Warren Harding was president. The Wright Brothers had their first sustained flight only 20 years earlier. When, on June 27, 1923, aviators from the U.S. Army Air Service dropped a hose from one biplane to another beneath it to demonstrate the first mid-air gasoline refueling, according to the U.S. Air Force.
A hundred years to the day, the U.S. Air Force andPease Air National Guard celebrated the milestone with air-to-air refueling exercises from coast to coast. NHPR joined a crew from Pease on Tuesday for aerial refueling above New England, including receiving fuel from another aircraft above Mount Washington in New Hampshire.
Pease Air National Guard now has a fleet of 12 KC-46 Pegasus refueling aircraft. The first one of the newest tankers arrived in 2019, and the aircraft required upgrades for its remote vision system, which is central to refueling operations. In 2020, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said the KC-46 aerial refueling tanker modernization program was assessed at about $43 billion. Shaheen and Sen. Maggie Hassan also raised questions about delays in bringing the new tankers online.
The new aircraft replaced a fleet of KC-135 tankers, a plane over 50 years old.
The Department of Defense is working to modernize additional aircraft. In a statement on the Centennial operation, Air Force Gen. Mike Minihan, commander of the Air Mobility Command, described air refueling as mission critical. "It connects our strategic vision with operational reality, ensuring we can reach any corner of the globe with unwavering speed and precision."
Lt. Col Gregg Van Splunder, the 157th Air Traffic Control Squadron commander, was one of the pilots for the refueling operation Tuesday. In an interview after landing back at Pease, he said the key focus is global reach.
"The refueling piece is so big, it is worldwide," he says. "There is refueling everywhere and active duty just can't handle it [all]. We come in and we help supplement it.”
Airman 1st Class Abby Stroup, a boom operator, helped line up the refueling operation.
The Pease Air National Guard crew received fuel mid-air from a Maine Air National Guard tanker.
Most air refueling operations are conducted at between 20,000 and 30,000 feet elevation, said Col. Brian Carloni, commander of the 157th Operations Group at Pease. In the photo above, Stroup is communicating with Carloni, and 1st Lt. Tim Guinee, at 21,000 feet above Cambridge, Vermont.
Aerial refueling with modern aircraft is efficient and standard. It's how the military moves planes everywhere. Line of sight, however, is still important.
Carloni says they typically pick up sight of the second aircraft about a mile away. Not long after he says this, Guinee points out the approaching plane — far off to the west. It's a Maine Air National Guard refueler, a KC-135.
"We're about to pull up about 10 to 15 feet underneath a 135," Carloni says. "You'll see the old tanker in front of us, and we'll pull right up underneath it. So ... it's going to be pretty cool."
Soon, as he and Guinee pilot the aircraft and prepare for the fuel transfer, the boom of the other plane lowers down, and the tanker's home base becomes clear: "MAINEiacs" and "ME ANG" are spelled out on part of the boom, which comes closer and closer until you hear it connect to a door opening atop the KC-46 Pegasus.
It's called a "point parallel rendezvous," and the crew later flies north to a point above Mount Washington, and then onward to Maine, to repeat the high-altitude gas refill.
Learn more about the DH-4B, the De Havilland aircraft that demonstrated the first air-to-air refueling on June 27, 1923.
