Nickel Air Refueling

In August, Steve had a flight where they “hit the tanker” to refuel in the air. Without refueling from the tanker, they can only fly for 1-1.5 hours per flight and then they need to land to refuel. Refueling in the air of course extends length of the flight. They don’t do this often for just regular everyday training missions. But when they are flying in combat, then they do this often to be able to stay in the air for long sorties, 8-10 hours. Hitting the tanker is a skill that needs to be practiced occasionally because it’s hard to do and dangerous, so whenever they can get a tanker in the area, they practice. Not sure what day this was, but the squadron’s flight doctor was able to go up in the tanker and took these pictures. He didn’t keep track of who was who but Steve was in this flight and could be the pilot in one of these jets. Back when we were stationed in Germany, I got to go up in a tanker and actually watched Steve refuel! It was by far the coolest Air Force related thing I’ve ever gotten to do, better even than the two taxi rides I took in the F-16.