 You know, I don't suppose there are many things in this world that are indispensable, but this old bird comes about as close to it as you can get for an airplane. It's a KC-135 strato-tanker, and it's used for refueling aircraft in flight. Oh, we also use it in sack for carrying cargo or passengers, and sometimes it's an airborne command post. But when I say indispensable, I'm thinking of it mostly as a refueler. I'm Sergeant Novak, and I'm a boom operator on these KC-135 tankers. I work with a pilot, a co-pilot, or navigator. We're the whole crew, just the four of us. Okay, preparation contact checklist. How are you preparation for contact after we're setting? Set 2992. Set co-pilot 2992. Stay with us, sir. I'm going back now to refuel an F-4C fighter. Come on, I'll show you how we do it. Doesn't apply, I still blight. Doesn't apply radio contact. Jag 49, U-8. These tankers are almost indispensable for today's air operation. You take aircraft deployment, for example. You know how we got our fighter aircraft over there in the Korean War? We had to dismantle them, send them over there by ships, and then reassemble them when they got there. It took months. But today, with aerial refueling, we can send fighters any place in the world in a matter of hours. Like we did when we sent that squadron of F-106s over in Korea right after the Pueblo incident. Most of the fighters and reconnaissance aircraft involved in the Vietnam War flew over there with the aid of air refueling, and they fly back the same way when they're due for overhaul in the States. On any given day, aside from mass deployments, there are always tankers and fighters going both ways over the pond. What the tanker has done for us is that we are no longer at the mercy of fuel duration. Commanders in Europe or the Far East know that the capabilities of the tanker can be used to build up their forces in a matter of hours. Now that's important because in this world things move so fast today that when you need aircraft, if you don't get them right away, you can be in serious trouble. As far as bombers are concerned, they can get to most bases without air refueling. We give them unlimited range and save precious time. So we are able to send B-52s non-stop and quickly to Guam from the U.S. on a regular basis. Many of the B-52s that go on bombing raids in Vietnam operate out of Guam. It's a long haul from Guam to Vietnam and back, and there's no way to complete the mission without air refueling. The B-52 and the 135 are designed to work together. They give us our global capability. They can keep up with us well enough to refuel us at higher speeds and altitudes. They can refuel us at night and in all kinds of weather conditions. There's a saying in the Air Force that flying is 90% boredom and 10% sheer unadulterated terror. Ground alert duty is a little less on the terror side and a little more on the boredom side. We've got our work to do, mission planning, things like that. But when we pull alert duty, we're pretty well confined to the alert shack. Of course, we find other things to do. Some guys sleep, others work crossword puzzles. Me, I like to read. However, there are the more energetic. We have one boomer around here that has so much energy, he does all the gardening around the building while he's waiting for the klaxon horn to sound. Bombers and tankers would be off the ground long before they could be hit. The tankers would go along to make sure the bombers had enough fuel to reach their targets in return. The bombers couldn't make it to their long-range targets and back without air refueling. The same thing applies to fighters that bomb Vietnam targets from bases in Thailand. The birds are so loaded down with bombs, they use a lot of fuel just getting off the ground. So after they're airborne, about 15 minutes out, we top them off with 5 or 6,000 pounds of fuel. It makes you feel pretty important to see them come up. You give them fuel, you see them go away, and you know you're a part of it. It makes you feel even better when one of them comes at you after a strike, and he's got holes in it, and he's dripping fuel, and you're trying to keep him alive and get him back to his base. After it's over, you know you've saved an airplane, and you've saved a pilot. But when you get home, sometimes you can't buy your own drink at the club. I remember once when I was going in for refueling, the probe on a 104 is very close to the side of the fuselage. Just a few inches out, and as I got close, I made a rough contact, and it bent the probe into where the fuselage. While I was sitting there wondering if I was going to have to bail out or just what, the boomer was able to make contact and bend the probe back out far enough so that we could make a refueling. I'll tell you, the old boomer really earned his money that day. I was coming back from a strike mission over the north in a pretty heavily damaged 105 one day. I had fuel siphoning problems and control problems and every other problem imaginable, a situation of that kind. And I managed to rendezvous with the tanker okay, but we were right in the middle of some thunderstorms, and we couldn't refuel. And I was running out of ideas quickly. The tanker guy said we had to do an immediate emergency descent, which we did, and I hung right there with him. I was getting pretty nervous about this time, as you can imagine. And we got down below and leveled out, and those tanker guys took control and got me calmed down and got me hooked up. We had to slow way down because of my control problems. He slowed that big bird down, and I finally got my gas. Had about 600 pounds left when I finally hooked up. And then he stayed with me all the way back to home plate, and I was really glad he did because with the fuel siphoning problems I had, I had to make about five or six hookups in order to make it all the way back. They really did a fine job for me. I remember one day flying out of Yuban, the eighth wing when General Olds was a commander, and then on a strike mission about 20 miles north of Hanoi, oil depot out there. Everything was going okay. We got the bombs off. We headed outbound, and number four, we looked around. He wasn't with us. And he was doing a lot of chattering on the air. He was new head, a little bit excited being up there anyway. And he lost sight of us, and he took off in the wrong direction. We had to head it on out east to exit out over the Gulf and come on back. And when we coasted out, he said he had us in sight, so we just continued on to the coast, and we asked for a fuel check, and he had about 4,000 pounds less than the rest of us. And I made the remark to my back-seater at that time that we're going to lose that airplane today, because there's just no way that he could make it to the tanker unless we asked him to do something different to come a little bit farther north for us. So we got on the radio and started calling, telling them what was going on. And number four by this time was getting a little excited. In fact, the poker string was getting a little bit tighter. And not knowing just where the tanker rendezvous point was, he said he did have a carrier in sight. So the tanker pilot, knowing off where all the carriers were based out in the Gulf there, said just stay over the carrier that he had come up and meet him. Now, this was a little bit farther north than they normally come up for post-track refueling. So the guy was just orbiting the carrier. He's getting down about 1,500 pounds, getting hurt and for fuel now. And the tanker said, I have you in sight. Gave him a vector right to the tanker and he plugged up and had about a minute and a half fuel remaining. And if the tanker hadn't come a lot farther north and known what was going on in the situation there, we would have lost an airplane that day. And that night, number four, bought that tanker pilot Mini Drinks. He did a great job for it. There have been many, many saves. I run a tanker squadron and I hear these stories all the time. I'm quite proud of our tanker crews. They're always there listening in on the fighter frequencies. I've never yet heard it said they didn't go after someone when they needed fuel. John Tire, I want to tell you personally how much I appreciate the job that your tanker people did for the fighters in Vietnam. Without the cooperation and the professional ability demonstrated by these people, I simply couldn't put the bombs onto the target. And I know that I speak for every single fighter pilot in all of Southeast Asia that the appreciation that they have for the tremendous job that the tankers did. And we'll always be grateful for the job that they've done and our support. I'd like to say, General, it's probably a mutual admiration society among the tankers and the fighter crews. I think that the tanker crews are probably more keenly aware than any other group of the tremendous responsibilities that the fighter and recon crews had on their missions over the north. They're keenly proud of their achievements. Their opportunity to serve the fighter pilots is probably one of the finest sources of pride and highlights of their career. Well, I don't think many people really understood the role that the tanker played. And I'd like to just recap a few significant things. On an average mission, our fighters were staggered in and bought four to a tanker. And they picked on an average of around 12,000 pounds of fuel. And they had to have this amount of fuel in order to get into the targets with the number of bombs that they were carrying. And as they got into the target area, they had to use AB. And when they used AB, the fuel consumption went up tremendously. And coming back out of the target area, they staged onto the tankers again, and they had to take another 4,000 pounds. And that 4,000 pounds was the amount of fuel that they needed to get home. And without this capability of the tankers, we wouldn't have been able to get into these target systems under the heavy defensive environments that we had to and do the job. And for example, when we're going after the Paul de Meere bridge, probably the toughest target that we ever had, fuel was going to be critical. The timing had to be exact. And the professional manner in which the tankers were able to take these people on and stage them off of the tanker and into the target area and recover and take on these added fuel in order to get home, I think was the highest professional standard that's ever been demonstrated between any components within our force. And this relationship with the tanker and fighter team in my judgment have constituted a new domain for tactical operations in the future. As a matter of fact, prior to my departure from Vietnam, I was beginning to use tankers to refuel F-100s to do close air support. And that's a new tactic to come out of this war. Well, certainly I feel that it's most important to note, General Mo Mayer, that the overwhelming air superiority that had been established by the fighter forces over the north did permit the tankers to operate further north and probably would have been able to be accomplished or done in any other circumstances. Not too many people think of tanker duty as being hazardous and we don't think much about it ourselves. But I know a boomer that was in a tanker crew that got the distinguished Flying Cross and the Mackay Trophy and you don't get awards like that just for laying on your belly and pumping gas. Everyone knows what the distinguished Flying Cross is, but the Mackay Trophy is given for the single most outstanding feet of airmanship for the year. This historic refueling feet, along with the professional confidence of this crew, ultimately resulted in saving six Navy aircraft and their crews. Their outstanding aerial skill, devotion to duty, and humanitarian interest in their fellow servicemen reflect the highest credit for themselves and the United States Air Force. Mr. Secretary, General Lee Wade, once again it has been demonstrated that you can continue aircraft in flight if they're properly equipped for refueling. And sometimes you have to take extraordinary measures to keep some of them in flight. You have to put an extra refueler between the main refueler and the aircraft that need the fuel. I think this was a great thing that this crew did and it's a well-deserved honor and I'm delighted to have the opportunity to present these certificates and also at this time to present the crew with the Mackay Trophy, which of course is too big for you to carry around, so we keep it here and put your names on it. Thank you very much and thank all of you for attending. Hey, since we have multiple refuelings, how about if between elements I stole the boon and come forward for a cup of coffee, huh? Sure. All right. The tanker crews that have been flying together for a while don't do much talking during flight. In fact, if somebody else was looking on, they'd probably think, what's the matter? These guys mad at each other or something? Well, it isn't that, of course. It's just that they've worked together so long that each man seems to know what the other wants, even before he asks for it. Like on one mission, I noticed the navigator was getting a little grouchy. So I gave him a cup of water and he settled right down. He was thirsty, but he was so busy that he didn't even realize it. That's what I like about tanker duty. You're part of a team. A team the Air Force thinks is indispensable to modern air power. Anyway, you look at it. I'm glad to be a part of it.