by Bill Yenne
During his last year at SAC’s helm, and eager to demonstrate the potential of his new bomber—both to the Soviet Union and to the budget-conscious United States Congress—LeMay ordered a succession of dramatic demonstration flights.
First, around the continent. On November 24–25, 1956, in Operation Quick Kick, eight B-52s made highly publicized nonstop flights around the northern perimeter of North America, flying as far north as the North Pole to demonstrate the capability of SAC to reach the Soviet Union across the top of the world. Four Stratofortress from the 93rd Bombardment Wing arced eastward from Castle, while four from the 42nd arced westward from Loring.
The official SAC history notes that “the flight demonstrated both the value and the limitations of the KC-97 tanker. Without the four inflight refuelings, the flight would have been impossible; but with a higher, faster-flying [KC-135] jet tanker, refuelings could have been conducted much faster. According to Colonel [Marcus L.] Hill’s estimation, his flying time could have been reduced by at least three hours by using the KC-135.”
SAC began receiving its first KC-135s at Castle AFB in June 1957. Thereafter, the team effort formed by the B-52s and the KC-135 would remain the cornerstone of SAC air power through the end of the Cold War.
Next, around the entire globe. In 1957, LeMay initiated Operation Power Flite, intended to circumnavigate the earth with three B-52Bs. Eight years earlier, he had sent a Boeing B-50 Superfortress from the 43rd Bombardment Group to fly around the world nonstop. The first aircraft to do so, it accomplished the feat in ninety-four hours by using inflight refueling.
SAC crews of the 22nd Bombardment Wing at March AFB dash to their RB-52Bs during an alert. It was SAC policy for the aircraft to be rolling on the runway within fifteen minutes of the alert siren. The 22nd Bombardment Wing motto, “Ducemus,” means “We Lead.” USAF
On January 16, 1957, five Stratofortresses—three primaries and two spares—took off from Castle AFB led by Maj. Gen. Archie Old, commander of SAC’s Fifteenth Air Force. The three primary aircraft went on to be refueled in-flight over the North Atlantic, North Africa, the Indian Ocean, and the Pacific by KC-97 aerial tankers.
The flight plan called for the lead aircraft to land at the Fifteenth Air Force headquarters at March AFB in Southern California, with the other two returning to Castle. Castle was, however, socked in by the thick tule fog common in California’s Central Valley in the winter, so all three aircraft set down at March AFB—within two minutes of the scheduled arrival time—after forty-five hours and nineteen minutes in the air.
LeMay personally awarded each crewman with a Distinguished Flying Cross for their “demonstration of SAC’s capabilities to strike any target on the face of the earth.”
The National Aeronautic Association awarded the year’s Mackay Trophy to the 93rd Bombardment Wing for the flight, and it was a cover story for the glossy picture magazines.
According to Time magazine on January 28, “The momentous trip, announced the happy LeMay with transparent modesty, was ‘just another training mission, no different from dozens and dozens of others.’ In some ways, this was true. The crews were as carefully briefed and seemingly as routinely inured as for any long-distance trip. Yet as they proved once again SAC’s enormous everyday striking power, it was also clear that SAC’s able flyers had made the kind of history that would soar to the top of man’s unending catalogue of conquests over nature.”
“Did Russia know of the mission?” LeMay was asked by a reporter.
“Certainly, Russia knew about it,” replied the general.
So, too, apparently, did Congress.
A few weeks later, on March 11, Time reported that “at a press conference, Secretary of Defense Wilson vaguely remarked that production of the B-52 intercontinental bomber might soon ‘be up for reconsideration,’” but, when Boeing stock fell 3.5 points, “the Air Force hastily announced that Boeing had firm orders for 502 B-52 bombers [and] that its present orders will keep it busy for at least three years.”
While Kick Start and Power Flite were designed for publicity, they served as prototypes of B-52 operations that proceeded without much notice through the middle period of the Cold War and that were designed to demonstrate SAC’s “capabilities to strike any target on the face of the earth.”
Operationally, it was not top secret that the mission of the Strategic Air Command B-52 force was to be prepared to launch a nuclear counterstrike against the Soviet Union within a moment’s notice of any indication of a Soviet strike being launched against the United States. Essentially, it would be the same application of strategic air power that had been used against Germany and Japan—but launched immediately and with nuclear weapons.
To execute their mission, B-52s were placed on alert at SAC bases on the northern tier of the United States, as well as flying airborne alert missions. These airborne alert missions were flown under a variety of operational names. For example, Operation Coverall was an airborne alert over the Atlantic Ocean, and Operation Chrome Dome—initiated in 1960 and kept secret for its first year—called for Stratofortresses to be on airborne alert patrols near the Soviet Union at all times.
Another ongoing secret SAC B-52 mission was code-named Hard Head. Initiated in 1961, Hard Head involved observing the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS) radar facility at Thule AB in Greenland, which, in turn, was designed to watch for potential Soviet missile launches. The Thule Monitor Missions, as Hard Head was also known, maintained visual surveillance of the radar site so that if the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) ever lost contact with Thule, it could be determined whether or not the Thule site had been destroyed in an act of war.
Gen. Curtis LeMay commanded the USAAF B-29 force in the Pacific during World War II, took over SAC in 1948, and commanded it for an unprecedented nine years. During that time, he built it into a highly disciplined force and the largest strategic nuclear force in the world. He later served as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force. USAF
Under Chrome Dome, a dozen Stratofortresses, one from each of SAC’s twelve wings, remained on station for twenty-four hours somewhere in the world until it was relieved by another, so there were always at least a dozen B-52s on patrol. As Tom Power later observed, it was a defense strategy that “never has been attempted in the military history of the world before.”
The routine, often alluded to in Cold War–era movies, involved the Combat Mission Folder in an orange box that was brought to the Stratofortress by the pilot and chained to the cockpit before each mission. It contained everything from maps to codes that would be necessary for arming the nuclear weapons and flying to a predetermined target within the Soviet Union.
The flights, which often covered more than 10,000 miles, were described by crews as “high-speed loitering,” which kept them within striking distance of the Soviet Union, but involved no dramatic maneuvering that might increase fuel consumption rates. The twenty-four hours would be punctuated by aerial refuelings and rotating catnaps for the crews.
Meanwhile, overall command and control was maintained by the Boeing EC-135 Looking Glass flying command post electronic communications aircraft that flew their own continuous airborne patrols out of SAC headquarters at Offutt AFB in Nebraska. The flights were pared back to just four bombers after 1966 when SAC intercontinental ballistic missiles were deemed capable of providing a corresponding deterrent.
The Chrome Dome missions conjured up the ponderous and perilous reality of a Cold War with the Damocles sword of nuclear annihilation hanging over the heads of Americans and Soviets. However, Tom Power was not entirely obsessed with the somber. Like his mentor, LeMay, he enjoyed using a good long-distance flight to publicize the capabilities of his B-52s.
Brig. Gen. William Eubank, the 93rd Bombardment Wing commander, talks with Air Force officers on the flight line at Castle AFB after the first B-52 operational flight in June 1955. USAF
The SAC slogan is proclaimed on a billboard near the main gate of Offutt
AFB during the LeMay era. USAF
Though Power Flite demonstrated virtually unlimited range with aerial refueling—and the KC-135 would soon make this routine—Tom Power was especially interested in showing how far a Stratofortress could fly without refueling. On September 26, 1958, two of the 28th Bombardment Wing’s B-52Ds set world speed records of 560.7 miles per hour over a 10,000-kilometer course, and 597.7 miles per hour over a 5,000-kilometer course. On December 14, 1960, a 5th Bombardment Wing B-52G set a world distance record, flying 10,078.8 miles without refueling. The record stood for just over a year, until it was topped by a 4136th Strategic Wing B-52H flying unrefueled for 12,532.28 miles from Kadena AB on Okinawa to Torrejon AB in Spain. This record stood for twenty-four years until it was topped by the Rutan Voyager.
While the Chrome Dome dozen were on station somewhere high over the arctic, Power had ordered a sizable proportion of the Strategic Air Command B-52 and KC-135 fleet to remain on ground alert status at bases across the northern tier of the United States. These included Fairchild AFB near Spokane, Glasgow AFB in Montana, Minot AFB and Grand Forks AFB in North Dakota, Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota, Sawyer AFB and Wurtsmith AFB in Michigan, Griffiss AFB in New York, and Loring AFB in Maine.
At these bases, SAC’s aircrews remained in partially blast-proof bunkers on seven-day alert tours, ready to dash to their aircraft on a moment’s notice and get their bombers airborne in fifteen minutes. In practice, many crews got from the bunker to engine-start in five minutes. When they did take off, the Stratofortress crews trained to do so as quickly as possible. The Minimum Interval Takeoff (MITO) involved whole squadrons of B-52s, as well as KC-135s, taking off twelve to fifteen seconds apart. It was a truly awe-inspiring spectacle that this author was privileged to behold.
In 1960, SAC opened the doors at Westover AFB to journalist Ed Rees for an article that appeared in Time magazine on March 14.
“In the act of reporting for alert duty, Lieutenant Colonel Dante Bulli and his crew in effect braced themselves at the end of a taut, outstretched spring,” Rees writes colorfully. “The trigger was the rasping sound of a klaxon horn. At any moment, that horn might blow. It could mean that a Soviet nose cone was on its way carrying destruction, and that there were 15 minutes in which to get off the ground and head for preassigned Soviet targets. There would be no time for second thoughts, no room for second-guessing as to whether some button-pusher was running a test. To SAC alert crews, the klaxon is a cry to arms.”
In January 1957, three B-52Bs of the 93rd Bombardment Wing departed from Castle AFB in California for Operation Power Flite, a record-setting round-the-world nonstop flight. It demonstrated that the United States had the ability to deliver a thermonuclear weapon anywhere in the world. USAF
The route taken by the Operation Power Flite B-52Bs. The 24,325 miles were completed in forty-five hours and nineteen minutes. USAF
Operation Power Flite succeeded in sending three B-52Bs around the world nonstop by using aerial refueling provided by KC-97G tankers. Within a few years, the slow KC-97Gs were entirely replaced by faster KC-135 jets. USAF
In fact, the crews were frequently subjected to drills, during which they were not told to stand down until they were ready to release their brakes and start down the runway, or until after they had completed their MITO.
“The only time you dare take a shower,” one pilot told Rees, “is right after an alert. Some day they’ll fool us and blow the horn again just after we get back.”
Going MAD
In the early 1950s, as the United States and the Soviet Union were beginning to build up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons and the missiles and bombers to deliver them against one another, planners in both countries drafted their war plans with the assumption that they could be integrated into tactical doctrine.
As an arms race ensued during the decade, the number of weapons—to use an unavoidable pun—mushroomed. According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the number in the United States arsenal grew from 235 in 1949, the year of the first Soviet test, to more than 15,000 in 1959. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, appeared to have at least a thousand, although Western analysts assumed a greater number. By this time, both sides came to an understanding that the destructive power was so great that nuclear weapons could never be part of an integrated battlefield doctrine involving a war between superpowers. Phrases such as “Armageddon” and “Doomsday Scenario” frequently cropped up when arsenals of these weapons were mentioned.
The only way that nuclear weapons could be used in a World War III between the United States and the Soviet Union would be as a final measure. The war for which Lt. Col. Dante Bulli and men like him trained would be the last war. It was generally believed that a full-blown nuclear exchange between the superpowers would so devastate the world that civilization itself would be obliterated. Albert Einstein, the great physicist whose famous 1939 letter to Franklin Roosevelt put the United States on the road to building the first nuclear weapon, famously quipped that after World War III was fought as a nuclear war, World War IV would be fought with “sticks and stones.” The implication is clear.
While Einstein’s characterization is more graphic, this notion of bilateral annihilation was coldly articulated as strategic policy by Robert McNamara. The Defense Secretary is widely remembered for being one of the first to articulate the policy of “Mutual Assured Destruction”—best known by its acronym MAD—the principle by which a nuclear power would not attempt the destruction of another for fear that it would be destroyed itself.
This was the template by which SAC’s LGM-30 Minuteman ICBM force was built up in the 1960s. As McNamara explained in an interview with the National Security Archive of George Washington University aired on CNN in 1998, “Mutual Assured Destruction is the foundation of stable deterrence in a nuclear world. It’s not mad, it’s logical.”
Broken Arrows and Other Problems
No discussion of the SAC Stratofortress during the era of the airborne nuclear alert is complete without mention of the “Broken Arrows” involving B-52s that crashed with nuclear weapons aboard. Though the term is commonly used to denote incidents involving aircraft, it actually encompasses a wider range of delivery systems. Indeed, most Broken Arrows reported since the 1960s involve submarines.
Technically, Broken Arrow specifically refers to any accidental event involving nuclear weapons that does not create the risk of nuclear war. According to U.S. Defense Department protocol, Broken Arrow is a subclassification of Pinnacle, which is a Joint Chiefs of Staff Operational Event/Incident Report (OPREP-3) “flagword” used within the National Command Authority reporting structure to identify “an incident of national or international interest and to provide time-sensitive information to commanders regarding any significant event that has occurred or is in progress.”
While a number of Stratofortresses have been lost in crashes through the decades, several B-52 Broken Arrow incidents that took place during the 1960s are of note. The first of these occurred on January 24, 1961, when a B-52G carrying two Mk 39 (later W39) nuclear weapons crashed near Goldsboro, North Carolina. A major fuel leak was reported during a nighttime aerial refueling, and the aircraft became uncontrollable during an attempt at an emergency landing at Seymour-Johnson AFB. The crew ejected at 9,000 feet, and the bomber disintegrated before crashing.
Both weapons separated from the aircraft, with the descent of one being slowed by a parachute. The other weapon plowed into soft dirt and buried itself as deep as about 55 feet in the mud. Everything was recovered except the thermonuclear stage of the second weapon. This was left in place at the site, which was purchased by the government and fenced off to prevent tampering. There is still a controversy around the subject of how close the weapons came to exploding.
On March 14, less than two months after the Goldsboro incident, a B-52F out of Mather AFB in California suffered an uncontrolled decompression and was forced to fly below refueling altitude. Having run out of fuel, it crashed near Yuba C
ity, California. The crew escaped, and the nuclear weapons were recovered.
Also important to mention while on the subject of B-52 accidents is a series that was the result of vertical stabilizers being lost in low altitude turbulence. These incidents occurred as SAC began low-level flight training to prepare crews for below-the-radar penetrations of Soviet air space.
Not all of these vertical stabilizer accidents involved nuclear weapons. A case in point was a B-52C of the 99th Bombardment Squadron, out of Westover AFB, Massachusetts, which was lost on January 24, 1963, coincidentally exactly two years after Goldsboro. Another coincidence is that the pilot of the aircraft was the same Lt. Col. Dante Bulli who had been interviewed at Westover by Ed Rees of Time magazine two years earlier. Bulli’s aircraft lost its tail in severe turbulence while operating below 500 feet over Piscataquis County, Maine, and crashed into Elephant Mountain. Only Bulli, his copilot, and the navigator escaped the aircraft, but the copilot was killed when he impacted a tree. Seven other crewmen were killed in the crash.
The wreckage of a B-52G lost in a January 1966 collision with a KC-135 over the Mediterranean lies strewn on a beach near Palomares, Spain, while a U.S. Navy ship stands offshore as part of the search for a missing nuclear weapon.
This aerial photograph shows the blackened ice field near Thule, Greenland, where a B-52G crashed in January 1968 while attempting an emergency landing. USAF