[427TJ]

I flew 39 combat sorties during Gulf War '91 in the KC-135R refueling tanker. No, not as important in world history as World War I or II, but pretty exciting for a young guy who thought flying tankers would be boring. The evening of the first day of Desert Storm we were briefed that the loss rate was expected to be 10-15% on that first night of the war. 10-15% of coalition aircraft?, we asked. No, 10-15% of the tanker fleet. Oh shi_. More than a few guys in the briefing room went pale. Then, after the first two or three nights of the air war, we realized that the capability of the Iraqi air force was, to say the least, overrated. We soon stopped wearing parachutes and flight helmets in the cockpit and flew our missions as if we were over Nevada supporting the Red Flag air war training excerise. Anyway, I took the attached photo on the last day of the Gulf War. We had just refueled two F-15C Eagle fighters (air force) and offered them extra fuel if they'd show us some afterburner as they went back on patrol. This Eagle came up under the right wing of my tanker and roared out in front of our windscreen and I got this photo. The noise was unbelievable. Just after I got this photo we flew through his wake turbulence and we experienced a +2, -3 momentary G-force on our airplane, much worse than any turbulence you've ever felt on an airliner. Then the second F-15 did the exact same thing but we just missed his wake turbulence. The pilot of the F-15 in my photo was named Rory Draeger and he was based at Eglin AFB in Florida. He had two Iraqi MiG-29 kills during Desert Storm. He left the USAF in the 90s and was killed in a sports car crash on an Oregon highway.