Apologies for perpetuating the MAYDAY discussion, but until we get more info on the F-35/KC-130 incident it’s the the only show in town!
I spent a total of some 7 years at Eastern Radar, controlling USAF traffic in UK ... and a couple more doing it from London Centre. Ignoring the regulatory aspects, as a Brit Mil controller you just learned to accept and understand their way of doing things differently. And even understand the implications of some of the emergencies ... I recall the F-100 had something that was sort of 5 minutes to ejection time, so get me home quick!! What REALLY matters, for an ATCO is handling the overall traffic situation for the exclusive benefit of the emergency aircraft.
Story. I was doing Centralised Approach Control for Alconbury/Wyton one day. I had 4 x F4 from 10 TRW on frequency as singletons heading for the Final Approach Fix (FL180+, IIRC), and due to the airspace I was busy. Four aircraft was the tech limit for our T82 store-dot tracking system, and I was being watched by the visiting CO of Midland Radar, who also used the T82 radar. He asked, “What happens when you run out of tracking store dots?” At that moment, I got a handover of another F-4 who had called MAYDAY. Simples ... identify and control #5 for a Diverse Recovery, tell #1 to #4 to proceed to the IAF and hold at their mercifully already assigned FLs. And eventually hand over #1 to ALC Rapcon and resume processing the other 4 in the stack. “Err, that’s what we do, Sir.” ... Terry Mac was not amused! BUT ... MAYDAY gets you in front of the queue!