Great shot of the tanker! :D

ty

Ah, the venerable KC-135! Amazing planes! The first one was delivered to the service for the Air Force in 1956! Dang! (This wuff's Author was born in 1957 - they're older than he is!)

Author used to watch these babies taking off, while he was working on an aircraft navigation system at the end of the runway. Author had a few "bring me my brown pants" moments when those suckers would scramble the whole wing for an alert. The old engines didn't have enough power to get them off the ground when fully loaded, so they used a water injection system for about 2000 lbs more thrust per engine. And you've only got 2 minutes of water. On a hot day, with full load, they'd rotate the front wheel up around the 70-90 second mark. You needed another 10+ seconds to get the rest of the main gear off the runway.

When they scrambled the whole bunch of them, they'd line up like cars on a freeway rush hour, and each plane would churn up the air so the one taking off next in line would roll a little farther. And the next farther still...

By the time the last one was rolling, they were nearly at the over-run and still accelerating, and barely got the bird up, then they folded the main gear and just kept things basically level before they finally got enough "umph" to start climbing. They'd roar overhead barely 20 feet above us.

When you're in a little orange and white tin box a few dozen yards from the end of that overrun, and one of those is belching black smoke on full water injection, and still on the ground, rolling at 200+ MPH and you're not all-together certain it's actually got to lift off before it reaches you, it's definitely a "high pucker zone".

Wow. I give the Air Force a lot of credit. I've been on C-130's and C-17's in combat zones. Never fun to be in a C-130 smacking a gravel strip and bouncing, but they got us there safe and in 1 piece.

*nodnods* Wuff' s never gone in on a C130 to a gravel strip like that, but has been on a C-5 and a C-141 when they were 'crankin' and bankin' on a short field 'combat approach'. It's amazing the maneuvers they can make a big plane like that do!

Wuff suspects that some of those cargo pilots are "frustrated fighter jocks", and they live for the day they haul a big 'truck' like those around and make 'em dance! *grins*

Yes. Very yes. I hate combat approaches, because of how quick and sudden the drops are, not to mention the random approach patterns. Either way, those pilots can do remarkable things.