I love Peter Chilelli’s work.
I was honored that Peter made a digital art of my father Richard “Butch” Sheffield for my family earlier this year.
The first picture of his artwork is so endearing it is called tanker saves the SR 71. The tankers KC 135Q crew did risk their life lives while going in and near enemy territory to refuel the SR 71. The tanker crews were always physically looking out for, the Blackbird.
SR 71 did not have a Weather Radar so often the tanker crew would let them know what kind of weather they may be flying into when they descended. Here is a story that I wrote with information given to me by SR 71 pilot David Peters
Ed Bethart(RSO) and I were flying a mission out of Kadena and it was definitely thunderstorm season. We were in heavy clouds headed to the tanker after takeoff and as we got DF and distance contact, we couldn’t see a thing. As we closed in, we had our 2000 ft altitude separation and at a mile had no contact. So, we told the guys to recheck their altimeter setting because we were coming up a thousand and in 1/2 mile. They confirmed their setting and altitude and airspeed so we moved up and in. Still nothing.
‘Restated the whole thing and that we would come up 500 and close to a 1/4 mile. Still nothing then like bursting through a curtain there he was right where he said he was.’
He continues;
‘We closed for hook up and got contact. I noticed that I kept ducking my head beside something was hitting the windscreen. It was ice falling off the tanker.
‘I said “Hey Teddy (Ted Bittel) you have Ice coming off.” About that time Ed says we are at 290 kts and descending. Of course, Teddy could hear that on the boom interphone and he says yes we have had the throttles frozen for the last half hour so we are trying to get the speed up for when you get heavier. It all worked out and we got filled up. However, the weather was so bad, when we tried to climb out, we hear very heavy turbulence, rain and lightning. Tried three times to accel but got violent unstarts each time. I tried going to manual inlets to open up and try to make it but it just couldn’t do it so we had to abort and return to Kadena.
’In the debrief the maintenance guys came in and showed us that the wave guide antennas in the nose were gone totally eroded by the rain. Then Chief Kelly came in and dropped a 20 lb block of ice on the table. He said it came from the flight control mixer quadrant.’
Peters concludes;
‘So, another of those stories where circumstances were incredibly difficult to the point of losing the mission but not because our incredible Q guys weren’t there
for us.’
Thank you, David Peters
Linda Sheffield
@Habubrats71 via X
peter-chilelli.pixels.com