Tanker aircraft delivers 1 billionth pound of fuel

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Monte J. Volk
  • U.S. Central Command Air Forces-Forward Public Affairs
SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) --  If you were to count from one to 1 billion it would take about 95 years. It took a little over a year for U.S. Central Command’s Combined Force Air Component Command-controlled tanker airlift to deliver 1 billion pounds of jet fuel.

A KC-135 Stratotanker delivered 84,000 pounds of fuel to three different aircraft over Iraq on April 21 surpassing 1 billion pounds of fuel delivered in the theater since Jan. 30, 2003.

One billion pounds is a lot of fuel, but this number would be even higher if the millions of pounds of fuel delivered by Navy, Marine Corps and special-operations forces tankers in the past year were also included. It only includes fuel from U.S. Air Force KC-135 and KC-10 Extender and British Royal Air Force VC-10 aerial refuelers.

“Everybody is working their (tails) off out there,” said Maj. Darin Driggers, an instructor pilot on the milestone flight. “Whether it’s the Army, Marines, Navy … everybody has a part to play; this is ours.”

The crewmembers, deployed from Fairchild Air Force Base, Wash., said they are not concerned about how many pounds of fuel they deliver, as long as it is enough to help the other aircraft meet their mission objectives.

“It feels like any other day,” said Senior Airman Casey Killian, a boom operator. “If it’s the first hundred pounds, (or the) millionth pound … it doesn’t matter. It’s all about completing the mission.”

Just how big is a billion? One billion pounds of jet fuel is 153,846,154 gallons. In the sense of time, about 1.4 billion seconds ago the first KC-135 was delivered to Castle AFB, Calif., on June 28, 1957; about 1 billion seconds ago the last combat ground troops left Vietnam on Aug. 12, 1972; and about 731 million seconds ago the first KC-10 entered service March 17, 1981.

Many KC-10, KC-135 and VC-10 refueler crews have kept fighters, bombers, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft flying and involved in the fight. Since Jan. 30, 2003, more than 52,000 U.S. and coalition fighter, bomber, reconnaissance and airlift aircraft have been refueled by U.S. and British tankers flying more than 16,000 sorties supporting operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.

“It’s nice to be directly involved. We’re up over … Iraq, and we hear firsthand what happens even before it gets to (the media),” said Capt. Bryan Cahill, pilot for the flight. “My parents and my friends knew people who were in the (World Trade Center), so it feels good to be over here, especially when I get to go back home and see those people and say that we did something to help out.”

Helping is what tanker crews do, but to some it is also kind of a family tradition.

“The job is a lot of fun,” said 1st Lt. Chris Saettel, a co-pilot. “My dad was a tanker pilot in the (1991) Gulf War. So, I’m picking up where he left off.”

The concept of refueling one aircraft from another in the air was first proposed in 1917 by Alexander P. de Seversky, a pilot in the imperial Russian navy. He emigrated to the United States, became an engineer in the War Department and received the first patent for air-to-air refueling in 1921.

The concept was tested and perfected in the mid-1920s using hoses to manually transfer fuel between aircraft. Its most famous application of that era occurred in January 1929 when the Army Air Corps set a world flight-endurance record of more than 150 hours in the air. Flying in circles over Metropolitan Airport in Van Nuys, Calif., a Fokker C-2A named the Question Mark was refueled 42 times by two specially equipped Douglas C-1s. The flight ended after seven days when the Question Mark had to land after one of its engines failed.

Aerial refueling evolved over the years with sophisticated booms, and probe and drogue designs replacing the hoses used in the early days. Today, nearly all U.S. and coalition military aircraft are capable of being refueled in the air, allowing virtually unlimited range and mission endurance.

In the early days of Operation Iraqi Freedom, some missions were flown by B-2 Spirit bombers from Whiteman AFB, Mo., to Baghdad and back. The 13,000-mile round-trip flight required 36 hours in the air and many aerial refuelings.

At the end of the day, it takes everyone -- fighters, bombers, surveillance, reconnaissance and airlift aircraft, and the people who fly and maintain them -- to succeed in war, officials said. Without the extended reach provided by aerial refueling, their daunting tasks would be far more difficult, and in many cases, “out of reach.”