New Stealth Fighters Prepare For UK Debut By Practising Tanking

Fleet Air Arm and RAF crews are preparing to deliver the first F-35B Lightning II stealth fighters – the striking power of the UK’s two new aircraft carriers – to their new home at RAF Marham in East Anglia.

All the pilots selected for the F-35 programme have learned the art of flying fast jets in the UK, earning their wings on Hawk trainers at RAF Valley.

The pilots crossed the Atlantic to learn how to master the new fifth-generation fighter at the US Marine Corps’ base at Beaufort in South Carolina.

The pilots will continue to train on the multi-million pound jets in America, but the UK’s front-line F-35 squadrons – firstly 617 Sqn RAF, later 809 NAS – will operate from Marham, each with mixed RN/RAF air and ground crew.

There’s just one small matter – the F35B has a range of about 1,000 miles but there’s 4,134 miles, mostly of Atlantic Ocean, separating Beaufort and Marham.

That’s where air-to-air refuelling, or ‘tanking’ comes in.

The RAF dispatched one of its Voyager tankers from 10 Squadron at Brize Norton to Cecil Airport in Jacksonville, Florida, to practise refuelling manoeuvres by day and night with the jets over the USA’s east coast.

Although it is not the first air-to-air refuelling with the F-35Bs, it is the first crewed entirely by the RAF.

Two RN and two RAF Lightning IIs manouevred into position to take on fuel – inserting the nozzle of their fuel intake (the probe), into the funnel-shaped drogue which delivers that fuel.

The tanker – a modified Airbus 330 airliner – can pump as much as 132,000lb of fuel over a five hour mission, or enough fuel to fill an F-35B’s tank nine times.

The next few months mark a key period in the rebirth of Britain’s carrier strike force. As well as 617 Sqn debuting at Marham, in the late summer HMS Queen Elizabeth will conduct her first trials with the new aircraft off the east coast of the USA.