbott said the Air Force would buy an additional 169 tankers from Boeing. Eventually it cancelledLockheeds paper proposal.

Boeing called its Dash-80 tanker version the KC-135. It improved several capabilities over previous tankers. Itcarried 31,200 gallons for refuelling, whereas the KC-97 (previously called the C-97) carried only 8,513. And itcould refuel planes at 35,000 feet, nearly twice the altitude ceiling of the KC-97. It also used Boeings flyingboom.

Even with the advent of the KC135, refuelling battles continued. SAC used the boom, the Navy and theMarines stuck with the probe and drogue, and the Air Force used both. It could be confusing and dangerouswhen planes low on fuel called for a tanker and had to ask if it was a mamameaning it had a drogueor apapameaning a boom. The KC-135 could add a drogue adapter, but only when on the ground.

Despite this never-ending battle over hardware, tankers played an enormous role in Vietnam. By mid-1967they had begun refuelling helicopters in addition to planes, greatly extending the copters range and allowingthem to support more rescues and special missions. Vietnam also saw the first aerial refuelling of largenumbers of planes on demand during battle. To accomplish this, the military developed Air Refuelling ControlPoints, or ARCPs, at which tanker pilots flew around an oval at least 100 miles long. Sometimes whole fleets oftankers used the same ARCP, and 50 or more could line up. When that happened, receivers arranged

themselves in cells separated by 4,000 vertical feetessentially waiting in line for gas.

In 1966 alone, KC-135 crews received credit for saving 53 planes that would have crashed without refuelling.One of the most noted saves came in June, on the so-called Peanuts flight. Four F-105s, each carrying six750-pound bombs, took off from Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base. The length of this mission called forrefuelling before and after bombing. The jets got their first refuelling and then hit the northeast railroad that ranfrom Hanoi to China. During the bombing the F-105s encountered heavy flak and then dogfighting with MiGs.They used more fuel than expected and couldnt even climb to a safer height for return. They called forrefuelling, and a KC-135, which was defenceless, headed into MiG territory.

The F-105s overran the tanker and flew back for it to catch them. Then the tanker overran them, and the F-105s used afterburners to catch up. Peanuts 4, flown by Capt. Ralph Beardsley, showed only 100 pounds of

fuel and got on the boom first. Regulations prohibit refuelling during turns, but Beardsley needed fuel sodesperately that he made contact during a 30-degree banked turn, grabbed some fuel, and got back into line.The gauge for Peanut Lead, piloted by Capt. Ray Lewis, then read zero, so he got on next. Eventually all fourpilots fuelled up and flew home. The pilot of Peanuts 3, Ken Kerkering, wrote: This tanker went far beyond thecall of duty by flying into hostile territory to reach us, and without him the four of us in Peanuts flight, at best,would have been running around in the jungle.

In the mid-1970s the Air Force started looking for a replacement for the KC-135. It came from the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10, which was dubbed the KC-10 in its tanker version. This new tanker joined the Air Force on


8/8

8

March 17, 1981. It included both a boom and a probe-and-drogue system, so it could refuel any plane in theU.S. military fleet. According to Boots McCormick, Refuelling behind a KC-10 is very stable. It is so big italmost drags you. KC-10s made possible Americas retaliatory raid on Libya following a terrorist bombing in1986. In the longest fighter mission ever flown, 18 F-IlIs were sent 5,000 nautical miles from their base inEngland to Libya and back (a flight made longer when France, cooperative as usual, refused to let the planesfly through French airspace). The raid was conducted in complete radio silence, and one of the F-111 pilotshad never even seen a KC-10 before, but the refuellings went off without a hitch.

Both the KC-10 and the KC-135 worked hard during the 1991 Gulf War, in which tankers completed more than

85,000 refuellings, pumping more than 1.2 billion pounds (185 million gallons) of fuel. The postwar Air PowerSurvey stated: The success of the aerial attacks also depended on the ability to mass formations of aircraft,made possible by an extensive network of aerial refuelling KC-135 aircraft.

Piloting tankers remains a risky job. Early in the Afghan conflict a KC-130 Hercules tanker crashed in themountains of Pakistan, killing all seven Marines on board. In the landlocked battles of Afghanistan and Iraq,everything moves by air, and that demands tankers to keep the planes moving. Nevertheless, U.S. forces relyon only about 60 KC-10s and 550 KC-135s, which by military standards are antiques, if not dinosaurs. In fact,as lain Murray of UPI recently wrote, The U.S. government operates over 80 percent of the 1950s-era 707-class aircraft still flying today, largely due to the tanker fleet.

Secretary of the Air Force James G. Roche told Air Force magazine, My fear is that our tanker fleet could be

the [lost] horseshoe nail that could cause the horse to tumble, the king to fall, and the kingdom to come apart.The Air Force plans to convert Boeing 767s for use as tankers, though the program is being held up byaccusations of wasteful spending. Whatever the outcome of this debate, the durability of the current tankerfleet shows how well designed they were for an unglamorous but indispensable job that allows America toproject overwhelming airpower to the remotest parts of the earth.

MIKE MAY is a freelance writer living in Madison, Indiana. His most recent article for Invention & Technology wasabout the development of the first Texas Instruments calculator.

Gas Stations in the Sky

Documents

Transcript of Gas Stations in the Sky