Back to KC-135
Between June 1964 and August 1973 the KC-135 tankers flew 194,687 refuelling sorties, provided 813,878 aerial refuellings and transferred a total of 1.4 billion gallons of fuel. To the thirsty fighters bound for downtown Hanoi the tankers were a lifeline that they came to depend on day after day. Many a tanker was credited with a ‘save’ when it rendezvoused with a fighter about to flame out due to lack of fuel.
Phil Gilbert was a tanker pilot in 1967 and, in common with many other pilots, was transferred to a different type of aircraft for a second tour of duty in Vietnam. In 1968 he became a Forward Air Controller and swapped his big bird for a little one, a Cessna O-2. His experiences give an insight into the life of the big-bird pilots, high above the clouds, and the little-bird pilots, dodging bullets down above the trees.
There were many times when we offloaded considerably more fuel than was scheduled. This was not at all unusual when fighters coming off the target were disoriented from their scheduled tanker and had to grab the first tanker they came to. Frequently we seemed to be picking up fighters coming in from all directions, all desperate for fuel. We would end up offloading so much fuel that our fuel status would already be critical when we would arrive back at our home base at U-Tapao, Thailand, only to find that we’d have to hold due to a thunderstorm hanging right over the field or, if recovering at Takhli, that we might have to hold for a priority recovery of battle-damaged fighters.
We had one fighter, an F-105 I think, who flamed out as he approached us for fuel. As his plane tilted into a glide, his remaining fuel sloshed forward and he got an air start and zoomed up to make the hook-up.
All Aero 