Air Force Aerial Refueling Methods: Flying Boom versus Hose-and-Drogue

On Sat, 01 Jul 2006 23:27:32 GMT, Guy Alcala
wrote:

Ed Rasimus wrote:

On Sat, 01 Jul 2006 08:38:55 GMT, Guy Alcala
wrote:

Ed, you only did that on a KC-135, right? If so, I submit that your sole drogue
experience is with the drogue universally acknowledged (by those with experience
of 'real' hose and drogues) to be the worst piece of **** ever to be stuck on a
tanker. Grabbing the first account to hand, John Trotti's ("Phantom over
Vietnam"):

I didn't say it was good, just that it was the hardest thing I ever
tried to do. I really don't relate it to the installation on the
tanker. It should have been fairly straightforward since the boom
extended the drogue well below any turbulence off the tanker. I
attributed it to the short probe (retractable) on the F-105.

When flying with F-100F Weasels, I never noted them having anywhere
near the difficulty that we did in getting gas using their wing
mounted probe.

It would be interesting to see if any F-105 drivers had tanked from regular drogues
and what their experience was. AIUI, the problem with the KC-135 add-ons were two:
1. Lack of hose length (low inertia due to the lack of hose weight causing it to
bounce around a lot), and 2. The heavy metal fitting just forward of the drogue,
which (because of the wild flailing of the drogue due to item 1) was perfectly
capable of smashing the canopy and/or the pilot's head if it made contact. At least
the first was apparently a not-unknown occurrence, which is why many navy pilots seem
to have been actually afraid of the system.

The hose on the KC-135 drogue was 12 feet, which sounds like a lot of
range for formation flying, but turns out not to be all that much in
practice.

I never really noticed any turbulence for the drogue in my limited
experience. The issue was pilot technique. The first thing we learned
was that it was virtually impossible to fly the probe into the drogue.
Any attempt to control the end game usually resulted in some form of
PIO gyrations and no hookup.

Best method was to stabilize several feet behind the drogue with the
probe lined up. If you could, line up the probe for about the ten
o'clock position on the basket. Then look straight forward and push
the throttle up to move ahead. Don't look at the drogue. Ideally you
would fly into the basket. More commonly as you closed the airflow
over the nose would push the basket smoothly up and away from the
aircraft.

In the worst case scenario the probe would hook the corner of the
basket nearest the airplane. Two possibilities then--either the probe
would slide into the funnel and connect or the probe would tip the
basket off and it would then flail leading to the aircraft impact you
describe. Even worse situation would be catching the basket, bending
the probe and ripping off the hose leaving unretractable probe
tenously holding heavy metal lined basket and x number of feet of hose
thrashing the side of the airplane in front of your left intake.

We had a souvenier basket in the squadron briefing room in the 4526th
CCTS at Nellis when I checked out. A student in a prior class had
brought it home on a flight.


Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
www.thunderchief.org
www.thundertales.blogspot.com