In the Military - Passing Gas

Not Quite a Fart Joke

It's easy to understand the humor of passing gas...in a juvenile sense, anyway. It makes a funny sound, sometimes produces smells that vary from unnoticeable to downright putrid, and can be a great source of embarrassment for "he who dealt it."

But while all that might be humorous, it has NOTHING to do with what I am writing about today...passing gas.

In the military, it can have a whole other meaning...in this case, a refueling tanker. Yes, today I wrote about my recent trip overseas in a KC-135 Stratotanker.

I've been on a bunch of different airplanes in my time in the military...C-130s mainly, but also C-9s, C-17s and a bunch of different helicopters, but I had actually never been on a tanker before this weekend. I headed out last weekend on a KC-135 bound for Germany. While the crew would stay at the base for additional training missions, I would head down to another base for my training...or shadowing...or boondoggle...whatever you want to call it. So we loaded up the plane with about 20 others who needed to go to Germany, and the stage was set for my trip, and this story.

TURBULENCE, TURBULENCE!

Ok, not really. I expected at least a little turbulence...especially considering the gusty winds around takeoff and all the roll clouds that were lingering in the south part of the state. But the flight was rather smooth. Let's take a look at some of the pics I took on the trip.

Loading up...our baggage was in the bins strapped down the center line of the plane while we took the jumpseats along the edge.



Behold, the seat that I will stay in for the next 9.5 hours:



Like I said, the flight was pretty smooth, but at about the 3 hour point, a little bit of alarm was raised when some of the crew members started smelling gas fumes. One of the crew chiefs went to the back and woke up another sleeping crew member. That person put on his boots and walked along the edge of the plane to check out the situation. Then the pilot got up and started walking around the plane. Some folks were concerned...as the troop commander for the trip, the crew chief did a great job keeping me informed on the situation. They think it was an over-pressurized valve that leaked a few drops of gas...other than that, they were kind of at a loss as to what it could be but would monitor the situation. I didn't feel like it was anything serious as the smell was very localized and wasn't growing. Otherwise we would have had to turn back to base of divert to Maine. Luckily it didn't come to that. Some folks never even stopped playing cards:

But I kept at it...trying to distract myself because there isn't any WiFi or in-flight movies. So I walked a lot of laps, took a few pictures...

I even managed to catch a few hours of sleep, albeit, it was a bit uncomfortable. But I will say that whenever I got up, I made sure to take along my emergency passenger oxygen system. This was one point that was heavily stressed by the crew chief. He mentioned there was one time in the past on one of his flights that the plane depressurized and 4 people almost died because they weren't near their oxygen. Not sure if he was being serious or bullshitting, but I didn't want to get on the bad boy list so I kept my kit close by.

The night was uneventful, except for some cold air and colder feet. That is one thing about these planes, they either get really hot or really cold. But I managed to get a couple hours of nap and I got out of my seat when the sun was coming up. Just was we were passing over Iceland, I snagged this picture:


And from there, I made sure I got my obligatory cockpit shot before we finished the flight:

Upon landing and checking in, we were greeted by the permanent party Air National Guard folks, who had some beer waiting for us!

Overall it was a great trip, though undoubtedly I would do some things different on the next trip! We didn't get to refuel any other planes (passing gas)...it just wasn't available for this mission. So one day, I'll make sure to get on a plane that is actually planning to refuel another jet. Until then, take care everybody!