I've done hundreds of air refuelings, both as tanker and receiver, and I can honestly say that air refueling requires the most concentration of anything I've ever done. It's also the most fun and rewarding part of flying!
Back in the late 1970's, I was aircrew on EC-130's and we became one of the first US Air Force C-130 squadrons get have air-to-air refueling capabilities. Part of my duties was to prepare the back of the aircraft for refueling and to be a safety observer. The first time I got to sit in the cockpit and watch - my reaction was pretty much the same as yours. It never got old. Excellent video - brought back some great memories. Thank you.
That takes me back. Watching all those old TG clips on TH-cam back when I was in my late-teens, struggling to hear what was being said, but still loving it.
@Mike L I was hesitant to even post it. I scrolled down a little bit but didn't see the comment....I still don't know if anyone else posted the same thing already.
@Mike L Yeah, I assume they had two or three camera crews capturing this if they didn't use stock footage. One for the C5, one for the tanker and one camera crew to capture the wide shot.....it's possible the wide shot was from the KC10.
That captain has hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of hours of flying in both seats. I worked on C5A at Altus AFB. That was a training base for pilots. Lots of officers training. Doing racetrack manovers. Touch and goes. Drop sites. We had a tanker wing there too so that they can practice refueling. Impressive video.
Yes the fuel capacity has a finite capacity but the refueling in air serves two purposes. Yes extends range but aerial refueling also allows the receiver air to carry more cargo and personnel the same distance. Maximum Take Off Weight is also a finite number and the aircraft doesn’t care whether it is cargo, Perone life, or fuel. The tanker aircraft is from the 171st Aerial Refueling Wing from Pittsburgh, PA I spent five years in PIT...not at 171st but we saw them all the time!
I’ve watched these takeoff and land hundreds of times during my time in the Air Force but these planes never got old to see. It’s still mind boggling these fly.
Amazing video! As a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, watching the C-5 Galaxy and the KC-10 always held my attention. I was a firefighter. To see them dock for a refueling op...stunning! Two of my favorite aircraft in the same video made my day.
One of the coolest and most terrifying things is seeing a telephone pole coming at you ready to transfer thousands of lbs of fuel while you both are flying. Awesome to see the coordination amongst the flight deck as well
I've heard that description before from the SR-71 guys, but I never thought about it from a subsonic aircraft point of view before. Man, that's gotta scare the bejesus out of ya to see that and know what it is. :/
That looked to be out of Dover AFB. The C-5 Galaxy is a big beast to behold. They lugged our OH-6s an AH-1s around for us back in the 80s. They were a great group to work with.
A/R was the most challenging and fun flying I've ever done. We did a few days at the Boeing Kent Space Center in Seattle, WA. where Boeing had a simulator. After a few days in the simulator you go for your first A/R flight. The first hour in the sim is hopeless. After an hour it clicks. I once took on 100K lbs. from a KC-10 over the Mediterranean. It took a bit over 20 minutes. We started in a relatively flat pitch attitude with the throttles about halfway up, we finished 2 1/2 degrees nose up with the power 3/4 up. That was my biggest offload but it was smooth and I got it with one plug.
When he said “this is not a game they are doing this for real” made me think of how crazy that would of actually been to witness. I could imagine it would literally feel as if you were in a video game.
woow I still can not belive what C-5 Galaxy can do. Respect 4 all pilots all over the world! Motorcycle destroyed my wish to be a pilot. Best Regards. 'Sky don't have a limit' ✌️
In-air refueling is easily the most important mission in the USAF. No one else has the same large-scale capability that we do. Things have come quite a ways since the Wright brothers' balsa wood flyer
Everyone is talking about the background music but no one noticed that in 3:24 the tanker was a tri jet (has three engines), whereas in 3:35 and the rest of the video it has 4.
If you ever get a chance to do this from the Navy side of things, you'd be in the back seat of a Super Hornet (or Growler, a variant of the Super Hornet), tanking behind another Super Hornet equipped with a "hose-and-drogue" system. Basically, the hose is deployed from the tanker and at the end there's a drogue (kind of like a low-resistance parachute - it looks like a badminton shuttlecock) and the pilot in the receiving aircraft - which has its own probe - is the one that has to do all the maneuvering. The pilot in the receiving aircraft maneuvers to place the tip ("Just the tip, okay?") of the probe into the center of the drogue (AKA, the basket). The tanker pilot is essentially just flying straight and level unless a turn is needed during refueling. We used to do this routinely at night (and often during the day) when I was in the Navy. (I flew in S-3A Vikings as an enlisted crew member.) At the time, the Navy operated two types of carrier-based tankers - A-7 Corsairs and KA-6 Intruders. One or the other was airborne any time there were a significant number of aircraft that had to trap back aboard the ship at night (I can't remember if there was one airborne for each daylight recovery). However, neither the A-7 or KA-6 could land with a heavy load of fuel, so to avoid the need for the tanker to dump fuel to get below the maximum trap weight one of the returning Vikings would be the "sponge," staying in the air until it was one of the last aircraft back on the deck. We tanked behind an Air Force KC-10 one time, similar to what you saw in the video except that a hose-and-drogue accessory package was added to the tanker before it took off. From what I remember, the hose came out of the tanker's regular refueling probe. And as with Navy tanking, the KC-10 just had to fly straight and level.
This is a practiced skill which you study in class and then to a sim. Just like other skills you master like cross wind landings the more you do it the more automatic it becomes and you get a feel for it. It is too hard to describe but the C5 is different than other aircraft that refuel because of the T tail. The buffeting is normal in a large aircraft but the pitching changes are not that significant in other aircraft.
Who mixed that? You literally can't understand what Hammond is talking because he is WAY to quiet in the mix. Seriously, did any of you listen to it and say "yeah, nobody wants to hear Hammond talk anyway, that'll do"?
It’s apparent that at 2:08, 2:24 and other moments, older stock footage of C5A/B Galaxy aircraft is used instead of the C5M featured in the documentary.
At 2:09 the engine sound is that distinctive whine of the older TF39 engines, not the way the current CF6 engines sound which this aircraft is equipped with.
So the Top Gear Trio did the olympics of Flight... Jeremy Clarkson went fast with the F-15 Eagle, James May went high with the U-2 and Richard Hammond went strong with the big C-5 Galaxy. Awesome
The dramatic music stops as they connect the probe, however the hard part has only begun. With these guided probes the air force uses the really difficult part is keeping the aircraft there for however many minutes it takes to refuel
As a B-52 AC, I took on fuel numerous times. At first, I wondered if I would ever be able to do it. The IP was constantly taking the aircraft from me. Eventually I learned, but at first only with the autopilot off. Later with the air refueling autopilot. After a while, just to make it interesting, I would air refuel with only the right or left engines, claiming to the crew I was simulating battle damage. I just wanted to have some fun.
If you're complaining about thr music being too loud than the voices, it's supposed to be fine on the show. They had something different for youtube upload.
The United States Military as a whole,is astounding,what a great opportunity for a young person,to get a start in life,I was fortunate to have been able to serve in the US MARINES,all the branches are equally as fulfilling im sure,peace to all...
you are rather wrong, most people who join the army does not want to and have because of crushing school loans, no suport or because they are hoaxed into it, not to mention the blantant transphobia in the us armed forces
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If you listen carefully, you'll hear a documentary behind all that music.
Ah yes if you listen closer you can hear a engine!
yeah very bad mastering
LOL
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
And if you put subtitles on
Some says he is deaf and some say he chew his ears off because he came second in a race...all we know is that he is called the sound editor.
He's called the Stig
@@danielt.9154 no
@@KilliKonKarnage I mean, yes he is. That was the joke.
3:53
“The planes are now so close to each other, that our super galax-*WHIRRRRRRRRRRRR*
Music is too loud, and voice is too low.
Excellent documentary but background music is unbearable
@akumma it
@akumma Think he means the volume it reached while Richard was trying to speak
spyderTL it’s really weird because none of the other clips I’ve seen are mixed so bad.
@akumma I would love to know what this video is about but I can't hear it
By @@bryan0x05 crew :email
Music is too loud in the video, I can barely hear what he is saying
You can barely hear what he's saying because it's loud in the cockpit
@@stuartdavis798 nah the Audio mixing is really bad, it's defiantly an editing issue
@@BigBreadBoi D5 ii8oopp00
I can hear it
@@crimzonrayz3274 many of these folks could try using the caption
I've done hundreds of air refuelings, both as tanker and receiver, and I can honestly say that air refueling requires the most concentration of anything I've ever done. It's also the most fun and rewarding part of flying!
I bet you have some incredible stories! Air refueling is amazing to me
So does it becomes like muscle memory after some times, and you should also try in dcs
Huge props to the pilot for pulling this off so well.
no
huge jet engines
get it?
Props to the pilot being able to focus through all of this loud music
Out of everything Hammond has ever done, on Top Gear or any of his other projects, I can honestly say this one I'm truly jealous of
Back in the late 1970's, I was aircrew on EC-130's and we became one of the first US Air Force C-130 squadrons get have air-to-air refueling capabilities. Part of my duties was to prepare the back of the aircraft for refueling and to be a safety observer. The first time I got to sit in the cockpit and watch - my reaction was pretty much the same as yours. It never got old. Excellent video - brought back some great memories. Thank you.
You must be like 60 years old
@@mr.winfrewnoblessonaceturk8094 ✊
All manual no computer control or proximity alert system, guidance systems....must be nerve racking...
@@mr.winfrewnoblessonaceturk8094 mathematical genius here
must've hired the deaf sound engineer from the old top gear days
Even worse...they totally ignored the NCO flight engineer sitting just behind the pilots.
That takes me back. Watching all those old TG clips on TH-cam back when I was in my late-teens, struggling to hear what was being said, but still loving it.
Gotta love them mixing up the tankers in the edit...see a shot of a kc10, then a kc135 and back to a kc10, then again back to a kc135
@Mike L I was hesitant to even post it. I scrolled down a little bit but didn't see the comment....I still don't know if anyone else posted the same thing already.
I was thinking the same thing
@Mike L Yeah, I assume they had two or three camera crews capturing this if they didn't use stock footage. One for the C5, one for the tanker and one camera crew to capture the wide shot.....it's possible the wide shot was from the KC10.
Saw the same lol
The air to air shots of the C-5 show an A/B/C model while the one Richard is actually in is a C-5M
Hammond can talk about anything and make it sound exciting, another great presenter from England
..and the Emmy for Sound Mixing goes to... not this person
At 3:58 it's basically impossible to understand what richards saying.
Amazing how Hammond balances the motoring world and engineering and science documentaries ⚡
Your audio mixing is terrible, you guys need any help over there?
How did anyone allow the audio at 3:54 to even happen?
Absolute respect to the pilot for just walking on up and getting it done.
Amazing job.
That captain has hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of hours of flying in both seats. I worked on C5A at Altus AFB. That was a training base for pilots. Lots of officers training. Doing racetrack manovers. Touch and goes. Drop sites. We had a tanker wing there too so that they can practice refueling. Impressive video.
Its astounding to realise. That these people do it every day, as a matter of course. Hats off to them .
Helen keller would've been better at audio editing than whomever did this.
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
It's whoever not whomever
Just to be a dissenter I think the music is too loud.
1:13
Pilot: let me know if you see anything
Richard: *laughs*
Pilot: No seriously let me know
Yes the fuel capacity has a finite capacity but the refueling in air serves two purposes. Yes extends range but aerial refueling also allows the receiver air to carry more cargo and personnel the same distance. Maximum Take Off Weight is also a finite number and the aircraft doesn’t care whether it is cargo, Perone life, or fuel.
The tanker aircraft is from the 171st Aerial Refueling Wing from Pittsburgh, PA I spent five years in PIT...not at 171st but we saw them all the time!
I worked on these bad boys for four years! As well as the KC-10A!! What a massive plane the C-5 is!! I definitely miss this part of my career!!
5:29 Holy cow!! Look how massive that crater was!
Awesome
I think it could be a volcano but without knowing where they're flying I can't tell. It is amazing the things you see from the air like this.
I noticed that too! That was probably from the _last_ C-5 Galaxy - KC-135 refueling, the one that didn't end too well.
Excellent choice editing so much excessively loud music and sound effects. I could totally hear Hammonds narration.
I’ve watched these takeoff and land hundreds of times during my time in the Air Force but these planes never got old to see. It’s still mind boggling these fly.
Richard's face was priceless when the pilot was explaining the go no go points!
Absolute respect for these folks,true professionals!
Amazing video! As a veteran of the U.S. Air Force, watching the C-5 Galaxy and the KC-10 always held my attention. I was a firefighter. To see them dock for a refueling op...stunning! Two of my favorite aircraft in the same video made my day.
One of the coolest and most terrifying things is seeing a telephone pole coming at you ready to transfer thousands of lbs of fuel while you both are flying. Awesome to see the coordination amongst the flight deck as well
I've heard that description before from the SR-71 guys, but I never thought about it from a subsonic aircraft point of view before. Man, that's gotta scare the bejesus out of ya to see that and know what it is. :/
Excellent job, CPT Alex Jensen! Way to go, sister! I hope she's a Major now. That was absolutely incredible!
Is the sound editing a homage to the sound editor of old Top Gear clips on TH-cam?..
My uncle piloted the KC-135 tankers for many years in the USAF 🇺🇸
Just amazing - incredible pilot skill - Thanks Richard.
she use autopilor no hands required
Great to see you again Richard.
7:18 because he's been working with Clarkson and May
Ronny eriksson
That looked to be out of Dover AFB. The C-5 Galaxy is a big beast to behold. They lugged our OH-6s an AH-1s around for us back in the 80s. They were a great group to work with.
A/R was the most challenging and fun flying I've ever done. We did a few days at the Boeing Kent Space Center in Seattle, WA. where Boeing had a simulator. After a few days in the simulator you go for your first A/R flight. The first hour in the sim is hopeless. After an hour it clicks. I once took on 100K lbs. from a KC-10 over the Mediterranean. It took a bit over 20 minutes. We started in a relatively flat pitch attitude with the throttles about halfway up, we finished 2 1/2 degrees nose up with the power 3/4 up. That was my biggest offload but it was smooth and I got it with one plug.
When he said “this is not a game they are doing this for real” made me think of how crazy that would of actually been to witness. I could imagine it would literally feel as if you were in a video game.
woow I still can not belive what C-5 Galaxy can do. Respect 4 all pilots all over the world! Motorcycle destroyed my wish to be a pilot. Best Regards. 'Sky don't have a limit' ✌️
In-air refueling is easily the most important mission in the USAF. No one else has the same large-scale capability that we do. Things have come quite a ways since the Wright brothers' balsa wood flyer
Richard was pretty excited there! Great crew coordination. Fun to see. Thanks!
"All we know is... it's the Top Gear sound editor!"
Nice to see them keeping the tradition going.
Love from Tanzania, salute.
Everyone is talking about the background music but no one noticed that in 3:24 the tanker was a tri jet (has three engines), whereas in 3:35 and the rest of the video it has 4.
just like in many 80s Hollywood movies. One moment it's a 747 then an L-1011 then a DC-10 then back to a 747 🤣
I was stressed just watching this. Hats off to our men and women in the service.
Another amazing video, hammond defo makes it better!
"Banking to the left" he says, vid shows banking to the right lol.
Channel is "Discover Australia" They've got everything reversed down there so he was just adopting their culture.
its upside down b
@@rxzaya "I was inverted"
Hey, I was in a simulator of one of these a while back. Air Force One no longer had any paint on the nose.
Note: when you added the drama music, my old ears could no longer hear your words at all.
The MTSU Aerospace patch on the instructor's headset is the best part of this video!
If you ever get a chance to do this from the Navy side of things, you'd be in the back seat of a Super Hornet (or Growler, a variant of the Super Hornet), tanking behind another Super Hornet equipped with a "hose-and-drogue" system. Basically, the hose is deployed from the tanker and at the end there's a drogue (kind of like a low-resistance parachute - it looks like a badminton shuttlecock) and the pilot in the receiving aircraft - which has its own probe - is the one that has to do all the maneuvering. The pilot in the receiving aircraft maneuvers to place the tip ("Just the tip, okay?") of the probe into the center of the drogue (AKA, the basket). The tanker pilot is essentially just flying straight and level unless a turn is needed during refueling.
We used to do this routinely at night (and often during the day) when I was in the Navy. (I flew in S-3A Vikings as an enlisted crew member.) At the time, the Navy operated two types of carrier-based tankers - A-7 Corsairs and KA-6 Intruders. One or the other was airborne any time there were a significant number of aircraft that had to trap back aboard the ship at night (I can't remember if there was one airborne for each daylight recovery). However, neither the A-7 or KA-6 could land with a heavy load of fuel, so to avoid the need for the tanker to dump fuel to get below the maximum trap weight one of the returning Vikings would be the "sponge," staying in the air until it was one of the last aircraft back on the deck. We tanked behind an Air Force KC-10 one time, similar to what you saw in the video except that a hose-and-drogue accessory package was added to the tanker before it took off. From what I remember, the hose came out of the tanker's regular refueling probe. And as with Navy tanking, the KC-10 just had to fly straight and level.
This is a practiced skill which you study in class and then to a sim. Just like other skills you master like cross wind landings the more you do it the more automatic it becomes and you get a feel for it. It is too hard to describe but the C5 is different than other aircraft that refuel because of the T tail. The buffeting is normal in a large aircraft but the pitching changes are not that significant in other aircraft.
regardless of the event, teamwork is always a fantastic feat.
Simply amazing and breathtaking
Awesome stuff. Kudos to the pilots and crew and thank you for your service! Semper Fi !!!!! My son is a marine
RESPECT! HIGH CLASS JOB!!
WELL DONE!
STAR TALENTS!!!!!*
One word: Amazing.
Ahhh the Top Gear Sound Engineer moved companies with Hammond.
That is incredible to watch so close like that. Is there a full documentary of this?
amazing work
dad did it with KDC-10 In dutch military, takes so much skill but he enjoyed it
Excellent documentary 👏👍
6:24 Madam Captain's nails on fleek.
The best in the business 💪💪👍👍
Excellent documentary
I have some fotos of my brother in air refueling when he piloted the C-5. You're right, it is quite a maneuver⚠️
Great skill great speed great hands.
My brother was AC on a C-5 and gave me some really righteous photos of his plane being refueled. He had also qualified for Select Lead Crew..
Who mixed that? You literally can't understand what Hammond is talking because he is WAY to quiet in the mix. Seriously, did any of you listen to it and say "yeah, nobody wants to hear Hammond talk anyway, that'll do"?
This is something special! How are they able to get the shots of both planes from outside?
It’s apparent that at 2:08, 2:24 and other moments, older stock footage of C5A/B Galaxy aircraft is used instead of the C5M featured in the documentary.
At 2:09 the engine sound is that distinctive whine of the older TF39 engines, not the way the current CF6 engines sound which this aircraft is equipped with.
Yeah. I noticed that too. Source: Like 8000 hours flying with the TF39s. Haha. I miss the distinctive whine of them to be honest.
5:50 It was at this point she fecked up by putting diesel in! 😂😂
Ironically a jet engine will run on diesel with little to no consequence. Most aircraft operating in northern Canada run arctic diesel
@@werty2010master indeed, diesel is as close as it gets to jet fuel...
Wild that someone listened to this and thought 'yep sounds mixed nicely, boys' and uploaded.
The whole progress was superb . That lady Commander. Big respect. Btw come on guys just enjoy the content.
Something about Richard Hammond saying “We’re about to attempt docking.” Disturbs me to no end.
This is amazing.
You are my mentor
richard Hammond
So the Top Gear Trio did the olympics of Flight... Jeremy Clarkson went fast with the F-15 Eagle, James May went high with the U-2 and Richard Hammond went strong with the big C-5 Galaxy. Awesome
The dramatic music stops as they connect the probe, however the hard part has only begun. With these guided probes the air force uses the really difficult part is keeping the aircraft there for however many minutes it takes to refuel
The COOLEST thing EVERRR! 🇺🇸 🇺🇸
Documentary: *exists*
Music: wait there is a documentary playing? Oh I'll just get *louder* then
Well done!
USA 🇺🇸
❤️ beautiful ❤️ video ❤️
Absolutely amazing 👏 :)
GREAT VID.
As a B-52 AC, I took on fuel numerous times. At first, I wondered if I would ever be able to do it. The IP was constantly taking the aircraft from me. Eventually I learned, but at first only with the autopilot off. Later with the air refueling autopilot. After a while, just to make it interesting, I would air refuel with only the right or left engines, claiming to the crew I was simulating battle damage. I just wanted to have some fun.
Beautiful aircraft.
She's a joy to fly on
Great flying
Much respect
Its amazing how small the kc 135 looks above that c5
Two Thumbs Up !!
If you're complaining about thr music being too loud than the voices, it's supposed to be fine on the show. They had something different for youtube upload.
The United States Military as a whole,is astounding,what a great opportunity for a young person,to get a start in life,I was fortunate to have been able to serve in the US MARINES,all the branches are equally as fulfilling im sure,peace to all...
you are rather wrong, most people who join the army does not want to and have because of crushing school loans, no suport or because they are hoaxed into it, not to mention the blantant transphobia in the us armed forces
What a beautifull flying whale so gracefull
Edit: That Lady has some focus you not see often!
Beyond of thought.👍👍👍
Cool nice music video
Look at the big picture. The “car” is twice the size of the gas station. Pretty cool but it’s almost routine.