Originally Posted by
Winged Wheeler
Every KC-135er has as tory like this: In the early days of OEF we had a crew that was assigned refueling with the Navy, so they bolted the drogue on back and they launched with as much gas as conditions allowed that day. Of course, when they arrived out in the area 2 hours later, they checked in to hear a KC-10 finishing up the AR with their receivers.
Now they had no recievers, couldn't dump their gas into a 10, but they did have bingo plus 120, or something like that so they had to stay in their left hand orbit at 250.
Hours later, when they were light enough to actually land, they asked every 30 or 40 minutes to go.
13.9 hours after departure, they landed at the same rodent infested airport they had taken off from and had never offloaded a drop of gas.
hehe... well, I can't say that hasn't happened more than a few times, BUT, the KC-135 has many more missions now-a-days than just orbiting in an anchor in left hand turns while being "hosed" by a KC-10 and the CAOC. Yes, air refueling is obviously the main mission, but we also do Medical Evacuation missions, Coronets, Business Efforts, Capstones, special ops stuff (depending on the unit), etc... Of course, on active duty these days in this wonderful war we're in, you're going to spend the majority of your time over Iraq/Afghanistan in yes, left hand turns. You probably do have less of a chance of getting shot at in a KC-135, but unfortunately, if you do get shot at (with a SAM), you'll never know it until you hear the BOOM. We don't have any RWR systems to warn us of being locked up and/or fired upon and don't have chaff/flare systems to fo incoming missiles. So, aside from firewalling the throttles and running away, bending over and kissing our arses goodbye is pretty much our primary defensive manuever. This jet was built in the days when our primary focus was refueling B-52's/B-1's to go drop the "big ones" on Russia and most likely never come back to the US as we knew it when we took off.