In 2015 Neil Dunridge and I got to fly out of Mildenhall over to Estonia to meet up with two flights of four A-10 of the 303rd FS at the end of their TDY to Amari. We’d visited them in Estonia the week before and got fast tracked approval from the 100th ARW to fly with them. It took two attempts as the first mission was scrubbed just after we arrived at the ops building at 2AM, so we drove home and repeated the 1AM meetup at Mildenhall gate the next night. Who said this was easy! Worth it though as we could plan specific photo ops with the pilots beforehand, not often possible on tanker flights.
Thanks but it’s more to do with building experience, taking shots is fairly easy from a tanker but as built up a few flights and relaxed a bit then my confidence to ask about different shots increased. I still kick myself about my first tanker flight where we had a B-2A for 30 minutes and I could have asked the crews to turn or formate for better shots, it still hurts today as I’ll never get another chance with the B-2! That flight with the A-10s was better as we had the cooperation of the pilots and they had the time to work for photos, that’s rare in a tanker, especially during a exercise.
Lucky for me my sister lived close by so I went to bed for the morning. I seem to remember Kev drove straight to work then we got a call at 5pm to try again! The long transit allowed some sleep and whilst in-between the morning and afternoon launches.
