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I am fortunate enough to live under the downwind leg of the east traffic pattern of our local airport which has a bit of military traffic so here are a few from the past few months.

Overhead break!
An extreme crop of a 172nd AW C-17A turning on to a tactical approach to JAN! This big ole bird can lose a lot of altitude fast!

Overhead Break by Larry Mc, on Flickr

2019 P-8A Poseidon in the pattern over my house
This is one of the newer P-8As delivered to the U.S. Navy in early 2019. I think it is stationed at NAS Jacksonville. This was captured just as the gear was being dropped.

C-17A on downwind for 16L at JAN. These big Ol Birds command attention!

KC-135R 186 Air Refueling Wing
This shot was taken from almost directly below the bird as it was on downwind for 32L at JAN. You can see the receiving pilot alignment stripe under the fuselage as well as the pilot automated director lights just behind the nose gear.


KC-135R 186 Air Refueling Wing by Larry Mc, on Flickr

189th AW C-130H on downwind to 16L Jan
Showing the 1920/30 Heritage special tail paint scheme.

189th AW C-130H on downwind to 16L Jan by Larry Mc, on Flickr

Bless you, sir. Not everyone has that attitude. I've actually been shot at in a field carrier landing practice (FCLP) pattern.

Oh, and nice pix too.

Cool photos! I didn't realise that the KC-135 could only refuel one aircraft at a time. The KC30 MRTT has two wing pods and the tail boom so it could refuel three at once.

Seriously? Surely if you live near a military airfield you'd have to accept that you'll get lots of low flying aircraft?

Thanks, as a former U.S. Army pilot and someone who has been fascinated with aircraft since my earliest childhood I don't consider where I live an annoyance at all. Well, if the Marines stayed in the pattern with their T-45C Goshawks I might get a bit annoyed those, pound for pound, are one of the noisiest aircraft I have ever heard when they depart. Fortunately they are up and gone after a close approach.

Thanks for the visit and comment!

Thanks, Rob, I appreciate the comment! I'm not too sure that with the boom deployed three aircraft can be refueled simultaneously since there are two different types of requirements and maneuvering required for both systems. I did read that there is a KC-3 that employs a three drogue system that can refuel three similar aircraft simultaneously.

Larry

There's more involved than having three available 'tits'. Two acft tappin' outer wing stations may have wingtip clearance but, more importantly, they have a safe break-away vector.


The guy trapped in the center line position would be SOL if (when!) something went wrong.

Not a KC-135, but here's a look at the center line basket of an EKA-3B which has a 73 foot wing span. Not much wiggle room and to be useful it has to be reliably possible under the worst conditions. Try this on for size at night in turbulence and below bingo fuel state.

I'm sure that it's more complicated than it seems. I was thinking mostly in terms of the amount of time to refuel a squadron of aircraft if you have to do it one at a time. I suspect (but I don't know) that they probably refuel two aircraft at a time with the MRTT from the wing pods if it's needed, but I doubt that they use all three at once. I have seen three F18 aircraft flying in formation with a KC30 simulating refuelling but not actually doing it. I don't have that photo online but I do have this one. I think the logic for the RAAF is that we don't have many KC30s, so we need to be able to refuel multiple aircraft. I think the 707 conversions had wing pods as well.


KC30A MRTT with FA18 Hornets by RobGeraghty, on Flickr

Nice example of the topic, Rob.


Tanking is a critical element driving nearly all air power decisions today.

This paper offers a peek into the complex issues. Based on USAF and USN needs it will affect other allies simply based on the procurement numbers.

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL32910.pdf

The USN decision to build the carrier air wing around the F/A-18 leads to the necessity to allocate a significant number of tactical aircraft (and pilots) to the tanker mission for which it isn't optimum for many reasons. There's one proposal to refurbish the KS-3 tanker for the carriers.

When in-flight refueling's a mission critical element you can't just bet on a single tanker nor USAF tankers to support carrier operations.

Fair enough! It never even occurred to me in the past that there would be tankers in carrier fleets. When we had carriers, they were barely capable of operating Skyhawks, let alone the Trackers or a jet tanker! The huge US nuclear carriers are a whole different scale, of course. I can understand that you'd prefer to keep planes airborne with tankers rather than the time consuming and wearing process of landing to refuel.

"For Want of a Nail" is a proverb, having numerous variations over several centuries, reminding that seemingly unimportant [stuff] can have grave and unforeseen consequences.

http://https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail

That's the hidden story behind carrier ops. Most folks see tanking as a long range, strategic bomber evolution or trans-oceanic transit but it's been the critical element in tactical carrier air ops since the '60's. It's at the pointy end of the logistics fuel pipeline.

If you're airborne during carrier ops there's gonna be a tanker hidden in the woodpile somewhere. Even if there's a weather (and diplomatically approved) divert bingo field available there'll be a ready alert tanker. A fouled deck, a malfunctioning aircraft or a bumfuzzled pilot having a problem getting aboard can happen at the best of times.

The story of air ops in the Middle East and Afghanistan is written in tanker-ed fuel.

It's always fun to be the last, lone tanker airborne when everything goes nuts at oh-dark-thirty in foul weather, you know you're gonna be the last one aboard and there's no bingo field. I've never heard of medals awarded for being a courageous tanker pilot!