The Air Force marked the 100-year anniversary of the first aerial refueling with flyovers across all 50 states, honoring the aviators who pulled off the seemingly impossible in 1923 and celebrating the promise of current and future airmen.
Aerial refueling has brought global capabilities to U.S forces, allowing increased range, flexibility and lethality for combat aircraft, but in the early years of the 20th century, the notion was still a dream.
But on June 27, 1923 — just 20 years after the Wright brothers’ first flight — Army Air Service 1st Lts. Virgil Hine and Frank W. Seifert passed gasoline from their aircraft through a gravity hose to another plane flying beneath it piloted by Capt. Lowell H. Smith and 1st Lt. John P. Richter, a feat that unleashed the nation’s air power potential.
The dynamic aircraft that took to the skies for the Air Force’s “Operation Centennial Contact” flyovers served as a soaring reminder of this achievement, and a promise of innovations still to come.
