Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Couple really high flying B-52's in formation???

This brings back memories. What an awesome aircraft. Spent 1986-1992 humping the flightline and later patrolling the alert areas at Griffiss AFB in upstate NY. Be standing there when they have a sortie and they fire up 8-10 of them along with the same amount of KC-135's. I've seen them launch one right after the other and it's amazing they can get off the runway, especially in the wake of anothers jetwash. I saw one take off right behind another and it was damn near vertical. I thought that I was goint to be a part of a crash response that day and how the pilot saved it I'll never know.

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another

What's not to like about a MITO launch?

That's one time in your life your very carefull about calling "abort" cause if you do your gonna get run over by the aircraft behind you...

Ship #1 goes high left, #2 goes high right, #3 goes low left and #4 goes low right.

One old girl keep me alive in vietnam in '69 she never let us down!!!

I was referring to.."The designers of the DC3 may have something to say about it"......AC47 "SPOOKY"

one interesting thing I've always noticed about the buff in low altitude high speed passes is the noticeable nose-low attitude of the aircraft in clean configuration, straight and level. They look like they're losing altitude and ready to plow right into the ground. Oh, and the noise.......cool stuff....
The guys I've talked to at the show here absolutely love flying them.
When looking down the side of the fuselage, you can definitely see the cycles. We have KC-135's practicing approaches and landings here during the week, and I think they have all been re-engined to CFM-56 high-bypass turbofans. I would imagine such a program will never happen to the old buff, even though newer technology fan engines would mean four instead of eight. They would have done it a long time ago, had it been viable.

The BUFF's ("G" and "H") models were designed around the GE TF-33 engine which was pretty common at the time. The C-141 and the later versions of the EC/RC-135'5 also used the TF-33 engines. About the only difference was the C-141 had thrust reversers. The BUFF's have had their wings re-skined and IIRC the center-wing wing spars have been replaced. The "D" model BUFF ran P&W J-57's which were common with the KC-135A's and "Q" models. "Q's" were used for air refueling the SR-71's. The J-57 had 10,000lbs of thrust, 11,900lbs when in water injection. Thikin it would have been nice to work on the KC's once fans were installed. Heck of a lot more power without having to deal with heating water. The KC's with fans have also been re-skined in the wings and IIRC spar work done in the center wing area. I've seen pictures of test-bed BUFF's with a single engine on the strut, mostly for engine flight test work...

I would imagine that a CFM installed on a BUFF would be quite the vacuum cleaner, ala Boeing 737. Those large fans have a huge inlet area. From what I understand, the wing on the BUFF would be capable of such retrofits; I'm sure it came down to some appropriation committee shooting down any more additional money going into the fleet other than avionics upgrades.
Does the USAF still have B-52's stationed at Diego Garcia, or was that strictly a Gulf War thing?

Wanted to coment that there is a bombing range near Salina Ks. I've been working around there for about 2 months. I've seen B-52s, B-1s ,B-2s, A10s. and other fighter jets making prictice runs. Makes a person proud to see those guys fly by.

Ran into the retired BUFF driver at a Benchrest match this past Saturday. His experience included Chrome Dome and Arc Light missions. He remembers getting up to 46,000' once when they were light and in a hurry to get home, most missions were done around 45,000'

I believe Barksdale AFB is still flying the B-52 H models.

I loved the B-52, cut my teeth trouble shooting electrical systems on those babies my first 7 years in the AF, stationed at Fairchild and worked G and H models. They are a sight to behold when fully loaded with bombs and ALCM's. Watching them do MITO runs during an alert had everyone on the flightline stopping to watch.

B-52 has to be the best value for money planes the USAF has ever had..I wonder long they will keep them flying?

I dunno Pete. Pretty amazing, when you think about it, a plane that was designed and first flown when my dad was in elementary school(he is 65 now).

Anyone remember how many BUFF's we still have flying??

Those C-130 guys might argue that but it was a heck of a value for both!

'Bout the only GOOD thing about a klaxton that included rolling the tankers and bombers was that they fed us steaks that day. If we had "T" bones for lunch we knew we were in trouble. Steak for dinner and no horn... sleep in you flight suit cause there's one comming after dark.

Hated pulling alert. Tanker Crewchiefs have to jump inside and go along for the ride. If we had to taxi they'd park the BUFFS first. So we had to wait with engines running until all the BUFFS were backed into their parking spots. Got REAL warm in the cockpit during the summer. Then you'd have to reload the breech cap for the cart start and top off fuel. Durring the winter you had to go out and heat water in the Tankers every four hours. We always prayed for the temps to get below 20 degrees....

Had M-16's pointed at me more times than I care to think about while trying to get into the bomber alert area. Got put on the ground a few times because I forgot my password, idiot. Crawling along the bombbay crawlway while they were on the alert pad always was a fun experience wondering what would happen if a horn went off.

AJ300Mag, I hated that water heater system, seems that they were always broke though the cart start system was a pretty cool concept.

Unless you found yourself downwind of the engine when the cartridge was fired...

Even the "smokeless" would choke a billy goat.

And then some rocket scientist decided to put one on each engine for the Tanker and IIRC one for each engine pod on the BUFF. Never got lucky enough to be around when they fired all four at once. I think SAC saw their error in their ways.


Couldn't count on how many times I had to run engines for the electricians so they could do a load bank on the generators...

Remember the word for the day?

If I were the senior NCO Tanker Crewchief on alert I always drove the flightline truck. One day we were comming back into the alert facility, we were stopped between the two gates. One of the gates was always experiencing electrical problems. There were a couple of repairmen working on the gate. We all got out of the truck, swapped badges and searched the truck. We had just climed back into the truck when one of the other crewchief made a statement that it was about time they tried to fixed the gate. He said it's about time they made some "progress"... the word for the day. Next thing I knew someone yanked me out of the truck, threw me on the ground where I ended up with the muzzle of a M-16 inches away from my nose. I don't take kindly to ANYONE stickin a gun in my face!

After all said and done the other Crewchief knew full well how I felt about the situation.....