The Oklahoma Air National Guard is training on the new KC-135s, which are refueling planes, in the Gulf of Mexico.
By Sean Murphy
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Keith Werner spends a lot of time lying around on the job.
A senior master sergeant with the Oklahoma Air National Guard, Werner is a boom operator on a KC-135 Stratotanker. His job is to guide the fuel boom mid-flight into a receptacle on an awaiting aircraft that hovers just below the massive refueler.
“I enjoy the air refueling part of it,” Werner said Thursday as he honed his craft at about 21,000 feet above the Gulf of Mexico. “I really like seeing the different aircraft and their capabilities.”
Laying horizontally in the boom pod, a small compartment at the back of the aircraft, Werner tucked his face into a chin rest and kept his hand on a joystick. He watched intently as he guided the boom into an F-16 fighter jet as it hovered just 30 feet underneath the giant aircraft.
The exercise was the first joint training operation between the Oklahoma Air National Guard’s 138th Fighter Wing in Tulsa and the Oklahoma City-based 137th Air Refueling Wing.
“This is an opportunity to showcase both air operations,” said Brig. Gen. Mike McCormack, commander of the Oklahoma Air National Guard. “But it’s really just the tip of the iceberg for what these air wings do for the nation, the state and these two cities.”
Pilots and crew members from the Oklahoma Air National Guard’s 137th Air Refueling Wing still are getting familiarized with the new KC-135s, which replaced the C-130 cargo planes that were moved out as part of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, process.
The KC-135s have some storage capability and can carry about 75 passengers, but it’s primary job is to refuel other aircraft. It can hold about 30,000 gallons of fuel.
“It’s a different mission than what we’re used to … but we enjoy it,” said Col. Devin Wooden, pilot of the KC-135.
The pilots say flying the KC-135 is a more straightforward mission — no evasive landings on dirt air strips or quickly unloading cargo in the dark of night.
“It’s almost like apples and oranges,” said co-pilot Lt. Col. Johnathan Benton. “But as we’ve transitioned from a transport wing to a refueling wing, we get to have a lot more interaction with our sister wing in Tulsa.”
Thursday’s exercise also involved the final flight of an F-16 from Ellington Air Base near Houston as the Texas Air National Guard wing based there scraps its fighters and transitions to its new mission as a reconnaissance wing featuring unmanned Predator drones. That change also is part of the 2005 BRAC.
As a result of the change, four of the F-16s from the Tulsa detachment and their crews, affectionately nicknamed “The Tribe,” are permanently housed at Ellington as part of a homeland security mission at that base.
“We have a rich Native American heritage in Oklahoma, and we’ve carried that with us down here to Texas,” said Lt. Col. Dave Serage, the head of the Texas-based Tulsa detachment.
That Oklahoma heritage also extends to the fighter jets, the tail of each colorfully adorned with a painting of an Indian chief wearing a headdress.
At Ellington on Thursday, two of the jets “scrambled” from their hangars after a report of an unidentified aircraft in the area, a move that is a regular part of their Texas mission.
“There are quite a few high-value assets within a 500-mile radius of around here,” Serage said. “Nuclear power stations, energy infrastructure … this part of the country is very critical to our nation’s health.”
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