All three took off from Chania and flew in an incredibly close formation to a point West of Cyprus and then just turned back.

They flew at times in a stack or almost literally wingtip to wingtip, i.e. next to no horizontal separation while maintaining a vertical separation of only 500 feet (150 meter).

Here they are closer to each other than they usually are when parked safely on the ground, 29,000 feet (9 km) up in the sky moving at around 500 knots (900 km/h).

Obviously this is what these machines are designed to do and the pilots are trained for. In operation their 'client' come even closer to refuel. But their 'clients' are generally much smaller and much more nimble and the KC is 'only' supposed to fly a stable holding pattern while the 'client' approaches the KC, maintains a safe distance and deals with the turbulence of the KC.

They took off from Chania, immediately got in formation, flew until they were around Akrotiri and then turned back to Crete, in formation, twice crossing a very busy civil aviation 'river' (Antalya-Alexandria) and only broke formation when BOBBY06 broke off to return to Rota in Spain and the two others landed back at CHQ. In all the whole show lasted little more than 45 minutes.

They caused quite a bit of turbulence in the civil aviation 'river' as that traffic broke rank with many climbing to around 40,000 feet (12 km) to stay clear of this crazy trio. Quite a show !

This leaves just one question : Why ?
Fly in another KC from Spain, 'scramble' two KCs that just flew in from Mildenhall and then disrupt civil aviation all for a short, dangerous and totally unnecessary walk-about over the Eastern Mediterranean. Why ? I mean, really : Why ?