Looking at the pics I'd say the aircraft is a P-51D, whose max
and cruise speeds are 437 and 325mph. The F-15 has a stall speed of
100kts or around 185 mph, so the formation had quite a lot of
margin to play around with in terms of speed and formation-keeping.
Notice the Eagle is clean (ie. flaps up) so I'd wager that the
speed of the formation would be at the higher end but slow enough
so that the formation won't zip by.
Fairyland do you have a source to back your claim that the C-135
family can launch missiles? The USAF has a lot of variants based on
the C-135 family including those that can monitor ICBM launches;
SIGINT, ELINT etc (Rivet Joint, Cobra Ball, Looking Glass, ARIA)
but this is the first time I've heard of it as a missile
platform.
And the vanilla KC-135R version we have would need extensive and
expensive modifications before it can come anywhere near being able
to do the missions I pointed out above.
EXCO is right, the main reason the 135s were purchased as the F-16s
we have used a different refueling method from what the KC-130
could perform
