fifty years of the b-52...the back of envelopes, but it is abso-lutely true that the original design...

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 200150

By Walter J. Boyne

In the skies over Afghanistan, the BUFF sees actionin yet another war.

Fifty Years of the B-52

The two B-52 prototypes—XB-52 (foreground) and YB-52—set the stage formultiple versions, one of which is still much in demand today.

The B-52 began projecting glob-al airpower with an epic, nonstopround-the-world flight of three air-craft in January 1957, and it con-tinues to do so today. The origi-nal B-52 design was a triumph ofengineering. However, its successhas depended mostly on the tal-ented individuals who built, flew,maintained, and modified it overthe decades.

Called to combat once again inthe War on Terror, the B-52 con-tinues to give front-line service ina variety of roles. What’s more,

its career is assured for at least20 years more. Early in its event-ful life, the B-52 was given theaffectionate nickname “BUFF,”which some say stands for BigUgly Fat Fellow.

The B-52’s stunning longevityis matched or exceeded by itsversatility. In the early years itfunctioned exclusively as a high-altitude strategic bomber, built tooverpower Soviet defenses withspeed and advanced electroniccountermeasures and deliver nu-clear bombs totaling up to nine

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2001 51AIR FORCE Magazine / December 200150

A PRIL 15, 2002, will mark thegolden anniversary of theB-52 Stratofortress. Fifty

years earlier, at Boeing Field, Se-attle, the YB-52, serial No. 49-0231,took off for the first time. No one—not even pilots A.M. “Tex” Johnstonand Guy M. Townsend—could haveimagined that the gigantic eight-engine bomber would serve so well,so long, and in so many roles.

Certainly no one dreamed thatthe B-52 would be in action overAfghanistan in the fall of 2001.But it was.


megatons in explosive power. WhenSoviet air defenses improved, theB-52 broke new ground by carryingHound Dog stand-off missiles de-signed to suppress enemy defenses.

However, when Soviet surface-to-air missiles downed the U-2 spyplanepiloted by Francis Gary Powers, theB-52 was given new tactics; it was toevade enemy radar by skimming overthe terrain at altitudes of 300 feet orless. Almost intolerable stresses wereplaced on the airframe and the crewsin this flight regime, but the ruggedB-52 just flexed its wings and pressedon with its nuclear mission.

Along the way, the B-52 was taskedwith many missions that had not beenenvisioned, including photorecon-naissance of Soviet shipping andcarriage of systems ranging from anti-ship missiles to high-speed recon-naissance drones.

The Vietnam ShiftThe Vietnam War brought another

significant change to the bomber. Partof the B-52 force was serving as Stra-tegic Air Command’s long rifle aimedat the heart of the Soviet Union. How-ever, in Southeast Asia, the big bomb-ers became flying artillery, backingup ground forces whenever needed.Crews who had been trained in long-range nuclear penetration tactics nowbecame the arbiters of the battlefield,called on by commanders for close—very close—air support.

After the Vietnam War, the B-52was modified to handle new weap-

ons, including sophisticated air-launched cruise missiles and preci-sion guided munitions, but it retainedits legendary power to flatten enemyground forces with tons of WorldWar II–type bombs. The B-52’s de-fensive capability received compa-rable upgrades so that, even in theage of stealth, it serves a major com-bat role.

In great part, the B-52’s longevityand the versatility resulted from theactions of Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, bothbefore and after he became the SACcommander in chief (and later USAFChief of Staff). At the dawn of theCold War, defense budgets were tightand long-range missiles were seen asthe coming thing. However, LeMayaltered the calculus. When offered amodified B-47 design that met mostof the requirements for the proposedB-52 mission at far lower cost, LeMaydeclined angrily, insisting that hewanted an aircraft large enough toaccommodate later developments,particularly in electronic countermea-sures equipment.

In essence, LeMay had defined anew age in airpower, when aircraftwere to be seen as “platforms” ableto be modified over the years to takethe systems that new weapons andnew missions demanded. There werethe usual protests at the time overhigh unit cost of the prototypes, butno one could have guessed that thecosts would be amortized over nofewer than five and possibly as manyas seven decades.

The BUFF’s first mission was onefor the ages. LeMay made it the linch-pin of the American strategy to deterwar by making SAC so strong thatthe Soviet Union would not darelaunch a first strike on the UnitedStates or its allies. The quick re-sponse capability of the B-52 andthe undeniable skill of its flight crewswere made obvious to Soviet mili-tary and political leaders by meansof its constant exercises and record-setting flights.

Nikita’s Case of NervesSAC and the B-52s succeeded in

that mission, and never more memo-rably, during the October 1962 Cu-ban Missile Crisis. As revealed bySoviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev inhis memoirs, the presence of nuclear-armed B-52s on orbit outside the bor-ders of the USSR made him thinktwice and then again about the wis-dom of challenging the United States.Eventually, Moscow backed down.

Roger Ferguson, a B-52 navigatorduring the crisis, recalls that themission briefings were deadly seri-ous and that plans called for B-52sto enter Soviet airspace at a givenpoint every 12 minutes. Security wassuffocating. When Ferguson’s crewraced out to their loaded B-52 tolaunch, they were forced to hit thedeck, spread-eagled, by an eagerrifle-toting airman. The BUFF com-mander had forgotten the counter-sign. It was funny—but not untilmuch later.

There are many apocryphal sto-ries about aircraft being designed onthe back of envelopes, but it is abso-lutely true that the original designfor what became the B-52 was cre-ated over one weekend in the VanCleve Hotel in Dayton, Ohio.

On Thursday, Oct. 21, 1948, agroup of highly talented Boeing en-gineers, including George Schairer,Vaughn Blumenthal, and Art Carlsen,were gathered to present the latestversion of a straight-wing turbopropbomber design to Col. Henry E.“Pete” Warden, a project officer atWright–Patterson AFB, Ohio. Un-known to them, acting on his ownauthority, Warden had been urgingPratt & Whitney to build the J57 jetengine. Warden suggested to theBoeing engineers that they scrub theturboprop bomber and come up witha swept-wing pure jet engine aircraftusing the J57.

Initial details for the B-52 that went to production were worked out oneweekend in a Dayton, Ohio, hotel room by Boeing engineers, including (fromleft) Shairer, Blumenthal, Pennell, Wells, and Carlsen.

AIR FORCE Magazine / December 2001 53

The Boeing engineers were notexactly starting from scratch. Theyhad learned much from the six-jet-engine, swept-wing Boeing B-47 andwere aware that there would soon bemajor improvements in in-flight refu-eling systems, including what wouldbecome the KC-135 jet tanker andthe Boeing flying boom in-flight re-fueling system.

The team members notified War-den that they would be ready with apresentation on Monday morning.Their boss, Edward C. Wells, ar-rived from Seattle, and with two otherBoeing employees, H.W. Withingtonand Maynard Pennell, in town onother business, they worked continu-ously, with plenty of telephone callsto Seattle, and succeeded. In addi-tion to three-view drawings and a35-page proposal, they presented toWarden a silver balsa wood modelof the new bomber, carved by Wellshimself.

The proposed aircraft bristled withadvances over the B-47. The earlieraircraft had a thin, narrow-chordwing, bicycle landing gear, and astructure designed using World WarII criteria. The B-52’s huge wingfeatured 4,000 square feet of wingarea, but it was flexible enough todeflect through a 32-foot arc. It hadan ingenious and top secret cross-wind main landing gear that allowedlanding in a direct crosswind of 43knots. It also made use of the mostmodern construction techniques avail-able.

Boeing built two prototypes—firstthe XB-52 and then the YB-52. Thesecond prototype was actually thefirst to fly because the XB-52 hadsuffered damage in a full pressuretest of its pneumatic system. Thetest ripped out the wing’s trailingedge. Production approval precededthe first flight, however, and the firstbatch of 13 B-52As were ordered inFebruary 1951. These differed fromthe prototype aircraft in a number ofways, the most obvious being thechange from the B-47–style tandemcockpit layout to conventional side-by-side seating for the pilots. Only

three B-52A models were built, theremaining 10 being completed as RB-52Bs. (The RB-52 was a dual-roleaircraft, designed to have a recon-naissance capability gained from atwo-man pressurized capsule in thebomb bay.) The third of the A mod-els, #52-003, would have a distin-guished career as a mother ship forthe North American X-15 and manyother test vehicles. Designated NB-52A, it served until 1968 and is nowat the Pima Air and Space Museumin Tucson, Ariz.

The Coming of the BUFFThe first operational aircraft was

an RB-52B, delivered to the 93rdBomb Wing at Castle AFB, Calif., byits commander, Brig. Gen. WilliamE. Eubank Jr., on June 29, 1955. The93rd transitioned from B-47s to B-52sand at the same time established the4017th Combat Crew Training Squad-ron for B-52 crew training.

The sight of the first operationalB-52 coming in to land brought mixedemotions. It was a beautiful airplane,but qualifying for even a copilotposition required a minimum flyingtime of 1,000 hours. As partial com-pensation, junior pilots often flew aLockheed T-33 as chase aircraft onearly B-52 missions. During one ofthese, the right outrigger gear of alanding B-52 failed to extend. Afterexhausting all the in-flight emer-gency procedures, the tip gear stayedup and the BUFF came in to land.Determined that no incident would

Only three A model B-52s were produced. One—designated NB-52A—served asthe mother ship for the X-15 research aircraft and other test vehicles until 1968.After that a B model—NB-52B—took over.

Members of a SAC B-52 combat crew race for their bomber. During the ColdWar, the airplanes were kept “cocked” and ready. An experienced crew couldhave their BUFF taxiing within five minutes.


occur, Eubank was driven in a jeepalongside the landing aircraft andpersonally grabbed the wingtip tomake sure that it did not touch theground.

The B-52C, D, E, and F modelsfollowed in quick succession. Thesewere similar in external appearanceand differed primarily in the engineseries, fuel capacity, and the bomb-navigation and fire-control systems.

During the first years of the Viet-nam War, the Air Force deployed onlyB-52Fs to the theater. The B-52Fscould carry 51 of the standard 750-pound bombs—27 internally and 24on pylons. In time, the demand forB-52 bombing sorties became so greatthat the entire B-52D fleet was pre-pared for conventional warfare bymeans of a high-density bombingsystem modification called “BigBelly.” This increased the bomb baycapacity to 42 separate 750-poundbombs or 84 500-pound bombs. Itcould still carry 24 bombs exter-nally, for a maximum bomb load,internal and external, of 108. Thenuclear bombing capability was re-tained.

The B-52 G and H models differedsignificantly in appearance from theirpredecessors, having a shorter verti-cal fin and rudder. The G was de-signed especially for flight at lowlevels and was considered by pilotsto be more difficult to fly than othersin the series because the ailerons hadbeen removed and lateral control wasby spoilers only. Unlike all previousmodels, which used conventional fuelbladders, both the G and the H mod-els had wet-wing fuel tanks, greatly

Above, BUFFs line up for takeoff circa 1969. Here, during Linebacker II in1972, a poststrike photo of the Kinh No rail yard, about seven miles north ofHanoi in North Vietnam, shows the destructive power of the B-52s.

increasing their internal capacity.This was a disadvantage in combat;during Linebacker II operations in1972, nine Ds were hit by SAMs butwere still able to land. More vulner-able because of the wet wing, all butone of the six B-52Gs hit by SAMscrashed.

More PowerThe H model was modified to be

easier to control and was easily dis-tinguished by powerful new TF33turbofans. Compared to power plantson the G models, these offered about30 percent more power. The 744thand last B-52, an H model, was de-livered Oct. 26, 1962. The B-52H is

now the only BUFF in active ser-vice.

It still demonstrates the versatil-ity of the basic design. The B-52Hhas been modified to accept the newAGM-154 Joint Standoff Weaponand AGM-158A Joint Air-to-SurfaceStandoff Missile, upgraded AGM-86C/D Conventional Air LaunchedCruise Missiles, and an offensiveavionics system fitted with new com-puters. The old Inertial NavigationSystem is being upgraded with theRing Laser Gyro INS, and the elec-tronic countermeasures equipment isgetting color touch-screen technol-ogy.

The buildup in numbers of the B-52came as SAC was in a period of pro-found transition. In 1958, the B-47s

had reached a peak with about 1,360in operation, but their numbers de-clined rapidly thereafter, and mostwere out of operational use by late1965. While original plans had calledfor a fleet of only 282 B-52 aircraft,the demand built steadily, and by1962, the Air Force had deployed nofewer than 639 operational B-52s.

As B-47 and B-36 units convertedto B-52s, there were some unusualpersonnel problems. Some combatcrews with years of service together,many with individuals who had earnedspot promotions, were broken up andspot promotions lost. Some espe-cially skilled crew members had“spots on spots”—two spot promo-


tions. When the spots were takenaway, lieutenant colonels becamecaptains overnight.

As a result, there were often un-seemly scrambles among aircraftcommanders to select the best talentfor their new crews. In SAC, promo-tions depended in great part uponcrew performance, and every newB-52 crew wanted the best people ateach of the six positions—aircraftcommander, pilot, radar/navigator(essentially, the bombardier), navi-gator, Electronic Warfare Officer,and gunner. (A great and honorabletradition ended in 1991 when USAFeliminated the B-52 gunner’s posi-tion, a victim of new technology thatmade aerial gunnery passé.)

Introducing the B-52 entailed farmore than teaching crews how to flya new aircraft. The wingspan of 185feet and a gross weight reaching488,000 pounds on later modelsmeant that new runways, taxiways,hangars, refueling facilities, andmaintenance docks had to be pro-vided at many bases. The planningproblem was increased in 1957 whenthe threat of Soviet missile attackmade it imperative to disperse B-52sto a larger number of bases to com-plicate Soviet targeting.

On AlertBy Oct. 1, 1963, there were 42

B-52 squadrons stationed at 38 bases.The dispersal made it easier for SACto try to reach its goal of having one-third of its force on ground alert atall times, but the new situation im-posed severe problems on training,maintenance, and logistics.

SAC was without question the mostinfluential component of United Statesarmed forces, and it routinely re-ceived a large share of the militarybudget. But even a large budget andgood management could not solveall the problems, and the usual lastresort was to take a solution out ofthe hides of the crews. The alertsystem was one of these last resorts,intended to solve the problem ofmaintaining a large proportion ofthe force instantly ready for war.

While the alert system was unde-niably effective, it was also cruel tofamily life. The ordinary workingweek lasted 60 to 80 hours, and therewere lots of temporary duty separa-tions. The alert system added to thesehardships. Sometimes the stress oflife in SAC became too much and

divorces resulted, but for the mostpart, wives and children pulled their“tours of duty” with the same cour-age as did the crew members.

The alert concept was introducedon Oct. 1, 1957. Under its terms,B-52s were required to get airbornewithin 15 minutes of the order totake off. At the time, it was widelyaccepted that the USSR had a greatadvantage in ballistic missiles thatcould strike US targets within 30minutes of launch. With immediatewarning, a 15-minute alert meantthat the B-52s would just have timeto get off to retaliate for the missileattack.

Crews on alert status were expectedto remain together and be closeenough to meet the 15-minute de-mand. Aircraft were “cocked,” thatis, ready for engine start, and expe-rienced crews could have the en-gines running within two minutes ofan alarm and be taxiing within fiveminutes.

The alert plan contained an unac-knowledged problem that was uniquein warfare: a warrior’s family was ingreater danger than the warrior him-self. The chances were that the war-rior would return from a combatmission only to find that he had losthis family to the enemy attack. Therewere evacuation plans, but civil de-fense was never really embraced bythe United States as it had been inthe Soviet Union. Tension remainedhigh throughout the Cold War de-spite the frequency of training alerts,

for the crews never knew which onemight be the real thing.

The routine and schedule of alertduty varied from base to base andover time, but a crew might expect topull one week of alert out of themonth, in addition to all their othermany training requirements. In theearly days, the “alert shacks” wereimprovised, but later they were well-built and relatively comfortable. Intheir “free” moments the crews coulduse the usually Spartan recreationalfacilities or work on correspondencecourses, but much of the time wasspent in studying their Positive Con-trol Procedures and their specificwar plan mission. The crews had tobe as concerned about Positive Con-trol Procedures and the associatedpaperwork as they were about thewar plan mission, for any failurewith the procedures—or loss of thepaperwork—meant serious disciplin-ary action.

The B-52 did not go to war fornearly 10 years after it entered ser-vice, but its entry into the VietnamWar would have a drastic impact onSAC’s ability to maintain a substan-tial percentage of its force on alert.

First BloodThe BUFF entered combat from

Andersen AFB, Guam, on June 18,1965. Some 27 B-52Fs of the 7thand 320th Bomb Wings were or-dered to attack Viet Cong forcesabout 40 miles north of Saigon. Itwas the first Arc Light operation.

The Cold War meant 24-hours-a-day alert for B-52 crews, who were requiredto be in the air within 15 minutes of a go order. These crews are “relaxing” inthe dining area of an alert facility.

St a

f f p

ho

t o b

y G

uy

Ace

t o


When a BUFF Went Down

The results were tragically disap-pointing. Two B-52s were lost in amidair collision during a 360-de-gree timing adjustment turn. Eightcrew members lost their lives. Athird aircraft was diverted. The re-maining BUFFs dropped their bombson an area that the Viet Cong hadjust vacated.

Despite the inauspicious beginning,the Arc Light campaign proved to beso valuable that the demand for sor-ties went up from an initial rate of300 per month at the beginning of1966 to a peak of 3,150 per month in1972, in the successful effort to con-tain the North Vietnamese spring of-fensive. The effectiveness of the forcewas enhanced with the introductionof the B-52D as the standard bomberand the introduction of the CombatSkyspot radar-assisted ground-di-rected bombing system.

U Tapao Royal Thai Air Base wasbrought into operation, enabling theAir Force to conduct B-52 missionswith greatly reduced en route times.Sorties were extended beyond Viet-nam to Laos and Cambodia. The stra-tegic nuclear bomber had been turnedinto a flexible, on-call tactical bombdelivery system.

The B-52 distinguished itself manytimes during the Vietnam War, buttwo efforts stand out above all. The

As large as the B-52 is, crew stations, like the offensive and defensivepositions here, are cramped. To keep BUFFs viable after Vietnam, they weremodified for new precision weapons and enhanced defensive capability.

The story of Linebacker II has been told many times, but thecold statistics conceal the human drama faced by everybomber crew on every mission. Lt. Col. George Larson pro-vided the following excerpt of an interview with Maj. JohnWise, 28th Bomb Wing, to give some insight into just howdemanding these missions were and how harrowing theycould be. All six crew members of Ash 02 survived.

“I flew my 295th combat mission on Dec. 27, 1972. We wereto attack the Van Dien Supply Area. We were Ash Cell. I flewAsh 02, aircraft No. 56-05999, not a good position to be in,because the North Vietnamese were using the lead aircraft toset up on the following cell’s aircraft.

“At the IP [Initial Point], I believe there were five to six SA-2s fired at us. At bombs away, we were level for dropping ourbombs, which were salvoed in 1.5 seconds. I put the B-52Dinto a 90-degree wingover when—wham!—we were hit in theleft side [wing]. All four engines on that side were finished.There were lights blinking all over the cockpit. We were latertold by USAF intelligence that the fatal hit was from SAM SiteVN 549.

“All the crew was OK. We had no engine power on the leftside. It was 250 miles to reach friendly territory. Aircraftcontrol was terrible, trying to make course on an exit headingto U Tapao. We were at 30,000 feet, and as the aircraftslowed, I would dive down, picking up speed, slowly climbing,but not making up all lost altitude. I could only steer a courseof 190 degrees, but we were getting out of the North by usingthis roller coaster maneuver. However, we were slowly losingprecious altitude.

“We crossed the 15,000-foot-altitude bailout decision point,but I looked down and there were lights. These lights werecoming from a firefight below between Communist troops andUS backed forces in Laos. I decided we would not jump intothe middle of a war. We crossed the Mekong River at 12,000feet, all the time keeping in constant communications with theAir Force rescue helicopters then airborne.

“We had been in the air nearly 45 minutes after being hit bythe SAM and it was time to bail out. I called the gunner to gofirst. However, unknown to me at the time, the gunner did notgo out on the first try, requiring a second attempt. The gunnereventually went. The navigator attempted to go, trying to blowthe hatch below, but it did not open, probably jammed fromthe SAM hit in the left wing. The radar navigator ejected. I toldthe navigator to jump out the open radar navigator’s hatch.The EWO then ejected.

“Well, the navigator’s microphone pulled loose as he jumpedand I did not know he had gone. I told the copilot to eject and—boom—he was gone, filling the cockpit with insulation. I keptcalling the navigator. I was not going to eject until I knew hehad gone safely out of the wounded bomber.

“At 3,000 feet, I heard the Air Force rescue boys indicatethat it was time for me to get out of the aircraft. Well—boom—the hatch above me was gone and then I squeezed theejection handle. Then, up and out I went. I was uncertain if Iwould separate from the seat. However, once in the wind, theseat was gone and I was floating free. The chute opened witha jerk. I looked down to see the bomber hit the ground with ahuge fireball, turning night into day.”

first is the battle of Khe Sanh, wherenew tactics devastated the NorthVietnamese besiegers in 2,548 sor-ties that dropped 59,542 tons ofbombs and, in the words of ArmyGen. William Westmoreland, “broketheir [the enemy’s] back.”

The second was Operation Line-backer II, when in 11 days of bomb-ing, B-52s smashed the defenses ofHanoi and Haiphong and forced

North Vietnam to negotiate peace inParis. The B-52s flew 729 out of 741planned sorties and dropped 15,000tons of bombs. Fifteen BUFFs werelost—about two percent of the force.The action proved that the B-52, sup-ported by tactical air assets, couldmeet and defeat the enemy. The re-sults have caused many to wonderwhat the world might be like if theB-52s had been unleashed in 1965,

Ph

ot o

by

Pa

ul

Ke

nn

ed

y


Walter J. Boyne, former director of the National Air and Space Museum inWashington, is a retired Air Force colonel and author. He has written more than400 articles about aviation topics and 30 books, the most recent of which is TheBest of Wings. His most recent article for Air Force Magazine, “The EarlyOverflights,” appeared in the June 2001 issue.

The B-52G was retired after Desert Storm. The B-52H (here and above), whichwas introduced in 1962, continues to serve, and during Allied ForceB-52H crews flew 270 sorties, dropping 11,000 bombs. They are heavilyengaged once again in the War on Terror.

when the target areas were virtuallyundefended.

All told, the BUFF force flew126,615 sorties during eight years ofArc Light. The B-52, initially a des-peration weapon thrown in whenthere was nothing else available, grewto become the final instrument of thewar.

After Vietnam, the B-52s returnedto service in the Cold War. As theyears passed, attrition and econom-ics pared the B-52 fleet down until,by 1991, only B-52Gs and Hs re-mained in service, with the excep-tion of an NB-52B serving as motherairplane at Edwards Air Force Basein California.

Desert DutyOperation Desert Storm called the

old warrior into action once more,with about 80 B-52Gs operating fromthe United States and four overseaslocations. History was made on Jan.17, 1991, when seven B-52Gs fromthe 2nd Bomb Wing at BarksdaleAFB, La., completed what was thenthe longest combat mission in his-tory—35 hours. The bombers flewfrom their US base to attack Iraqitargets with 35 AGM-86C Conven-tional Air Launched Cruise Missiles.Poststrike reconnaissance revealedthat 33 CALCMs found their target.

The B-52 missile attack was fol-lowed up with the first low-level

attack in SAC history. After threedecades of practice, B-52s swept inat less than 300 feet above the groundto bomb four Iraqi airfields and animportant highway. Then, after theseglamorous forays, it was back to text-book duties from the Vietnam Warera, with three-ship cells of B-52sbombing from above 30,000 feet.The B-52s would put down about150 bombs in a tight, devastatingpattern that killed troops in the tar-

gan in late March, with six B-52slaunching CALCMs. Heavy raidsby B-52s on Yugoslav army unitsin Kosovo were one factor in Bel-grade’s decision to throw in thetowel. B-52s had flown 270 sortiesand dropped 11,000 bombs.

After 50 years and hundreds ofthousands of sorties, B-52 crews havelots of tales to tell, some hair-raising(landings with four engines out onone side, for example). No matterwhat the subject, however, the storyis always filled with affection for anairplane that just keeps going on,year after year, decade after decade,always taking on new tasks, and al-ways on the first team. ■

get area and demoralized those adja-cent to it. The B-52s were assignedother missions as well, but the mainthrust of their attacks was the deci-mation of Iraqi troops with conven-tional M117 750-pound bombs andcluster bomb units. All told, theBUFFs flew more than 1,600 sortiesand dropped more than 25,000 tonsof ordnance. No B-52s were lost toenemy action, but one crashed in theIndian Ocean on its way back toDiego Garcia, with the loss of threecrew members.

The BUFF, now a hardened com-bat veteran, returned to war in Feb-ruary 1999, in Operation AlliedForce. Aircraft were sent first fromBarksdale and later from MinotAFB, N.D. Combat operations be-

Sta

ff p

ho

to b

y G

uy

Ace

to

fifty years of the b-52...the back of envelopes, but it is abso-lutely true that the original design...

Documents