To give planes longer legs, the airmen needed a way to refuel them in the air.
The earliest attempts at midair refueling were just stunts — a daredevil “wing walker” crawling onto the top wing of a biplane with a can of gasoline strapped to his back, leaping onto the wing of a passing plane, and pouring the sloshing gas into the fuel tank. After World War I, the idea stumbled forward for a few decades but never really caught on. Designers found other ways to make planes fly farther, such as larger fuel tanks, more efficient engines, and lighter materials. But with the rise of the Strategic Air Command, midair refueling suddenly became crucial. When Curtis LeMay took over SAC in 1948, he had hundreds of bombers under his command, but none that could take off from America with nuclear bombs, drop them in the heart of the USSR, and get back to safety. All his war plans required planes to attack the Soviet Union from forward bases, mostly in Europe and the Pacific. Analysts pointed out that any forward base within striking distance of the Soviet Union was also vulnerable to Soviet attack. What SAC really needed was a way to fly from the United States to the USSR and back without having to land for gas. By the early 1950s, midair refueling was a SAC priority.
SAC tried a number of refueling methods and tanker-bomber combinations, but each had its shortcomings. One of the biggest problems was speed matching. In 1951, SAC started flying a piston-engine tanker called the KC-97. SAC paired this slow tanker, which had a maximum speed of only 375 mph, with the B-47 jet bomber, which could fly up to 600 mph. Both planes, when linked for refueling, had to fly at exactly the same speed, slowing the bomber dangerously close to a stall.
To avoid this sticky situation, pilots invented a daring maneuver: the two planes linked at a high altitude and then dove in tandem so the less powerful tanker could match the jet bomber’s speed.
This technique was imperfect, to say the least, and SAC pilots eagerly awaited jet-to-jet refueling. In 1957, they finally got it. On the receiving end was the B-52. On the tanker side was the KC-135 Stratotanker, equipped with a Boeing innovation called the flying boom. In 1966, the KC-135 and its flying boom were the state of the art in midair refueling, and they remain so today.
The boom is an aluminum tube 33 feet, 8 inches long and about 2 feet in diameter. The far end is bulbous, giving the contraption the look of a giant metal Q-tip. Near the tip, two four-foot wings stick off either side of the boom. These wings were Boeing’s big innovation—“ruddervators” that allow the boom operator to fly the pipe into position, a bit like sticking your hand out the window of a moving car and swimming your fingers up and down. Tucked inside the boom is a 12-foot, 3-inch telescoping nozzle that shoots in and out at the boom operator’s command. The fuel travels through the nozzle to the receiving plane.
To prepare for refueling, a boom operator, or “boomer,” walks to the back of the KC-135 and hops down into a small, coffin-shaped room called the boom pod. The pod is about three feet across, three feet high, and ten feet long. At the end of the pod, giving a view out the back, is a window about three feet wide and two feet high. On both sides of this main window are small side windows, and directly below it is an instrument panel. A long, padded cushion, shaped a bit like a fully reclined dentist’s chair, fills the rest of the pod. The boomer lies on this cushion stomach down, hands on the controls, looking out the back window.
The job of boom operator is widely regarded as the best enlisted job in the Air Force, because it’s challenging and well paid and earns a lot of respect. “In what other job,” runs a popular joke among boomers, “do you get two officers to drive you to work?” (Pilots usually reply that the boomer has it easy, because “he gets to lie down on the job and pass gas.”) To hook up, the tanker holds its position as the receiving plane slowly approaches from behind and below. The boomer extends the telescoping nozzle about ten feet out the end of the boom and watches the other plane approach. (Human depth perception falls off after about twenty feet — to the untrained eye, the ten-foot nozzle looks as if it extends a foot or less.) The boomer guides the receiving plane toward the boom by lights on the tanker’s belly, shining a steady “F” for “forward” until it hovers about ten feet away. The receiving plane crawls closer at about one foot per second, making sure its large bow wave doesn’t knock the tanker out of position.
The receiving plane finally stops closing the gap about two feet from the end of the nozzle and “parks” it in the air, exactly matching the tanker’s speed and heading. The boomer lines up the boom with the tiny, four-inch hole in the roof of the receiving plane. Then, when the boom and the hole are aligned, the boomer presses a button and the last two feet of the nozzle shoot out the end of the boom and slap into the hole. It looks and sounds like a giant iguana shooting its tongue out to snag a fly. The nozzle locks into place, and the gas begins to pump.
After the “thwock” of the connection, the tanker’s belly lights glow a steady green if the receiving plane is correctly situated. The boom can swing in a circle about 20 degrees up, 40 degrees down, and 10 degrees left and right. The receiving plane must fly within this cone-shaped “envelope” to stay connected to the boom.
Pumping the gas is a complicated job, and it falls to the tanker’s copilot. Offloading 7,500 gallons of fuel can drastically alter the tanker’s center of gravity, unless the copilot continually monitors and regulates the fuel levels in each tank. Pumps connect the KC-135’s ten fuel tanks, allowing the copilot to shuttle fuel among them and keep the plane on an even keel.
It’s a balancing act, and there’s plenty that can go wrong. If the tanker’s pumps go haywire and pump with too much pressure, they can blow the receiving plane backward off the boom. If the two planes disconnect too quickly, the tanker can spray jet fuel all over the receiver’s windshield, creating a smeary mess. Or the two planes could collide, causing everything from a crunched boom to a fiery crash. Refueling gets more dangerous when bad weather hits, or when a tired or inexperienced pilot is flying the receiving plane. Even under ideal conditions, things can quickly go awry.
On January 17, 1966, Wendorf’s bomber would refuel over the scrubby hills between the villages of Cuevas and Palomares, in what was known as the Saddle Rock Refueling Area. Saddle Rock was one of the best places in the world for midair refueling, as the dry desert air kept the sky bright and clear and there were no busy cities or airports below. Wendorf liked refuelings — they were an interesting break from the long and tedious flights where he spent most of his time “boring holes” through empty space. But Wendorf had already handled one refueling on this trip, and as a courtesy common on such flights, he asked Messinger to take the second. For Messinger, refueling was one of his least favorite parts of the job. Unlike Wendorf, Messinger hated flying the B-52. “It was a dog,” he said. “No fun to fly and hard to work. It was like driving a Mack truck.” B-52 pilots say that flying the plane is challenging because it is relatively unresponsive. “First you tell the plane to turn, then it thinks about it for a minute,
Refueling any plane requires the pilot to make continuous, minute adjustments. Accordingly, refueling can be one of the toughest things B-52 pilots have to do. They rely on little tricks to align themselves correctly with the tanker. For instance, when a small black UHF antenna on the tanker’s belly appears to line up with a certain white stripe, the bomber is at the proper 30-degree angle for receiving fuel. Once connected, if the bomber’s copilot can see the boomer’s face through a certain high corner window, the B-52 is flying safely inside the envelope.
Throughout the approach and refueling, Messinger would have to keep his right hand on the eight throttles and his left hand on the yoke, both moving constantly. He couldn’t take his eyes off the tanker plane for a second. Because of the danger, both crews wore full safety gear — helmet, gloves, and parachute — for the entire rendezvous and fuel exchange. The whole process normally took thirty minutes to an hour. Even with two decades of flying under his belt, Messinger still found refueling a sticky business. By the end, he was usually drenched with sweat.
Pilots usually refer to the B-52 by the nickname “BUFF.” Depending on whom you ask, this stands for either “Big Ugly Flying Fellow” or, less politely, “Big Ugly Fat Fucker.” The B-52 entered the fleet in 1955, underwent multiple modifications, and by 1966 was the workhorse of SAC’s bomber force. The “ugly” bit notwithstanding, most pilots regard the BUFF with fond nostalgia — a dependable old bird that always got you home.
A B-52 is the size of a Boeing 707, with elegant wings, tapered and graceful as a hawk’s, stretching ninety feet from top to tip. When the plane is sitting on the ground, the wings, laden with fuel tanks and four engines each, droop almost to the tarmac. They would drag on the ground if not for the small wheels on each wingtip. Once the plane gets moving, the wings rise. With a seventeen-foot deflection in either direction, they can move seventeen feet upward and seventeen feet downward.
As a result, the wings can “flap” up to thirty-four feet during turbulence.
Saving weight was a major issue for the B-52. When they built the plane, pilots say, they crammed it full of gas and bombs and threw some people in as an afterthought. The G model that Wendorf and Messinger flew had a takeoff weight of 488,000 pounds, almost 40,000 pounds heavier than previous models, even though the designers had lopped nearly eight feet off the horizontal stabilizer.
