Dropped off the tanker in the mighty Hun one night with lots of fuel. Lead asks for a block to 430. Controller approves and watches us fall out if the sky in the low forties, one by one each plane reached its exact coffin corner. Fun times, especially the descent waiting waiting for enough margin to pull a bit.
Yes, but you neither had "severe control issues" nor any crashes, even at the edge of the envelope!
Once I had to refuel from a KC-10 in the 30s (only hole in the clouds) while in a loaded A-6 with a buddy store. We had 3 A-6s and 4 A-7s in the flight. The A-7s couldn't get in the basket at all due to the speed of the heavy KC-10 and the wake turbulence. I could only get in with a running start once we were a bit lighter, and keep Mil power until I finally dropped out. I then transferred fuel to the A-7s and repeated.