One turning and one burning - the outer Pratt & Whitney R-4360 piston engine and the port General Electric J47 turbojet provide the foreground in another of the author’s photographs from the KC-97L. The F-4Ds, up from Bitburg AFB, arrived in two pairs and carried no wing-mounted fuel tanks, nor ordnance on their wings

One of the sequence of photographs taken by the author while aboard an Ohio ANG KC-97L over Germany in June 1969. With the Bitburg-based McDonnell Douglas F-4D Phantom maintaining a position beneath the rear fuselage of the tanker, the flying boom (so named as it has flight control surfaces) is lowered before connecting to the receptacle aft of the Phantom’s cockpit.

McDonnell Douglas F-4D-30-MC Phantom 66-7511 of the 36th Tactical Fighter Wing (TFW) at Bitburg the day before the author’s flight in a KC-97L of the Ohio ANG. The role of the 36th TFW’s Phantoms was to provide support for Nato ground units in West Germany