It’s true. My son is deploying in his KC135 tomorrow which has no parachutes. Tough as family awaits the news from this crash.
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Its “tomorrow” there today!
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Policy must have changed in the USAF then. We had parachutes, they were hanging in a rack by the boomers station. We didn't wear them routinely but they were there.
#16. Time to demand that the Fuel tankers HAVE parachutes. Not to have them is just plain stupid and deadly.
I’ll give you an example of possibly NOT having something you need in a time of war (or even peace-time operations).
At my first and last “Five O’clock Folly” press briefing at the Pentagon, about 1971 or 72 (I have the article somewhere), I asked PIO Jerry Friedheim about a news article clipping in the “Currents Events/News” handouts we got several time a day from DOD/DDI (Directorate of Defense Information).
One article said that several No. Vietnamese MIG 21s flew through a a plane “cell” of B-52’s on a bombing mission (probably over NVN).
Apparently none of the bombers were damaged but I don’t know, and still do not know, if they were shot at.
I asked Friedheim about this incident and asked whether these B-52’s had any Machine-Gun defenses on them and manned. He refused to tell us anything.
Many B-52’s never had Gunners though later they had a Tail Gunner because one got wounded fighting off NVN planes.
The stupidity of NOT having defense weapons on a very large plane, like NOT having parachutes on a large aerial refueler, is beyond belief.
The same thing happened to a lot of our UNARMED RF-4C’s. Some were shot down because they couldn’t escape from enemy aircraft who were faster then them, and armed with machine guns and anti-aircraft missiles.
WHY THE HELL DOES OUR MILITARY CONTINUE TO DO THESE STUPID THINGS THAT COST AMERICAN LIVES? It has been 48 years since I was a journalist in SVN/Cambodia and as soon as I got there, I met a Major in charge of press credentials who was a total fool regarding the safety of a group I was with (I had MACV credentials but never picked them up in disgust).
The So. Vietnamese were much more concerned with our safety and within a couple of hours everyone of our group had SVN Press Credentials which could have been a lifesaving document if we ran into the enemy.
Time to shove STUPIDITY out the door and put back plain old common sense as an official policy. It will save American lives.
https://www.940arw.afrc.af.mil/News/Article-View/Article/169673/air-force-pulls-parachutes-from-kc-135s/
MY experiences were in the 70's and 80's and I thought I was keeping up with the tanker community. My apologies to you for the bad post and best wishes for your son on his deployment.