WEBVTT

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(airplane engine roaring)

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- Any opportunity to make history,

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to do a elephant walk like this,

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it'd be a great opportunity for the 117th,

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for Maintenance and Ops
and the wing as a whole,

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'cause everybody's a part of it, you know?

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- Anything more than three is
gonna be a unique challenge

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to get all those airplanes
in the right position

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with the kind of airspace
that's gonna be required.

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- Well, today we watched history

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for the 117th Air Refueling Wing.

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We witnessed, first time ever,

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an eight-ship formation departure

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led by Wing Commander Colonel Grant.

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- You saw something in Birmingham

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that has never happened before.

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Eight KC-135s leaving the ground
in less than four minutes.

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On top of that, we were exercising

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some of our operational war plans,

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and in that comes a
guarantee of our readiness.

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- You can get more fuel
in the air together,

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but also you gotta plan
for having multiple booms

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in the air.

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If one of 'em breaks,
especially when you're draggin'

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fighters across the ocean, for example.

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It's not always just a function of fuel.

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A lot of times it's a
function of having redundancy

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with the booms, 'cause
there's only one per airplane.

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- Such events that could
drive this sort of scenario

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could be a act of God catastrophe

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coming towards the Birmingham area

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or just any type of
imminent threat to the base

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and its local populace,

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we'd wanna get all those
airplanes off the ground

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as fast as possible.

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- Something like that just
does not happen overnight,

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but a lot of planning went into it,

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and a lot of coordination
went into it as well.

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There's fingerprints of 1100 people

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on that project yesterday.

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It's not just the pilots;
it's not just the maintainers.

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It's the people that are supporting

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all the folks that are making that happen.

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And there's a lot of folks
well outside of the 117th.

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Our aircraft control folks,
the Birmingham Atlanta Center.

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When you're putting eight
KC-135 heavy aircraft

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into the Atlanta Center airspace,

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midday, that's a big deal.

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- It's kinda cool, as far
as the preparation needed

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to get every single jet
ready, all jets gassed,

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and it shows our full
mission capability here.

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(engine roaring)

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- We started up 32 jet engines,

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and if you count our
auxiliary power units,

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that was 48 engines.

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And they all kicked off without a hitch,

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and we got started in record time.

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So I would venture to say

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it couldn't have gone any smoother.

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- My understanding that the old record

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on getting the largest
number of aircraft airborne

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was five previously,

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and so when we saw eight on the schedule,

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we thought we could get some
good training out of this,

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and hopefully, if we can get six airborne,

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that beats the record.

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If we get all eight airborne,

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I don't know that anybody'd be
able to touch it ever again.