Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho -- The 916th Air Refueling Wing ‘Totin’ Tigers’ have once again participated in a gathering of units with ‘big cat’ heraldry known as the ‘Tiger Meet of the Americas’ (TMOTA). The 391st Fighter Squadron ‘Bold Tigers’ staged the third TMOTA at Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho, Oct. 14-21. Other feline units flying alongside the 916th at this year’s event were the 79th FS ‘Tigers’ and the 140th WG Colorado Air National Guard ‘Cougars’, both flying F-16s. A combined 410 ‘Cougars’/416 ‘Lynx’ Squadron team from Cold Lake, Canada, operating CF-18 Hornets and from Germany, the NATO E-3A AWACS crew of No.1 ‘Tiger’ Squadron, adding a welcome international flavor to events.

Tiger History
The TMOTA is a biennial exercise that has its beginnings in 2001 when the Colorado ANG had the idea of inviting other feline units together for four days of tactical flying and social events. Modelled on the annual NATO Tiger Meets in Europe that date back to 1961, the TMOTA is developing its own identity with its own unique social events and infamous ‘Tiger Games’. The basic goals of Tiger Meets on both the sides of the Atlantic are the same: To promote solidarity between NATO members, to improve tactical awareness and operational understanding between participating units and to create and maintain strong ties, professional and personal, between participating units.
The Colorado ANG had a trophy made with the intention of having the participating teams compete both in the air and on the ground to win and host the next TMOTA. Tiger Meets are organised at squadron level, with major command approval, but have all the elements of a mini Red Flag, with air-to-air and air-to-ground fighters, aerial refueling and even the valuable NATO AWACS E-3A to provide aerial command and control. Unlike a Red Flag exercise however, the Large Force Employment (LFE) sorties are tailored to the individual units training requirements in a more relaxed atmosphere.

Tiger Tankers
Maj. Wayne Turner was the Totin’ Tigers ‘Tiger Lead’ for the eight day deployment and, as one of the attendees at the first TMOTA, was able to provide a perspective on the benefits in training for the 916th. 

“This exercise helps us tremendously, we have a couple of people here in training status so it gives us the opportunity to give them a different perspective on how we would operate when involved in a large force exercise.” Major Turner adds, “Although we regularly fly in formation at home it is a different, less tactical formation than here. Some of our newer people have not done an offload to more than one plane at a time, they are used to C-17s and KC-10s, they are not used to having eight guys on their wing and cycling one guy after another on to the boom.” 

Tech. Sgt. Lori O’Connell, one of three boom operators sampling their first Tiger Meet agrees. “This will be my first opportunity to refuel Canadian CF-18 Hornets using the Drogue system, we don’t get to do Drogue often and we only occasionally get large fighter formations so this is valuable training,” she said. 

Fellow Boomer Tech. Sgt. Riccardo Bonicelli points out another benefit of attending, “We gain recognition and exposure. A lot of people, when they ask where we’re from and we reply the 77th at Seymour Johnson, say ‘Seymour Johnson has tankers?’

Tiger Spirit
A key aspect of the TMOTA is that everyone, all the maintainers and support personnel, are involved in the Tiger Games and the social events, nobody is left out. The 391st FS TMOTA 2005 Project Officer, Maj. Troy ‘Bucket’ Orwan was keen to stress, “We didn’t want to make the Tiger Meet just a ‘pilot thing’, the overall winning team is voted on whether the whole team got involved and displayed the best ‘Tiger spirit’, be it in the maintenance competition, the games and the social side or the flying.” 

The Tiger games consisted of a Skeet Trap, Golf Tournament and Softball contest, with overall points added to the flying and maintenance contests to get an overall winning team. 

At the conclusion of the Tiger Meet the winning teams were awarded trophies and bragging rights until 2007 in four categories. The maintenance competition trophy went to the 391st FS. Best Tiger jet paint scheme went to the Colorado ANG, followed by a new trophy awarded to the chosen host unit for TMOTA 2007 and won by the 79th FS at Shaw Air Force Base, SC. Finally overall top Tiger team and the original Silver Globe trophy went back to the Colorado Guard. When asked whether they came to win, the 120th FS Tiger lead, Maj. Craig ‘Lobo’ Wolfe answered simply: “Of course.”
Maj. Turner concluded, “Everyone did a really good job out here, they’re a great bunch of guys and gals and it is great flying. We were invited to the very first TMOTA at Buckley. We had wanted to go to the last one up in Canada two years ago but unfortunately we were activated at the time, but we were able to make this one and hopefully we will get invited to the next one down in South Carolina.”

Editor’s note: Kevin Jackson is a freelance aviation photojournalist based in London, UK and flew with the 916th ARW team during this year’s Tiger Meet.