RF101C refueling with 2 more stacked up

great stuff, PE

This is a superb shot.

Excellent! This photo definitely has a "Cold War" feel.

This was one of the few 'posed' shots.

Sitting in the Fuel Masters seat in the blister, I couldn't see the planes in the background well, so I stood on the seat, but still the planes in the background didn't look good to me, so I asked the pilot to drop down about 10 ft and back about 10 ft. This gave me just the shot I wanted, but the blister put streaks in the scene due to the curvature of the glass. You can't have everything I guess.

The pilot complained bitterly (he said &$$%###) If I remember.

This was all common channel squadron radio.

When we got back to the base, our commander, a Lt. Col., came over and told the pilot (a captain), that if the Lt. (meaning me) said I was going to take his picture in the air again, the captain was to "look for the birdie, smile, and say cheese"!

The captain said "YESSIR!"

I will never forget that. I was laughing so hard, but I did get a picture of it! Someday I may post that too. I have pre-mission and post mission pictures, in-cockpit pictures of the KB50-J crew, and portraits of all of the pilots.

These are unclassified duplicates (not dupes of originals, just second of 2 shots).

The best shots and the classified pictures remained behind. I only got these by virtue of using my own 35mm Nikon and film, as we didn't have color film or a 'real' camera in the unit at the time except for the Speed Graphic with some Super XX. Our commander gave me some selected negatives when I left the unit on my way to Cape Canaveral. He also gave me 4x5 prints of some of the better pictures in the series.

I may get around to posting some of these someday.

PE

Very interesting story and shot. Thanks for sharing.

I remember oggling these bad boys being serviced at Bristol in Winnipeg when I was a kid. The Canadian version CF-101.