Woody,

Thanks. Sounds every bit as challenging as anything I saw in my day - if not
more so.

***

BTW, two nice pix of your outfit's (VFA-201) fly-bys during your CompTUEx at
MCAS Kaneohe last November. See the current HOOK (Spring 2005. Pix and
accompanying article on pp. 58-59).

--
Mike Kanze

"Wineau - A person who drinks wine from a glass."

- Sighted on a T-shirt


"Doug "Woody" and Erin Beal" wrote in message
...
On 5/13/05 2:01 PM, in article , "Mike
Kanze" wrote:

Woody,

The most challenging CONDITIONS were definitely over Iraq in March/April
of
2003.

Care to elaborate?

Owl,

Turbulence like you read about in the North. Most of the refueling was
IMC.
In fact, I had one rendezvous (night, NVG's, wingman) where we didn't
visually break out the fully lit tanker until .3 miles in the HUD (STT
radar
lock, distance reported by lead because *I* was certainly flying welded
wing--looked reasonable though). NASTY! Several nights the weather was
from nearly the surface all the way above 350 to 400.

Getting into the iron maiden on the KC-135 is challenging in turbulence
(actually, staying in is the rough part), but with WORPS or WOPR stores on
the 10 or the 135 in turbulence with all that excessive amount of hose
bouncing the basket all over, it was downright hard as hell! One night,
we
had a Prowler rip a store off the tanker and a Tomcat rip the probe off
the
aircraft and divert. Toughest tanking I've ever seen!

Speaking of which, I'll never figure out how the Prowlers found the
tankers
on those IMC nights, but they always managed to just by using their
yardstick. Those guys did some very impressive work.

Frankly, we hung it out a bit in conditions that we normally wouldn't have
accepted to get ordnance to the folks on the ground.

--Woody