A dozen faces pressed against the tiny windows of the big Air National Guard KC-135R refueling tanker.

Screaming engines drowned out any real conversation, but that didn’t seem to matter. The guests were on the spouse flight sponsored by the family program of the 186th Air Refueling Wing, stationed at Key Field in Meridian.

One guest, Pam Thompson, says her husband has always encouraged her to fly in a tanker to get a better idea of his job.

Friday’s flight rendezvoused over Oklahoma with a B-52 bomber from the 93rd Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force based in Shreveport, La. B-52s dwarf the tankers, which are converted Boeing 707s.

At rendezvous, they were traveling together, 30,000 feet up, at 250 mph and only 40 feet apart.