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To prepare for refueling, a boom operator, or “boomer,” walks to the back of the KC-135 and hops down into a small, coffin-shaped room called the boom pod. The pod is about three feet across, three feet high, and ten feet long. At the end of the pod, giving a view out the back, is a window about three feet wide and two feet high. On both sides of this main window are small side windows, and directly below it is an instrument panel. A long, padded cushion, shaped a bit like a fully reclined dentist's chair, fills the rest of the pod. The boomer lies on this cushion stomach down, hands on the controls, looking out the back window.

The job of boom operator is widely regarded as the best enlisted job in the Air Force, because it's challenging and well paid and earns a lot of respect. “In what other job,” runs a popular joke among boomers, “do you get two officers to drive you to work?” (Pilots usually reply that the boomer has it easy, because “he gets to lie down on the job and pass gas.”) To hook up, the tanker holds its position as the receiving plane slowly approaches from behind and below. The boomer extends the telescoping nozzle about ten feet out the end of the boom and watches the other plane approach. (Human depth perception falls off after about twenty feet — to the untrained eye, the ten-foot nozzle looks as if it extends a foot or less.) The boomer guides the receiving plane toward the boom by lights on the tanker's belly, shining a steady “F” for “forward” until it hovers about ten feet away. The receiving plane crawls closer at about one foot per second, making sure its large bow wave doesn't knock the tanker out of position.

The receiving plane finally stops closing the gap about two feet from the end of the nozzle and

“parks” it in the air, exactly matching the tanker's speed and heading. The boomer lines up the boom with the tiny, four-inch hole in the roof of the receiving plane. Then, when the boom and the hole are aligned, the boomer presses a button and the last two feet of the nozzle shoot out the end of the boom and slap into the hole. It looks and sounds like a giant iguana shooting its tongue out to snag a fly. The nozzle locks into place, and the gas begins to pump.

After the “thwock” of the connection, the tanker's belly lights glow a steady green if the receiving plane is correctly situated. The boom can swing in a circle about 20 degrees up, 40 degrees down, and 10 degrees left and right. The receiving plane must fly within this cone-shaped “envelope” to stay connected to the boom.

Pumping the gas is a complicated job, and it falls to the tanker's copilot. Offloading 7,500 gallons of fuel can drastically alter the tanker's center of gravity, unless the copilot continually monitors and regulates the fuel levels in each tank. Pumps connect the KC-135's ten fuel tanks, allowing the copilot to shuttle fuel among them and keep the plane on an even keel.

It's a balancing act, and there's plenty that can go wrong. If the tanker's pumps go haywire and pump with too much pressure, they can blow the receiving plane backward off the boom. If the two planes disconnect too quickly, the tanker can spray jet fuel all over the receiver's windshield, creating a smeary mess. Or the two planes could collide, causing everything from a crunched boom to a fiery crash. Refueling gets more dangerous when bad weather hits, or when a tired or inexperienced pilot is flying the receiving plane. Even under ideal conditions, things can quickly go awry.

On January 17, 1966, Wendorf's bomber would refuel over the scrubby hills between the villages of Cuevas and Palomares, in what was known as the Saddle Rock Refueling Area. Saddle Rock was one of the best places in the world for midair refueling, as the dry desert air kept the sky bright and clear and there were no busy cities or airports below. Wendorf liked refuelings — they were an interesting break from the long and tedious flights where he spent most of his time “boring holes” through empty space. But Wendorf had already handled one refueling on this trip, and as a courtesy common on such flights, he asked Messinger to take the second. For Messinger, refueling was one of his least favorite parts of the job. Unlike Wendorf, Messinger hated flying the B-52. “It was a dog,” he said. “No fun to fly and hard to work. It was like driving a Mack truck.” B-52 pilots say that flying the plane is challenging because it is relatively unresponsive. “First you tell the plane to turn, then it thinks about it for a minute, then it makes the turn,” said one veteran B-52 pilot. “And once it goes, it doesn't want to stop.”