B-52 Stratofortress - US strategic bomber / Documentary US Air Force / WHD

[Music] for nearly half a century one aircraft alone has dominated the skies during those years it has dropped more conventional bombs than any other airplane with a maximum speed of 650 miles per hour a range of over 8,000 miles and capable of dropping 70,000 pounds of bombs it is the most lethal bomber in the world it can also deliver nuclear bombers missiles and precision guided weapons when a United States president wants to wield his big stick he sends in the b-52s when the United States wants to punish an enemy we send the heavy bombers and one of those is to b-52 the b-52 has now become a symbol of more than a bomber it's a symbol of America's resolved using extraordinary archive film and color reenactments battle stations enters the world of the b-52 stratofortress [Music] as far back as World War one the use of aircraft as a means of delivering explosives was accepted as an effective way to strike at the enemy as aircraft became bigger so too did the amount of bombs they could drop [Music] but the outbreak of World War two Adolphe Hitler unleashed his bombers smashing enemy territory in advance of his armies [Music] but as the tide of war changed there was the Allies who used the bomber to its full destructive potential with raids of a thousand bomber aircraft at a time allied heavy bombers such as the British Lancaster and the American b-17 proved their superiority by pounding Nazi Germany into submission Japan 2 was systematically destroyed by vast armadas of American b-29s [Music] in early August 1945 two bombs were dropped that changed the face of war forever and with it the birth of one of the most terrifying instruments of war the nuclear weapon [Music] for the first time in over six years the world was at peace but signs of another conflict were already on the horizon the growing threat of war with the Soviet Union the USA began to prepare for hostilities with the Eastern Bloc on March the 21st 1946 an organization known as sac Strategic Air Command was established there was no office building so we used offices in the old Martin bomber plant on this airfield and we start seeing people that we had fought the war with coming from all over the place mostly all b-29 types sac wanted air combat units capable of flying huge distances and employing the latest and most advanced weapons but what America did not have was an aircraft powerful enough to meet these intense requirements with this in mind the Boeing Company began working on various designs for a long-range bomber these included radical swept-back wings and jet and conventional propeller powered aircraft but it wasn't until October the 21st 1948 the Colonel Henry Pete worden of the right air development center met with Boeing engineers [Music] they arrived with a wealth of documents and designs but warden paid little attention to the paperwork and requested a prototype using turbojet engines he wanted the plans for this new prototype and he wanted them fast Pete worden gave them just two days it was a daunting request but the team were not going to let warden down we were the ones that had to do it and we knew what we had to do and you see I had I had all my aeronautical data on the b55 because I just made a report on the airplane to Pete worden earlier that week so we had all the data but we had to we had to move it into the size of the b-52 the genesis of the mighty b-52 came about in humble surroundings in a room of the Van Cleve hotel in downtown Dayton Ohio is a classic small-town hotel I think the Boeing Company had a suite on the seventh floor it consisted of a kind of a sitting room it had a big round table and a couch so that that was that was a suite it was pretty good for the Van Cleave the first thing we did on Saturday morning is we we kind of figured out what we needed to do we needed some drawings we needed a performance document so a bond and I we were the airplane technical people so we we started in on the on the performance taking my b55 data and transferring it into the bigger airplane and EDL's and George Shire disappeared and at the time we did we didn't miss him until they were gone now they came back about two hours later with some balsa and what they'd been out doing they decided they wanted a model and they had to go out of the model shops and find the biggest piece of balsa and Dayton and that's set the scale of the model and a shire was the best aerodynamicist in the world and bought and i were a little upset with him because he here lee had this massive document to put together and here he was sitting in the corner whittling uh-oh model but anyway that's what he did over the following 24 hours the aircraft began to take shape it would be an eighth engine jet using podded pairs of the Pratt & Whitney engines it would have a top speed of 490 knots and the potential to deliver a 10,000 pound bomb load over a range of 5,000 320 miles it would also have a radically redesigned wing with a span of 185 feet [Music] by Sunday noon we had things pretty pretty good shape so we called in the secretary of the Boeing officer in this Heinz and she typed up all the material that we've written the document has a few pages in it [Music] on the Monday morning they presented their work to Colonel warden he was impressed with the jet-powered plans and asked the Boeing engineers to continue with the design endorsement of the aircraft didn't happen for another three months but in January 1949 production started in Seattle over the following two years Boeing worked and tested their new plane at a feverish pitch nowadays they have what they call computational aerodynamics and they can do it with a computer but in those days the Windtunnel was was what's the way we did it and that's why it took about a year of Windtunnel testing that was mostly in figuring out how to put the engines on the wing and the date it turned out to be okay on April the 15th 1951 the b-52 was wheeled out called the why b-52 it was prepared for its maiden flight at the Boeing Field we knew we had a winner before we threw it the first flight you know an airplane I was really excited about that it had taken seven years from the initial United States Air Force request for a new bomber to get the b-52 on the runway it didn't look like any other airplane but I'd been deeply involved in me in the testing in the wind tile and I knew it should fly but when it finally took off flaps hanging down with swept-wing but I was real happy to see it disappear over the horizon the test flight entailed checking out the airplane and checking out the systems now black blisters so the control forces turned out to be many times greater than what they should have been and so he took both of us to turn the airplane under certain certain conditions [Music] the flight lasted two hours 51 minutes and ended with a perfect landing at Moses Lake [Music] it was universally agreed that Boeing was onto a winner over the next three years Boeing in the United States Air Force tested developed and refined the aircraft many improvements were made one of the most noticeable was by the head of Strategic Air Command general Curtis e LeMay that they change the crew seating configuration now the first airplane did not have the right cockpit on it general LeMay decided he wanted the side-by-side cockpit and we didn't have the time to hit the first airplane over the first three or four airplanes that came off the line where a b-52 wise I think and they had the tandem cockpit finally in 1955 the new b-52 was revealed to the public and ready for active service the Soviet Union had by now developed its own atomic and hydrogen bombs an America desperately needed a heavy bomber to strike back if necessary would the b-52 fit the role so urgently needed by Strategic Air Command during the mid-1950s the Soviet bloc began to build a terrifying arsenal of nuclear weapons America was determined to provide a deterrent to prevent the Soviet Union from ever using their bombs this era of the Cold War now needed a strategy we initiated and developed and planned and wrote the first nuclear war plan it was a sac war plan but it became a national war plan it was into this uncertain and highly charged environment that the b-52 came into service with the Strategic Air Command early b-52s had a six-man crew on the upper flight deck with a pilot copilot and electronic warfare officer on the lower deck with a radar navigator Bombardier and navigator in the rear of the aircraft was the tail gunner crammed throughout the wings and fuselage with the fuel tanks and along the lower fuselage with a massive bomb bait for some of these elite crews that Sackett selected it was the first time they'd ever seen a b-52 when I walked around a b-52 and I thought wow this is really cool and then I look at the skin on this b-52 and it's all wrinkled kind of like mine and I thought this is this thing can't fly this is not going to be good you cannot be serious you cannot be serious so I was not a happy camper Hey [Music] I was just absolutely awestruck by the sound the noise the motion of the airplane but it did fly and it flew very well it took a lot of strength and very fatigue imagine yourself totally to drive a big 18-wheeler a Mack truck down the highway not only down the highway but into the neighborhood and around the corner and back it up and that's what a b-52 feels like in comparison say to an f4 fighter which is like driving a Lamborghini you put the throttle forward on all eight engines the entire airplane shakes you have this noise and it's sitting there on the end of the runway everything is vibrating you know it's almost like a sprinter ready to take off and then you get moving and it starts accelerating and then gives it a faster a little faster a little faster then you have about a 12,000 foot runway and you finally take off and you lumber up know it's down you climb until you you know reach their altitude go on but the first time it's really an exhilarating experience the b-52 wasn't necessarily difficult to land and take off the airplane except in a crosswind crab system where you could dial in the crosswind crab so that you could land the aircraft while it was pointed relatively into the men but you were flying actually sadly so it was a very unusual and spooky sequence as US military thinking developed during the Cold War the greatest fear was of a sudden pre-emptive Soviet strike so sac ensured that 12 b-52s fully armed with nuclear weapons were airborne 24 hours per day 365 days per year the plan was known as chrome-dome it was the plan in the Cold War to arm the bomber fleet with nuclear weapons and achieve a high state of readiness and comply with our national policy which was to encircle the Soviet Union operation chrome dome had b-52s flying three basic routes a northern route across North America and Canada past Newfoundland and Iceland up past Greenland and the Arctic Circle across Alaska and back down the western side of the US a southern route across the Atlantic orbiting the Mediterranean then back to the US and one b-52 constantly on patrol over Greenland 24 hours a day each patrol was designed continuously to monitor critical targets in the Soviet Union that would never be more than 2 hours flying time from a patrolling b-52 but these missions some as long as 26 hours took incredible stamina on the part of the crews sit in an ejection seat you had parachute on your back you were wearing a helmet fairly heavy and thermal underwear you may have heavy boots you have winter flight suit or a summer flight suit it was normally dark down there because you needed to have good visibility when you're watching the radar scope most of times it was cold a negative fifty five degrees and of course the skin of the airplane some places wasn't that well insulated and then you add on top of that your high altitude your low ambient humidity and you would lose a lot of moisture there were many times that I would lose five to ten pounds usually just in water from you know a long stressful mission that was very cramped we had air mattresses you could lie down and rest obviously the one pilot would be flying the airplane one navigator navigating we early on had a small oven where we could cook what was soon I characterizes an early TV dinner we had a hot cut where you could have coffee or heat up some soup oh and we had box lunches as well all over the range of over 8,000 miles the Cold War b-52s had to refuel twice on each mission but with ease massive aircraft each refuelling was a manoeuvre fought with danger you are in very close proximity to the airplane and imagine driving down the highway and you'd like to have two seconds between cars well we're talking maybe 20 feet between the airplane that's above you and the bomber right below you know and it our fraction of a second if you hit an air pump or some kind of clear air turbulence you have the capability you know of his tail coming down and your nose going up and yes it could ruin your whole day boom operator in the tanker who's he flies the boom you had to fly the b-52 into this envelope into this narrow airspace under the tanker that the boom operator liked and some boom operators were so damn picky that if you didn't have it within a foot where they wanted you they wouldn't stick the boom in you know and I'd say put the damn thing in you jerk any time of the day or night when you were the pilot were air refuelling taking on at least 40,000 pounds of fuel when I finished my body would be wet just absolutely soaked preparation from October the 1st 1957 during normal periods of readiness 40% of sacs bomber force was on continuous ground alert ready to get airborne at 15 minutes notice when that klaxon went off of course you never knew for sure whether it was a training exercise or whether it was a real thing some of these fumbles over to the wall finds a light switch turns it on jump into your flight you get that on get your boot on grabs your part or whatever else you need to ending on where in the world you are and then if you run like mad out to the airplane and then the heart starts beating and the adrenaline starts if you don't know what's going to happen and the next message maybe the you know call to go to work despite the hardships and training the reason why the crews alertness was so vital was that every b-52 was armed with up to four thermonuclear weapons each warhead was more than 1,700 times more powerful than those dropped on Japan and if they were needed then only the president could order them in in the early 1960s Strategic Air Command was the key deterrent against any attack by Russia the spearhead of this force were the mighty b-52s there was a story that used to be told there was a journal and he'd go to the Russian premier and the question who was is today the day we can take on the United States and we can come out ahead and gentle say it not today sir and our job is to make sure that every day that was his answer to enable the us to keep that high state of alert Strategic Air Command required the b-52 crews to undertake the long stress-inducing tours of duty the average tour of duty for sac combat crew members in the early 60s you would normally pull to seven-day alert tours per month so that's 14 days out of roughly 30 or 31 days that you could expect to be sitting nuclear ground alert and you were expected to be able to launch within 15 minutes and go strike those targets if given the order to do so so in addition to the pulling of the ground alert you could expect to fly maybe three maybe four training missions per month so your your time was totally consumed with those responsibilities the continuous training of the crews was hard and rigorous only the best survived but it was not enough to be the best they had to pass the psychological tests as well he had the psychological profile which is very important in other words you're talking about taking a nuclear weapon and dropping in on the country and a lot of people can't handle that and physiologically are you able to take the long missions the twenty-plus our missions that are required you'd have the stamina and you're given physical tests to see if you had that standard the training required everyone to do their job not just the crew but the maintenance people and all the support people even the people that made the lunches everyone had to do their job to keep the fleet in the air when it was meeting the driving force behind this quest for a state of excellence was General Curtis e LeMay he was the the big daddy he was the one that that started sac yeah the encourse the impression that he conveyed was that there's nobody tougher than Curtis e LeMay first of all brilliant person to have in the concept he had and he knew what his mission was there there were moments that he was a loving father he was he had times that he he could show compassion but on the outside he was just a rough gruff son of a [ __ ] I guess but shouldn't attack be launched against America a series of defensive steps were put into action incoming missiles or bombers would be picked up by the early warning radar tracking stations once verified the alert that the US was under attack was passed on to Strategic Air Command HQ in Omaha Nebraska they would put the entire b-52 fleet on alert and scramble the plane [Music] sac would then consult with the White House the president was never more than a few feet from the war plan if and only if it was necessary the president would give the final order to go then the b-52s that were already airborne would receive their coded instructions known as the go codes to fly to their targets there was a coded message that you would receive and it required you and another what they called positive control crew member to authenticate this message and it was in there was a code the code was a letter code if you and the other positive control which was the radar navigator at the bomb a directive will and if both of your cards matched the message then that meant it was an authentic message and it would authorize you to strike your target most b-52 crews had already made arrangements with their families for when and if they were ordered to bomb their targets I had taken the opportunity as had many other psychomat crew members to instruct my wife as to what she needed to do given a nuclear attack on the United States and that included putting together the items and materials that she would need to take care of the children packing the automobile and have it ready to go to leave the immediate target our sac bases were all targeted and get away from it [Music] every mission carried with it an awesome responsibility it's kind of a terrifying thought you see I had seen an a-bomb go off in bikini not many had seen one and I knew how horrifying it was we were carrying things much much more powerful and of course all of us were keenly aware of the significance of the Cold War and the threat that was posed by the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nations and we were committed if need be to take them out we also knew that we were never committed to a first strike or a preemptive strike I felt confident that every crew that I was on would fly the assigned mission you know we'd go there and do the best we could if we were able to strike her targets not if we were blown out of the sky we were blown out of Scott because you know if that happened it meant that our country had already been instructed [Music] each b-52 bomber was then on its own heading towards its target they can't pull you back once you have that you're committed to the target you just orbit they're waiting until one of two things happens either you get that message that tells you to proceed onto your target or if you don't get it you have to determine how long you can stay there in orbit at that point before you have to head back so you can make it back to a base and land without running out of you should the enemy bombers on missiles get through and destroy sac headquarters there was an alternative plan to guide the midair b-52s to their targets it was called lookingglass we also had the looking-glass the sake of board command poles which flew continuously from February of 1961 until 1991 with a sac general officer on board with a full battle stance those were eight and a half hour missions they flew three missions a day and of course that system was designed if Strategic Air Command headquarters was lost due to an attack then that general officer would find himself running the war and talking to the commander in chief the president knighted States and the Secretary of Defense I was privileged to fly 358 of those missions in the 10 years I was a sectoral officer this flying command center was a vital linchpin in the doomsday scenario [Music] but thankfully it was never needed as just one misguided bomb would have resulted in a nuclear catastrophe with potentially not a single living thing left alive on the planet but accidents with all these nuclear-armed bombers did happen and when a b-52 with 450 Megaton bombs crashed the world held its breath during the Cold War nuclear-armed b-52s patrolled the skies 24/7 ready at a moment's notice to deliver the most powerful bombs in the world those bombs were never dropped in combat but on more than one occasion they were nearly detonated by accident On January the 17th 1966 a b-52 on regular Mediterranean patrol was refueling at thirty thousand five hundred feet over the coast of Spain we had a mid-air collision over Spain between a b-52 and a kc-135 jet tanker kc-135 cruises lost many of the b-52 crew survived the weapons were deployed if you will and had to be recovered from the sea and it created quite a sensation we were successful in recovering those weapons and the safety that was built into the weapons there was never any concern about a nuclear detonation after another incident in Greenland neutral governments began to object that b-52s armed with nuclear weapons were flying over their territory the risk of a catastrophe was too great and the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles ICBMs and nuclear submarines had given the United States an alternative retaliatory arsenal those events created such a stir on the world scene that Strategic Air Command and the civilian leadership the United States decided to to stop them to curtail that operation [Music] in September 1968 the air alert system of chrome-dome was decommissioned for the men who had flown those missions the b-52 had fulfilled its role as a world peace key and looking back on it I don't regret that 17 years I spent inside I think they we we did a lot for our country I think we have one of the things we're talking about is that most people think the cold war just ended it doesn't we say that we want psyche won the Cold War for over 10 years the b-52 had patrolled the skies waiting for the go codes that fortunately never came but it's days as a bomber were not over it was about to take on a new mission over Southeast Asia when Southeast Asia came about and there was a need to deliver large firepower that is conventional ordnance iron bombs is referred to the Air Force looked around and the best delivery platform they had was in fact it b-52 in March 1965 in the escalating conflict in Vietnam President Johnson gives the go-ahead for Operation Rolling Thunder the bombing of North Vietnam again the b-52 is mobilized and again it is modified to conduct its mission we modified the b-52 D models with what we call the big bellied modification to the point where between external and internal carriage they could carry a hundred and eight 750 pound block from 1965 onwards the b-52 D big belly versions would carry the burden of the conflict single-handedly until joined by the b-52 G versions in the final stages of conflict between 1965 and 1968 in Rolling Thunder b-52s flew more than 2,000 sorties and dropped over 630 thousand tons of boulders this was the first time that the b-52 had entered the theater of actual warfare I had already told my crew if we get hit hmm we're gonna ride that airplane until it blows up I didn't think they'd be taking any prisoners when you were flying over there it was a large non stealthy airplane when you would put a radar scope on it it would stand out almost like a flashlight because of the decides you know it was metal sides and we reflect radar energy that's why there was so many ECM electronic countermeasure aircraft flying with the missions and that kind of countermeasure officer on board but still even with that it was very much sitting duck at high altitude apart from Sam's surface-to-air missiles the b-52s had to face the Russian built mig-21 find us we didn't we'll have problem with MiG's trying to attack the b-52s we found the MiGs flying in formation with us and they're flying at our altitude on our speed at our heading and they were transmitting this information down to the the gunnery to the SAM sites so here's a guy on the ground he knows you're heading your altitude and your airspeed that simplifies his gunner his process of shooting you down by 1970 the heavy bombing also extended outside Vietnam to Cambodia and Laos salty rates had risen to over 3,000 a month but the best known manifestation of the massive USAir effort in Vietnam was still to come it would bring losses of aircraft and crews to the b-52s the like of which they never before had to face [Music] by 1972 the conflict in Vietnam was raging and peace negotiations had reached a stalemate so a major escalation of the b-52 bombing was ordered operation linebacker - this was to be the systematic bombing of key objectives in North Vietnam [Music] so December 15th we got the alerting order linebacker to and for security we nobody was allowed to go off base or make off-base phone calls and so we were told to prepare for a three day maximum effort mission with a possibility of extended indefinitely and at that time we've told that targets would be Hanoi normally when you briefed you had a cell three b-52s 18 people and usually they were talking to each other and the briefers trying to breathe and nobody pays any attention to him because it's same briefing every day and we go in this room the rooms packed with crew members and this briefer could have spoken without a microphone in a whisper and everybody in the room would have heard every word he said it was so quiet in that place thing I remember was looking around and I thought you know some of us probably aren't going to be alive some of us are going to be dead in four or five hours we're not coming back three days into the operation on the evening of December the 20th John mules b-52 was making its bombing run over Hanoi when it came under attack by some missiles to see these lights these little spots of light and then as they came up through the under cast you can see the rocket plume of the engine of the surface-to-air missiles and there were a lot of surface-to-air missiles coming up a lot just about five seconds before bombs away and I looked out and there's this I could just see this huge Sam right right off the nose of the airplane I thought get above us before you detonate the next thing I knew the airplane was in a 30-degree Bank all the windscreens were completely shattered but intact and half the red lights in the cockpit were on so I thought well I'm gonna try to level the wings but probably won't be able to out on the left wing I see fire I look out there and my number three and four engines are unfunded and just as I'm looking at that fire light the second Sam hits the airplane honestly put a pretty big mole in the crew compartment because we had explosive decompression we lost our pressurization and the noise was deafening it was just like you were standing next to a train that was going by our track at 80 miles an hour just deafening noise now I'd look out and the engines aren't just on fire now the wings on I'm trying to decide did we stay with the airplane and tell that wing stance so I thought I better get the crew out and the way I did that is there's an emergency bailout light in each in front of each crew member and you have a guarded switch which a pilot can activate and when you hit that switch it turns that red light on in front of each crew member and that means eject it's a kick in the butt when that thing fires and I thought this is not a good day jeonyul was captured by the North Vietnamese and taken to the infamous Hanoi prison camp nicknamed the Hanoi Hilton after three days of solitary confinement Yul was on the receiving end of a b-52 bombing raid and I can remember being huddled back in the corner of that cell with my fingers my ears as deep as I could get him and I just knew my eardrums are gonna rupture and the plaster is falling down from the ceiling in the cell and their wooden shutters over the bars on the door and they're like they're made out of cardboard they're flapping back and forth from the concussion from these bombs and I'm sitting there thinking three nights ago I was up there dropping those mom the way I'm going to check out is being bombed by my buddies who I was up there bombing with three nights ago isn't that ironic December the 20th was the most intense night of Operation linebacker six b-52s were destroyed and 17m and lost their lives after 93 days of captivity Jon Newell was finally released but for him his savior was the b-52 that b-52 was such a sturdy airplane such a tough bird that it took to direct Sam hits and I was in it for at least 50 or 60 seconds trying to decide whether to bail out or stay with it and all my crew got out everybody survived during linebacker - the b-52s flew over 700 sorties in North Vietnam they kept up the most sustained heavy bombing of the war dropping over 15,000 tons of ordnance they destroyed 1,600 military installations 10 airfields 500 railway tracks 3 million gallons of petroleum and 80 percent of all electrical power but for the sak Cruz a high price was paid to complete that objective over the eleven days of the operation 15 b-52s were shot down by Sam missiles of the 92 crew aboard these planes 61 went down over North Vietnam roughly half were killed and half were taken prisoner Hanoi could not take a further battering and a ceasefire was signed in March 1973 the last American troops left Vietnam throughout the 1980s and 90s the b-52 remained the principal strategic heavy bomber in the US air fleet constantly updated to incorporate the latest airborne technology the b-52 was always ready to go into action on September the 11th 2001 as it neared its 50th birthday the b-52 was called on again on the 11th of September we were in the middle of an exercise and we watched the airplane hit the second tower at which point we knew then that this was not just an accident that it was an attack on the United States so really hit home at that point that we needed to take the attack back to the enemy their targets were the Taliban extremists who for five years had held the Afghanistan people in an Islamic reign of terror home to the al-qaeda terrorists this organization was held responsible for September 11th atrocities [Music] so began the war on international terrorism the b-52 has at least three different precision weapons those bombs can drop within 40 feet or 13 meters but we have seen in actual combat that we're actually beating that by a long margin on the 10th of november of this past year we had an Air Force Staff Sergeant on horseback in Afghanistan who is under attack he made a mayday call much to his luck that day a b-52 orbiting close by was able to direct himself in that direction with it within 8 minutes of being contacted we laid down 16 of these wind correct munitions dispensers killing about 250 to 300 of the advancing troops allowing him and his Northern Alliance teammates to escape to fight another day the mere sight of a b-52 overhead sending a signal to those on the ground that we're here to stay we're watching and we're not going to abandon you [Music] for nearly half a century the extraordinary b-52 has been at the forefront of US policy in the air the remarkable range of the aircraft means that from bases in the US it can strike at targets anywhere in the world what a bargain week out is taxpayers and I don't know of very many airplanes that have been around still flying since the 1952 current projections out of the b-52 has a combat life until 2045 almost 100 years of active service no other bomber in history comes close to this rail I believe it will probably be the most famous airplane ever and certainly one that perhaps the longest longevity of any combat airplane that we've ever had in the inventory started in the 40s of 50 60 70 80 's 90s you know and now 2000s so the original designers give them an attaboy for me because they did a very good job [Music] well I was flying f-86s and halfway through the f-86 program found out that some of us were going to be going to the Strategic Air Command and two b-52s and I was one of the fortunate ones that ended up in b-52 so I was not a volunteer to go to b-52 I went against my will but that's how I ended up at sac and b-52s when and and again the way I looked at it was I said okay look for the last four or five years you've been doing something that you would have paid the Air Force to do if they didn't have to pay you you would have paid them for the navigation the assignment has a navigator for pilot training for flying the f-86 I would have paid them to do it they were doing just what I wanted to do and I thought now I see what they were up to so sneaky Mother's they they let me have fun for five years now I'm going to start earning my pay now I'm gonna start doing something that it's a job it's not in I don't enjoy this but it's a job and I understand that and I'm committed so I'll have to do it no well yes I do I do remember one specific thing about the very first flight we go out to fly we taxi out and we run all of our checklist before takeoff or sitting there on what they call the Hammerhead the area just before you go in the active runway we're sitting there so I turn around the IP and I say what's the problem why aren't we taking off and he looks at me and he says take off we don't take off until our scheduled takeoff time well I'd been in the Air Force for what five years and I had never heard of a scheduled takeoff time before and that all my flying had been when you're ready to go you go when you run the checklist and tower clergy you take off scheduled to take off time so we set there ten or fifteen minutes just waiting for this magic time to arrive and then we get a take off so that was my that's what I remember about my first ride I don't remember too much about the airplane I do remember later on as my as we're going through training my pilot I'm the copilot of course and my pilot who is upgrading to pilot he's been a co-pilot he's out there getting his upgrade training and he's great in every respect except refueling and he is having a lot of trouble refueling and evidently my nonverbals to the instructor pilot were I cannot believe this guy can't refuel I mean I'm just looking like I know I can do this because this instructor to me said you'll he said as soon as I get big checked out you're gonna get your shot we're gonna let you refuel and I thought great so the magic day came finally Vic got where he could reap you he so the instructor said all right Vic get out of the seat you'll get in the seat and I should have known bad things were gonna happen because this IP seemed so happy so happy about that I was going to get in the seat so I get in there and I'll tell you what a nice guy I am I thought I don't want big to feel real bad about his copilot driving right in there and hooking up and refueling and I thought so what I'll do is make it look like I'm having a little trouble back here before I go in and hook up because I'm thinking this is in this is straight and level in trail now on f-86s I mean when you flew in trail you're usually chasing the guy you were on your back you were climbing you were doing everything so and and it wasn't running that tough to stay in when you're flying in trail and I thought that that tankers on an autopilot he's maintaining a constant heading airspeed everything else should be absolutely no problem I end up almost wingtip to wingtip behind that airplane I go from supreme confidence in a period of a probably three or four minutes I am so confident that I can drive in hook-up within three minutes I'm saying I don't give a day I could fly this airplane for 20 years and I'll never learn to refuel it this is ridiculous I couldn't get close to that tanker I was just back and forth back and forth I could not stabilize the airplane why are you getting close and and the instructor pilot just loved it he loved every minute of it he said oh yo you're doing great what a wonderful job a refill DW later told me he said Johnny said I thought you were gonna kill all of us I thought we were all going to die he said I can feel here playing coming through all this say yes it was mm-hmm when that klaxon went off of course you never knew for sure whether it was a training exercise or whether it was a real thing and that is true after a few years of pulling alert though and usually I'd say during a normal alert tour and at the base I was at that was seven days and it varied from base to base but a seven-day alert or you might have two or three maybe four alerts during the week you're on and of course obviously all practice except they weren't all practice in my six years I had one that was not a practice and this was a malfunction with the beam it was a combination of three things as I understood it the beam used which was the early warning up in Alaska and they they had some malfunction with that and there were I guess they thought flights of geese or something flying anyway the command thought that there may be incoming aircraft and so they had their procedures to follow what they thought they saw airplanes coming in from Russia then they were to get us this this particular message that came across was not to launch us but it was to get us out the end of the runway but the engines running and the other thing that was a clue was the practice missed the practice Klaxons we're usually during daylight hours I can't remember whenever after nine o'clock in the evening and this one happened about four o'clock in the morning when the when this klaxon goes off at four o'clock in the morning that really got all of our attention because I just never happened so we run out the airplane we crank up the engines we crank the radio up and we hear this message which is not a practice message and so we're taxing out and we think whoa now this changes your whole attitude and the way I can relate this to you it just so happened on this very first on this particular morning when got this we had a brand new navigator his first tour on alert first alert and his observation when we when it was all over and we came back into the alert facility he said wow I said I didn't know you guys took this so seriously what a klaxon went off we had to explain to him that this was not a normal klaxon response that it was really it was a real thing quite an interesting event for me anyway we were at a party at the officer's club and in the middle of the party the wing commander says all right everybody go home go in the crew rest and be prepared and we knew about the Cuban Missile Crisis I mean we knew that it was a high state of readiness for the country so it was really no big surprise that we were to go in the crew rest and to stand by for whatever is going to happen well the next thing that happened was ok we're picking up airborne alert along with a lot of other wings that we're into it right then because of the increased readiness for the whole command so we take off I think the second day of the the Missile Crisis we're airborne on our way on a airborne alert chrome-dome and I'm a co-pilot at this time and it's about I'd say 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning out over the Atlantic on the way to Spain to hit the tankers and the pilots asleep I'm upfront and all at once I see a real bright light out in front of the airplane and we're out over the middle of the Atlantic and the sky starting to turn bright and I thought oh my god tape somebody is dropping nukes they've already started dropping nuclear weapons somewhere and those must be they the Russians must be hitting our bases in Spain that's what I thought I saw and I get on on radio and I called the number 2 guy we usually flew in to ship sails I called number two and I said and I think the copilot all right no the pilot was awake anyway I call him I say do you see what I see out in front and he said yes I do and I said if you are anything on the radio because we should have been getting message saying hit strike your targets and he said I haven't heard a thing and about that time through this undercast comes a full moon it was a full moon and but it was this was under cast below us and all I could see was this light I would never felt so relieved in my life when I saw that it was a moon I'll tell you I was terrified I was terrified when I saw that moon before I knew it was a moon and that sky lighting up when it shouldn't been lighting up I just knew that World War 3 had kicked off you know I don't remember except for the Cuban Missile Crisis that was very stressful but the rest of the time even on the airborne alerts I don't remember it being that stressful except like say night refueling sometimes if you were in weather and having to get the fuel at night and landing at night and weather may be a problem other than that I didn't sense it so much it but I did sense it years later in my civilian job and when I worked for the United Way and we'd have a campaign and there was a dollar goal set and at the end of the at the last week of the campaign trying to reach this dollar goal and everybody all my co-workers would be so stressed out and I thought what is the big deal here you know so what if we don't make this go what so what and owe to them this was life and death and then it dawned oh it finally dawned on me I thought you know what this is probably the most pressure they've ever been under in their lives is this and I thought oh wow what a wait why don't you go through life and and I told what I mean once I said you ain't know what pressure is how about being a 30 year old aircraft commander of a b-52 with nuclear weapons on board and you got a problem you got a real big problem that's pressure and so at the time to answer your question at the time I didn't really think except for those exceptions I mentioned like the Cuban Missile Crisis the others but it wasn't until years later that I look back on it and I thought hey that was some pressure I was under at that time but I don't recall it now is being that great [Music] the city is awake and headed for work most of the occupants of these cars know that when five o'clock rolls around they can head for home most of them but a few like the man in this car will have to work a little longer maybe by noon tomorrow his job will be done maybe but no one especially him will lay bets on that and he wouldn't have it any other way [Music] this is Major Paul Dobbins US Air Force his title is easy to remember commander of a b-52 G missile bomber codenamed buzzsaw 4:8 his job is to keep the peace that's all just keep the peace he and the other 260 thousand men of the Strategic Air Command along with other members of the US Armed Forces but they don't think of it as just a job to them peace is their profession their b-52s represent a shield behind which a nation may work pray and sleep undisturbed to ensure peace sac keeps in fighting trim making sure it remains too tough to tackle airplanes get their pre-flight checks now the crew of buzzsaw 4:8 joins other crews for this mission at a pre takeoff briefing last-minute changes in weather air routes and even world politics could affect their flight plans each crewman has known all other details concerning the mission since crew briefings yesterday these men are preparing for a mission unique in military history the bombers they man will be an airborne force that will patrol the skies for 24 hours in their bomb bays and under their wings will be more potential destructive power than that expended in all wars fought since time began a force poised and alert ready to leap into action at the first warning that an enemy's missiles or bombers are on the way these are the men and weapons that will help shield the free world for many more years along with sacs mighty missile force but man is the vital element man has judgment something a missile lacks once fired missiles cannot be shifted to other targets or called back but no deadlier combination can now be found than the manned bomber married with the missile [Music] taxi the men of buzzsaw for a and the airborne alert mission they fly could be compared to the club carried by the prehistoric caveman that club represented what is known today as the deterrent concept preventing an enemy from attacking because he knows that an attack would mean instant and devastating retaliation [Music] darkness the safari ready to take up Roger free [Music] [Applause] but this retaliatory force is not a wooden Club it is an instrument of sinew and steel the sinew of dedicated men and the steel of weapons the like of which the world has never before known [Applause] [Music] now the mission begins operation sky watch a 24-hour hat any minute of which the order to attack might be given [Music] with 14 hours of its mission completed buzzsaw 4/8 is winding up refueling and preparing for 10 more hours in the air there is no practice on these missions the airborne alert planes have but one purpose retaliation if war begins but let's go back to the time before these men were assigned to airborne alert a training period in which they underwent long grueling hours of practice to qualify as combat crews in those days one goal stood out above all hit the targets every time the IP air force jargon for initial point the point where the bomb run begins major Dobbins bomber will hit its IP shortly after dawn but before that it will theoretically wipe out two widely separated targets with its missiles before making a simulated bomb run on a third target Delta practice targets chosen for the training missions are based on the similarity of radar pattern reflections given off by actual targets that would be hit in case of aggression [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] decoy missiles if the missile bombers ever Thunder into enemy territory all weapons will be trained on in defense a number of small decoys will be released by the bomber each will give off the same radar impulses as the b-52 result instead of one b-52 streaking to target ground radar screens will show several the enemy must then decide which is the real bomber by the time he decided the targets would be in ruins [Music] see this company we have the practice missile firings against targets Koko and Bravo are only minutes away while the hound dog missiles will be fired only in America's defense they are nonetheless ready now on this simulated attack switches are thrown but the missiles are not launched instead electronic impulses reported on the ground tell the crew where each missile would have struck but here is what the two nuclear-armed missiles and later the new air launched ballistic missiles could do if the firing switches are ever thrown in retaliation to strategic targets many hundreds of miles apart would be level while buzzsaw sped on to drop its bomb load on a third target [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: WAR - HISTORY - DOCUMENTARIES

Views: 1,501,265

Rating: 4.6834326 out of 5

Keywords: History of wars, documentry, battleship, war history, documentry films, B-52 Stratofortress, strategic bomber, us bomber, us bomber aircraft, us bomber in action, us bomber aircraft in action, bomber b52, bomber b 52 movie, b-52 takeoff, b52 documentary, b 52 jet bomber, us air force, us air force fight, us air force fighter pilot, vietnam war, cold war, cold war documentary, cold war documentary cnn, cold war documentary bbc, b-52 bomber, us deploys, bomber aircraft

Id: 8Yxf0JVgGKU

Length: 66min 7sec (3967 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 18 2019