Sandboxx – Late last year, Marine Corps F-35C Joint Strike Fighters launched from Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, CA, on a journey of more than 2,500 miles across the Pacific to Hawaii. This journey, already a feat for tactical aircraft, was made more impressive in that it was the first time in some four decades that the Marine Corps had conducted such an air transit without support from Air Force tankers. The Corps’ own KC-130Js refueled the 5th-generation fighters, said Lt. Col. Courtney O’Brien, squadron commander of VMGR-352, to which the tanker aircraft belong.