Air Refuelling - The Hidden Force Multiplier

from Vietnam to the Falklands and from the Cold War to the Middle East air-to-air refueling or tanking is the unseen force enabler allowing those countries which have this capability to project their airpower around the world and allowing their aircraft to stay in the air for as long as their crew have the stamina and the engines have enough oil so how does this vital service affect the military [Music] [Applause] [Music] today's video is sponsored by fast hosts now if you're in the UK you have a chance to win two tickets to South by Southwest including flights and accommodation if you can answer my tech uestion which is the Boeing kc-46 Pegasus is the latest refuelling aircraft to be used by the USAF from which other Boeing plane was it developed from I'll explain more later in the video now air refuelling might be seen by some as just the process of refueling an aircraft in flight but the impact of this basic process has shaped the way the military is operated and ultimately how conflicts have been fought for the past 70 odd years certain operations would just not have been possible without it but this apparently simple process is fraught with danger for both the aircraft being refueled and the tanker carrying the fuel and there have been some notable incidents whilst refueling the type of plane being able to be refueled is not just limited to Fighters which are the most commonly seen almost any plane can be modified to allow air refuelling from tankers to helicopters to heavy bombers like the b-52 b2 and for specially modified Boeing 747s like Air Force One and the Boeing efore B the US Strategic Command control aircraft also have air refueling capability although no US president has ever used the air refueling ability of Air Force One and many of the tankers themselves can also be refueled by other tankers air refuelling also allows planes to take off with greater weapons load and less fuel and be refueled on route or take off with less fuel and safe carrying it into the sky and be refueled later which is shown to save up to 40% in fuel costs the history of air refuelling goes back to the 1920s with first the US Army Air Service and then shortly after the British and French air forces this was done by having two planes fly slowly in formation one above the other a hose will be lowered from the upper plane to the lower line and then the fuel flowed under gravity although best method worked it was seen as more of a novelty than a practical solution this was also over time of the first long-distance flight records an aviation enthusiast saw Air Refueling as a way to increase their range one of these was Alan Cobham a member of the Royal Flying Corps in World War one he took the idea of the hose and created the grapple line looped hose method originally he intended for use with transatlantic flying boats and in 1935 he demonstrated it in action over the following years his company flight refuelling limited or FRL developed it into the first practical air refuelling system in the latter part of World War two this method was adopted by the RAF for their very long distance tiger force of Lancaster and Lincoln bombers for operations against for Japanese homeland's but the war ended before they came into service after the war the USAF bought some of Fr Elle's refueling systems for their b-29 and B 50 bombers in 1949 a B 50 called a lucky lady flew non-stop around the world using an fr L refueling system boss this worked Cobham realized it left a lot to be desired and started work on what would become known as the probe-and-drogue which has become one over to standard methods in use today this continued to use a hose which would be let out and trout from the wings of a body of a tanker aircraft at the end of the hose it had a drogue which was a bit like a shuttlecock which provides the stabilization in the air as well as doubling up as a funnel to guide for receiving aircraft's refuelling probe and lock onto it whilst for connection is made to fuel his pump from a tanker to the receiving aircraft multiple probe and rogues can be deployed by a single tanker enabling up to three planes to be refueled at once but the amount of fuel transferred per probe-and-drogue is limited to about 1200 liters per minute in the late 1940s general Curtis LeMay the head of the Strategic Air Command asked Boeing to develop a method that could transfer fuel at a higher rate than the probe-and-drogue for his bomber force the result was the flying boom this used a rigid gimbal telescoping tube with small winglets which could be moved this controlled the position of a boom which was done by the boom operator who was located in the rear of a tanker this could transfer about three times the amount of fuel in the same time compared to the probe-and-drogue a couple of other methods are also used but in a very limited form which are the wing to wing method where the receiving aircraft refuse from the wing rather than a probe on the fuselage and the body refuelling where both planes can supply and receive fuel the first purpose-built air tanker which was developed by Boeing in the early 1950s was the kc-97 Strato freighter which was in turn based on the Boeing Strato Cruiser the aircraft Kaycee identify which is still in use today stands for ke meaning tanker and C meaning transport over the years some of the newer tankers have come from successful civilian aircraft the kc-135 which is still in use is based on the Boeing 707 and the kc-10 is based on McDonnell Douglas dc-10 and the latest kc-46 Pegasus is based on the Boeing 767 the British K 2 3 & 4 were based on the Vickers vc10 and a Victor K 2 s were originally V Force nuclear bombers before being converted into tankers although through the 1950s and 60s Air Refueling became much more widespread it remained there danger operation and played a major part in the loss of a b-52g carrying four hydrogen bombs over Spain the pallamary is incident of 1966 as it became known as occurred when the b-52 was about to perform the second refueling of its mission as part of Operation chrome-dome now operation chrome dome was for response of the u.s. to the threat of a Soviet nuclear attack and involved up to 12 fully loaded b-52 nuclear bombers in the air at any one time from 1960 to 1968 flying from the u.s. to around the edges of the Soviet Union which required sometimes two or more refuelings permission as the b-52 approached four tanker from the rear 31,000 feet over the Mediterranean Sea our four coast of Spain it was flight slightly faster than the tanker which is normal in this situation the boom operator would call break away break away break away but no such call was heard by the crew of the b-52 and it continued towards the kc-135 tanker what appears to have happened is still not clear to this day but the b-52 struck the flying boom and collided with the belly of the tanker spilling fuel onto both planes which then exploded destroying the tanker and the b-52 all aboard the tanker were killed along with three of the seven crew of a b-52 and for armed mark 28 hydrogen bombs were initially lost over the coast of Spain and the Mediterranean Sea though all were eventually recovered after a huge cleanup operation by the u.s. air refuelling was also instrumental in the 1982 operation blackbuck the bombing of the Port Stanley Airport by the RAF Falcon bombers in the Falklands conflict the seven plan raids at 6600 miles or twelve thousand two hundred kilometers were the longest bombing run in history at the time to get one volcán bomber from the Ascension Island Bay to drop 21 bombs on the target in the Falklands took 11 Victor k2 tankers with tankers refueling tankers and the Vulcan receiving 8 refills afterwards vist caming for some negative reaction not least for me other parts of the RAF with a commander of the 801 Naval Air Squadron saying that for the same amount of fuel to drop 21 bombs the sea harrier of a carrier force could drop 2357 that record stood for 19 years until october 2001 just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks in New York when the longest bombing run to date took place as part of Operation Enduring Freedom the first of six b-2 bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base Missouri flew over the Pacific Ocean halfway across the Indian Ocean and on to Afghanistan to destroy the air defense systems there to allow other aerial operations to take place the one way distance to the target was nearly sixteen thousand miles or 26 thousand kilometers with refueling being done by kc-135 and kc-10 tankers and even boda b2 has a range of six thousand nine hundred miles or 11,000 kilometers it took five refuse to get there by the time the mission ended and the b2 landed at the Diego Garcia Base in the middle of the Indian Ocean it had been in the air for forty four hours and twenty minutes but the story didn't end there the b2 was left with its engines running while she was refueled on the ground new oil added to the engines the toilet emptied and new food placed in the plane then 45 minutes after it landed a new crew flew the 13,200 Mars or 21 thousand seven hundred and eighty kilometers back to Whiteman Air Force Base a totaling two running time of over 70 hours over three days six b-2s made the same journey something that would have been impossible without air refueling during the Vietnam War b-52s flying from Guam and f-105s F or phantoms and f-111s amongst others flying from Thailand relied upon the kc-135 Stratotanker z-- to carry out their missions but the tankers could also do something which was little known about and thus seemed really rather amazing and which was to rescue damaged planes by towing them back to base there's an instance of an f-111 aardvark which was damaged by a missile over North Vietnam and put out a distress call a kc-135 was about to return to base and heard the call and responded to meet up with the f-111 once the boom was attached to the operator could see that the f-111 had a serious fuel leak caused by the missile damage under certain conditions like this when the plane was still flyable but would lose too much fuel to be able to get back to base the boom locking mechanism was strong enough to pull the receiving plane along whilst transferring fuel in this instance the f-111 was towed back to its base in Thailand where it was able to land safely these are just a few of the stories of the often unseen Air Refueling which occurs every day around the world and the effect it has had on the modern military now our sponsor for this video fast hosts also deals in what could be called the unseen but also no less unimportant services of the internet from domain names to web hosting email hosting and alike one of the services which they offer and I use every day is Microsoft Office 365 I use word for my script in OneNote for all my video subject ideas and exchange outlook for all my emails because the service is hosted it's always up-to-date and you can have it on up to five devices I like exchange outlook because I can always get my emails on any device it'll run on even if the iPhone fails with a hard drive in the computer packs up I know all my data is safe online and it just downloads when I'm set up again including any of the new messages which have arrived since you're offline and with fast host offering you a 50 GB by mailbox it's unlikely you're gonna run out of space anytime soon now don't forget if you're in the UK you have a chance to win two tickets to South by Southwest including flights and accommodation if you can answer my ticket question which was the Boeing kc-46 Pegasus is the latest refueling aircraft to be used by the USAF for which other Boeing plane was it developed from if you're stuck the answers just over halfway through the video just click on the link in the description below or enter the URL now showing and good luck with the competition

Channel: Curious Droid

Views: 313,331

Rating: 4.9363728 out of 5

Keywords: air refueling, air tanker, kc-135 refueling, kc-10, kc-46a pegasus, kc-46, victor k2, vickers vc-10, b-2 bomber, air to air refueling, buddy refueling, wing to wing refueling, paul shillito, curious droid, longest bombing run, falklands war, kc-97 stratotanker, flying boom, probe and drogue refueling, alan cobham, frl refuelling

Id: v2VWisu1GaA

Length: 14min 25sec (865 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Shrike_88]

Curious Droid has an amazing channel

[u/Tyrfin]

Nice find.

[u/BenqEnobe]

The bit about towing aircraft home is a very interesting fact. TIL! Thanks

[u/Mully66]

Ive been in the cockpit of an E3 Awacs for many A-A refueling's. Pretty cool to see in action.