For nearly half a century, 1 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 mph, a range of over 8000 miles and capable of dropping £70,000 of bombs, it is the most lethal bomber in the world. It can also deliver nuclear bombs, missiles and precision guided weapons. When a United States President wants to wield his big stick, he sends in the B50 twos. When the United States wants to punish an enemy, we send the heavy bombers, and one of those is the B52. The B52 is now become a symbol of more than a bomber. It's a symbol of America's resolve. Using extraordinary archive film and calorie enactments, Battlestations enters the world of the B52 Stratofortress. 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. With the outbreak of World War Two, Adolf Hitler unleashed his bombers, smashing enemy territory in advance of his armies. But as the tide of war changed, it was the allies who used the bomber to its full destructive potential. With raids of 1000 bomber aircraft at a time, Allied heavy bombers such as the British Lancaster and the American B17 proved their superiority by pounding Nazi Germany into submission. Japan, too, was systematically destroyed by vast armadas of American B20 Nines. 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. 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 B29 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 that Colonel Henry Pete, Warden of the Wright Air Development Center met with Boeing engineers. 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 Warden 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 B 55 because I just made a report on on the airplane to Pete Warden earlier that week. So we had all the data, but we had to, we had to move it into the size of the B52. Of the mighty B52 came about in humble surroundings in a room of the Van Cleave Hotel in downtown Dayton, OH. It's a classic small town hotel. I think the Boeing company had a suite on the 7th floor. It consisted of a kind of a of a of a sitting room. It had a a big round table and a couch. So that that was that was the suite. It was pretty good for the van. Cleave, the first thing we. Then on Saturday morning as 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 the airplane technical people. So we we started in on the on the performance taking my B-55 data and transferring it into the bigger airplane and Ed wells and George Shire disappeared. And at the time we didn't, we didn't miss them until they were gone and 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 around to the model shops and find the biggest piece of balls in Dayton. That and that set the scale of the model. Shire was the best third nemesis in the world and born and I were a little upset with him because here we had this massive document to put together and here he was sitting in the corner whittling a model. But anyway, that's what he did. Of the following 24 hours, the aircraft began to take shape. It would be an 8 engine jet using podded pairs of the Pratt and Whitney engines. It would have a top speed of 490 knots and the potential to deliver a £10,000 bomb load over a range of 5320 miles. It would also have a radically redesigned wing with a span of 185 feet. By Sunday noon, we had things pretty, pretty good shape. So we called in the Secretary of the Boeing Officer in this Hines and she typed up all the material that we've written as the document has a few pages in it. 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 wind tunnel was was the was the way we did it. And that's why it took about a year of wind tunnel testing. That was mostly in figuring out how to put the engines on the wing, and today that turned out to be OK. On April the 15th, 1951, the B52 was wheeled out. Called the Y B52, it was prepared for its maiden flight at the Boeing Field. We knew we had a winner before we flew it. The first flight, you know, the airplane. I was really excited about that. It had taken 7 years from the initial United States Air Force request for a new bomber to get the B52 on the runway. It didn't look like any other airplane, but I've been deeply involved in the in the testing in the wind tunnel and I knew it should fly. But when it finally took off, the flaps hanging down the swept wing and I was real happy to see it disappear over the horizon. You look. Normal. Test flight. Entailed checking out the airplane and checking out the systems now, like for instance so. The control forces turned out to be many times greater than what they should have been, and so it took both of us to turn the airplane under certain certain conditions. Upside down. The flight lasted 2 hours 51 minutes and ended with a perfect landing at Moses Lake. It's like an. Airplane now. It was universally agreed that Boeing was onto a winner. Over the next three years, Boeing and 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 changed the crew seating configuration. Now, the first airplane did not have the right cockpit on it. General Lemay decided he wanted a side-by-side cockpit and we didn't have the time to hit the first airplane. So the first three or four airplanes that came off the line were beef 52 wise, I think, and they had the tandem cockpit. Finally, in 1955, the new B52 was revealed to the public. And ready for active service. But the Soviet Union had by now developed its own atomic and hydrogen bonds, and America desperately needed a heavy bomber to strike back if necessary. Would the B52 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 sack war plan. But it became a national war plan. It was into this uncertain and highly charged environment that the B52 came into service with the Strategic Air Command. Early B52 was at A6 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 bombays. For some of these elite crews that sack had selected, it was the first time they'd ever seen a B52. Walked around a B52 and I thought, wow, this is really cool. And then I look at the skin on this B52 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? 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. Very fatigued. Imagine yourself totally to drive a big 18 Wheeler 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 B52 feels like in comparison, say, to an F4 fighter, which is like driving a Lamborghini. You put the throttle forward on all 8 engines. The entire airplane shakes. You have this noise and it's sitting there on the end of the runway. Everything's vibrating. You know, it's almost like a sprinter ready to take off. And then you get moving and it's slowly starts accelerating and then gets a little faster, a little faster, a little faster than you have about a 12,000 foot runway. And you finally take off and you lumber up, nose down, you climb. Tell you you know which your attitude going, but the first time it's really an exhilarating experience. The B52 wasn't necessarily difficult to to land and take off the airplane, except in a crosswind crab system where you could dial in the crosswind crabs so that you could land the aircraft while it was pointed relatively into the wind. But you were flying actually sideways, so it was a very unusual and spooky sequence. As the US military thinking developed during the Cold War, the greatest fear was of a sudden preemptive Soviet strike. So SAC ensured that 12B50 twos, fully armed with nuclear weapons, were airborne 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. The plan was known as Chrome Dome. Was the plan and 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 B50 twos flying three basic routes. A northern route across North America and Canada passed 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 1B52 constantly on patrol over Greenland, 24 hours a day. Each patrol was designed continuously to monitor critical targets. In the Soviet Union, there would never be more than two hours flying time from a patrolling B52. But these missions, some as long as 26 hours, took incredible stamina on the part of the cruise. Sitting in injection seat, you had a £3540 parachute on your back. You were wearing a helmet, fairly heavy and thermal underwear. You may have heavy boots if you have winter flight suit or 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 -, 55 degrees. And of course, the skin of the airplane someplaces wasn't that well. Insulated and then you add on top of that. You're high altitude, you're low ambient humidity, and you would lose a lot of moisture. There were many times that I would lose 5 to 10 pounds, usually just in water from, you know, you know, a long stressful mission. It was very cramped. We had air mattresses. You could lie down and rest. Obviously the one pilot would be flying the airplane. 1 navigator navigating. We early on had a small oven where we could cook what was I characterized as an early TV dinner. We had a hot cup where you could have coffee or heat up some soup, and we had boxed lunches as well. Although with the range of over 8000 miles, the Cold War B50 twos had to refuel twice on each mission. But with these massive aircraft, each refueling was a manoeuvre fraught with danger. You. Are in very close proximity to the airplane. And you imagine driving down the highway and you'd like to have two seconds between cars while we're talking maybe 20 feet between the airplane that's above you and the bomber right below, you know, and it. The 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 it, it could ruin your whole day. Boom operator in a tanker whose he flies the boom. You had to fly the B52 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 anytime of the day or night when you. With the pilot where air refueling taking on at least £40,000 of fuel, when I finished my body would be wet, just absolutely soaked perspiration. From October the 1st, 1957, during normal periods of readiness, 40% of sacks bomber force was on continuous ground alert, ready to get airborne at 15 minutes notice. When that Claxon went off, of course, you never knew for sure whether it was a training exercise or whether it was a real thing. Somebody fumbles over to the wall, finds the light switch, turns it on, jump into your flight suit, get that on, get your hood on, grab your park or whatever else you need depending on where in the world you are. And then you run like mad out to the airplane. And then the heart starts beating and you're traveling. Starts because you don't know what's going to happen. And the next message. May be the. You know, call to go to war. Despite the hardships and training, the reason why the crews alertness were so vital was that every B52 was armed with up to four thermonuclear weapons. Each warhead was more than 1700 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 B50 twos. There was a story that used to be told that there was a journal and he'd go to the Russian premier and the question was, is today the day we can take on the United States and we can come out ahead? In general, say not today Sir, and our job is to make sure that every day that was his answer. But to enable the US to keep that high state of alert, Strategic Air Command required the B52 crews to undertake the long stress inducing tours of duty. The average tour of duty for a SEC combat crew members in the early 60s, you would normally pull 27 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 3, 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. You had the psychological profile, which is very important. In other words, you're talking about taking a nuclear weapon and dropping it on a country and a lot of people can't handle that. And physiologically, are you able to take the long missions, the the 20 plus our missions that are required? Do you have the stamina and you were given physical? Test to see if you had that stammer. 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 needed. 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 sack. Yeah, they. And of course, the impression that he conveyed was that there's nobody tougher than Curtesy Lemay. First of all, brilliant person to to have them. The concept he had and he knew what his mission was there. There were moments that he was a a loving father. He was a he had times that he, he, he, he could show compassion. But on the outside he was just a rough gruff son of a bitch, I guess. But should an 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, NE. Would put the entire B52 fleet on alert and scramble the planes. 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 B50 twos that were already airborne would receive their coded instructions, known as the GO curves, 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 the there was a code. The code was a letter code. If you and the other positive control, which was the radar navigator, the Bombardier if you 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 B52 crews had already made arrangements with their families. When and if they were ordered to bomb their targets? Had taken the opportunity, as had many other Psychomet 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. You know, our sack bases were all targeted and got away from it. 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. That 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. We were able to strike our targets. If not if we were blown out of the sky, we were blown out of the sky because, you know, if that happened, it meant that our country had already been struck. Each B52 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 there. Waiting until one of two things happens. Either you get that message that tells you to proceed on to 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 fuel. Should the enemy bombers or missiles get through and destroy SAC headquarters, there was an alternative plan to guide the mid air B50 twos to their targets. It was cold looking glass. We also had the looking glass, the SAC airborne Command post, which flew continuously from February 1961 until 1991 with a sack General officer on board with a full battle staff. Those were eight and 1/2 hour missions. They flew 3 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 of United States, and the Secretary of Defense. I was privileged to fly 358 of those missions in the 10 years I was a sack journal officer. This flying command center. There's a vital linchpin in the doomsday scenario. 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 B52 with 450 megaton bombs crashed, the world held its breath. During the Cold War, nuclear armed B50 twos patrolled the skies 24/7, ready at a moments notice to deliver the most powerful bonds 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 B52 on regular Mediterranean patrol was refueling at 30,500 feet over the coast of Spain. Clear collusion over Spain between a B52 and a KC135 jet tanker. KC135 crew was lost. Many of the B52 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 our nuclear detonation. After another incident in Greenland, neutral governments began to object that B50 twos armed with nuclear weapons were flying over their territory. The risk of a catastrophe was too great. And the introduction of intercontinental ballistic missiles, ICBM's 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 of the United States decided to to stop them to curtail that operation. In September 1968, the Air Alert System of CHROMEDOME was decommissioned. For the men who had flown those missions, the B52 had fulfilled its role as a world peacekeeper. Looking back on it I I 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 the Cold War just ended. It doesn't we say that we want cyclone the Cold War. For over 10 years, the B52 had patrolled the skies waiting for the GO codes that fortunately never came. But its 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 as we referred to, the Air Force looked around and the best delivery platform they had was in fact to be 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 B52 is mobilized and again it is modified to conduct its mission. We modified the B52-D models with what we call the big belly modification to the point where between external and internal carriage they could carry 100 and eight 750 pound bombs. From 1965 onwards, the B52-D Big Belly versions would carry the burden of the conflict single handedly until joined by the B52G versions in the final stages of conflict. Between 1965 and 1968, in Rolling Thunder, B50 twos flew more than 2000 sorties and dropped over 630,000 tons of bombs. This was the first time that the B52 had entered the theater of actual warfare. Crew. If we get hit, we're going to ride that airplane until it blows up. I didn't think they'd be taking any prisoners. 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 the sides, you know was metal sides and then we reflect radar energy and that's why there were so many ECM electronic countermeasure aircraft flying with the missions and electronic countermeasure officer on board. But still even with that it was pretty much sitting duck at high altitude. Apart from Sam's surface to air missiles, the B50 twos had to face the Russian built Mig 21 fighters. We didn't really have. A problem with legs trying to attack the B50 twos. We found the megs plane information with us and they're flying at our altitude, at our speed and our heating, and they were transferring this information down to the to the gunnery, to the Sam sites. So here's the guy on the ground, he knows you're heading. Their 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. Saudi rates had risen to over 3000 a month. But the best known manifestation of the massive US air effort in Vietnam was still to come. It would bring losses of aircraft and crews to the B50 twos, the like of which they never before had to face. By 1972, the conflict in Vietnam was raging and peace negotiations had reached a stalemate, so a major escalation of the B52 bombing was ordered. Operation linebacker 2. This was to be the systematic bombing of key objectives in North Vietnam. So December 15th we got the alerting order Linebacker 2 and for security we nobody was allowed to go off base or make off based phone calls and so we were told to prepare for a three day maximum effort mission with the possibility of extended indefinitely. And at that time, we've told the targets would be annoying. Normally when you briefed you had a cell 3B50 twos, 18 people and usually they were talking to each other in the briefers, trying to brief and nobody pays any attention to him because it's the same briefing every day and. We go in this room. The room is 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 those 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 Newells B52 was making its bombing run over Hanoi when it came under attack by Sam missiles. To see these lights, these little spots of light, and then as they came up through the undercast, you could 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. I have a lot. Check my check lamp. I got it. You know. Are you targeting anything? We've got something off the nose. Just about 5 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. Which I got it, I got it, I got it, we got it. Sam kicking up off the nose, but it looks like it's going to detonate above us. OK, looks like it's part of your windscreen there. 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 going to try to level the wings, but probably won't be able to come out on the left wing. I see fire. I look out there and my #3 and four engines are on fire. And just as I'm looking at that fire light, the second Sam hits the airplane. Obviously put a pretty big hole 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 violent track at 80 miles an hour just deafening noise. Now I look out and the engines aren't just on fire now the wings on fire. I'm trying to decide do we stay with the airplane until that wing stands? So I thought I'd better get. Crew out. And the way I did that is there's an emergency bailout light and each in front of each crew member and you have a guarded switch which the 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. John Newell 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 B52 bombing raid. I can remember being huddled back in a corner of that cell with my fingers in my ears as deep as I could get them. And I just knew my eardrums are going to rupture and the plaster is falling down from the ceiling and the sail 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 bombs. 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. 6B50 twos were destroyed and 17 airmen lost their lives. After 93 days of captivity, John Newell was finally released. But for him, his saviour was the B52. That B52 was such a sturdy airplane, such a tough bird, that it took two 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 2, the B50 twos flew over 700 sorties in North Vietnam. He kept up the most sustained heavy bombing of the war, dropping over 15,000 tonnes of ordinance. They destroyed 1600 military installations, 10 airfields, 500 railway tracks, 3,000,000 gallons of petroleum and 80% of all electrical power. But for the sack crews, a high price was paid to complete that objective. Over the 11 days of the operation, 15-B50 twos 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 B52 remained the principal strategic heavy bomber in the US Air fleet. Constantly updated to incorporate the latest airborne technology, the B52 was always ready to go into action. On September the 11th, 2001, as it neared its 50th birthday, the B52 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 the September 11th atrocities. So began the war on international terrorism. The B52 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 this past year, we had an Air Force staff Sergeant on horseback in Afghanistan who was under attack. He made a mayday call, much to his luck that day. A B52 orbiting close by was able to direct himself in that direction, and with within 8 minutes of being contacted, we laid down. 16 of these wind correct ammunitions 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 B52 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. For nearly half a century, the extraordinary B52 has been at the forefront of U.S. 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 we got as taxpayers. And I don't know of very many airplanes that have been around, still flying since 1952. The current projections are that the B52 has a combat life until 2045, almost 100 years of active service. No other bomber in history comes close to this record. I believe it will probably be 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. SO50, Sixty 70s, Eighties, 90s, you know, and now 2000s. So the original designers give them an attaboy for me because they did a very good job. Well, I was flying F80 sixes and halfway through the F86 program. Found out that some of us were going to be going to the Strategic Air Command and to be 50 twos and I was one of the fortunate. Ones that. Ended up in B52 so I was not a volunteer to go to the B52. I went against my will, but that's how I ended up in SAC and B50 twos. When and and again the way I looked at it was I said OK look. For the last four or five years you have been doing something that you would have paid the Air Force to do. If they 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 F86. 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 mothers, they they let me have fun for five years. Now I'm going to start earning my pay. Now I'm going to start doing something that it's a job it's not in, I don't enjoy. Like this. But it's a job and I understand that. And I'm committed, so I'll have to do it. No. Oh, 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. We're sitting there on what they call the hammerhead, the area just before you go on 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've 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 takeoff time. So we sat there 10 or 15 minutes just waiting for this magic time to arrive, and then we get to take off. So that was my. That's what I remember about my first ride. I don't remember too much about the airplane, but I do remember later on as my as we're going through the training, my pilot. I'm the copilot, of course, and my pilot, who is upgrading to pilot. He's been a copilot. 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 refilling. 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. He said as soon as I get Vic checked out, you're going to get your shot, we're going to let you refuel. And I thought, great. So the Magic day came. Finally Vic got where he could refuel 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 going to happen. Because this IP seems 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, well, 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 an F80 sixes. I mean when you flew in trail you were usually chasing the guy you were on your back you were climbing you were doing everything so and and it wasn't that tough to stay in when you're flying in trail and I thought that that tankers on autopilot he's maintaining a constant heading airspeed. Everything else should be absolutely no problem. I end up almost wing tip to wing tip behind that airplane. I go from supreme confidence in a period of probably 3 or 4 minutes. I am so confident that I can drive in and hook up within 3 minutes. I'm saying I don't give it. 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 when you getting close. And the and the instructor pilot just loved it. He loved every minute of it. He said oh, you're you're doing great. What a wonderful job of refilling. EW later told me he said John, he said. I thought you were gonna kill all of us. I thought we were all going to die, he said. I could feel here playing, coming through all this say. Yes, it was. When that Claxson 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 to her and at the base I was at, that was seven days and it varied from base to base. But a seven day alert to her, 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 6 years I had one that was not a practice and this was a 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. Then 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 if 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 engine is running and the other thing that was a clue was the practice. Missed the practice claxons? We're usually during daylight hours. I can't remember one ever after 9:00 o'clock in the evening and this one happened about 4:00 o'clock in the morning. When the when this klaxon goes off at 4:00 o'clock in the morning, that really got all of our attention because that 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 taxiing 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 we got this, we had a brand new navigator, his first tour on alert, First Alert Tour. And his observation when we when it was all over and we came back into the alert facility, he said. Wow, he said. I didn't know you guys took this so seriously when you when the clackson went off. We had to explain to him that this was not a normal claxon response, that it was really it was a real thing. Quite an interesting event for me anyway. We were. At a party at the officers club. And. In the middle of the party, the Wing Commander says, alright, 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 into 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 of the missile crisis, we're airborne on our way, on a airborne alert chromedome. And I'm a co-pilot at this time and it's about I'd say two or three o'clock in the morning out over the Atlantic on the way to Spain to hit the tankers and. The pilots asleep, I'm up front 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 is starting to turn bright. And I thought, Oh my God they. 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 a radio and I call the number two guy. We usually flew in two ships sails. I called #2 and I said and I think the copilot or 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 have you heard anything on the radio? Because we should have been getting a message saying hit strike your targets. And he said I haven't heard a thing. And about that time through this undercast. Becomes a full moon. It was a full moon. But it was the IT was undercast 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 should have been lighting up. I just knew that World War Three 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're in weather and having to get to fuel at night and landing at night and weather, maybe problem. Other than that, I didn't sense it so much. 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 coworkers 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's So what? And ohh, you know, to them this was life and death. And then it dawned on 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, haha, wow, what a weird, what a way to go through life. And and I told one of them once, I said, you know what pressure is? How about being a 30 year old aircraft commander of a B52 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 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 looked back on it and I thought. Hey. That was some pressure I was under at that time, but I don't recall it now as being that great. The city is awake and headed for work. Most of the occupants of these cars know that when 5:00 o'clock rolls around, they can head for home. Most of them but a few like the man in this car. We'll 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. This is Major Paul Dobbins, US Air Force. His title is easy to remember. Commander of a B52G missile bomber, code named Buzzsaw 48. His job is to keep the peace. That's all. Just keep the peace. And the other 260,000 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. They are B50. Twos represent a shield behind which a nation may work, pray and sleep undisturbed to ensure peace. Sack keeps infighting trim, making sure it remains too tough to tackle. Airplanes get their pre flight checks now. The crew of Buzzsaw 48 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 bombays 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 sacks, 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. Tired. This is bus off. Alright, we're. Taxing. Roger 48. You. Were cleared for runway 3. 5. The men of Buzzsaw, 48, 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. Dark, this is myself. Alright, we're ready for takeoff. Roger, 48, you were cleared for takeoff. 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. Now the mission begins, Operation Skywatch, a 24 hour hack, any minute of which the order to attack might be given. With 14 hours of its mission completed, Buzz saw 48 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. And you see this is. Navigator. Jack. 's. Heading to the IP is 110 degrees. 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 1/3 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. This is navigator etc. Go ahead navigator. Decoy firing time in 10 minutes. Initial launch assault missiles in 18 minutes. OK, Jack, coordinate all firings on schedule. Decoy missiles. If the missile bombers ever Thunder into enemy territory, all weapons will be trained on them. In defense, a number of small decoys will be released by the bomber. Each will give off the same radar impulses as the B52 result. Instead of 1B52 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. You see this, Bombardier? We have target on school. The practice missile firings against targets Coco 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 recorded 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, 2 strategic targets many hundreds of miles apart would be leveled while Buzz saw speed on to drop its bomb load on 1/3 target.
