Air Force veteran sheds light on crash of U.S. refueling aircraft amid Operation Epic Fury
THOUSAND PALMS, Calif. (KESQ) – The loss of a KC-135 Stratotanker and its six crew members in the skies above Iraq is drawing reaction from one Air Force veteran.
Dana Crosby now lives in the Coachella Valley. He served in the Air Force as a KC-135 Instructor Navigator from 1985 to 1992. He spent time in the Middle East.
"Our entire unit deployed during Operation Desert Shield. We rotated home, went back during Operation Desert Storm, and flew hard for two and a half months. And then it was all over and we came home," Crosby remembered.
Crosby described the KC-135, itself a retrofitted military version of the Boeing 707 passenger jet, as a vital piece in the Air Force's fleet, despite its age.
"It's extremely vital. I mean, during, you know... there were tankers flying 24 hours a day during the First Gulf War that I participated in, and it's a force extender," he explained. "A fighter jet can do four missions in one without having to land [by] coming back and getting refueled a couple of times."
He outlined the process for the various aircraft types that would use the moving gas station in the sky. From transports to bombers to fighter jets, any plane fit for refueling and thirsty for gas would follow a similar routine.
"The receiver airplane is flying a visual formation and just trying to keep that same picture. And the boom operator in the back of the airplane is extending the boom and lining it up and and then plugging into the receiver aircraft, and then up front the pilots turn on the fuel pumps and transfer transfer fuel," Crosby detailed. "It's actually pretty pretty routine. And the incidences of of midair collisions is extremely rare."
Despite the rarity of such accidents, Crosby said it appeared that the latest loss of the Stratotanker in Iraq was due to a mid-air collision. United States Central Command ruled out the possibility of friendly or hostile fire that downed the aircraft when it first broke the news on Thursday.
Based on Crosby's research into the crash and his experience, he said the clues more than likely point to a mid-air refueling mishap. According to Crosby, pictures of another KC-135R Stratotanker said to be involved in the crash (claims which have not yet been verified by officials) shows a large portion of its vertical stabilizer sheared off. There are no reports of any injuries aboard the second aircraft.
"Whatever happened here was very rare. And it turns out that one of the the KC 135s, the one that landed in Israel, was itself refuelable," Crosby said. "So it sounds to me like it was getting it was coming into refueling formation when the incident happened. But it's lucky that that airplane didn't go down, too."
In the event of emergencies, Crosby stressed it would be incredibly difficult to bail out of a doomed refueling aircraft.
"Back in my day, they did have parachutes. We were parachute trained. But to my knowledge, no one's ever jumped out of a tanker," he recalled. In recent years, Crosby added, the parachutes have been removed from the tankers.
"Maybe [the crew] would have benefited from [the parachutes]. I don't know. I don't know how rapidly the plane went down or anything, but the odds of ever having to jump out of a tanker are astronomically low."
