Every successful flight begins well before it takes off. As the sun rises over the 171st Air Refueling Wing, near Pittsburgh, long before a KC-135 Stratotanker refueling tanker aircraft can leave the ground, the crew chiefs are already hard at work.
Hidden behind a large hangar door, the crew chiefs are just one of the many quiet constants on base at the Pittsburgh International Airport in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. The public rarely sees their work, and they never fly in the cockpit, but their fingerprints are on every takeoff and every safe return home.
For approximately 100 crew chiefs who call the 171st home, their work goes far beyond routine maintenance and preflight inspections. Every takeoff is backed by hours of training, working in year-round weather conditions and nonstop troubleshooting to keep the nearly 70-year-old KC-135 tankers flying.
"Yes, it's an older airplane, but it's [kind of] like working on an older car; everything we touch is mechanical," said Air Force Master Sgt. Justin Hughes, full-time crew chief mechanic assigned to the 171st Air Refueling Wing. "We fly with cables and pulleys, so whenever there is something wrong, there is something physical for us to fix, a puzzle to solve. It's something I can put a wrench to and work to fix."
For Hughes and the rest of the maintenance team, solving those puzzles comes twice as often. The 171st is the only Air National Guard unit that operates two aerial refueling flying squadrons. This unique structure has earned the wing the unofficial designation of a "super wing."
Despite the difficulty of maintaining a force twice the size, the wing does so with roughly the same number of maintenance personnel as other tanker units that only have one flying squadron.
While the 171st crew chiefs continue to maintain the wing's 16 KC-135 tankers, much of their work happens behind the scenes. Like the cables and pulleys that work together to lift a heavy load, crew chiefs are just one part of a larger puzzle that keeps all of the aircraft mission ready.
"The specialized issues that we find during the inspection go to the other specific shops in maintenance," Hughes said. "We [the crew chiefs] work together with the rest of maintenance to get the planes ready to fly so we can ensure the plane takes off safely. It's a group effort."
That group effort is visible every time a tanker takes to the skies and plays a major part in the 171st successfully offloading millions of pounds of fuel every year to U.S. and NATO aircraft. In doing so, the 171st ensures that the broader military force can project power, defend national security interests and respond to crises anywhere on the globe at a moment's notice.
But for Hughes, along with the mission's success, he finds that one of the most rewarding parts of the job comes after the work is done and the aircraft has landed somewhere new.
"Traveling is definitely my favorite part of the job," Hughes said. "Going to different places and meeting new people, you never realize how big the world is until you land and get to see something new."