I posted this before but since it was brought up.
October 10, 1973, McGuire AFB, NJ, 30th Military Airlift Squadron, C-141s. I was pulling Cold Banner alpha alert (we always had an alert bird, called Cold Banner alert, to fly the President's car and Secret Service personnel around; alpha alert was on-base station for a launch capability in 3 hrs. IIRC). At Oh dark thirty, we were alerted to go fly. During fight planning, my engineer came in and told me the plane was being loaded incorrectly. Heavy forklifts were being put on without the proper wood planking to distribute weight. The Ops officer told me all waivers would be provided and to get the aircraft airborne as is. Flight plans took us to Harrisburg, Pa. to get a load. Harrisburg apparently has an armory. Although the field was normally closed, the tower was opened just for us. Using the previously mentioned forklifts, we loaded 40k lbs of Shrike anti-radar missiles. A Joints Chief-of-Staff call came in to the tower and told me to get the plane off the ground immediately, which was difficult to do hand loading the aircraft. Airborne, next stop Oceana Naval Air Base, Va. We landed, and were told to taxi to the end of the runway and shut down on the runway! Parked on a parallel runway, which was 12k ft. long was a Boeing 707 completely covered in wrapping paper like a package, however, cargo doors on the side of the aircraft was open showing the words El Al, the national airline of Israel. They loaded the shrikes on the Boeing which already had a load of sidewinders on board. It used most of that 12 ft to get off! On arrival back at Mcguire, I turned on Walter Cronkite on the news and he reported that the first US support of Israel occurred at Oceana NAS that day and showed an aircraft he called a 747 taking off enroute to Israel and it was really my C-141. So much for secrecy. I was 25 years old and I had made the national news, or, at least my plane. I can't believe it was 40 years ago!
Later we were flying roundtrip shuttles to Israel from the Azores (24 hr. missions). On landing in Ben Gurion in Tel Aviv, I was told that the stores we were unloading would be fired in 30 minutes. The front line was close! We started support all the way from the US two weeks after the Russians had started their airlift to Egypt from Turkey (which had forbid us to land). In two weeks we caught up with them and then easily surpassed them.