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Never Loved Until They're Needed, Aerial Refueling Crews Gave the Newly Independent Air Force Its Global Reach

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Never Loved Until They're Needed, Aerial Refueling Crews Gave the Newly Independent Air Force Its Global Reach Never loved until they're needed, aerial refueling crews gave the newly independent air force its global reach. by itoirui.J. Pennington To the pilot of an airplane running low on fuel, the business end of a tanker is a beautiful sight. Here, one KC-10 prepares to refuel another. v %w$> теоки пли'( IIKKSK he first attempts to refuel while airborne occurred be­ tween 1918 and 1921, when U.S. Navy pilots used grap­ Tpling hooks to snag five-gallon cans of gasoline from floats on the Potomac River. It was thought that snatching fuel from ships would enable aircraft to make ocean cross­ ings. In 1921, the first transfer of gas between two airborne aircraft was accomplished when a wingwalker simply car­ ried a container of fuel from one aircraft to the other. But techniques improved rapidly, and in 1923, Henry H. "Hap" Arnold—then a major in the U.S. Army Air Service—direct­ ed the first in-flight hose contact between aircraft. The watershed for military aerial refueling was January 1929, when an airplane dubbed Question Mark stayed air­ borne for nearly a week. Using a crude hand-held hose to transfer gas, it made 43 contacts with two tankers and set an endurance record of 150 hours, 40 minutes. The five-man crew of Question Mark, all members of the Army Air Corps, received the Distinguished Flying Cross. Several went on to renown: The commander, Major Carl A. Spaatz, became the first chief of staff of the independent Air Force in 1947, and Captain Ira С Eaker, after commanding the Eighth and Mediterranean Allied Air Forces during World War II, became CEO of Hughes Aircraft. The crews of the tanker aircraft that refueled Question Mark, on the other hand, received letters of commendation rather than the DFC. This set an enduring precedent: Although tanker support was absolutely essential to the success of flights like those of Question Mark, it would usually be regarded as a less glam­ orous and somehow less deserving role. And yet the mod­ ern Air Force couldn't exist without it. Hap Arnold articulated a "global mission" for the Air Force even before it was a separate service. He described a force "designed, equipped, and trained to operate beyond the sphere of influence of either armies or navies" in This Fly­ ing Game, a book he co-authored with Eaker in 1936, short­ ly before he was named Chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps. Although this vision pre-dated the use of aerial refueling in the Air Force, aerial fueling helped make it possible. 'The thinking was always global," says Colonel Phillip S. Meilinger, The U.S. military saw the potential of aerial refueling soon after it saw the potential of the airplane. The first in-flight experiment, which relied on one aircraft snagging a hose that dangled from another, was accomplished in 1923 by two U.S. Army Air Service de Havilland DH-4s (right). But the flying services didn't seriously pursue the idea until after World War II. In the early 1950s, the Strategic Air Command hosted a test of two refueling methods: the British-developed probe-and-drogue (far right) and the Boeing-developed flying boom (being used to refuel a B-50, top). SAC chose the latter. 1923 1929 REFUELING Two U.S. Army Air Service Flight of Question Mark. DH-4s conduct first successful CHRONOLOGY air refueling; first aerial refueling-related fatality. 26 Air&Space October/November 1997 a historian and former commander of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies at Maxwell Air Force Base. "Refueling made it easier and cheaper." (An essay by Meilinger appears on p, 46.) Following the end of the cold war, the roles of the Air Force have shifted from the strategic to the conventional, from apocalyptic nuclear war scenarios to a U.S.-based quick- response military, but aerial refueling continues to be the cornerstone of this new global engagement philosophy. "Even today, aerial refueling provides the capability to provide glob­ al effects, lethal and non-lethal, in a matter of hours," says Major Dik Daso, current Chief of the Air Force Doctrine Branch at the Pentagon. 'Technology has not advanced to the point where limitless fuel supplies, something like cold fusion nuclear reactors, are available. Until this advance oc­ curs, there will always be a need for in-flight refueling." Air Force strategists consider the refueling tanker a "force multiplier" because it expands the power and reach of com­ bat aircraft, just as if the service had more of those aircraft. The availability of a tanker allows combat aircraft to trade fuel for weapons: An aircraft can take off with minimum gas and maximum munitions, then top off its fuel in the air. Furthermore, the aircraft can stay in the air to the limits of pilot endurance. Refueling is strictly a support function; tanker crews don't use weapons or risk death in combat. Yet they do make it possible for others to deliver weapons in greater quantities and at greater ranges, and they do on occasion save lives. Moreover, duty on a flying gas station is not without risk. Al­ though tankers normally operate in protected airspace, they still must rendezvous with other aircraft at high speeds, sometimes at night or in bad weather and sometimes under conditions of radio silence. Tanker crews who venture into hostile airspace need courage: Their aircraft have no warn­ ing systems, no self-defense systems, and little ability to evade a threat. A tanker is essentially a 300,000-pound gas can—one flak hit could be lethal. A collision with a re­ ceiving aircraft could have incendiary consequences. o be sure, not everyone takes tankers for granted. Cer­ Ttainly not the 13 airmen who were spared a dangerous and possibly fatal swim in the Atlantic in March 1986. It started as a typical "fighter drag."Two brand-new KC-10 tankers from the 68th Air Refueling Group at Seymour John­ son Air Force Base in North Carolina were using their so­ phisticated navigational equipment to lead nine Marine A-4 Skyhawk attack aircraft in formation across the Atlantic, pro­ viding in-flight refueling as required. The pilot of one of the tankers, Lieutenant Colonel Marc С Felman, had 2,500 hours in the KC-135, the tanker that for four decades has formed the backbone of Air Force refueling operations, but only six 1934 1948 1949 sling, Ltd. First KB-29M tankers developed; Lucky Lady II completes founded in Great Britain. first two aerial refueling units the first nonstop in Air Force established (equipped around-the-world flight. with KB-29M hose-method tankers). Air&Space October/November 1997 27 Fill 'cr Up Looped Hose Probe-and-Brogue Flying Boom The first aerial refueling technique to be In this system, the tanker reels out a Developed by Boeing Aircraft in 1948, used regularly, the looped-hose method hose which ends in a "drogue": a funnel- the flying boom was put into military was developed in Great Britain by RLR. like basket. The receiving aircraft production the following year on the Atcherly in the 1930s. The tanker maneuvers into position to insert its KB-29P tanker. The boom operator stationed itself below and to the side of fixed probe into the drogue. Advantages worksfrom a station in the rear of the the receiver aircraft, which trailed a 300- include the minimal equipment aircraft and controls the boom by foot line with a pronged grapnel behind required: External pods with drogue manipulating its rudderva tors—the little it The tanker then fired a 100-foot reels can be mounted on many types of set of "wings" on the boom that act as weighted line—the contact line—with aircraft Large tankers can carry several both rudder and elevator. Receiver an attached hose so that it would arc in drogue refueling systems and thus aircraft take an initial position about 10 front of the receiver's line. The receiver refuel several aircraft simultaneously. feet behind and 25 below the tanker. reeled in the lines, removed the grapnel, One disadvantage is that the primary The boom operator then maneuvers the and placed the hose into the receiving responsibility for making a hookup falls boom into a socket in the receiver's tank. The tanker then climbed until it on the receiver pilots. A nervous refueling receptacle. When the tanks was above the receiver and the fuel was receiver—such as one flying a damaged are Mli?tlie boom automatically breaks transferred through gravity flow, aircraft or in bad weather—can have away. This method is the most reliable, flowing from the tanker down to the trouble making a connection. The probe- has a higher fuel-transfer rate, and receiving aircraft. In use until the 1950s, and-drogue system was used on the KB- requires less skill on the part of receiver this method required relatively low 29M and TAC KB-50J and is used on pilots. Flying booms were used on the altitudes (below 10,000 feet) and slow some C-130s and on Navy, Marine, and KB-29P and KC-97 and are used on the airspeeds. all helicopter refueling platforms. KC-135 and KC-10 tankers. missions in the KC-10. (The first wide-body tanker in mili­ getting kind of emotional for them." tary service, the McDonnell Douglas KC-10 is descended Felman realized he had to get into the air immediately if from the freighter version of the DC-10.) there was to be any chance of saving the tanker and the re­ Felman and three A-4s took off about 45 minutes ahead of maining fighters.
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