Agree, pretty much everything about sitting in the back sucked, the night made it suck and scary to boot. I had 2 flights where I had to put the student on the boom and let him take it from there. That was cleared solo in my book -- didn't want to make anybody else sit through that abomination!!!

All the above is true, and the bold is FACT in a three-bag F-4! Beak to Beak, and just about to start your turn, and 69% of the time, HE would turn into you. We called it "Tanker BFM."

When we found out they turned at a certain A/A TACAN DME, we just stopped using the TACAN, and often just told him we'd do the turn ourselves.

I'll bet you've got a tanker story or two.

Mmmmmmmmmmabe.....

You'll never hear me talking down to a tanker toad.

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!

I've done both, a student's first night trip to the tanker was worse since I was pretty certain that all the SAMs and AAA shot at me weren't going to result in any sort of collision. Besides, when did you guys go anywhere near a MEZ, it doesn't count if you're watching the enemy shoot at your SEAD and you're 100 NM away...

This is precisely why we in the Navy send our students to the tanker (day/night) and to the ship (day/night) for their first time solo...

Good grief. Are fighters still getting sent to drogue equipped tankers by mistake? This happened a couple of times in Vietnam (no big deal for a Thud) until someone decided to add Papa to all the call signs of the guys with a drogue installed. Made things go a lot smoother. Guess we will just keep reinventing the wheel until all the KC-135s are gone.

And the guy going to the night tanker....adjusting his seat height...and the canopy departed the a/c....hmmmm.....

That's one way to get out of tankering.

We had guest tanker help one time for day and night plugs. Went down to one aircraft, so I hot seated 4 students one after another through the day plugs.
I demo'ed one plug (amazing what a great sight picture it is sitting so far back) and then all four guys did outstanding with very few aborts or misses. Monkey see - monkey do was certainly a player that night.

I was wiped out after those 4 flights though and we canceled the night tanking since I was still the only IP around.