The United States Air Force has retired its final McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender tanker and cargo aircraft. The KC-10 Extender is a military version of the iconic three-engine McDonnell Douglas DC-10 airliner and was developed to supplement the numerous KC-135 Stratotankers. The KC-10 Extender has now completed its 42 years of service and is heading for retirement at the famous boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base.
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Video: The KC-45 (A330 MRTT) – How Boeing Won A Contract First Given To Airbus
- Guest authors
- January 8, 2025
- 0
February 29th, 2008. It was the day that Northrop Grumman Corporation announced that it had been selected by the U.S. Air Force to provide the KC-45A aerial refueling tanker for the KC-135 tanker replacement program. Most notably, this jet would be based on the A330 commercial airframe, produced by EADS – which, these days, would be Airbus’ Defence and Space division.Unfortunately, the celebrations wouldn’t last long for Airbus and Northrop Grumman.Just days later, Boeing would launch a full-scale counteroffensive to convince the Air Force that it had selected the wrong aircraft. In the end, Boeing was successful in overturning the Northrop Grumman deal, having its 767-based tanker win instead. It’s been quite awhile since this whole ordeal took place – long before our website and YouTube channels existed. So we thought it would be interesting to take a look back for today’s video!