Tag: Air-to-air refueling
The KC-135 Stratotanker North Star had its landing gear down and its engines at idling speed in an attempt to slow down enough to match the F-4 Phantom’s speed and perform a midair tow. Ron Craft, a KC-135 Stratotanker crew member who was stationed at Loring Air Force Base (AFB) from 1981...
Shell 77 crew encountered a condition they had not realistically experienced in training, which left them with an unrecognized hazardous situation that was difficult to overcome. On May 3, 2013, a KC-135R, call sign Shell 77, crashed in the foothills of mountains located six miles south of Chaldovar, Kyrgyz Republic. The...
U.S. and Japanese ships and aircraft did not, however, locate the crew of the KC-130 Hercules The U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) has pronounced the five remaining Marines involved in the F/A-18 and KC-130 aviation mishap during an air-to-air refueling exercise on Dec. 6, deceased. The change in status comes at the conclusion of...
"I called the middle tanker, below me: 'What number are you, in the middle?' He responded, 'I'm tanker #2.' I said, 'No, you are now tanker #1 and we are on the way down. Also, just to warn you, if we don't get this gas right now, we are going swimming,'" Jay Lacklen, former C-5 pilot Jay Lacklen is a former...
RAAF No. 33 Squadron and Aircraft Research and Development Unit worked with U.S. Navy VX-20 to conduct the trials from Naval Air Station Patuxent River Taken on May 29, 2018 the cool photos in this post show a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) KC-30A belonging to No. 33 Squadron refuelling a U.S. Navy P-8A Poseidon belonging to VX-20 during trials...
The refueling basket became disconnected from a USAF KC-10 during an air-to-air refueling mission, shattering the Hornet’s canopy Taken on Feb. 1, 2002, the main image of the article shows maintenance personnel dispatched from the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74) removing a refueling basket from the refueling probe on an F/A-18 Hornet strike fighter assigned...
So far, the CH-53K and CH-47 are seen as potential contenders. However, only the MH-47G has an inflight refueling capability Col Bernhard Martin, a senior Luftwaffe (German Air Force) officer, told Flight Global at Defence IQ International Military Helicopter conference in London on Jan. 31 that the next heavy-lift helicopter for the service needs to be inflight refueling capable. Martin says...
The outflow valves which are used to regulate the pressure of the KC-135 were capped off during a 5 year overhaul and never opened back up The impressive photos in this post show the result of failed pressure test on a KC-135 Stratotanker aircraft. "This is an example of what happens when we do not pay attention to detail, and do...
Although only six F/A-18s were involved, the A400M mission simulated the refueling of eight aircraft via multiple contacts The interesting video in this post shows the A400M ability to deliver fuel to six F/A-18s in a single mission during a recent air-to-air refueling (AAR) human factors certification flight on Dec. 13, 2017. Configured with two underwing pods and a centre hose...
No matter how deadly, the F-35 couldn’t go anywhere or complete any mission without regular fuel-ups from the gas-station-in-the-sky KC-135 Stratotanker Fairchild Air Force Base (AFB) KC-135 Stratotanker was hard at work refueling six of the U.S. Air Force’s latest fifth-generation fighters, the F-35A Lightning II, over the Pacific Northwest on Oct. 17, 2017. As explained by Senior Airman Janelle Patiño,...
