Originally Posted by
1Seat 1Engine
Almost 4000 hours in the F-16 and one of the most consistently terrifying things in the airplane was instructing a newbie on his first night AAR from the back seat, followed by a backseat night landing.
Really, it was less comfortable than a dentist chair. I was always untying the knots in my toes afterwards.
On deployment, when you'd refuel several times a flight, it actually gets to be quite uneventful. Especially if the boomers are proficient; a fact frequently overlooked. Proficient confident boomers make refueling go WAY faster. Timid boomers can ruin your night.
Hell, there's usually more funny stories about blown tanker rejoins than actual refueling. Remember! Never go two circle with a tanker above 20,000, he might out-rate you!
Agree with most of what you said. I was never a backseat IP, so I would say getting shot at by Serbian SAMs was a little more scary than getting gas ... BUT, on the other hand, we did take an informal poll in the squadron a couple of weeks into the war (Allied Force, 1999), and the consensus that the most dangerous part of each mission was getting to / from the tanker ... Too many jets around and too many not following the procedures, too often the ATO changed and you didn't know. I remember one night that I rejoined on what was supposed to be my tanker, but it ended up being the wrong tanker in the wrong track--something I figured out
after I was on the boom and getting gas! Good on the boomer for getting the mission done.
On another mission (the night Vega 31 went down), when my 3 hour OCA mission turned into a 7.7 hour RESCAP, I once rejoined on a KC-135 ... That was dragging a drogue, so had to go find a proper one with a boom instead!