Duane, thank you for your aerial service!

HOOAH Sir, but regardless of the "sexy mission" factor, your chain of command warranted your service, performance, contribution as such to award the medal. It is more rare than the BSM these days and worn right next to it, be proud of them, not everyone is going to wear such bling and count them the next time you fly inverted for an accurate count!

I have 10 Oak Leaf Clusters --- RC-135, plus EC-130 and EC-121. Similar story to yours over 11,000 hours on my Form 5 --- but Korea, Vietnam, and Libya vs Iraq and Afganistan

CW5 Sam R. Baker - You have a good point. I like to think even though we did not have the sexy mission, that our gas maybe the reason some people managed to make it home. That GBU-12 on the wing of an F-16 is useless if that bird is RTB because they are out of gas. I suppose I may have not got a single event medal. There were some hair razing flights we were on before like being at 10,000 in OEF refueling A-10's and MC-130's. We had a specific squadron trained to do low altitude refulelling using night vision. But there were times when us normal tankers would be wavered to do it without goggles. It would be intresting lights out at night below the mountain tops. The KC-135 was not designed for the slow speeds of A-10's and C-130's. It was designed to refuel the "future" supersonic fighters and bombers like the F-102 andF-106 and bombers like the XB-70 and B-58 Hustler. Doing A-10's 130's we would have the flaps down and be at initial buffet speeds when we were heavy. That plane was not very responsive at those speeds. 130's were awful for us They would always be moving all around our plane. I had one occasion where we did an emergency separation on a 130. The boom in the back said that the props almost went into the tail. I guess those would be the closest to anything out of the norm we would experience.