Tommy Towery - We Were Crewdogs I - The B-52 Collection

Our Mission

Alert morning briefing, Carswell AFB, TX

We Were Crewdogs - Mission Statement

Tommy Towery

Our mission is to fly and fight, and dont you forget it! That was the motto by which most Crewdogs lived in their service to the United States Air Force. A less known saying (much less formal, but just as good) was put forth by a commander under which I served in midstream of my military service. He had a sign made that hung over his desk that said, Tell the Crewdogs what you want done, then get the Hell out of the way!

As an adult I realized that when I was a child I had no idea of what my father had done when he served in the Army in World War II. Had it not been for the fact that he was missing a leg because he had stepped on a land mine at Omaha Beach on D-Day, then I probably would know even less about him. I missed every opportunity I was given to find out more about his life, and when he died, the story of his military service in World War II went with him to the grave. To me it is sad that the story of his sacrifices for the freedom, which I and my fellow Americans now enjoy, will never be shared with the next generation.

I do not want that to happen to my generation. My daughter was born after the Vietnam conflict had ended. Except for the odd stories she has overheard between others and me who were there, she has little concept of what I did in B-52s, just as I was unaware of my own fathers World War II life. She has even less understanding of the rest of my B-52 experiences, including the approximate 120 days a year I spent on nuclear alert during the early years of her life. Long after my memory has failed me, when her children ask what their grandfather did in the Air Force, I want something documented to explain it to them.

I know that many stories have been written about the combat missions flown in Vietnam . That was the conflict in which most of my generation participated and the one with which they most identify. On the other hand, there have been very few things written about the day-to-day training, peacetime missions, and everyday life of a B-52 Crewdog during the Cold War era. When the Strategic Air Command ended its Nuclear Alert readiness in 1991, I was already out of the B-52 and retired from the service. Now it seems even longer in the past, and not only do aircrews on Nuclear Alert no longer exist, neither does the Strategic Air Command, the command in which I spent the majority of my 20 years of military service.

Thats the educational goal of this collection of stories. Some people sit down and write stories to educate others. Some people write stories to entertain. Some record history. We hope that in our endeavors, this group of stories will do all of these things. It is a collection of the serious and the humorous sides of living the life of a SAC B-52 Crewdog, and it is intended to share those experiences with others. The common thread that binds them is the B-52 aircraft, the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat Fellow).

Basically, as editor, I told the Crewdogs what I wanted and then got the Hell out of the way. Each author was encouraged to select the subject content and writing style he wanted to use to tell his part of the story and to write it in his own personal words. Once the stories were completed, an attempt was made to put them in some logical order. Some were easy to classify but others seemed to fit no particular category, so the best match available was selected. These accounts came from officers and enlisted men alike. They are serious and humorous and represent similar stories remembered by many ranks. At least one member of each crew position of the B-52 contributed to this collection. There are many more similar stories that will never be recorded.