I sometimes think it's tough getting to my favorite diesel station to fill up when my gauge needle is bouncing on E...Doing the same thing in mid-air over the Pacific at night in a typhoon calls for skills and nerve I could never have...Making a complex problem even tougher by accomplishing this in a half-million pound USAF C-5 carrying 73 Marines and all their gear, and having to suck fuel from a total of three airborne tankers one after the other just boggles my mind...
I called the middle tanker, below me: “What number are you, in the middle?”

He responded, “I’m tanker #2.”

I said, “No, you are now tanker #1 and we are on the way down. Also, just to warn you, if we don’t get this gas right now, we are going swimming.”
My hat is off to these crews......Ben