Bad day to refuel
Inflight refueling of F22 Raptors went badly wrong on July 8.
A KC-46A Pegasus refueling tanker was forced to conduct an emergency landing July 8 after its refueling boom was shredded in a mishap off the East Coast.
The unofficial Facebook page Air Force amn/nco/snco posted photos of the KC-46 Friday, which showed extensive damage to the plane’s refueling boom. The War Zone first reported the damage to the KC-46.
The boom itself was damaged and the underside of the KC-46A tanker’s underside was torn up.
The photos show most of the boom is ripped off, with its remaining metal ripped and twisted and a chain hanging down. The underside of the plane’s tail was also dented and scraped, which may have occurred from the damaged boom.
In my decidedly unprofessional opinion, that ain’t gonna buff out.
The KC-46, which is from McConnell’s 22nd Air Refueling Wing, was refueling F-22 Raptors from Joint Base Langley-Eustis that afternoon when the mishap occurred, Van Winkle said. The crew declared an in-flight emergency and landed safely at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina without any injuries, he said. The F-22s returned to their home base.
No reports on what, if any, damage the fighter(s) sustained.
This isn’t the first such incident – quick search for “inflight fueling accident” turns up similar reports August 2024 and November 2022. Think now is a good time for one of our resident experts to let their thoughts be known?
Category: Air Force
Well day-um!
That’s gonna leave a mark.
Hope all the crew are ok, no one hurt or lost.
He broke the doinker?
Giggle Switch
…
ha.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I see a lot of large aircraft refueling over head here. Pretty strange seeing big planes flying so close together. In the past I could tell there was a refueling going on by the sound.
When you drive off with the fuel hose still attached at the gas station it snaps right back on. They should get with those people.
However, I’m going to say this is actually good news. Aviation is having rough year all around and if they had splashed an F22 and or tanker that would have been way worse.
The question nobody wants to hear while flying… what was that noise.
Don’t worry, it’s just the fuel hose banging against the side of the plane.
That hole wasn’t created from the refueling mishap. That hole came about from fire and rescue having to remove the boom operator from whatever object his sphincter was attached to.
If they had one of those flying over sisters Eagle Airport in September 2013, we may have never heard of Daniel Bernath.
Nine comments in and no “resident expertise” as of yet! (Unless the topic was actually snark.)
Did they find the boom? What happened to the F-22 involved?
It’s now doing a very expensive A6 impersonation.
I asked Google AI to compare the A6 and the F22 and it told the F22 was much faster because the A6 is a car.
AI leaves much to be desired.
Not completely wrong…
Perhaps I should have said A6 Intruder. I figured this being a military blog, the Intruder part wasn’t necessary. I have enclosed a pic to clear up any confusion.
I knew what you meant, but AI didn’t.
Wheres the boom?
I was expecting an aircraft-shattering boom.
Well I am no expert on Air Force refueling operations, but my grandfather was a lineman and he left my Dad his tools. I think if we get some snips and a little duck tape we can get that (as Musk would say) “unplanned external modification to the aircraft” fixed up here in a giffy!
Glad no on e was hurt. Wonder where the pieces landed?
Wherever it landed, the news interview will probably sound like this. Especially so if it landed in a trailer park.
Ooopsie!
“a chain hanging down”
I’ll bet that’s for when they run out of fuel and need to tow
the customer home.
When towing another aircraft inflight, the towing aircraft should have their hazard lights blinking, and maintain a safe speed in the right lane.
Ain’t good to mess with vertical or horizontal stabilizer of any aircraft. Wouldn’t want any extra tail accessories swinging around from the tail, either.
As the saying goes, “shit happens”.
KC-46 having APU problems, too:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/kc-46-crews-ordered-drastically-000447142.html
“Van Winkle[?] said.”, “….Seymour Johnson Air Force Base…”, a broken dick?
None of this is real. Nope. The simulation is breaking down.
The para? is cuz we don’t have the article and no one knows this Von Tinkle character.
They’re doing it wrong.
In one of the Star Trek movies, Scotty was heard to say something to the effect of, “Da more ya overtake the plumbin, the easier it is to monkey up the works.” This explains why the B-52 and the KC-135 are still flying.
If you had to build a new and modern B52 today it would likely be $50B a copy.
Boeing would specify 25 years to produce the first aircraft, and then it would be 10 years late.
There will be cost overruns before they get back from lunch.
It would be a real boom to go over prior boom incidents and square away further incidents.
So, with in-flight refueling mishaps, who’s commonly at fault? The fueler or the fuelee?
The aircraft receiving the fuel. If the pilot is too damn stupid to make sure he has enough fuel to, he should go into another line of work, like charging people exorbitant sum of money to get their Social Security benefits, and failing that, filing frivolous lawsuits.
After I got out of the Navy, I did various odd jobs until I decided to go to college. One of those jobs was aircraft fueler at DIA. Did that for about a year, but for on-ground refueling, the fueler is at fault for any screw ups. I only got dinged once for the time I spent there, so I must’ve did a pretty good job. But I guess it’s different when your doing it in the sky.
One of Hack Stone’s many siblings had a side gig loading aircraft at Philadelphia International AirPort. One of the coworkers punched a hole in the side of an aircraft with a forklift. So he did what any other person would do who caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage and could possibly lead to the deaths of hundreds of people in the air and on land; he did not notify anyone. The plane landed at the destination and the ground crew was raising all kinds of hell, as they should have. And that employee’s name? That’s right, Daniel Bernath.
Just kidding about Bernasty, but the rest is true, as far as Hack Stone’s knows. His brother would never embellish a story.
Jeez. In that refueling job, I was also a trainer. I taught about 3 of them how to refuel the plane and how to be effective at it. I taught them that there are 3 checks to ensure the correct fuel load for the flight: the fueler, gate agent, and pilots. We fuelers were the first check, so if we got it wrong, we were risking that the gate agent and pilots would catch it. If they didn’t, and that plane couldn’t find a runway in time, it was crashing. This was among the first things I taught them and I tried to make it sound as blunt as possible. I hope your sibling was black listed from being able to take a job in aviation ever again. No offense.
Anyway, little bit of a sidebar, here is one of my training videos I would show my trainees when I would first meet ’em:
It wasn’t Hack’s brother, it was the coworker of Hack Stone’s brother that did the after market modifications to the plane. No one at the Philadelphia Airport, other than the guy driving the forklift, knew about it until the word got back from the destination airport.
Oh ok. Gotcha. Hope he (the coworker) never works in aviation again. Offense towards him half-intended.
Air refueling mishaps like this occur a couple times a year. This one had a pretty spectacular picture so its getting a lot of airplay. I’d be curious to see the accident report.
Back a dozen or so years ago there was a pretty exciting video from a NATO AWACS – KC-135 air refueling near hit.
Two big airplanes flying close together is really sporty.
“Two big airplanes flying close together is really sporty”
My dad (B-17G Bombadier) had some really good stories
about keeping a tight formation over the target.
Wish he were still here.
Kudos to the Boomers and their flying gas stations.
NKAWTG
Nobody Kicks Ass Without Tanker Gas.
Managing tankers is one of the toughest jobs in modern command and control.
This was no boating accident.
I can recall my dad coming home from a long flight smelling like he showered in JP-4. He did. Apparently, B-52’s had a problem with fuel leakage from the boom receptacle if the breakaway wasn’t done right and would rain fuel just behind the flight deck. That’s gotta be a little unnerving.
“In my decidedly unprofessional opinion, that ain’t gonna buff out.”
Oh, I don’t know…a little Motrin and a band-aid, fly it off…should be right as rain.
Had an IFR hose on one of our HC-130P refuse to retract back into the pod for some long forgotten reason; it was guillotined and jettisoned while on a training flight over central Oregon. It crashed into the roof of a vacant house on the Warm Springs Indian reservation. A couple of weeks later, the outline of a little house indicating it’s “kill” showed up painted on the side of the plane next to the crew entry door.
Hopefully it was allowed to stay on throughout its service life, and not removed because of feelings or some such crap.
I think it was still there, at least until we transitioned over to KC-135’s a few years later.
Overheard commo:
“OW! You said just the tip! My turn!”