Another shot from the other side of the plane. We were operating from both drogues and had planes stacked up waiting. This mission, and the others with pictures I posted here lasted about 8 hours.
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.