 Boy, it's been over 60 years since I've done that. As 82-year-old Richard Devine climbed into the cockpit of a U.S. Air Force KC-135, the memories of his days in the Air Force during the 1950s and 60s started flowing back. Fuck here. And then right here you could put anywhere from 10 to 12 passenger-type seats. The retired Omaha-Nebraska resident said he found recent photos on the Internet of tail number 580057, the same KC-135 he helped maintain during the 1950s. It's still flying and it's just up the road in Sioux City, Iowa. After accepting an invitation to visit the Iowa Air Guard Unit, Devine was met by Master Sergeant Jamie Bethune. The pair toured the updated KC-135 and shared related experiences and some of the history of the air-refueling aircraft. Are they taxi-hard enough, you know, a tight enough turn, it'll leak, knock on wood and no issues. Man, we used to fight that all the time. When Devine entered the Air Force in 1958 and arrived at Lorraine Air Force Base in Maine the following spring, he became part of the first generation of crew chiefs to maintain the Air Force's newest jet-powered tanker aircraft. In the back of the aircraft, the former airman was eager to crawl into the boom pod where air-refueling work is performed when the aircraft is in flight. I'm not quite as agile as it used to be. The mission at Lorraine Air Force Base during Devine's time had KC-135 and B-52 aircraft flying continuous airborne alert along large parts of the Arctic region near the border of the Soviet Union as part of Operation Chromedome. When I was up there, it was sack and we worked every day as though we were at war. The bombers were airborne for 24 hours and the tankers supported the bombers. The bombers would have to be refueled at least once, usually twice while they were in orbit up on the North, on the North Circle, they called it. Air Force KC-135 has been re-engined, reskinned and mostly remade into a different aircraft compared to the original A-Model of Devine's time. Regular maintenance and constant care through the years have kept the KC-135 in continuous service ready for the same air-refueling mission it was created to perform over 60 years ago. Well, that's a lot quieter than what I used to be. Reporting from Sioux City, Iowa, I'm Vince DeGroote.