Students take flight to refuel fighter planes

BY LAUREN MATTHEW
Staff Writer

OLD BRIDGE - Most school days for Old Bridge High School students don't begin by boarding a military aircraft.

But on April 28, that's exactly what 37 of the school's Air Force Junior ROTC cadets did, as part of an operational U.S. Air Force refueling mission aboard a KC-10 tanker aircraft.

"We went in the air and we refilled F-22s and F-15s," said 10th-grade cadet Charlie Thompson.

The day began before sunrise, at 4:30 a.m., according to retired Air Force Col. Randall Lanning, the senior aerospace science instructor at Old Bridge High School. Cadets arrived at McGuire Air Force Base, Wrightstown, by 6 a.m., boarded two aircraft by 8:15, took off by 9 and landed by 1:30 p.m., Lanning said. They were back home by late afternoon.

"It was the same day as the junior prom," Lanning noted. "That's truly an endurance test."

The air refueling mission allowed cadets to see two types of Air Force fighter planes up close: the F-15 Eagle and the Air Force's newest fighter, the F-22 Raptor. The planes were from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, and belong to the 305th Air Mobility Wing at McGuire.

Top, an Old Bridge Junior ROTC cadet gets a hands-on lesson aboard one of two DC-10 planes used for a refueling mission. Above, an aircraft poises below a DC-10 39,000 feet in the air to refuel. "The F-22 is so new they've only got one squadron of them in the whole Air Force," Lanning said.

Students flew aboard two KC-10s down to Langley to refuel other planes while in the air.

Old Bridge ROTC students have participated in the refueling trip for the past three years. For Thompson, the trip marked his first flight.

"I had to work up enough courage to get on," he said.

Lanning said cadets were selected based on merit. They were each asked to write an essay explaining why they deserved to go on the trip. The essays were given to student cadet leaders to choose who would go, and Lanning and ROTC staff approved the choices.

"We selected 41 to go, and 37 actually flew," Lanning said. "This is a privilege."

McGuire is one of two bases that operates KC-10s, Lanning said. The other is Travis Air Force Base in California.

"The Air Force has put one of these units on the East Coast and one of these units on the West Coast," Lanning said.

The KC-10, he explained, is the military version of a DC-10 airliner.

Once aboard, cadets got a chance to see how the planes operate. They went into the cockpit as well as the boompit, where refueling takes place.

There aren't a lot of windows on a KC-10, Lanning said, so if you aren't sitting near one of those two places, it's kind of like riding in a box.

"There was, like, two windows the size of Dixie cups," said sophomore Katie Arzig.

Cadets also made note of the extreme loudness aboard the flight.

Being aboard a KC-10 at 39,000 feet takes adjusting, junior Frank Flaherty said.

"It was hard to breathe up there at first," he said.

Flaherty said he was impressed with how everyone interacted once onboard.

"It was like a family up there," he said.

"It's really kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, because a lot of Americans never get the opportunity to fly in one of these missions," Lanning said.

"It was really fun," said junior Iliana Lavie. "On my flight, four people got to go and see the whole refueling process, and I was one of those four."

Lavie said she took pictures of everything, and in some of them, the pilot of the plane being refueled can be seen.

"The whole experience of going through the passenger terminal, going through screening, going through the Air Force flight line ... watching the air crew do their thing and being able to be a part of that process was just as important as the actual refueling was," Lanning said.

Some cadets brought video cameras, he said, and took footage of F-22s and F-15s coming up to refuel.

Senior Orlondo Finney has been on the trip before, but this year the planes were different.

"It was actually a good experience to get on this type of aircraft," he said. "Not many people get to experience this."

Flaherty said he has always wanted to be a pilot, and this trip offered him the chance to talk to those who do the job.

"It was an honor speaking to those pilots," he said.

Chief Master Sgt. Thomas Pitzer, who works with Lanning at the high school, said the trip gave cadets a chance to see how responsible they can be.

"These kids get to see, not so much the Air Force, as they see young men and women who are maybe just a couple of years older than them, and how responsible they are ...," Pitzer said. "When you think of how responsible they are, it just is an amazing transformation."

For Pitzer, the trip was like going home.

"I was an aviator anyway, so I got to go back out and do what I did," he said.

Teamwork, Pitzer said, is a huge part of the Air Force and the ROTC program.

Lanning agreed.

"The ultimate goal is, of course, that connection with the fighter," he said. "But it took all these people doing all these different jobs to basically see that the air refueling mission was accomplished. There's no one link in that whole chain that wasn't important."