In fact, I don’t believe they ever bothered fully painting the A-12, the SR-71’s older and faster brother…
I’m not gonna mess with her because she knows that a restraining order is just a piece of paper.
Cool thread, BTW. It’s hard to believe the SR-71 is 60 year old technology!
The M-21, a two-seat variant of the A-12, had an unmanned D-21 reconnaissance drone mounted on its back. The drone would launch, follow a preprogrammed path while taking photos, release the camera module for retrieval and then self-destruct. I once had the GI Joe imitation.
Yup! The last surviving example is in Seattle; I used to go look at it all the time when I lived there.
That photo gives me impure thoughts.
It kind of has similar curves to the Al-Wakrah stadium in Qatar.
Sorry for showing up late to the thread, been busy.
The stripes seen in front of the refueling receptacle on some USAF aircraft are called “lead-in lines”. Their purpose is to provide a visual cue to the receptacle location during low visibility/night/EMCON conditions, and to help the boom operator judge the boom nozzle’s distance from the receptacle. On some aircraft, like the F-22 and B-1, they are just painted, and on the C-17, they are actually electroluminescent panels arranged in the particular pattern decided on for that airframe. You can also see the receptacle lighting in the C-17 pic, which helps greatly at night… when it works. As you can see, the lead-in lines aren’t standardized across all USAF aircraft, and others don’t have any lead-in lines at all (B-2, F-117, VC-25, C-32B, some F-15 and F-16). There are at least 5, possibly 6, different types & configurations of air refueling receptacles on current USAF aircraft.
There is a publication for boom operators that has receiver-specific information and detailed photos for every air-refueling-capable aircraft in NATO (and several outside NATO). When I first started flying on the KC-10, I referred to that pub before every mission to study the info and photos, to get the proper “sight picture” fixed in my mind for the receiver(s) I’d be seeing on that mission. With experience, I didn’t need to refer to the pub anymore, unless the mission was for a “special” receiver, or one I hadn’t seen in a while.
Re: SR-71 air refueling - unfortunately, the Sled had long since been retired by the time I got in the KC-10. Initially, there were 56 KC-135s modified to the KC-135Q configuration, to be the dedicated tanker force for the SR-71. They had some special comm/nav gear to rendezvous with the SR, and body fuel tanks that were isolated from the main fuel tanks to accommodate the JP-7 fuel the SR used. Later, several KC-10s were used for SR-71 AR missions, as the KC-135Qs were re-engined and modified to the KC-135T configuration. Q-qualified booms were experienced boom operators who had specific training on the particulars of the SR-71 AR mission, but they still flew regular AR missions as well.
Thanks for the first-hand update. I never had a chance to ride along on a KC- mission. I was always at the other end of the boom.
That pic you posted of the B-1 make it look like either that particular jet was used for boomer training, or something about the B-1 makes poking their receptacles especially hard. Despite being old and well-worn our jets never had *that *much paint abuse in the lead-in area.
All the nose receptacle aircraft are challenging receivers. B-1s are, in my opinion, the most challenging of those, due to the way their nose moves with pitch changes… and they look like they’re *very *pitch-sensitive with the wings extended. Add nighttime, a long duty day in the desert (I’m 99.44% certain the B-1 in that pic is over Afghanistan), and the tendency for the receiver pilot to fixate on the boom nozzle rather than flying off their tanker visual references, and a B-1 contact can potentially turn into a bump & grind session really quickly. I will say that I never saw a B-1 look that bad in the US, but I did see a few that were similarly beat-up looking in the desert.
When I was in the KC-10 FTU (Formal Training Unit, for those who don’t speak USAF) in 2007, touching the receiver outside the receptacle with the boom nozzle was grounds for an Unsat for the flight (again for those who don’t speak USAF, having too many Unsats in your training record is a BAD THING, and usually does not end well for you). It was even frowned upon in the sim after the 2nd or 3rd sim session. I can’t speak for the -135 community, but I see no reason that their standards would be different from the -10 community’s standards in that respect.
Oh, my. Me too.
Dang it, this was supposed to be quoting chacoguy’s comment that the picture gave him impure thoughts. How did I manage to quote the wrong post?
<fume>
At any rate, I agree with chacoguy: This picturegives me impure thoughts.
Thans JHBoom.
Isn’t it fun (as it is for us) when a query, if not an entire thread, is yours for an easy lay-up?