The Last Cruise...?

Like many Navy fighter pilots, Hardin wasn’t a big fan of the KC-135. It was not the friendliest of the tankers available in that part of the world, with its after-thought of a male-to-female rig and its very hard, unforgiving basket. However, on the plus side, it did pump gas at the respectable rate of two thousand pounds a minute. Everything appeared to be going well, even the air was smoother than usual – until the hose separated about eight feet up from the basket. Hardin felt his mouth come open under his oxygen mask. He was now disconnected from the tanker – along with approximately eight feet of flailing hose not to mention the basket still attached to the refueling probe. In short order, the slipstream stripped away part of the rubber sheathing, revealing a ten or twelve-pound metal fitting that began to beat the living crap out of the F-35. This is going to be bad – real bad he thought. Unfortunately, it was bad. After fifteen or twenty whacks against the side of the plane and the canopy, the canopy gave way. He’d never thought about what the sound of a canopy breaking would sound like, since it was made of plastic, but he was astonished when it did shatter that it sounded just like a glass window being broken.