Posted on 06/13/2014 7:49:31 AM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
It was a question as I didn't find it myself. But FReepers came to my rescue!
... he'll be fryin' chickens in the barnyard.
Your friend goes back a ways in terms of Buff history; the last “true” tail gunners were in the D models, which were retired in the early 80s. I’m assuming he probably spent some time in the G/H models, where the gunner was moved “up front” with the EWO.
Incidentally, D-model gunners were responsible for shooting down two North Vietnamese MiG-21s during Linebacker II missions in December 1972. The first was credited to SSgt Samuel Turner, the other to Airman First Class Albert Moore. Your friend probably knew (or knew of) both; Turner was a MSgt who was still on active duty when he died of cancer in the mid-80s; I don’t know what happened to Moore.
During one of my Air Force assignments, I worked with a former Buff gunner who became a training manager after the gunners were eliminated from B-52 crews. He began in the D model, but transitioned to the H model. Said he much preferred the D, because his “office” had a window in that model. With the lack of an outside visual reference, he said that low-level missions were tough in the H and even worse for the nav and radar-nav “downstairs”
I'm going to guess that they have a machinist make any part that breaks.
At one point there were over 750+ B-52s of various model numbers in squadron service. Now, thanks to end-of-Cold War force reductions and START Treaty terms, there are less than 100.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_B-52_Stratofortress
http://usmilitary.about.com/library/milinfo/affacts/blb-52stratofortress.htm
When I lived near Wichita back in the sixties, I frequently drove past McConnell AFB and saw the B-52s on alert at the end of the runway.
The image conveyed was brooding birds of prey, you could easily imagine their "eagle eyes".
I felt palpably safer for their presence...
I had the pleasure, and honor, of serving in SAC at Andersen AFB, Guam back in the mid to late 1980’s. These planes were very loud, but wow, what a plane!
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