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November 18, 1966

"Man all helicopter in-flight refueling stations on the double."

The command rings out on board the 7th Fleet destroyer USS Gurke in the Tonkin Gulf and 17 men scramble to their appointed places.

Hoses pulled

Hoses are pulled out, the pump room is manned, rubber boots are slipped on, safety observers stand by their stations and a firefighter dons his asbestos suit.

In-flight refueling is fairly new, but answering the call to in-flight refueling stations has become routine for the Gurke's crew. During their last two 30-day periods in the Tonkin Gulf, they have averaged five refuelings a day.

In-flight refueling

In-flight refueling extends the flight time of carrier-based search-an d-rescue helicopters flying patrols in search of pilots downed off the coast of North Vietnam.

By extending the air craft's normal five-hour flight time, SH-3 "Sea-King" helicopters now spend six to ten hour periods on their SAR stations deep in the Tonkin Gulf.

The value of in-flight refueling to keep those helicopters on station has been proven numerous times, such as the recent rescue of an Air Force pilot who was shot down north

of Haiphong and picked up less than a mile from the North Vietnamese coast. A few minutes later he could have been in enemy hands.

To the men in the Gurke's single refueling crew, manning their stations means extra work, interruptions in their regular tasks and sometimes loss of sleep. Still they have a certain pride about their special work.

"They do a lot of grumbling about the extra load this puts on them," said the ship's XO, Lcdr. Donald E. Babcock of West Lafayette, Ohio. "But last month I heard some of them really complaining when one of our regular customers refueled from another destroyer," he added.