Boeing EC-135N 'Stratolifter'

Description

Notes: C-135A with electronics modification as advanced range instrumented aircraft (ARIA) . Large nose radome.
Manufacturer:	Boeing
Base model:	C-135
Designation:	EC-135
Version:	N
Nickname:	Stratolifter
Designation System:	U.S. Air Force
Designation Period:	1925-1962
Basic role:	Transport
Modified Mission:	Special electronic installation

Specifications

Not Yet Available

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George Kamburoff  Pleasant Hill, CA	I came of age on this aircraft, and this story is now owned by Smithsonian Air and Space Magazine, with permission to reprint. I do not know what to make of the experience, but the story is true: October, 1966 Dusk was the time the interesting things came out at Edwards, . . the black U-2’s with the bulges and blisters of their sensors, the C-130’s with scissors-like catchers on the noses and poles with cables out the back to pick up Air Commandos off the ground and to snatch the re-entry vehicles of spy satellites in mid-air . . . a real trip. The daytime was for the rocket planes of NASA and Test Pilot School, the flash and fury of Blackbirds, experimental aircraft, and one-of-a-kind experiments, . . . but the dark was fascinating. I went out that night just to see what would catch my eye, when in the grainy darkness a form slipped onto the runway and landed. This one was unusual for a cargo bird. Its silhouette showed an enormous elongated drooping radome on the nose. I could hardly wait to find out what was in it. As the sole radio fixer on nightshift, I expected work orders to come in that would get me inside it soon. Back in those days, the number of analog communications systems and the nature of the technology ensured that almost every landing of a transient bird would guarantee communications work. But nothing came from Maintenance Control. Days went by, . . . nothing, and I was getting itchy to get inside and see what it was all about. I was finally informed by our civilian Shop Chief that we were forbidden to work on the aircraft because it was a project which had exhausted its budget. When the end of the time period came and it had to be turned over to the Air Force, the project would be scrapped, even after the tens of millions of dollars were spent on the project. I protested unsuccessfully. Not trying to save that mission was impossible for me, so I decided to sneak out and do it. It wasn't a matter of Right versus Wrong, it was the matter of which Right was the best thing to do, and by whose standards. Who was I to second-guess the Air Force? How did I know what the realities were? I am sure that my need to do it was as big a factor as my rationalization that it was worth the risk to save that mission. We were in a serious Cold War. It seemed clear. The next day or so, I saw that the Navigation guys were parked by the bird, so I stopped to look over the A/C. Surprisingly, the Crew Chief and his entire crew were from Douglas Aircraft, but the plane was a Boeing C-135. The Crew Chief ventured that somebody decided to “throw Douglas a bone”, and give the technical job of complex modification of a Boeing aircraft to a Chief and Crew from Douglas Aircraft, absolutely unfamiliar with it. The DC-8 and the 707 (the civilian equivalents) looked similar, even alike to many, but were completely different aircraft. With all the trouble and delay of getting a modified aircraft air-worthy, the money budgeted for this rare bird with the exotic equipment was gone. There were no funds for the electronics repair, and I was forbidden to work on it on my own time. But the bird was fascinating - in that big nose was a fully-gimbaled 7-foot dish antenna to extract electronic signals, and I climbed all over it, inside that droopy beak. If it were mine, I would use it to get transmission oversprays, orbiting to get the communications of others, or tracking ICBM reentry vehicles. Its missions are still classified, and its existence was not to be revealed for decades. That night the EC-135N had landed with all six communications systems down in the three frequency ranges, HF, VHF, and UHF, and had some interphone problems at copilot position. There were some Navigation and engine problems, too. The aircraft had to fly in a few weeks to fulfill obligations or the entire project would be canceled, so the Navigation guys and I decided we'd fix it - we were alone at night, so who would know? Since we couldn't leave a paper trail, we couldn't remove and replace anything. We had to bring any suspected units into the shop, troubleshoot and repair them, using untraceable spare tubes and parts squirreled away in personal drawers and unauthorized bench stock. Then we could realign the pesky analog electronics, reinstall and test. We started with about two weeks to test flight. Nav guys got their stuff done in about two nights. It took me a lot longer. Every night, after things got quiet and dark, I got into the van and drove over to the F-111 hangars, where the EC was parked, and went to work on another system. After I got many of the systems up working for more than a week, I was dismayed to be called out in front of the shop by Cy, the Shop Chief, who informed me officially (and loudly), he found out I had been working on the bird in violation of direct orders and was not to continue. While he covered his patoot, I wondered if I saw a twinkle in one corner of his eye before he turned and left. I had great respect for Cy Leach, but managed to agonize myself into doing it anyway. It had to be for the “greater good”, because if I failed, it certainly wouldn't do me any. I could even be punished for succeeding. In fact, I was forcing the issue. It was more important than my service record. After everyone went home, I grabbed my stuff and headed out to the beast anyway. After all the weeks, all the work, all the furtive scurrying, six of the seven systems were working. The Primary UHF Command Radio system wasn't. I spent most of the final night in frustration trying to figure out why I couldn’t get any signal out of the antenna. The ARC-34 receiver-transmitter ops checked okay; good modulation, good power out, none reflected back, but nothing was being transmitted. I felt beaten. I drove back to the shop feeling like a failure, and an insubordinate one, at that. Wandering around the empty shops that night, I considered taking the last few hours replacing the antenna, but knew it was a very unlikely cause, and I would have to disable our shop and Nav radio to do it. Too depressed and unable to sit, I kept walking around the dark hangar with all our technical shops. Meanwhile, the Autopilot and Nav guys had broken into a storage locker, retrieved a big wooden box left over from the B-58 Project, and were prying off the lid as I walked into the Nav shop. Oh, neat – more trouble! Looked like an Article 15 to me. I warned them all and scurried out. It was a terrible night – I had failed to get that aircraft in the air. Not just that, I had disobeyed the superiors I respected. Worst of all, I hadn’t solved the problem. What I needed was some kind of equipment to solve the problem of the disappearing signal, something to send a signal out and tell me the impedance (an electronic characteristic) at UHF frequencies, all along the cable from the radio to the antenna. If I could find significant changes, I might be able to find a place where the signal would be absorbed, reduced to heat, or perhaps reflected between discontinuities. As far as I knew, that kind of equipment didn’t exist – I had never even heard of such a thing. Meanwhile, the other three night-shifters opened the wooden crate and the gray case inside it, and powered up some instrument that looked like an HP oscilloscope, and were trying it out. But it was no ordinary HP Oscilloscope: It was something labeled a Time Domain Reflectometer. It sent UHF Radio Frequency pulses down antenna cables, and mapped the impedance along the length! It couldn’t be true, . . the first and only time I had ever seen one (to this day), and it was exactly what I needed right then. It didn’t mater if it was impossible, there it was. This stuff only happens in B movies, I thought, grabbing the Reflectometer with run-on apologies. Swiping a roll of antenna cable from Nav and grabbing Autopilot’s 100-foot extension cord, I raced out to the aircraft, equipment bouncing in the back of the van. It was already Midnight. I got out the stuff, hooked up the unit, connected the RF antenna cables and – right on script - saw the impedance aberration in the cable just past the point where it disappeared into the modified airframe. It was a condition which would absorb the transmitted signal. It all made sense, but what to do about it in such a short time? And we still had the trouble with #2 engine. The Chief and I started looking for another route for the cable while the crew noticed that section was hot, and started looking into that. In their investigation they found an engine bleed valve installed backwards, which was dumping hot air from Engine #2 into that small section of closed airframe – cooking the cable and betraying the source of their engine problem, as well. As they corrected the bleed valve, we found another way to reroute a new cable, and all got busy. It had to be in the air in about an hour. Outside, a freezing wind was blowing before dawn, and I brought one end of the new coaxial cable into the extended hood of my arctic parka to solder the tip onto the RF connector. The new cable was re-routed, and the #2 engine bleed valve re-installed. Time was up: The plane had to go. They ran up the engines as I hooked up the cable at the bulkhead, then was physically pushed out and down the ladder by the scrambling crew, dragging my stuff with me, no time to test the system. I was pulling the extension cord out of the way as the plane taxied into the pre-morning darkness, on time, with everything working, . . . to become the first of the ARIA fleet. Instead of accomplishment, I felt depressed, a strange emptiness, perhaps a loss of purpose, and the awareness that I would have a lot to clean up, in every sense. Completely spent, I loaded up the truck, shuffled back to the shop, put it all away, and trudged to the barracks as the sun rose, to await my fate. Strangely, nothing was ever said by anyone about it, but except for some special projects, it was my last hurrah on Nights. I was immediately taken off flight line duty and put into the shop, where I could work solely on the electronic equipment and do the homework required to get my 5-level skill category so I could work legally, . . and get promoted. The ARIA birds paid their way publicly as communications relay systems during Apollo missions, helping to find and guide a speeding Apollo 13 back home to recovery. And their classified work is still just that. ARIA has been recently revealed by Dwayne A. Day (Black Fire: De-orbiting Spysats during the Cold War http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1715/1), to have been used for more interesting purposes as well, such as the tracking of a re-entering KH-9 surveillance satellite, an event on which the movie Ice Station Zebra was based, . . and missions of who-knows-what, yet to be revealed. But it almost wasn’t. 11/25/2014 @ 16:25 [ref: 68781]
William Kafer  , DE	I worked on the ARIA aircraft from 1965-1967 during the developement,training and acceptance testing at Bendix Radio Towson, MD and in Tulsa, OK with McDonald Douglas. My area of support was in the RF group that included the tracking and telemetry receivers, Spectrum Display Units,Signal Data Demodulators and the combiner equipment. 04/30/2013 @ 10:34 [ref: 67777]
William Kafer  , DE	I worked on the ARIA aircraft from 1965-1967 during the developement,training and acceptance testing at Bendix Radio Towson, MD and in Tulsa, OK with McDonald Douglas. My area of support was in the RF group that included the tracking and telemetry receivers, Spectrum Display Units,Signal Data Demodulators and the combiner equipment. 04/30/2013 @ 10:33 [ref: 67776]
joe segreto  warner robins, GA	I served at Patrick A.F.B. 1970 untill the wing went to Wright Patt. A.F.B. Ohio. Than went to March A.F.B. Calif. untill I went to Robins A.F.B in Ga. I Ret. in 1983 from the 19th BW and I'm still working Civil Sevice 27 years. I crewed 372 and worked in the phase dock while at Patrick. I was there 5 years. Joe 08/02/2011 @ 13:36 [ref: 44355]
Chris Tubbs  Sumter, SC	I was assigned to the 6th AGS(AMXS) CINC Support Flight as a jet engine mechanic on both EC-135N 61-0327 and EC-135Y 55-3125 while stationed at MacDill AFB FL 1998-2003. During those years I flew countless missions to the AOR with the best group of maintainers and crew that anyone could ask for. One trip was a complete trip around the world in 327; MacDill, Kirtkand, Hickam, Singapore, then into the AOR and back home. I worked on the aircraft during the reigns of Gen Zinni and Gen Tommy Franks. We used to tell Gen Franks (who didn't care for C-37 too much) Go big or stay home!. The fun part was getting to build things for the aircraft. I built drawers for the secure phones in the general seating area and did a lot of re-building and up keep on the interior kit. My wife even made new curtains for the General's bunks,crew bunks and baggage bins. It was truly a sad day but, yet an honor to be one of the crew to deliver 61-0327 back to Robins for induction to the museum. 08/30/2010 @ 20:49 [ref: 29707]
Glenn Alderman  Fountain Hills, Az, AZ	I served on the EC-135Ns and before that on the C-130s at Patrick AFB. I was there from 1965 to 1975. I was last on SMSgt Bill Booth's crew. I operated the Telemetry and Voice positions with Barry White. Bob Callahan was our recorder operator and Bob Jaeger was Antenna. We had a lot of fun in those days. I'm 73 years old now but I still dream about some of those old times. 07/08/2010 @ 19:15 [ref: 27121]
BILLY D. WILLIAMS  WARNER ROBINS, GA	THE EC-135N WAS THE SECOND OF TWO ACFT ASSIGNED TO 19 AREFW IN SUPPORT OF THE USCENTCOM MISSION. SAC GAVE UP THE REFUELING MISSION, SO THE ACFT ARRIVED WITHOUT THE BOOM. BOTH ACFT FLEW THE MISSION WITHOUT A LATE MISSION EVER ATTRIBUTED TO MAINTENACE. I FLEW ON BOTH ACFT FOR TEN YEARS. ENJOYED EVERY MINUTE. THE MAINTENANCE CREW WAS OUTSTANDING IN EVERY WAY AND ALWAYS WAS COCKED AND READY. WE HAD MANY UNUSUAL MSSIONS AND WERE CHASED BY MIGS SEVERAL TIMES. OUR PILOTS WERE THE BEST IN THE WORLD AND SAVED OUR BUTTS MANY TIMES. ALL THE GENERALS, WERE HIGHLY APPRECIATIVE OF THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS THE CREWS MADE. TIP SLATER WAS THE MAN BEHIND THE ARRIVAL OF THE SECOND AIRPLANE WITHOUT HIM THE MISSION WOULD HAVE NEVER GOT OFF OF THE GROUND. MANY HOURS WERE PUT IN TO ACCOMPLISH THE MSSION. THE AIR FORCE IS PROUD. 05/04/2010 @ 09:49 [ref: 26128]
N. (Tony) Virgilio  Springfield, OH	Crew Chief ARIA 61-0330 from Nov.1975 thru Feb 1980 at WPAFB Ohio. Flew on many Aria missions especialy to Ascension Island. Left active duty, went to work at the 4950th MOD Center. Was Modification ccordinator on 3 commercial 707-323cc to EC-18 ARIA. Retired from civil service May 2007 Still at WPAFB working for the 445th AW. 02/05/2010 @ 06:53 [ref: 25686]
Eric S.  St Petersburg, FL	I was a US Army Military Policeman assigned to the CENTCOM PSD (2000-2003) and flew numerous missions on the CINC's aircraft. It was a great experience (except for a few harrowing in flight refueling adventures) and the crew was top notch. 01/09/2010 @ 11:03 [ref: 25540]
Gary Jordan  Mesa, AZ	Served at Patrick AFB from 1968 - 1971. 6550th ABG/6549th CEMS. Served for most of the Apollo missions and the Trident tests. Enjoyed my time there as well as the the people involved in this great effort. Was one of the people who was always thrilled to see "Antenna will not Stow" in the "781". Spent many a long (and I mean long) deployment to Cocos Island. My best to all of those who served in this wonderful unit. Good to see the reference to the Moon Rock Express - that wasn't much of a lock on the chest. 03/25/2009 @ 20:09 [ref: 24019]

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