Takeoff Leaves 7 Guardsmen Grounded Flyboys Disciplined For Baring It All In Four ‘Aerial Streaking’ Incidents

Seven members of the Washington Air National Guard in Spokane have been grounded for flying in the nude during four training flights over the past several months in what a colonel dubbed “aerial streaking.”

The guardsmen are part of the 141st Air Refueling Wing, based at Fairchild Air Force Base.

The fliers stripped off their fire-resistant flight suits as a prank during routine training flights of KC-135 air refueling tankers, said Lt. Col. Mike McCaffree, spokesman for the Guard at Camp Murray near Tacoma.

There were no women on the flights and flight safety never was compromised, McCaffree said.

The Guard had refused to confirm the story until Thursday, even though reporters had been asking about the incident since Saturday after receiving an anonymous tip.

“We were kind of embarrassed by the whole thing,” McCaffree said.

“For some things, we could have let information out. We could have confirmed it was people in the nude,” he said. “But it was so loaded, based on what happened with the president. People immediately think sexual harassment, and that’s not the case. I can tell you there were no interns up there.”

The guardsmen included six officers and one enlisted man, said Capt. Kay Steward, spokeswoman for the 141st.

The Guard refused to name the men involved, give their specific rank and ages or say when the flights had occurred.

“There is a time in the future when it will be available under (the Freedom of Information Act),” McCaffree said.

“But I don’t think breaches in personal discipline are something we want to put out in a press release or that the general wants to broadcast,” McCaffree said, referring to Brig. Gen. Frank Scoggins, who oversees the Air Guard.

The seven crew members involved likely never will fly again, McCaffree said. Additional disciplinary action is pending.

McCaffree said he does not know how many people took off their clothes on each flight. On at least one occasion, some members of the flight crew did not strip, he said.

The typical crew of a KC-135 consists of a pilot, co-pilot, navigator and boom operator, who lowers the equivalent of a giant flying gas hose from below the tail of the craft to refuel other planes.

The 141st has 10 of the flying tankers and 800 to 900 personnel, Steward said.

The bare-it-all flyboys were not partaking in a military ritual, McCaffree said.

“None of us really understands why they thought it was funny,” he said.

The incident appears to be an anomaly in a unit “universally regarded within the reserve component as being one of the most professional,” McCaffree said.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Close call Only 30 minutes before it was scheduled to begin, a national news conference to discuss the nude fliers was canceled by the Defense Department when it was learned that terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan had been attacked.