We had the old KC-135A Water Wagons in Saudi when we started Elf-One in the 1980s. As the Vice-Commander I was always having to respond to the locals in Riyadh about the dark black smoke they put out on take off as they climb over the city.
One of the reasons I have hearing problems is the noise caused by the water injection. My first flight out of Castle AFB as a student was number 4 in a 4 ship Minimum Interval Take-Off (MITO) 12 seconds behind the tanker in front of us with 2 B-52s also flying water wagons in the lead. All we could see was black smoke until we rotated. At the time I was too young and dumb to figure out how damn dangerous that was. The steam jet would really make the earth move.