Idle Chatter -- Tracking Aircraft -- February 9, 2022

I was up much of the night (2:30 a.m. CT - 4:30 a.m CT) tracking aircraft -- mostly US military aircraft -- over Great Britain and Europe.

Generally, military aircraft turn off their "open" transponders and are not tracked by flightradar24, but occasionally US military aircraft are tracked. 

Of interest last night:

• I tracked three F-15's flying out of RAF Lakenheath, England, northeast of London, on training missions to eastern Yorkshire and Scotland and then over the open ocean between eastern Scotland and Norway.
• of the three F-15s two were a pair; one was a singleton. It's unusual (unheard of?) for a singleton F-15 on a training mission; I assume the wingman had his/her transponder turned off
• I tracked a KC-135 refueling plane leave RAF Mildenhall, England, and then follow a refueling track over north-central Europe; I didn't pay close attention, but I believe it was over northern Germany
• more interesting was a KC-135 refueling aircraft also departing RAF Mildenhall some six to eight hours earlier and flying southeast over Europe, across Ukraine and then follow a refueling track for what appeared to be about an hour over the Black Sea; at the time I "caught" this particular KC-135 it was over the east coast of southeastern England on its way back to RAF Mildenhall; the transponder was turned off about fifteen minutes out of RAF Mildenhall;
• but the most fun I had was not what I found overnight but what a reader sent me two (?) mornings ago; screenshot below:
• this is a super-secret RC-135 spy plane; it was about the only active a/c I may not have flown in during my USAF career; even as a flight surgeon I was not allowed on this a/c -- I say "may not have flown" because I honestly cannot remember if I ever had one flight. 
• I "know" the internal layout very, very well but don't know if that's because of the literature I've read or if I had one training flight mission. I guess I could take a look at my flight history but that would take "forever," assuming I could even find it; it's in deep storage. LOL.
  
• anyway, the call sign for this particular RC-135 was "JAKE-ONE-ONE" based on the screen shot below. Note that it also flew out of RAF Mildenhall and then flew a reconnaissance track well inside Ukraine west of the Russian border. 
• note the length of that mission: it was still over the area of operation having departed RAF Mildenhall over seven hours earlier. It will be several hours back to RAF Mildenhall when it departs Ukraine, unless it lands at a USAF base in Germany. 
• this was a particularly bittersweet screenshot for me: I remember working with and knowing many, many crewmembers assigned to RC-135s during my many years in the USAF. Very fond memories but bittersweet because I really, really miss working with and seeing those folks. Had life been different, I might have volunteered my services in retirement to be close to these folks and these missionst
• it was truly incredible what these young folks -- and they were young -- many directly out of high school with two-to-three years of training before their first real-world mission. 
• "Rivet Joint" refers to all aircraft, all personnel, all missions associated with this aircraft. Note the registration: 62-4134, a Boeing C-135 that came off the assembly line in 1962.
• I can come up with any number of reasons why the transponder was "open." 
• the KC-135 I tracked last night had flown a refueling track over the Black Sea just south of the RC-135 in the screenshot below; a KC-135 doesn't doesn't fly that long a distance to refuel one or two aircraft.