Anyone stationed at NAS Meridian, Mississippi, might remember the Key
brothers.

Al and Fred Key took a modified Curtiss Robin aloft from Meridian's airport
and kept it airborne via an improvised in-flight refueling scheme for 27
days (!) in July 1935.

(Those among us who bitch about being double- or triple-cycled, or whine
about 8 hour hops over Afghanistan can shut up for a while.)

I remember when Fred Key died in 1971, a noteworthy event in Meridian then.
Key Field, Meridian's commercial / general aviation field, is named after Al
and Fred.

http://www.cr.nps.gov/nr/travel/aviation/old.htm
http://www.smithsonianmag.si.edu/smi...ct97/flew.html
http://www.lib.usm.edu/~archives/key.htm

--
Mike Kanze

"Experience proves that the man who obstructs a war in which his nation is
engaged, no matter whether right or wrong, occupies no enviable place in
life or history."

- U. S. Grant, Personal Memoirs


"Keith W" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
oups.com...
Considering the fact that the whole fleet of F/A-18E/F & EA-18G in
future IS NOT to refuel F-35s, but IS to refuel all F/A-18s and UAVs, I
think emerging that question again is probable.

By the way, I learnt it just a few weeks ago that who actually invented
aerial refueling were Germans in WWII.

Then you learned wrong

The first inflight refuelling took place in 1921 when Wesley May, a
barnstorming stuntman, strapped a five-gallon gas can to his back
and stepped from the wing of his Lincoln Standard to the wing skid
of a Curtis JN-4, unstrapped the can and emptied its contents into
the Jenny's fuel tanks.

In July of 1923, the Army Air Service, conducted the first successful
air-to-air refueling that used a hose to refuel one aircraft from another
and two Air Service lieutenants, John Richter and Lowell Smith, used
aerial refueling to fly their de Havilland DH-4B non-stop from the
Canadian
border to Tijuana, Mexico, covering the 1,300 miles in twelve hours with
two refuelings.

The USAAC let things drop after an accident but another of the early
barnstormers, Sir Alan Cobham founded Flight Refuelling Ltd
and manufactured the first commercially available refuelling
systems.

In 1939 these were use to refuel Imperial Airways 'C' Class flying boats
from FRL's Harrow tankers allowing the aircraft to cross the Atlantic
non-stop.

In 1945 the RAF were planning to use IFR operationally
to provide its Lancaster bombers with the range to bomb Japan
when the war ended.

In 1948 the US Air Force purchased Flight Refuelling Ltd 'looped hose'
AAR equipment for their KB29 tanker fleet and in 1949 Flight Refuelling
Ltd
invented the 'probe and drogue' method of AAR still used by the USN
and RAF.

Keith