A reader sent me
this story, an incredibly good story about the B-52 in
The New York Times. I had one flight in the B-52, out of Grand Forks AFB, back in 1984, or thereabouts, maybe 1985. It was an 8-hour, "low-level" flight through the Rocky Mountains, at midnight. We stepped out to the bomber about 4:00 p.m., departed about 10:00 p.m. and returned about 6:00 a.m. the next morning. I was not recording a daily journal at that time so I don't know the specifics and the hours are not exact. It might have been a six-hour flight and it might have taken off a bit earlier and landed a bit earlier but that's what I remember. [December 7, 2015: I found my official flight records -- the flight was April 12, 1983; the sortie last 6.5 hours.]
The
B-52 is an Air Force plane that refuses to die. Originally slated for
retirement generations ago, it continues to be deployed in conflict
after conflict. It dropped the first hydrogen bomb
in the Bikini Islands in 1956, and it laser-guided bombs in Afghanistan
in 2006. It has outlived its replacement. And its replacement’s
replacement. And its replacement’s replacement’s replacement.
Air Force commanders are now urging the Pentagon to deploy B-52s in Syria.
“We’re
ready, we’re hungry, we’re eager to be in the fight,” said Col. Kristin
Goodwin, who commands the Second Bomb Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base
in Louisiana, where about half of the bombers are based.
Now
in its 60th year of active service, the bomber is slow, primitive and
weighed down by an infamy lingering from the carpet bombing of Vietnam
in the 1960s. But 76 B-52s still make up the bulk of the United States’
long-range bomber fleet, and they are not retiring anytime soon. The
next potential replacement — the Long Range Strike Bomber,
which has yet to be designed — is decades away, so the B-52 is expected
to keep flying until at least 2040. By then, taking one into combat
will be the equivalent of flying a World War I biplane during the
invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The
unexpectedly long career is due in part to a rugged design that has
allowed the B-52 to go nearly anywhere and drop nearly anything the
Pentagon desires, including both atomic bombs and leaflets. But it is
also due to the decidedly underwhelming jets put forth to take its
place. The $283 million B-1B Lancer first rolled off the assembly line
in 1988 with a state-of-the-art radar-jamming system that jammed its own
radar. The $2 billion B-2 Spirit, introduced a decade later, had
stealth technology so delicate that it could not go into the rain.
I don't know if there has been an all-female B-52 flight crew flying combat but back in 2005,
this all-female flight crew flew something that gets up even more close and personal in the USAF when in combat, the C-130. In this case, the plane was transporting 151 US Marines.
More remarkable than the fact that these were all women, is the age and ranks of these women. This is how I remember the US Air Force: very young people, in their mid-20's and younger, flying multi-million aircraft for the best air force in the world. I remember flying a medevac C-5 or C-141 from Ramstein to Washington, DC, the oldest crew member on the flight, when I was about 35 years old, and about ten years older than the next oldest active duty member on that aircraft.
For more on
women flying in combat, see this link.
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The Blog-- Housekeeping
This is not news. There is nothing new here. It's just a reminder. Some
folks get to my site by googling and end up on old posts, and then find
internal links that are broken. This is simply a reminder that the posts
are still there; the URL was changed sometime ago, and some internal
links have not been updated.
This blog goes back to about 2009, I believe. Sometime in 2011 or later (I forget), my
site was hacked and the URL "stolen." If you click on a link and get a
message that the page does not exist, do not despair. If it's a link to
one of my posts, the post is still there. Simply insert "the" in front
of the URL. I changed the URL "milliondollarway....." to "
themilliondollarway.blogspot.com" and have had no further problems. I'm correcting the links as fast as I can. Some URLs are even different from that, but the correct URL is: "
themilliondollarway.blogspot.com". No posts have been lost; the URL just needs to be corrected.
See graphic below where to insert "the."
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A Note for the Granddaughters
It took a little time to train Sophia, age 17 months, and it took a little while for her to complete the task, but it was time well spent. I got a lot of blogging done, and she had a lot of personal time with Mother Nature. I paid her fifty cents/bag, deducted 10 cents/bag (hefty discount rate on cost of the bags); withheld thirty cents for income tax purposes, and FICA; she netted about 10 cents/bag.
Fourteen bags are in this picture. At the moment, there are now nineteen bags along the curb. It was well after dark when she completed the 19th bag, so I didn't get that photo.
