The thundering above the Dover Air Force Base came not from a storm on Aug. 7 but from a new aircraft arriving at the Air Mobility Command Museum.
The KC-135 Stratotanker, which was built in 1957, flew from McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey, to become the 28th airplane on display at the museum.
“We certainly got our money’s worth out of this one,” Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said in noting the plane has been in use for more than 50 years.
The KC-135 was built by Boeing and uses a flying boom to provide fuel to other planes in flight. One crewmember, known as a boom operator, is stationed in the rear of the plane and operates the boom during in-flight air fueling. Above the fueling system, a deck holds a mixture of passengers and cargo.
“It was hard to break and easy to fix,” said New Jersey Air National Guard Tech .Sgt. Brian Zaleski, who has served on the KC-135’s crew for two years. “It was a very reliable aircraft.”
Members of the McGuire AFB crew had signed the sides of the aircraft with chalk as a way of saying good-bye to the aircraft, and N.J. ANG Brig. Gen. Mike Cunniff, who flew on the plane from New Jersey, pointed out it is one of 12 KC-135s that have not been taken apart.
Most of the other planes are in other museum displays, and Cunniff said his crew would be flying other KC-135s to Little Rock, Ark., where they will be placed on display, on Sept. 21.
“A lot of people are going to see this one,” Carper said, noting Dover AFB will likely be an attraction in a national park being planned in the state.
On Aug. 7, the KC-135 flew two circles around the museum and after its final landing, taxied underneath two ceremonial streams of water made by fire engines alongside the landing strip.
This is the first time in four years that a plane has been flown into the museum, said Paul Gillis, who serves on the museum’s board of directors and flew on a KC-135 during the Cold War.
The KC-135 is the aircraft that was used to refuel Air Force One, and Gillis said he was on a KC-135 four times when it was carrying out this mission.
“We had a hydraulic leak once, and it only took about 30 minutes for them to fix, and we were back in the air,” he said. “It’s a good plane.”
The KC-135 will not fly again after being parked at the museum, and Gillis said the museum will start preservation work this week, beginning with removing the aircraft’s fuel. The Stratotanker then will be displayed at the museum.
After presenting a symbolic key to the aircraft to museum curator Jim Leech, Cunniff and other crew members said they did not feel sad about turning over the plane and liked knowing where the aircraft was going to be located.
“I will be bringing my children down to see it,” Cunniff said.
