GREAT thread overall. I’m curious about this aspect. Do you (or anyone) have sea stories about gassing up at a civilian airfield/ overnighting in a location you didn’t plan to be?
I am loving the replies especially hearing from the former Soviet Union point of view (thx Max).
My only unexpected RON experiences were Cecil Field and GITMO when the deck got night clobbered and there wasn’t enough gas in the air. Both times were late at night and we pretty much had to fend for ourselves even me getting out and sliding down back
of jet on horizontal stab. Pinning the seats was always fun at night and then making sure we had comms with ship to see when they wanted us back. Then finding someone who knew how to start a Tomcat. We didn’t need a PC but had to have power and external air and somebody who could figure out how to hook it up.
Then there was the last day of Desert Storm. We had received a replacement pilot after one pilot turned in his wings on eve of Shield turning into Storm (said he did not sign up for war...he signed up to build time for airlines). By the time a new guy arrived, it was last week Dof combat so he was flying CAP missions over the Red Sea to get familiar with ops. They called off combat while he was still getting acquainted with things but Skipper wanted to let him at least “poke his nose” in country. The first morning of no combat missions presented an opportunity; the Admiral wanted 2 Tomcats to “boom” Baghdad after seeing a message from Air Force saying they were using F-111s to induce Saddam to cooperate and let POWs know we were thinking of them (similar to Hanoi Hilton overflights).
So there I was in the backseat with the new guy heading to Iraq on the wing of “Bluto” (Andrés Brugal) as the Mission Commander for this escapade. It was ominously quiet on the comm circuits as we tanked over Saudi Arabia off a USAF KC-135. We were the only customers. His technique with the hard basket was a little rough and he had to abort a couple times but we finally got plugged. We departed the tanker track and pointed our noses towards Baghdad. Soon we saw the huge lakes situated to the Northwest and began our descent accelerating to just to just over Mach 1. I knew we were supposedly in a cease fire but hoped they knew that and nobody with an itchy trigger finger wouuld light off a SAM or unleash a torrent of AAA in our direction.
As we descended through 5K at the speed of heatter, we could see the burbs sprawling below us. Suddenly, the AWACS called us and asked our intentions....intentions?!? I wasn’t about to respond in the clear and announce that to the entire Iraqi IADS. So I asked them to go “Green” so we could talk via secure KY-28. Meanwhile we are booming the heck out of the burbs and watching for telltale SAM activity. The AWACS apparently did not have us on their list of ATO missions so wanted us to abort. I told them we were tasked by our Battle Force Commander so we would have to hear it from him. They said standby....standby? We were supersonic going 12 miles a minute over the outskirts of Baghdad!
So I contacted Bluto over our squadron tactical radio suggesting hold over the nearest lake until we sort this out. He agreed and we zoom climbed to 10K over the massive lake that reminded me of Lake Meade in Nevada only I didn’t see any pleasure craft cruising around. We had plenty of gas remaining so we orbited awaiting a response from the AWACS. Normally we had an E-2C running interference for us but not today. As far as we knew it was just us and the AWACS. Then this very old sounding and authoritative voice came up and said “THIS is JERICHO,...your mission is cancelled”. I looked at my list of callsigns and JERICHO wasn’t on it nor had I heard of that codeword. I figured discretion was the better part of valor and rogered his direction guessing he must be an airborne general officer or maybe General Horner himself from sound of his deep voice. Oh well, at least we got the new guy a look at Iraq and he could say he had been to the burbs!
We headed back to the tanker track to take on more gas but when the probe was extended, I noticed the tip was slightly bent and cocked to one side probably from his clumsy attempts earlier. I checked our fuel ladder and we could make it to the Red Sea but didn’t have any extra margin in case the ship wasn’t ready. We were close to the Ar’Ar Special Ops Base near the border that was always briefed as an emergency divert with hot pits for the A-10 Warthogs that staged out of there for RESCAP and CAS mission in support of the multinational SPECOPS Task Force based there. So Bluto held overhead while we dropped in to see about getting some gas....expeditiously.
I cautioned the new guy about landing with carrier pressure tires and applying too much braking pressure thereby creating too much heat and melting the fuse plugs. That would not be good. I still hoped to make our recovery time and having to change a tire would mean a RON most likely....although I heard from a sister squadron pilot who diverted there and had to stay overnight that the SAS contingent had their own beer brewing contraption which produced a nice Lager! So we landed without incident with me advising to use length of runway and to go easy with brakes. That took us past four alert pads that had 2 MH-53J helos staged next to Mil-18 Hips painted like Iraqi helos. We taxied to the fuel pits uneventfully drawing quite a crowd. Guess they didn’t see too many Tomcats and it had been months since our sister squadron had diverted there. We shut down the right engine so they could safely approach the refueling panel.
All went well and we saw the Totalizer begin to show an increase in fuel load. Then they started arm waving and pointing under the aircraft. I could see they were worried about a leak but surmised it was the normal ECS drainage. I told the pilot to kneel the jet and cracked the canopy so I could hand them a kneeboard card. I wrote them a note saying that was normal. They passed around the note and nodded their heads in agreement before turning the flow back on. No sooner than flow had resumed, the sMe guy started pointing somewhere else and they shut off flow. This time it looked like they spotted the Coolanol (used to condition the Phoenix missiles....kinda like antifreeze) vent. Again, I drew a picture with an explanation.
Again, we resumed fueling before an even larger crowd including an absolutely bad ass A-10 that had arrived next to us armed to the teeth including Sidewinder missiles. I was surprised at how tall it was as we were looking directly at each other when we weren’t kneeling to pass notes. The safety observer then stopped the refueling a third time pointing at the main mount this time. I worried about the fuse plug and a possible flat tire but he had spotted another leak of some sort. This time, I wrote “It’s a Navy jet, it is supposed to leak!” They passed around the note and nodded their heads yet again but all laughed. We finally got our gas and did a nice low transition and burner climb in the vertical for the crowd rejoining Bluto who was still orbiting overhead. We raced back to the ship and were having sliders before too long. Never heard anything more about the episode nor did anyone know who JERICHO was, but our Admiral wa happy. That worked for me!
