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usafphantom2 · 5 months

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First hand experience from a boom operator on a KC 135Q he’s 85 years old and such a sweet guy. His name is George Lester. He is sharing things with me over on Fakebook..

Where is the blackbird?

Day in the life of a KC135Q combat crew. This is about our first mission as a fully qualified crew, no instructors. Day started showing up to squadron 9th AREFS, loading on a bus to base operations where we filed our flight plan, got a weather briefing, picked up flight lunches & on to or assigned aircraft, today it was 58-0099, loaded aboard.

Started our individual preflight, preflight our parachutes etc. Started engines and off we went, climbing to 25,000 feet heading to air-refueling area near Edward AFB, nav setup our orbit and we waited for the receiver, today it was a YF-12, 30 minutes prior to our ARCT (air refueling Control Time) I doned my parachute attached my helmet to my emergency oxygen bottle, pilot booms off inter-phone to the pod, I checked in with pilot booms on inter-phone in the pod, booms coming down, preflighted boom and wait for receiver.

I get a call from Dutch 26 (call sign from YF-12.)

saying he's a mile in trail, this isn't a normal call, then he say I'm 1/2 mile, I'm looking, my pilot asks do you see him boom, I said negative, ( pilot told me later he thought he had a blind boomer) back to my story, receiver said he was 1/2 mile so I told pilot going to command, Dutch 26 this is Craig 92 radio check how do you read over, he replied loud and clear, I'm off your right wing, ( I almost fell head first into bottom of the pod looking for him, copilot says he's not on our wing, about that time

Dutch say boom …Why do you have a drogue installed, I'm looking down my boom no drogue, he then asked is your tail number 325, I replied no its 099, he then asks my navigator for position, he was 15 miles away,

he boom I'll be there in a few, he finally shows up, I made another radio check, cleared him into contact position, put boom in recptical, called contact boom inter-phone, boom floats out of recptical, did that twice before he says, boom are you trying boom inter-phone? We don't have one.

Found out later YF-12 doesn't have boom inter-phone. No one had informed me of that..Ok 😆 see the different in nose of the YF-12 vs SR-71 picture, heck I'll put the SR-71 picture as well. That's the trainer, 2 pilot SR.~ George Lester I asked George some details about his job. This is what he said.

Sure, my career field was Inflight refueling specialists. I was responsible for weight and balance of the aircraft, using the sextant for navigator, dealing with passengers we carried. Inflight refueling of receivers of all types, at Beale our primary receiver was the SR-71, refueling was actually the smallest time consuming part of our job. Kind of a joke but the navigator & I was responsible for keeping the pilots from killing us..LOL 😆 I knew quite a bit of everyone's job. No required but it saved damage to our aircraft and violation of rules and regulations for our mission. My first pilot was Lawrence J Markle, he had a pet name for me "enlisted swine" we'd be flying along after refueling & navigation leg, he'd say, Co get out of your seat Enlisted Swine strap in copilot seat, he'd teach me all kinds of things as to flying our aircraft. Was fun for me.

@Habubrats71 via X

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