Air National Guardsmen from the 186th Air Refueling Wing at Key Field were joined by members of the community Tuesday morning as they marked the 100th anniversary of the first U.S. Air Force air refueling.

On June 27, 1923, First Lt. Virgil Wine and First Lt. Frank Seifert used a hose to pass fuel from their plane to a plane below and successfully completed the first air refueling in Air Force history.

To mark the anniversary, a KC-135R from Key Field joined aircraft from throughout the nation in flyovers celebrating the refueling milestone.

Col. Joe Reid, vice commander of the 186th Air Refueling Wing, said the ability to refuel aircraft without landing is a crucial aspect of the Air Force’s ability to respond quickly to whatever situation may arise.

“If you have to take an aircraft, and you have to take it a long ways, it has to make multiple stops. There’s a long logistics chain,” Reid said. “What air refueling allows is to take an aircraft off the ground and fly all over the world with speed and get there rapidly, not only for combat missions but for humanitarian missions too.”

Meridian, Reid said, has a special history with air refueling as Fred and Al Key, for whom Meridian’s airfield is named, spent 27 days in the air and flew more than 52,000 miles without ever touching the ground. That legacy, he said, is continued on today through the missions flown by the men and women of the 186th.

In fact, Reid said, a special valve designed for the Key brothers’ flight to avoid fuel spills during air refueling has been used in generations of planes since and is still used today in modern refueling aircraft.

“It works great, so why change it,” he said.

Air refueling is a critical function for the armed services to succeed in their missions, and the Air National Guard is the best equipped to meet that refueling need, Reid said. The guard has around 248 tankers that can be called upon when needed and provides more air refueling support than even the Air Force.

“The Air Force couldn’t do that mission without us, and so we are a vital part of that,” he said.

While it’s interesting to read about guardsmen flying on missions or seeing them responding to a natural disaster on the news, Reid said it’s important to remember the service members in the 186th are people in the local community. They are friends, neighbors and coworkers who signed up to serve their country and support their community in whatever capacity they are needed.

The KC-135R from Key Field was joined in its flyover of Meridian by a C-17 from the 172nd out of Jackson. It was then scheduled to head to the coast. Additional flyovers were scheduled in Pascagoula, Waveland, Natchez, Vicksburg and Jackson before heading west to Fayetteville, Fort Smith and Little Rock, Arkansas, and Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana.