Seventy-five Years of Inflight Refueling PDF Download

Author: Richard K. Smith
Publisher: Air Force History & Museums Program
ISBN:
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Author: Richard K. Smith
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781500520090
Category : Technology & Engineering
Languages : en
Pages : 90

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This is an excellent overview of aerial refueling. Unfortunately, this reprint is missing the first nine illustrations (between pages 1 and 22). I have read the original version, which was printed on glossy paper. It was exceptional. It is unfortuante that the U Mich reprint was not checked for completeness before it went to the printer. Very likely, every copy that Amazon stocks probably suffers from the same defect. I tried two copies and was forced to ask for a refund.

Author: Office of Air Force History
Publisher: Createspace Independent Pub
ISBN: 9781508673668
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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The U.S. Air Force's development of aerial refueling cannot be attributed to any one person, but among all of those involved, General Curtis E. LeMay remains an outstanding figure. During his nine years as SAC commander, LeMay built the U.S. aerial refueling capability into what was practically an air force unto itself, an "invisible" foundation for the nation's original nuclear deterrent. With only a bit of exaggeration, it can be said that the KC- 135 was his airplane. When LeMay retired as Air Force Chief of Staff on February 1, 1965, Boeing already had delivered its 732d and last KC-135 tanker. At the time, SAC had forty-nine tanker squadrons with 641 KC-135s, with almost 200 other KC- 135 variants performing a bewildering number of specialized military missions. During the quarter-century after General LeMay retired, land- and sea-based ballistic missile forces gradually upstaged manned bombers. LeMay had left "all those tankers" in the wake of his career, and some people had wondered openly what the Air Force would do with them. First, the tactical air forces and B- 52 bombers answered that question in Southeast Asia. After the experience of the airlift to Israel, the Military Airlift Command had its own answer. In no way could tankers be considered surplus to anything, much less a declining asset. On October I, 1990, as hundreds of SAC tankers were cruising over the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, refueling fighters and transports on their way to Operation DESERT SHIELD, and other tankers were offioading fuel to support intensive combat training exercises over Saudi Arabia in anticipation of DESERT STORM, Curtis Emerson LeMay died at March AFB, California, just six weeks short of his eighty-fourth birthday. Within two years, at midnight on May 31, 1992, the mighty Strategic Air Command passed silently into history. Three new organizations divided its assets: the Strategic Command acquired the intercontinental missiles and some bombers, the Air Combat Command (formerly TAC) got what remained of the big bombers and some of the aerial tankers, and the Air Mobility Command (the old MAC) gained most of the tankers. The Old Order changeth; it was the end of an era.

Author: U. S. Military
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781973510253
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 95

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This Air Force publication examines the history of military aircraft inflight refueling, beginning with the first, in 1923. On June 27, 1923, at an altitude of about 500 feet above Rockwell Field on San Diego's North Island, two US. Army Air Service airplanes became linked by hose, and one airplane refueled the other. While only seventy-five gallons of gasoline were transferred, the event is memorable because it was a first. The summer of 1998 marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the use of this elementary technique of range extension. The airplanes were de Havilland DH-4Bs, single-engine biplanes of 4,600 pounds. First Lt. Virgil Hine piloted the tanker; 1st Lt. Frank W. Seifert occupied the rear cockpit and handled the fueling hose. Capt. Lowell H. Smith flew the receiver while 1st Lt. John Paul Richter handled the refueling from the rear cockpit. The refueling system consisted of a fifty-foot length of rubber hose, trailed from the tanker, with a manually operated quick-closing valve at each end. The process is best described in terms of "you dangle it; I'll grab it." After six hours and thirty-eight minutes, and only one refueling, engine trouble in the receiver terminated the flight. Recognizing that a second refueling plane would provide more safety and flexibility, the next attempt included a third DH-4 as the second refueler. Its crew members were Capt. Robert G. Erwin and 1st Lt. Oliver R. McNeel, who became the world's second refuelers. On August 27 and 28, with fourteen midair contacts, tankers operated by Hine and Seifert and Erwin and McNeel kept Smith and Richter in the air over a prescribed track for thirty-seven hours and twenty-five minutes (see Appendix 1 for a schedule of refuelings and deliveries), and set a world record for endurance. The track flown was 3,293 miles, about the same distance as that from Goose Bay, Labrador, to what was Leningrad in the Soviet Union. The First Refueling * The Question Mark and Its Answer * Aeronautical Flagpole Sitting * Refueling at Farnborough * The Modern Airplane Defers Refueling * A British Dilemma and the American Solution * Sir Alan Cobham and FRL, the British Solution * Wartime Might-Have-Beens * Refueling Frustrations and the Onset of the Cold War * The Aircraft and Weapons Board * The KB-29 and B-50 * Lucky Lady II: Air Refueling Accident * The Probe and Drogue * The Cold War Gets Hot, Refueling Becomes Vital * Boom Versus Probe and Drogue Refueling * The B-52 and KC-135 * Tankers Aweigh * Tactical Air Command Adopts Aerial Refueling * SAC, TAC, SIOP, and Tankers * In Europe: NATO and Others * The War in Southeast Asia * Refueling Helicopters * Moments of Truth * The Aerial Refueling Systems Advisory Group * Aeronautica Geriatrica * The Advanced Tanker Cargo Aircraft/KC-10 * EL Dorado Canyon; The Longest Fighter Mission * The Persian Gulf War * The Legacy of Curtis LeMay

Author: Air Force History and Museums Program (U.S.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Government publications
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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Author: G. Kurt Piehler
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452276323
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1921

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The Encyclopedia of Military Science provides a comprehensive, ready-reference on the organization, traditions, training, purpose, and functions of today’s military. Entries in this four-volume work include coverage of the duties, responsibilities, and authority of military personnel and an understanding of strategies and tactics of the modern military and how they interface with political, social, legal, economic, and technological factors. A large component is devoted to issues of leadership, group dynamics, motivation, problem-solving, and decision making in the military context. Finally, this work also covers recent American military history since the end of the Cold War with a special emphasis on peacekeeping and peacemaking operations, the First Persian Gulf War, the events surrounding 9/11, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and how the military has been changing in relation to these events. Click here to read an article on The Daily Beast by Encyclopedia editor G. Kurt Piehler, "Why Don't We Build Statues For Our War Heroes Anymore?"

Author: John Andreas Olsen
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1612345786
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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This book combines short military biographies and operational analyses to reveal how the personalities, attitudes, and life experiences of twelve outstanding U.S. airmen shaped the central air campaigns in American history. These case studies illuminate the character of these airmen, the challenges they confronted in widely disparate armed conflicts, and the solutions that they crafted and implemented. Their achievements proved decisive not only in the campaigns they led, but also in shaping the U.S. Air Force and the dominant role of airpower in modern warfare.

Author: Air Force History and Museums Program (U.S.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Military history
Languages : en
Pages : 50

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Author: John Andreas Olsen
Publisher: Potomac Books, Inc.
ISBN: 1597975559
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 561

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Presents a regional, national, and global overview of air power; Written by a cadre of military specialists who offer global perspectives; Assesses its cultural as well as military influences

Author: Theodore Voorhees
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472126717
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 381

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The Silent Guns of Two Octobers uses new as well as previously under-appreciated documentary evidence to link the Cuban Missile Crisis to the Checkpoint Charlie tank standoff to achieve the impossible—craft a new, thoughtful, original analysis of a political showdown everyone thought they knew everything about. Ultimately the book concludes that much of the Cold War rhetoric the leaders employed was mere posturing; in reality neither had any intention of starting a nuclear war. Theodore Voorhees reexamines Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s leadership, decision, and rhetoric in light of the new documentary evidence available. Voorhees examines the impact of John F. Kennedy's domestic political concerns about his upcoming first midterm elections on his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis through his use of back-channel dealings with Khrushchev during the lead-up to the crisis and in the closing days when the two leaders managed to reach a settlement.