0930 Monday 25 March 2002
On board a VRC-40 C-2 Greyhound
Flying to the USS John F. Kennedy in the Indian Ocean
I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm’s way.
—JOHN PAUL JONES, AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY WAR NAVY COMMANDER
The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more.
—DR. JONAS SALK, DEVELOPER OF THE POLIO VACCINE
Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
—MARK TWAIN, AMERICAN WRITER, HUMORIST, AND ENTREPRENEUR
Conan, a B-1 weapons system operator and member of General Moseley’s Commander’s Action Group, or CAG, was looking for me, said the sticky note on my desk. The rumor was that Conan and General Moseley’s CAG were building a brief to answer the Army’s noise about the lack of Air Force support in Anaconda, but no one had confirmed the brief’s existence. The bigger rumor was that an interservice feud was brewing between the 10th Mountain and Air Force leadership. Big Army blasted the Air Force in the mainstream media for not giving 10th Mountain ground forces the air support they needed, which was pure bovine feces. I found Conan later that afternoon carrying a relatively large PowerPoint brief in his left hand. Its cover page stated: “Ninth Air Force Report on Operation Anaconda.”
“Show me this brief I hear does not exist,” I said as Conan and I leaned over the admin counter.
“You can see it, Sluggo, but I can’t give you a copy. It’s still rather sensitive.”
“Oh, come on, Conan—there’s no bad blood in the media between Big Army and Big Blue!”
Conan chuckled and laid the brief on the desk between us. The rivalry rumor was true, because the Air Force’s answer to the 10th Mountain complaints lay before me.
Conan asked for my air refueling input. The old business adage is true in combat and defined air refueling support to Anaconda: you can have it quick, cheap, or easy—but you can have only two. If you want it quick and easy, the product will never be cheap. Air Mobility Division and my air refueling team received late notification of the 10th Mountain’s support requirements. Anaconda’s big spike in fuel consumption was not cheap and was directly related to our receiving tanker requirements only five days before Anaconda’s kickoff. Understating requirements drove fuel costs through the roof after the increase in airborne artillery needed for Petty Officer Neil Roberts and RAZOR 03’s rescue. Acts of God, such as Neil Roberts’s falling off RAZOR 03, are never anticipated. A rescue operation looking for and fighting over downed troops always drives refueling and gas requirements higher.
Once Anaconda began, shifting battlefield objectives and a poor command and control setup caused delays on the battlefield, again driving fuel costs higher as fighters and bombers waited over targets. Our one-hundred-thousand-pound fuel reserve in Snooze’s KC-10 orbiting near the Shah-i-Kot evaporated in the afternoon of the first day. A quarter of the refueling events required drogues for Navy fighters, and there were not enough in the theater if we were to go to war in Iraq. Strike aircraft returning with retained weapons needed more gas, because heavy attack aircraft consume ridiculous amounts of fuel. Bringing fighters from the Jab in Kuwait several times a day on nine-hour-plus sorties threw every refueling plan off when they stayed past their three-hour station times. The approval process for clearing US aircraft to refuel from international tankers took too long, and the matrix used to schedule receivers to tankers was not up-to-date. I handed my notes to Conan and asked where the brief went from there.
“First stop is COMACC, General Hornburg. He’ll have to fight Big Army over this one.”
“Well, if you need any more input, see Gramps. I’m leaving for a couple of days.”
“Where are you going, and who approved this trip, Sluggo?” Conan asked, smiling.
“Bahrain, and then on a COD to the USS John F. Kennedy in the Indian Ocean. I’m discussing their move up into the NAG and getting their Anaconda lessons learned so we don’t make the same mistakes over Iraq.”
Conan told me to have a great trip, gathered up the brief, and stepped off to his next appointments.
The USS John F. Kennedy was about to transit from the Indian Ocean through the Strait of Hormuz and into the Northern Arabian Gulf to begin Operation Southern Watch no-fly zone support. My team needed to gather Carrier Air Wing 7’s lessons learned while they were still fresh in their minds and to brief them on current and future Iraq refueling operations. Rolls, one of the Navy folks in San Diego I worked with at the KC-135 Employment School, was now the Carrier Air Wing 7 chief of plans. Even in combat, it’s not always what you know but who you know. Two days after I sent Rolls an e-mail about my travel plans, he e-mailed back that the air wing had approved the visit. I do not know of any aviation-related event on the face of this planet that compares to blue water Navy aircraft carrier operations in combat conditions. Every jet catapults at max gross weight carrying live weapons. General Scott said Afghanistan schedules were relatively static at the moment, so it was a good time to go see Rolls. Chunks, a good friend of mine in the States, sent me a new lunch bag filled with sixty rolls of Fujichrome Velvia 50 film just for this trip. I packed a light carry-on bag and my new Minolta camera.
A loadmaster escorted me to the C-130’s cockpit for the hour-long flight to Bahrain. I talked with the flight crew for the entire hour about their airlift operations and their thoughts on going into Iraq. Folks working in the CAOC’s Naval Air Liaison Element, or NALE, said that the only hotel to stay at in Manama, Bahrain, was the Ritz-Carlton, right on the beach. Being a very light sleeper from my SAC nuclear alert days, I just wanted one good night’s sleep without jet noise waking me up. As I walked into the Ritz-Carlton lobby, I saw the NALE folks had not steered me wrong. My room on the sixth floor was silent—no planes departing nearby in afterburner. I was in bed by 2000 and slept for eleven hours. A taxi dropped me off at Manama’s Navy Air Traffic Office the next morning. Four Grumman C-2 Greyhounds were parked behind the fence, all with red-and-orange sunset tails with a silhouette of a cowboy on a horse, the insignia of the VRC-40 Rawhides.
Leaving Manama at 0900, I settled in for the three-hour flight to the USS John F. Kennedy’s flight deck. Somehow my Navy counterparts could sleep in the back of the noisy COD, but I could not. As we approached the John F. Kennedy, the loadmaster began giving the same instructions I’d heard multiple times when approaching carriers for trap landings: feet and knees together, arms crossed and hands grabbing each shoulder harness firmly, chin down on my chest. We broke at 3 g’s over the bow, and I could see Big John’s wake under us. My grip on the shoulder harness tightened. After another loud SCREECH—BANG—HALT, I was back aboard the Kennedy, which was steaming in combat conditions. As we taxied out of the wires, the loadmaster dropped the cargo ramp. Hornets and Prowlers lined both sides of the bow. Two Hornets taxied behind us toward the waist catapults. Burning jet fuel is like crack in the nostrils of a military pilot, and the Kennedy’s deck reeked of it. When we reached the hummer hole, the COD’s props reversed thrust and backed us into a parking space in front of the conning tower. Rolls stood behind the COD’s cargo ramp, waiting for me. A few moments later, the engines shut down.
Over the loudspeaker, I heard “Lieutenant Colonel, United States Air Force, arriving!” Field-grade officers with ranks of O-5 and above are rendered honors when coming aboard a Navy vessel. I thanked Rolls for the Navy’s formal greeting.
“Captain Bill Gortney and Air Wing Seven welcome you aboard, Sluggo.”
“Rolls, thanks so much for letting me come down. We have a lot to talk about.”
As we walked down the catwalks belowdecks, Rolls and I discussed what was going on in Afghanistan. After signing in at the Kennedy’s ATO office, Rolls walked me to the carrier’s billeting manager’s office. Lieutenant colonels got their own staterooms, which cost $35 a day for meals and incidentals. Anyone would pay ten times that amount to be where I was and to see the activity on the flight deck. Carrier air wing operations were the Valhalla aviation photographers dreamed about. After we dropped my bags in my room, Rolls walked me down to the CVIC. He introduced me to his staff, and I shook hands with Rolls’s planners and intel analysts.
If you’re on a carrier, the CVIC is the place to hang out. It’s the nerve center for air operations, intelligence on enemy forces, analyses of targets and future operations, and the air wing schedule. Everyone had questions about air refueling during Anaconda, and Rolls scheduled a meeting for me to talk with his staff later that day. Our next stop was a short introduction to the commander of Carrier Air Wing 7. Captain Bill Gortney, the air wing commander, call sign Shortney, discussed refueling over Afghanistan and answered my questions about his move to the NAG. His air wing pilots had great praise for the tanker operations in Anaconda; they were “the best we have ever seen,” he said.
Rolls had strike plans to create, so he left me to my own devices, handing me his phone and bulkhead numbers if I got lost between decks. Fortunately, having been on carriers before, I knew my way around. Bulkheads and their numbers were something most Air Force people just smacked their heads on. But bulkhead numbers are a map to the carrier belowdecks, and I understood what to do when someone told me to find him or her at a particular number.
I walked aft, headed for the air wing ready rooms. Aircraft recovered one deck above my head, with the same SCREECH—BANG—HALT of my COD arrival. The sound of the arresting cables reeling out filled my ears as I walked through the door into the VF-143 Pukin’ Dogs’ ready room. A few F-14 Tomcat aircrew members stopped what they were doing and looked up at me; not a lot of Air Force lieutenant colonels visited the ready rooms.
The duty officer sitting behind a desk asked, “May I help you . . . sir?”
Every head turned to see who the “sir” was. I introduced myself as chief of the ARCT from the Prince Sultan CAOC, the guy who designed Anaconda’s refueling plan. Everyone gathered around me at the duty desk. Some related how refueling had gone well, and a few others told me some things ARCT needed to change. Softer drogue baskets was a common theme, and I told them wing pods were coming soon. Others had questions about how big-wing tankers operated. In every business, the best learning tool has always been a long talk with your customers, and there I was surrounded by them. Pukin’ Dogs Tomcats could not do their job unless they were refueled by Air Force or RAF tankers. Very few Pukin’ Dog aircrews understood tanker planning and the math used to build a schedule. Ollie, the Pukin’ Dogs’ commander, asked if I could come back and talk to his junior officers and discuss tanker capabilities. All of his JOs’ first hookups behind Stratobladders and Gucci Birds had been under combat conditions over Afghanistan, a terrible way to learn the Iron Maiden’s foibles.
My next stop was the VFA-11 Red Rippers ready room. Lungs, the Red Rippers’ skipper, asked if I would give his new Tomcat crews a briefing on tanker capabilities and limitations. I was beginning to notice a trend here. Lungs told me the same thing Ollie had, that most of his JOs refueled off Air Force tankers for the first time over Afghanistan in combat. What would happen if a Coalition air force went into Iraq? Trim, skipper of the VFA-131 Wildcats, and his executive officer, Satan, had a lengthy discussion with me about tanking over Afghanistan. I took notes as fast as my right hand could fly in a black-and-white composition book I’d bought for this occasion. I still have that composition book. I wanted to find out how the Lockheed S-3 Vikings of the VS-31 Topcats accomplished air refueling at sea. When I walked into their ready room, everyone noticed the Air Force lieutenant colonel and wondered how I got there. Pecker, the Topcats’ skipper, had a meeting to run to but assured me he would hook me up with one of his pilots later on.
I met Rolls back in the CVIC, and his planners walked me through their goods and not-so-goods of Anaconda. I laid out the initial Anaconda refueling plan and explained how it had been overcome by events on the ground. They all understood the strain put on us by Petty Officer Neil Roberts’s falling off RAZOR 03. This discussion evolved into refueling operations for Southern Watch and what would happen if we went into Iraq again. Knowing SPEAR probably had good reports on Iraq’s Air Force and integrated air defense network, I asked to read their latest. It was a gold mine of information. After a quick swing by the Dirty Shirt Mess for a couple of sliders and some auto dawg, I slipped into bed at 2330, tired and pleased. Our Navy customers were really happy with how my refueling team had supported them, but the lack of drogues in theater was detrimental to Carrier Air Wing 7’s ability to get gas and stay up longer, particularly if the US went into Iraq soon. I dropped my composition book on the floor beside me and rolled over to get some sleep. The clock said 0017. I always sleep well aboard a carrier at sea. Big John rocked me to sleep, and continued rolling all night long. Best night’s sleep I’d had in a long time.
The next morning I was back in Lung’s Red Rippers ready room drawing my tanker capabilities and limitations briefing on his presentation whiteboards. I drew a big picture of the Iron Maiden basket, with big teeth in the center and beady red eyes. A sliding whiteboard covered the Iron Maiden picture with training objectives and an outline. I asked the Ripper crews what they thought of the Iron Maiden, and most of their answers I cannot write here in a family-oriented book. I then slid back the panel covering my toothy Iron Maiden picture, and the whole room erupted in laughter. One training point I wanted to stick in their minds, even if they forgot everything else I told them, was that the airflow from the KC-135’s big CFM56 turbofan engines calmed down markedly while plugged in the basket if they asked the tanker pilot to pull the inboard engines back. Every KC-135 pilot knew what that meant. Putting the outboard throttles up to compensate for the inboard-engine throttle reduction and loss of inboard thrust meant that the CFM56 engines’ hot exhaust gases were not beating on the Tomcats’ twin vertical tails. It was the same for the Hornet pilots. Every head in the room went down as they scribbled “pull the inboards back” on their notepads.
One pilot asked when the KC-135 fleet would get soft-basket wing pods like the KC-10’s WARPs. A company in the United States called Cobham expected to test pods in the summer for release in the fall. The Air Force had bought only thirty-three pod sets for the forty-five aircraft retrofitted for MPRS pods. Everyone liked refueling off the Gucci Bird’s WARPs, with their soft, collapsible baskets. One pilot called the Gucci drogue “the Nerf Basket” because of its soft contact. Note to self: find out from AMC Requirements when the MPRS pods were fielding and the health of the WARPs and Iron Maidens in case Iraq’s air campaign loomed soon. I sent a message back to Gramps and AMC that night.
Rolls met me in one of the ready rooms and asked if I would like to attend the admiral’s battle group staff meeting. Captain Gortney introduced me to the carrier battle group admiral and the entire O-6 staff. The admiral went around the room, speaking with each captain about their responsibilities. Their discussion was a fascinating look at carrier operations at sea. Captain Gunner, in charge of weapons, mentioned that the Kennedy would replenish its bomb lockers in a few days, during UNREP. The admiral told Captain Gortney that he wanted me to fly before leaving the John F. Kennedy. Shortney said he would see to it. I was elated at the possibility of an S-3 Viking hop before leaving. The next day, in his staff meeting, Shortney told Pecker I was cleared to fly.
The Rawhides’ C-2 COD broke the next day. I was stuck haze gray and under way for at least three more days. When I met Rolls in the CVIC, he told me the Kennedy was scheduled for UNREP that afternoon from the USS Seattle. Pulling a ball cap over my head at the appointed time, I walked up several flights of stairs to the bridge. The officer of the deck announced my arrival—“Lieutenant Colonel, US Air Force, on the bridge”—and everyone turned to see me walk in. The same look appeared on everyone’s face: “What are you doing here, Colonel?” Beyond the control desk and wheel, the auxiliary conning tower was full of people. The aux con is made up of wings off each side of the bridge, about fourteen stories above the water rushing beneath you. Navy officers controlled rendezvous and UNREP with the Seattle from the aux con via computer monitors and radios. The USS Seattle steamed along half a mile in front of us as the Kennedy closed to a position along Seattle’s left side. A US Coast Guard cutter approached Seattle from the right side to fill their tanks with fuel also. Three additional rolls of film jingled in the calf pocket of my flight suit with every step I took.
Half an hour later, the Kennedy and the Seattle were steaming side by side on a glass sea. Men on the Seattle’s decks shot rope lines across to fuel specialists standing in the Kennedy’s refueling areas on the right side. Big steel cables stretched across the open ocean between the ships, followed by black fuel hoses. Forty minutes after pulling alongside each other, the ships were hooked together and passing fuel, mail, and food. This was refueling of a very different sort. The Kennedy took on 1.2 million pounds of jet fuel over the next few hours through six hoses stretching between it and the Seattle. A young ammo shop lieutenant steered or “conned” the carrier through hooking up. All three ships—the Kennedy, the Seattle, and the cutter—glided through the water on a southeasterly heading.
The captain in command of the ship, call sign Harv, sat in his chair behind the lieutenant. Harv asked what an Air Force tanker pilot was doing aboard. I explained that I had come aboard for a few days to visit with each squadron to learn how Anaconda went for them and to teach the JOs about big-wing tanking.
The next lieutenant assigned to conn the ship failed to show up at his appointed time. The officer of the deck called his department to find out his whereabouts. He wasn’t coming because of something that was happening in his department. Harv, in a moment of insanity, looked at me and said, “Hop in there, Sluggo, and conn the ship.”
“Sir . . . with all due respect, are you nuts?!” I said.
Harv’s UNREP staff chuckled quizzically, as if to say, “Yes, boss—you are joking, right?”
Harv wasn’t joking.
“Sluggo, it’s just like flying formation in your tanker. The only difference is anticipating rudder and screw inputs. Make one-degree heading changes at the helm, and only one-percent RPM changes on the inboard screws. Keep the two outboard screws at seventy percent RPM. Maintain eighteen knots speed and a two-hundred-twenty-five-degree heading on the computer monitor. The one-eighty stick on the Christmas tree there outside the window stays on Seattle’s waterline. Piece of cake, Sluggo.”
I thought, Sure, why not. Outside the window below me, I could see the Christmas tree Harv was referring to; it was made of PVC pipe and stuck outward toward the Seattle’s waterline. Branches started at 130, climbing in increments of one hundred up to 230 feet. Harv had told me to keep Seattle’s waterline on the 180 limb, maintaining 180 feet of separation between ships. Yes, America, the largest Navy ship—one hundred thousand tons of steel aircraft carrier—maintains formation and separation with PVC pipe. A stripe on Seattle’s side helped me keep position fore and aft. A single CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter used a sling to carry food and palletized bombs onto the Kennedy’s deck. The Sea Knight appeared motionless above the Seattle’s rear deck, even though the ship was moving at eighteen knots, while merchant seamen attached bundles to the hooks under the fuselage. Two SH-60s from Carrier Air Wing 7’s Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 5 Nightdippers slung smaller bundles from the Seattle to the Kennedy beneath their fuselages. Harv’s crew in the aux con coordinated with Seattle’s crew in their aux con ahead of us.
Harv, in another temporary loss of situational awareness, radioed Seattle’s captain. Through my headset, I heard Harv ask, “Hey, Iggy, are you sitting down?”
Iggy replied, “Why, should I be?”
Harv shot back, “Air Force is conning the ship!”
All seven heads in Seattle’s aux con turned in unison. One officer held binoculars up to his eyes and pointed at me with his right hand. So I waved back. I don’t know of another Air Force pilot who can say that he conned an aircraft carrier taking on fuel. In the fifty minutes the Kennedy spent next to the Seattle, 420,000 pounds of jet fuel passed into the Kennedy’s tanks. How’s that for a big gulp?
The Kennedy slowly crept aft, getting heavier as the Seattle became lighter from pumping its gas through the hoses. Standard refueling technique as receivers gained weight was to push the throttles up to maintain speed. Over my headset, I told the young helmswoman, “Helm, make your RPMs seventy-one percent.”
A young African-American woman from Alabama reported back, “Aye, aye, sir, making my RPMs seventy-one percent.”
Iggy called over, “Hey, Sluggo, what do you do in the Air Force?”
“Sir, I’m a KC-135 pilot and currently chief of the air refueling control team at the Prince Sultan Air Base CAOC. My team manages air refueling for all four Coalition countries’ tankers.”
After a lengthy pause, Iggy said, “We love tanker guys!”
Harv’s entire crew busted out laughing.
Iggy was an F-18 Hornet pilot, so of course he loved tanker guys and gals. Hornets were the fuel-critical fighter in every carrier air wing, holding little and burning a lot. Legacy Hornets held nine thousand pounds of internal fuel and burned it at the same rate Eagles do, eight thousand pounds an hour at tactical speeds. Understand the problem? Most Hornets flew with two external tanks, one on the centerline and another on a wing pylon, in a configuration nicknamed “goofy gas.” Hornets had to use Air Force big-wing tankers on every strike mission Afghanistan support called for. The VFA-131 Wildcats and VFA-136 Knighthawks on the Kennedy consumed a lot of gas, so Iggy’s “We love tanker guys” reply did not surprise me.
Fifty minutes later, another Navy lieutenant reported to the aux con to drive. Conning the ship was a training item junior officers needed to accomplish for mission certification at sea. I did not want to leave, because the Seattle and the Kennedy would remain tied together for another three hours. I handed the lieutenant the neck mic and stood next to Harv in his aux con captain’s chair, discussing events in Afghanistan and Iraq and watching the sun set and all the ship lights come on. A big half-moon reflected off the ocean behind the Seattle. Who would want to leave a picture like this?
Friday 29 March was my last day haze gray and under way. I walked into the VS-31 ready room to see that Pecker’s Topcat schedulers had my name on their flying board. My Viking ride would last about two and a half hours, followed by a trap landing back on Big John, running to the Topcats’ personal equipment room, getting out of all my flight gear, running upstairs to the ATO office to sign out, and hopping onto a COD back to Bahrain. Friday would be a long day, and I had eighteen rolls of film out of the original sixty left. Another cat shot—the first of two in one day, and my tenth overall—happened just before official sunrise at 0633. By regulation, I could not sit in the copilot/tactical coordinator, or COTAC, seat during a cat shot before official sunrise for safety reasons. TOPCAT 706’s takeoff time was ten minutes before official sunrise. With three of us on board, I would switch places with the COTAC once we were airborne.
A survival equipment specialist in the Topcats’ PE room fitted me with flight gear: a survival vest, an oxygen mask, and a helmet. Petty Officer Reynolds briefed me on arming and disarming the ejection seat. Stick, the S-3 instructor pilot I was flying with, met me in the PE room. He reviewed all the mission specifics with me and a tactical coordinator, or TACCO, call sign Red Man. TOPCAT 706 would launch with TOPCAT 702, refueling the surface CAP above the Kennedy and then descending to 1,500 feet to tag ships in the carrier’s vicinity. JFK’s surface combat air patrol (SUCAP) orbited near the carrier at eighteen thousand feet, an additional protective cover for the battle group. Orbiting above recovering aircraft, or “hawking,” TOPCAT 706 would act as a tanker for aircraft with emergencies during recovery. Stick briefed me on his ejection criteria. The most common reason for ejecting was a weak catapult stroke. He warned me not to get run over by the carrier after landing in the water, so I would need to steer away from the ship’s forward movement.
Stick emphasized that I shouldn’t touch the big yellow ejection ring between my knees unless we talked about it first or he told me to eject. I didn’t want to blast through Plexiglas at 1,500 feet, watch a parachute canopy bloom above me, and splash down into the Indian Ocean to wait for someone to pick me up, hopefully a friendly. The last items Stick briefed me on were the defensive maneuvers we would undertake if we came under fire from an enemy ship. Fortunately, he had never been fired at while tagging ships around the carrier.
Crouching down to get through the Viking’s small entry hatch, I moved to the TACCO’s ejection seat in the back of the jet. I buckled my survival gear to the ejection seat pan and fastened my lap and shoulder harnesses. Starting the engines and taxiing to the catapult took about five minutes. Red Man hollered over the interphone to get ready as I felt the catapult shuttle engage the nose tow bar and the engines spool up to 100 percent. Then came a big jerk forward, followed by a loud bang. A cloth curtain separating the cockpit from the TACCO’s area angled backward about thirty degrees during the cat stroke. In three and a half seconds, TOPCAT 706 reached the end of the deck and was airborne at 160 knots.
Red Man and I switched seats during the climb to eighteen thousand feet, where we tanked the SUCAP Hornets. I wanted to get into the seat as fast as I could as Stick trailed the buddy store drogue. Two Hornets joined off our right wing, taking four thousand pounds each. It was a perfect morning for snapping pictures. Done with refueling, Stick rolled the Viking onto its back and pulled straight down toward the Indian Ocean. We leveled off at 1,500 feet, and Red Man called out our first ship contact at two o’clock for eight miles. Stick then gave me control of the aircraft. Banking right, I looked for the ship on the forward-looking infrared (FLIR) projected on the multifunction display in front of me. As we passed aft of a large gray-green cargo ship, Stick passed the ship’s name and registry to Red Man. We flew from ship to ship, Red Man logging names, courses, speeds, and national registry. No one on the ships seemed to care as we buzzed them. One fellow on a ship came out of the bridge and waved at us as we passed aft.
We headed back to the Kennedy and the recovery stack, our wingman TOPCAT 702 radioing for us to join him, too heavy for an arrested landing. We were going to “swap spit,” as Viking crews called it: we would take on some of 702’s gas. Our Viking was lighter after giving a lot of gas to the SUCAP Hornets. As we pulled up behind it, I noticed TOPCAT 702’s FLIR turret pointing at us. Stick said they always watched receivers behind them on the FLIR. The Viking’s refueling probe extended above our heads as we pulled in behind TOPCAT 702. 702’s drogue reeled out of the buddy store on their left wing and dangled in front of us. I was captivated watching probe refueling from the receiver’s perspective. The basket hovered in front of us, barely moving. Stick mentioned that it was easier to refuel in the morning because of the calmer air. We plugged in on the first try, and the gas gauge needle climbed as fuel passed from 702.
Five thousand pounds off-loaded decreased TOPCAT 702 to trap weight. Stick let me fly in formation off TOPCAT 702’s right wing back to the recovery stack, retaking control ten miles from the John F. Kennedy. Both Vikings orbited overhead during recovery, waiting for anyone who needed gas. The Hornets trapped first, because they were all low on fuel. The Prowlers landed next, and the four Tomcats last. Each time a group of Tomcats, Hornets, or Prowlers approached the ship for landing, Stick or TOPCAT 702 followed a thousand feet above and behind them. If a pilot needed gas because of missing the wires, or bolter, as they call it, or had an emergency requiring them to stay airborne longer, a Viking would pass above them for a “trick or treat.” Recovery tanker Vikings always landed last for this reason.
We rejoined behind the carrier, and 702 led us down the right side at eight hundred feet and 350 knots. 702 broke hard left above the bow, and Stick rolled into a left break at a shallower bank angle. Watching this as a spectator provided another one of those mental pictures I’ll take to my grave. The pattern from breaking overhead to landing took about two and a half minutes. I cannot describe in words what it looked like to roll out half a mile behind the carrier, come over the fantail, and then catch a three wire that pulled us to a stop in about two hundred feet. Stick folded up the wings and moved TOMCAT 706 out of the landing area. As we taxied past the island, a tug hooked up to our nose wheel strut and pushed us back into a parking spot.
I had to safe the ejection seat first before doing anything else. Stick and Red Man stayed in their ejection seats so I could get off the plane first. Thanking them profusely for a great flight, I ran down to the PE room to shed my flight gear. It was 0835, and RAWHIDE 42 would launch at 0900. Sweaty and smelly from cooking under TOPCAT 706’s wide greenhouse Plexiglas canopy, I ran back to the ATO office and signed my name on the passenger manifest. Then I walked upstairs with my bags and threw them onto RAWHIDE 42’s ramp, its engines already running, ready to taxi to the bow cats. I shook hands with Rolls and thanked him for a great week, and asked if he would please thank Shortney and Pecker for the S-3 ride. Two minutes later the COD’s engines spooled up, and we taxied to catapult one on the bow’s right side. A loadmaster told us to assume the position as I felt the launch bar go under tension and the engines wind up to 100 percent.
“GET READY! GET READY! GET READY!”
We were facing backward again. The cat shot started with its loud bang. My body rose half an inch out of my seat after a vigorous jerk forward. Three hundred seven feet—a hundred-yard dash—is the length of a cat shot, and it’s over in three and a half seconds. I saw out my COD window that the blue Indian Ocean was still pretty calm as we climbed away from the deck.
During the three-hour flight back to Bahrain, I read through the notes I had taken over the week, which I still have. Everything the aircrews told me concerning tanking over Afghanistan was covered in the Employment School’s Joint Maritime Operations syllabus. That gave me great satisfaction. I slept for the last hour and a half of the flight. After landing at Manama, a taxi dropped me off in front of the Ritz-Carlton. I got another great night’s sleep in a cold room and comfortable bed. At 1030 the next day, a C-130 delivered me and a bunch of cargo pallets back to Prince Sultan Air Base.
I saw a quote in a fighter squadron ready room a long time ago stating: “Every shot not taken is a shot missed.” We tend to pass up learning opportunities that place us well outside our comfort zones. I didn’t have any idea how to conn the carrier. I was frankly amazed that Harv even asked me to try. After some fear and trepidation, I thought, Why not. What a great opportunity to learn and build some confidence. Pilots never pass up the chance to fly in another airplane. Even if I wasn’t touching the stick during the cat shot and trap landing, I was still going up in the S-3 to enjoy the ride. Both were incredible opportunities to learn.
From what I’ve determined, I’m the only KC-135 pilot to have driven an aircraft carrier while it refueled. It was a fantastic opportunity to operate outside my comfort zone. I’m thankful Harv had the courage to mic me up and let me drive his multibillion-dollar yacht for fifty minutes. When Stick rolled inverted and pulled from eighteen thousand feet, I felt some queasiness and told myself not to throw up. The Viking was a fully aerobatic airplane, way out of my comfort zone. But this opportunity gave me a firsthand look at how the Viking refueled and performed its sea-control duties. This experience was valuable when it came time to plan refueling operations during the Shock and Awe campaign, because I knew how the S-3s operated. Every missed opportunity to learn and gain experience outside comfort zones is a missed shot. Learn how to work outside of your comfort zone, and never miss a chance to gain valuable knowledge from customers and clients.