What I mean is, is there a connection between the dispenser tanks and the planes own tanks which feed the engines?
Hey, it could happen.
This is not a silly question. 
Peace,
mangeorge (Always thinkin’)
Ahh, having read this several times I think I get it. You’re asking if a plane used for mid-air refuelling of other aircraft has ever run out of fuel why waiting to rendezvous?
I have no idea of the answer, but I’d hazard that since they are in the air for such short periods of time it would never have happened, but I don’t know.
Oh well this should give your thread a bump anyway.
Well, sort of, Gaspode.
I’m asking if an air tanker can refuel itself in mid-air.
Is there a hose, or pipe, that would allow the crew to transfer fuel from the tanks used to refuel other planes to it’s own gas tank.
Peace,
mangeorge
So, just to be clear, the title of this thread is not what you are actually interested in, but instead want to know if in-flight refueling aircraft have the neccessary equipment to allow them to refuel themselves?
I’d be interested in the answer to both, though I suspect Gaspode is correct in stating that the relative short duration of flight for such aircraft limits the likelihood of them exhausting their onboard fuel supply (as opposed to the cargo-fuel).
Yes, they can refuel themselves. If you look at the spec sheet for a KC-135 (one of the most popular tankers), you’ll see 2 listings for range. One will be with some amount of transfer fuel, and will be rather short (say 1500 miles w/ 150,000 pounds of fuel). But they will also give a range for a ferry mission. I believe this is the case where they are just moving the plane around, not serving as a tanker at all. And this range is much, much higher. For the KC-135, it’s 11,015 miles. (For reference, that’s the distance between Sydney and London and a bit under halfway around the world)
So in my mind, that clearly implies that yes, they can flick a switch and send that cargo fuel into their own engines, giving them a rather stupendous range. And that they occasionally have a need to do so. But that doesn’t necessarily imply that one has never crashed due to lack of fuel. Can’t answer that part…
Oh, and if you REALLY care about the title question (“Has an air tanker ever run out of gas?”), you could try the book The Boeing KC-135—More Than Just a Tanker which includes:
…which would probably answer your question. 
smackfu, the longer “ferry” range may just be because the tanker is flying empty.
I have seen references to tankers re-fueling after they took off. Apparently it takes a lot of fuel to get a loaded tanker off the ground. It would make sense for them to re-fuel from another tanker instead of depleting their cargo.
Do all military jets, even the exotics like the Blackbird, use the same fuel?
Doh! I suppose that would an alternate interpretation of the facts, starfish. Maybe someone who knows will wander in here. There’s got to be some Air National Guardsmen on this board, right?
This quote from the Boeing KC-135 webpage implies that it can refuel itself:
Arjuna34
And to answer your question about types of fuel, starfish… From http://194.205.16.17/ency/C/C-135.asp:
Actually, that doesn’t imply anything of the sort, as far as self-fuelling goes. A ‘receiving aircraft’ is the one on the end of the refuelling probe. What that quote says is that the more efficient tanker carries less fuel for itself, and therefore can carry more fuel for it’s babies.
I can’t speak for the KC135 crowd, but Naval aircraft use ‘buddy stores’ for in-flight refueling, which are loaded on weapons pylons in just the same manner as ordnance, and therefore are incapable of self-fueling. In any case, self-fueling would pre-suppose that the tanker was carrying the corect grade of fuel.
Here’s quote from this KC-135 site:
My impression is that all the tanks (there are many on the plane) can be tied together, enabling the aircraft to draw fuel from them. They apparently don’t HAVE to be, since it can carry JP-7 fuel, which the KC-135 doesn’t use (as smackfu posted). None of the links I found came out and said either way- apparently the question is so basic that it goes without saying! The above quote was as close as I got.
Here’s more than you probably ever wanted to know about the KC-135, although these links don’t mention explicity whether it can refuel itself.
Magazine article about in-air refueling
Arjuna34
Actually, again, this tells us nothing in regards to the OP, as the quote is refering to transfer via the refuelling probe, not self-fuelling. Internal fuel does refer to the cargo, and may refer to the tanker’s own supply, but I’d take a carefull look at what ‘nearly all’ means before coming to any conclusions.
Here’s a radical idea: Why doesn’t someone call their local Air Force Reserve unit and ask? I don’t have one close, but I bet someone in here does…
I didn’t think the OP specified transfer via the probe, but just a “connection” …
Some refueling planes (but not the KC-135) can be refueled from other refueling planes, but I doubt they can refuel themselves via the long external probe.
That’s probably the best idea so far
Arjuna34
I can remember being briefed on air-air refueling (I’m an engineer for the Army, we generally don’t worry about those round-the-world flights, so I’m not the best source). I know that there are some tankers (not saying it’s the KC-135 or not, memory’s not that good) that can burn or give away every drop of fuel on board.
No. There are several different types of JP (stands for Jet Propellant, IIRC).
The fuel used in the Blackbird has an ultrahigh ignition temp…one time a ground crew took a bucket and splashed a bit of fuel in it and tossed in a match–it put the match out.
So far, you all are pretty much assuming USAF “Flying Boom” type refueling. They’re the only ones who use that method, in which the refueling A/C takes the active role and the recieving A/C has the passive role. The tanker guides and sticks the hose in the hole of the recieving aircraft. And yes, at least at one time tanker crews did talk about “hard dick” and “limp dick” in this connection.
A retired C-5 Galaxy guy told me once (and the story didn’t begin with “This ain’t no shit…”) that a KC-135 in flight was having a problem with its transfer valves or something and could only run off of the tanks they use to fuel other aircraft. They went up in the C-5, conected and pumped fuel in the reverse direction, which C-5s allegedly can do. Sounds suspicious to me, but the guy seemed on the level at the time.
Anyway, the US Navy and most other nations that do have in-air refuleing capability use hose-and-drouge. A hose is used which has a sort of basket or funnel at the end with a sort of ring-shaped parachute type thing on its rim. This makes the basket open out some and stabilizes it as it trails behind the tanker. The hose is on a reel so it can be extended and retracted. There is a thing called a guillotine assembly which can be used to forcibly cut off the hose should it become stuck extended. The hose is then pressurized with fuel and the recieving aircraft extends its fuel probe and takes the active role in attempting to stick the probe into the basket so that it slides into the center and so force the valve (like a ball pushed out with a spring) open so the fule will flow. Those of you all who saw “The Perfect Storm” saw the process attempted by a USAF KC-130 as the tanker and an Air National Guard H-60 as the reciever. Heliocopters are the USAF exception to the rule of using the flying boom method, for some reason. In that movie, the difficulty of attempting the refuleing in crappy weather was well illustrated as well. Where high winds whip the basket all around, the recieving aircraft can’t get lined up on it. You could in theory also approach the basket so fast that you’d skewer it and get it stuck on your probe, which I believe has happened once or twice. You could also hit it in such a way that it whips around and smacks your aircraft in such a way as to damage it, which has even on occasion broken the canopy and killed the luckless pilot. Sometimes in the older days, a bunch of fuel would come out of the hose right at separation and go in the intake of the recieving aircraft (I’m thinking A-4s and F-8s) and cause engine flame-outs. This kind of thing led to offsetting the refueling probes later on.
The advantage of the Hose-and-drogue method is that it does not require dedicated tankers; a special tank (called a Buddy Store in the USN) can be hung from any rack that could otherwise take the weight a fuel drop tank and so be used to turn almost any aircraft into a tanker. In and of itself, this allows 300 gallons to be tanked to whomever needs it. In practice, it is used on aircraft that can let fuel from the internal tanks and other drop tanks into this store, increasing the amount of fuel available to “all of it”.
In the context of hose-and-drouge refueling, the A-3 Skywarrior site has a picture of a chain of tankers of various types all linked to each other, showing that tankers could tank other tankers until the whales come home again.
During the Vietnam War, there was an instance of an A-4 having a really big ass hole shot through its little wing where the fuel tank is. The guy was running totally dry when he hooked up to an A-3 tanker (I think from VAQ-135), and the A-3 pumped fuel in enough to keep the A-4’s engine running, even though the fuel was pouring out of the hole nearly as fast as it could be pumped. The A-3 stayed connected almost until the little guy landed on his ship. I believe the A-4 pilot got the Medal of Honor, I don’t remember if the A-3 people got anything.
I took one for the team and posted this question to rec.aviation.military. No verified responses yet, but here’s a link to the thread.