The first night of the "big show," and I was part of many packages going downtown. From the time we prepped for the mission through execution, I knew it would be a mission I never would forget. I was right but for a completely different reason. We were part of a multitude of packages. The mission was similar to what we had trained for: night launch, big-wing tanking, rendezvous, ingress, egress, more big-wing tanking, and night recovery. Other than being the real thing, it was not much different than many other missions we all have been on- until things went wrong. Our big-wing tanker for the evening was a WARP (wing-air-refueling pod)-configured KC-10. Thirteen of us were scheduled to cross the two hoses. On arrival, I was about number eight in line. The wait was long enough that we began discussing the fuel-bingo numbers to the diverts on the auxiliary radio. The situation rapidly deteriorated as we went from planned diverts to emergency-divert options.
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