Bill Yenne - B-52 Stratofortress: The Complete History of the Worlds Longest Serving and Best Known Bomber

The power elite of the 1950s: A Stratofortress draws contrails across the stratosphere. USAF

A Block 90 Seattle-built B-52E prepares to link up with a KC-135.

The Complete History of the Worlds Longest Serving and Best Known Bomber

BILL YENNE

First published in 2012 by Zenith Press, an imprint of MBI Publishing Company, 400 First Avenue North, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA

2013 Zenith Press

Text 2012 Bill Yenne

All photographs are from the authors collection unless noted otherwise.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Yenne, Bill, 1949

B-52 Stratofortress : the complete history of the worlds longest serving and best known bomber / Bill Yenne.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary: A comprehensive history of the B-52s development, manufacture, and combat service. The longest-serving U.S. Air Force combat aircraft, the B-52 debuted in 1955 and is slated to continue to 2040. It flew in the Cold War, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, and Afghanistan--Provided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-7603-4302-9

1. B-52 bomber--History. 2. Air power--United States--History. I. Title.

UG1242.B6Y46 2012

358.4283--dc23

2012025615

Editor: Scott Pearson

Design Manager: James Kegley

Designer: Diana Boger

Cover designer: Rob Johnson

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

On the front cover: A B-52H from the 20th Expeditionary Bomb Squadron over the Pacific Ocean during the RIMPAC exercise in July 2010. USAF photo, Tech. Sergeant Jacob N. Bailey

Making final flight line adjustments to a Pratt & Whitney J57 as Stratofortresses line up for delivery to the Strategic Air Command.

T HE BOEING B-52 STRATOFORTRESS is the ultimate embodiment of the principle of strategic air power and has been the cornerstone of American air power doctrine since well before the U.S. Air Force was formed out of the USAAF in 1947.

It looked the part then, and it still does.

For this author, the first introduction to the powerful Stratofortress came as a young boy growing up on the northern tier of Montana, who used to lie on the lawn on warm summer evenings in the late 1950s and early 1960s staring up at the sky through a pair of high-powered binoculars.

The Stratofortresses came over, many thousands of feet above, their streaming contrails colored golden by the late rays of summer sun. Often they were in groups of three, and often they were attached to the booms of KC-135s. With the binoculars, the U.S. Air Force written on the forward fuselage was easily readable. Also clearly visible were the eight big Pratt & Whitney engines and the distinctive tall tails. The boy watched them until they disappeared over the trees and pondered the formidable power they represented. The boy watched them many times, perhaps dozens of times. The man into whom that boy grew has often wished he could go back and do it again, preferably with a camera and a 500mm lens.

Also burned into the memory of the boy who became a man is being half a mile from the end of the runway at Fairchild AFB, watching a minimum interval takeoff of Strategic Air Command B-52s. A whole squadron of the big bombers took off 12 to 15 seconds apart, their J57-P-29WA turbojets painting black contrails across the late afternoon sun.

The personal attachment of that boy who used to watch the Stratofortresses in the sky was cemented two decades later, when, as a man associated with the U.S. Air Force Art Program, he was afforded opportunities to go inside Stratofortresses from bases in the continental United States to Andersen AFB on Guam.

On June 25, 1980, he strapped himself into the jump seat on the flight deck of a 328th Bombardment Squadron B-52H, tail number 60-0051, at Castle AFB. The aircraft took off for a 12-hour mission that included aerial refueling over Pacific Ocean, a high-level simulated bombing run over the Nellis AFB test range, and the hair-raising and eye-opening experience of low-level operations over the 1st Combat Evaluation Groups Detachment 5 range near Wilder, Idaho. Down below, he glimpsed a farmhouse out of the corner of his eye and imagined another boy looking up.

Back in 1954, when the boy was first looking skyward at the sounds of airplanes and the Stratofortress was freshly accepted by the service, Secretary of the Air Force Donald Quarles looked up at the immense aircraft and described it as the most formidable expression of air power in the history of military aviation.

It was at night, with the massive bombers bathed in the eerie light of mercury vapor lamps, that the Stratofortress best embodied their characterization as the most formidable expression of air power in the history of military aviation.

The eight throttle levers of a B-52D, with those for the numbers one and two enginespaired in the far port side nacellepushed forward. The Stratofortress is the only American jet bomber on which one would have found eight throttles. Bill Yenne

A B-52H from the 96th Expeditionary Bombardment Squadron takes off from Andersen AFB, Guam.