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Schrage served in U.S. Air Force, flew tankers

John Schrage served as a pilot during the Vietnam War. (Jeff Meek photo)Buy Photo
Schrage in 1970 during pilot training.  (Photo courtesy of John Schrage)

Hot Springs Village resident John Schrage attended Robert E. Lee High School in Texas, played football and baseball and then attended Texas A&M. There he joined the U.S. Air Force ROTC program in 1966 and later earned an economics degree.

After graduation he was commissioned and sent for initial pilot training in 1970. A year later he went to Castle AFB, Calif. for KC-135 training. The Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker jet was an aerial refueling aircraft that could cruise at speeds over 500 miles an hour, carry as much as 200,000 pounds of fuel and was powered by four turbofan engines.

At Castle he learned the plane’s systems, practiced refueling and then went to Dyess AFB, Texas in 1971. At Dyess, Schrage was assigned a crew and the entire squadron was then sent to Kadena AFB in Okinawa with the 917th Air Refueling Squadron. The mission? To support U.S. efforts in Vietnam and provide aerial refueling to bombers and fighters.

Practically every other day Schrage flew missions to refuel B-52 bombers in various areas including South Vietnam. Most of the missions were 4.5-hour flights.

He also did 12-hour radio relay missions in the Tonkin Gulf. These flights monitored North Vietnamese radio transmissions. The information gleaned from them was then relayed to other units.

At 25,000 feet they were just above surface-to-air missile range, fairly safe, except for encountering a possible MIG fighter which was a rare thing Schrage said.

There was one mission Schrage isn’t likely to forget. He was flying into Ton Son Nhut, a major air base and commercial airport on the outskirts of Saigon. There had been some close attacks recently so caution was at a premium.

The runway was pretty short for the big fuel heavy KC-135s and this time Schrage had to come in at night with his lights off. On approach he was escorted in with a C-119 gunship on one wing and a C-130 with lights on near the other wing.

“I felt like a sitting duck. They were lighting me up,” said Schrage of the other planes guiding him in which could possibly lead to enemy fire directed at his tanker. The missions to Ton Son Nhut usually carried film from SR-71 Blackbirds meant for analysis before heading to Washington, D.C.

Schrage said the flights were with a four-man crew which included a boom operator lying down “flying” the boom out the back of the tanker with a “stick.” Aircraft approached the Stratotanker from behind and hook up as the boom was extended out. Several hook ups were rough, but never caused any damage. “Breakaways” also took place when he would determine things weren’t going well and the two planes would quickly separate.

In 1972 Schrage was part of Operation Linebacker and was the lead tanker of a huge flight of 72 tankers divided into three cells to meet up with 72 B-52s for what was later called “The Christmas Bombing,” an attempt to get the enemy back to the negotiation table.

The hook ups were made at night which made the missions even more dangerous. Keep in mind the pilots did not have GPS, just celestial navigation.

In 1973 Schrage returned to Dyess but was sent back in 1974 and 1975 flying out of Thailand and Okinawa. Even though the war had ended, recon missions and fighter operations still took place and those planes needed fuel.

Schrage said he was also flying, temporarily, out of U-Tapao Airbase during the 1975 “Mayaguez Incident” when the Khmer Rouge fired on and boarded the container ship USS Mayaguez which was to then sail to Poulo Wai.

Informed of the seizure, President Gerald Ford had recon aircraft locate the ship and contacted the Chinese to help communicate with the Khmer Rouge for the ship’s and crew’s release. Eventually, on May 15, a rescue operation began the task of reclaiming the ship and crew. Schrage’s missions, at 15,000 feet, would refuel the attack planes as they carried out their flights.

Also during this time period he spent two months in Spain on training missions.

In 1975 he was sent to the United States as a squadron instructor pilot at Dyess, training others in the KC-135.

In 1976 Schrage was ordered to the 24th Strategic Recon Wing at Eilson AFB, Alaska to fly RC-135-S aircraft, mostly out of Shemya AFB not far from Russian territory. He was there when Russia was launching ICBMs targeted for Kamchatka Peninsula off the Russian coast to refine their target capabilities.

The United States would orbit the target area to take pictures, collect signals and monitor the exercise.

In Alaska, Schrage’s job was flying the RCs and working as a receiver instructor pilot and squadron instructor pilot in charge of all training.

In November 1978, while in Alaska, Schrage separated from the Air Force.

As a civilian he stayed with flying, first, in January 1979, in Clear Lake City, Texas, with Metro Airlines flying the DHC-6 Twin Otter, Beech 99 and Shorts 330 aircraft. Later in 1997 he became a federal mediator based in D.C.

In 2002 he went with Express Jet Airlines handling labor relations from which he retired in 2012.

In 2008 he and wife Dee moved to the Village and have five children: Bill, Teresa, Amy, Jennifer and Leann.

Looking back on his USAF career Schrage recalled a memory of his time at Shemya. “I have to say each landing at Shemya was a real adventure. It’s a relatively short runway for an aircraft (RC-135) like that,” he began. “And the weather is horrible. It’s in the middle of the Bering Sea. If you’ve ever watched “Deadliest Catch” you know what the weather is like. It’s not uncommon to have 50 to 75 mile per hour winds with a 35 to 50 knot crosswind component. Then you have snow and ice to go with it all.”

Once it took three tries for him to get his plane on the ground. The successful attempt included descending to just eight feet off the runway to even see the runway.

Schrage holds dear the time spent with crew members and is proud and feels privileged to have served his country in the United States Air Forc