There I was, flying on my 30th mission out of Diego Garcia in the KC-135 Stratotanker. The missions were notoriously boring. Typical sorties last between six and eight hours with the entire duration taking place under "due regard." That's right, no controlling agency to talk to and nothing to do but keep an eye on the weather. The lack of traffic deconfliction wasn't a problem since a crew might be lucky to see one other airplane other than their scheduled receiver during their entire two-month deployment. Let me rephrase that - the lack of traffic deconfliction was usually not a problem. The constant shifting between day to night flying turned the crew into zombies after a few weeks. This was the second consecutive deployment to Diego Garcia for the co-pilot and boom operator, with about three weeks spent at home between two-month deployments. This meant that although my crew was intimately familiar with the missions we were flying, it took us about half as long to reach complete and total boredom. As the aircraft commander, I had experimented early on during the deployment with taking short naps, alternating with the co-pilot. After catching the co-pilot asleep during my sleep turn more than once, I made a command decision to put an end to the power nap rotation. Taking off with a near-maximum gross weightrnwas enough to keep us on our toes, but once we were airborne and leveled off at our cruise altitude, complacency quickly set in.
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