Tag Archives: United States Air Force

Loud, cold and spartan: why I love the Boeing B-52

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Get some headphones, turn up the volume.

Celebrating 55+ years of service — perhaps even 90 years of service?

How B-52 Bombers Will Fly Until the 2050s

by Kyle Mizokami

The Air Force’s fleet of Cold War bombers will fly longer than most people will live, allowing B-52 crews to work on planes their great-grandfathers flew.

A series of upgrades to the B-52 Stratofortress bomber could keep the remaining fleet of Cold War bombers going until 2050. The planes, built during the Kennedy Administration, are expected to receive new engines, electronics, and bomb bay upgrades to keep them viable in nuclear and conventional roles.

The B-52 strategic heavy bomber is a true survivor. It was designed to fly high over the Soviet Union carrying atomic bombs if necessary. But the B-52 is the do-it-all tool of strike warfare, taking on whatever mission is popular at the time.

Get a load of this:

B-52s were modified to drop conventional bombs during the Vietnam War, where they proved they could fly low to penetrate enemy defenses, gained the ability to drop precision-guided bombs, and swapped their nuclear bomb loads for nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. The B-52s also can carry Harpoon anti-ship missiles, lay minefields at sea, and provide close air support to troops on the ground. B-52s have even flirted with air-to-air warfare, with their tail gunners reportedly shooting down two MiG-21 fighters over Vietnam.

Tail gunners. Actual tail gunners. We’re talking primeval WWII aircraft having tail gunners.

So why keep an ancient relic like the Boeing B-52?

How would the B-52 use all of this new equipment to stay relevant on the battlefield? As a large aircraft with the radar signature of a barn door, adversaries can see a B-52 coming from miles away. That said, a B-52 can fire missiles like JASSM from beyond radar detection range. In wartime, a B-52 could work with a stealthy aircraft like the F-35 to launch missiles against time-sensitive targets. A F-35, while flying stealthy, can carry a limited amount of weapons, but it could spot targets at sea or on the ground and relay targeting data to a B-52 hundreds of miles away.

The LATimes.com even surmises the B-52 will fly for a full century:

Why the B-52 bomber will fly for 100 years

by Justin Bachman

The Air Force just can’t let go of the B-52.

In the world of heavy bombers, none has prevailed as long as the B-52 Stratofortress. The Cold Warrior joined the U.S. arsenal in 1954, eventually becoming part of a nuclear triad that, along with strategic missiles and submarines, was aimed at giving the Soviet Union pause. After the Berlin Wall fell, it slowly became an aerial jack-of-all-trades. With its long range, minimal operating cost and ability to handle a wider array of weapons than any other aircraft, it just didn’t make sense to get rid of it.

Under the Air Force’s current bomber plans, the B-52 will fly until 2050 — just shy of its 100th birthday. While this prospective centenary has been cause for some breathless coverage, little has been said about how a complex piece of machinery built during the Korean War is still useful in 2018, let alone 2050. What is the B-52’s secret?

That secret is flexibility. Boeing Co. produced more than 740 B-52s since the first one rolled out. It’s had many nicknames — the most apt at this moment being “Stratosaurus.” Like any other well-regarded employee who manages to survive, and even thrive, in a constantly changing organization, the B-52 has always found an important role.

But what’s next? Right. The Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider. But it ain’t no B-52.

At the pricier end of the spectrum, the Pentagon is budgeting almost $17 billion over the next five years to develop the new B-21 Raider from Northrop Grumman Corp., which will replace the current fleet of B-1B Lancer and B-2 Spirit bombers. The B-21, which may fly as a “crew-optional” aircraft, is expected to join the Air Force fleet in the mid-2020s. The Pentagon plans to buy at least 100 B-21s, spending about $97 billion.

That spells the end of the B-52. Right?

Backing it up will be the Stratosaurus.

The decisions were detailed this week as part of the Trump administration’s budget request to Congress. The 1980s-era supersonic B-1 and the radar-evading B-2 fielded a decade later will be phased out gradually as new B-21s enter service, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said.

Wait for it.

The B-21 will offer the U.S. the ability to strike with speed and stealth, “but once we own the skies, the B-52 can drop ordnance better than most others,” Ferguson said. “And hey,” she added, “it’s paid for.”

It looks like the analog era of geeky white males with thick glasses, protractors, slide rules, pocket protectors and short-sleeved white shirts with thin ties may have been ahead of their time.

BZ

 

 

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My father: 10 years on

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Col. Richard Lee Alley, USAF, 4-13-1920 to 2-11-2009

My father, United States Air Force full bird Colonel Richard Lee Alley, passed away ten years ago, on this day. February 11th, 2009.

He was 88 years old. He missed his 89th birthday by less than two months.

This year, he would be 99 on April 13th.

I cannot, still, tell you how terribly I miss him.

He was a part of The Greatest Generation.

The generation that secured promise and freedom and liberty for not only the United States, but for the entire world at large.

At the end of his life, he proffered large decisions. I had to make many of those large decisions. One of the worst for me was deciding to take him out of his very own house. The house where me and my two other brothers were raised. The house where he clinged.

First, I had to physically take him out of his house. Where he and my family had lived — for over sixty years. He said: “goodbye house.”

I wrote about looking at my father’s face in repose.

Ten years. I can remember it like yesterday. It seems like it was yesterday. And there isn’t a day that I don’t think about Dad.

So many questions. So many questions I would loved to have asked him. But I was wrapped up in my life and didn’t realize until a year or so later how he may have played a very serious role in any number of USAF adventures on many levels.

That first night of his passing, the 11th, I had a dream. I awakened with it in my head. Carole King was singing “So Far Away.” I remember that most distinctly.

Dad passed away at 3:30 am on Wednesday, February 11th. The night before, I had been able to summon both my brothers and my wife to his bedside. Friends visited. I thought he would make it through that night. I was sure of it. My wife counseled me: “kiss him, kiss him goodnight.” But I didn’t do it. I tried to make light of his condition, that he’d be around the next day. I’ll horribly regret not kissing my father goodbye to my very own dying day, come what may.

I pondered what had happened, here. I reflected, once again, here. I thanked you, my readers, for supporting me here. My father’s funeral was documented here. There were more goodbyes for me, just selling my father’s car.

He was a member of The Greatest Generation. Those who made so many major sacrifices for our great nation, kept us safe in our beds, and kept the country strong and free. Their incredible sacrifices. Though they didn’t necessarily want to do so. He fought in B-17s. He trained in B-25s. It was almost the perfect triumvirate: his brother Jim signed up for the Army; his youngest brother Bill enlisted in the Navy (and had the USS Yorktownsink underneath him). My father went for the Army Air Force.

If you want to digest the quintessential document of sacrifice, read “With The Old Breed” by Eugene B. Sledge. Astounding. Simply astounding. Or perhaps the superior(but lesser read) Bert Stiles book: “Serenade To The Big Bird.”

They didn’t want to be there, they feared, they wanted to run away. And yet they persevered.

God bless you, Dad.

I think about you every day.

I can only hope, as I wrote:

I’ll bet my Dad’s flying high above the earth right now, in an open cockpit Consolidated Vultee BT-13, canopy slided back, where the skies are blue, the weather fair, and he’s young, strong and free. So free.

God bless you, Dad. Hold Mom’s hand. Step into your past, may it be untroubled and calm and fair. May your love be unfettered and limitless and beautiful. Whatever your ideal reality would be, let it be.

And I write this post through a film of tears. My throat constricts. I still miss you terribly.

What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I just let this go?

BZ

 

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C-5 takeoff

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After watching this video you’re going to have two very important exclamations.

  1. I hope they don’t run out of runway, and
  2. Where the hell was their rate of climb? Sheesh!

By the way, the C-5 was loaded to the max at 700,000 pounds — which is 317.5 tons — on a 99° F day. It could only have been worse had they been taking off at, say, 6,000-feet AGL.

BZ

 

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Memorial Day, 2017

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Best remembered for me personally, I submit, with a remembrance of “A letter to my father, from his.”

A letter from my grandfather to my father, in 1941.

My Dad flew for the United States Air Corps in WWII. He took his primary flight training at Stockton Field, California, and graduated in 1941. My father, Richard, apparently received a letter from his father, Verto, before Dad was off “for points West” in 1941.
 
I found this letter amongst my Dad’s things, buried in his desk, in an envelope bearing the return address of a law firm in Dallas, Texas, postmarked 1979. It was addressed to my grandmother, his mother, likewise in Dallas. Because of this circumstance, I wondered: Why was it sent from a law firm to his mother? Did my father ever see this letter when it was meant to be seen? When his father was still alive? Or did he only see it when his mother’s estate closed, after his father passed away?
 
I’ll never know.
 

Typewritten on onion-skin, the words within are poignant, sage, prescient. They moved me. I think they’ll speak to you as well.

Dear Son:

I hope that I can finish this letter so that it can be mailed in sufficient time to reach you before you board the rattler for points West and your next experience in training for an eaglet in the Air Service of Uncle Sam.

I have learned that the very cheapest thing one will ever run across in this life is advice because everyone wants to give it away and so few will ever accept it. So I have been several hours in completing these paragraphs, blue penciling here and there lest I make my epistle a treatise on the “more abundant life” of New Deal parentage rather than a few timely remarks covering the fundamentals which do provide and form the background as happiness and success as America measures them.

And, I might add here, that I fervently hope that this same American measurement as applied to happiness and success will continue to be the yardstick for many years, so work hard and be ready to do your part if necessary to annihilate any and all of the cockeyed Fascist or Communist interpretations of what is best for mankind and its soul.

I shouldn’t be a bit surprised that the first week or two after you leave home, that you will be amazed at the really remarkable memory you possess and in your particular case, it will be a pleasant memory. This is what is commonly called “Homesickness” but when it is stripped right down to the chassis it is merely an association of pleasant thoughts, pleasant surroundings and pleasant people who are vitally interested in you, plus an overwhelming sense of a loss of security. Doctors sometimes use what they call a counter irritant to take the mind off the chief pain or trouble of their patient and the best counter irritant to an acute attack of “pleasing memories” is deep concentration on your work.

You should be extremely grateful in that you have been a fairly regular attendant at Sunday School, of a splendid common sense religion and, without even dwelling on the manifold advantages of a good Sunday School background, one of the most practical benefits it will give you is that it will help you to see things in their true proportion.

Jesus once had something to say about people who strain at a gnat and swallow a camel, and one of the chief causes of much unhappiness in life is our confusion as to the relative importance of things.

So many trifles seem to big and important; we indulge ourselves so much in fretting and rebelling against the minor things, we can endure a severe physical pain with genuine stoicism, but the bark of a dog or the crunch of crackers upsets us tremendously.

2.

Whenever you feel that you are beset with many troubles, take a little time off and look into the Bible, particularly the New Testament; it will do you a lot of good, and you will be amazed how your troubles will disappear. The Bible does teach you to see the big things of life in a big way and the minor things as minor ones; it will give anybody true perspective.

As you go through life, you will learn that the simple life is the most effective one and also the happiest. Regardless of anyone’s argument to the contrary, you will always find that the really big successful people in America today, regardless of simple pleasures, have simple taste, are very modest and usually have a deep religious character. McKinley, a great President, put corned beef and cabbage on the White House menu, and I expect, if you knew the real “low down” on that commanding officer of yours, you would find that perhaps he has a secret yen for growing nasturtiums.

The more successful they come the more big people are interested in getting information; they never hesitate to learn from anyone. Only small potatoes with warped mentalities are showy or pretentious, and those with an obnoxious abundance of conversation about themselves generally are using their long winded gyrations to cover up their deficiencies. Always remember that egotism is the cause of more conversation than learning or wit.

My experiences and observations have taught me that honesty is not only the best policy but it is the only policy, because dishonesty is its own downfall, sooner or later. It has been said that many wealthy people have obtained their money or their power by dishonest means and perhaps that is so. But you will always find that sooner or later either their conscience or the law catches up with them and the fellow with the big stick ends up either with a shiny seat in his pants or a hard cell in the hoosegow. Dishonesty is like that queer implement that Australians use, the “boomerang”: it always makes the circuit and always comes back and smacks you in the face when you aren’t looking.

Dishonesty never paid dividends to anyone. It is just about as dangerous as an elephant hanging over the edge of a cliff with his tail tied to a daisy.

And now to an element a little less mental than some I have mentioned, but none the less important and that is WORK. Work is essential to success in any line of endeavor and don’t let any of the textbooks tell you differently. Some people have said that worry kills more men than work, and that is true because more men worry than work. So far as I know no one ever died from work in this country, but thousands may die in this country if we don’t settle down to work soon.

Truly work is the most fascinating thing in the world. It rests the soul, it feeds the brain, and it gives a sense of security that is really marvelous. Never envy those who have apparently nothing on their hands but time and nothing on the brains but hair. You will get more downright thrill in the simplest job well done than

3.

they will ever get in a lifetime. Nothing worthwhile was ever accomplished except by work and any success you ever heard of was the result of one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

As a matter of fact, you will find the economic progress of any nation is generally measured by its working hour. The real fortunes and the real industries of this nation were the result not of the 40 five day week, but a working day of dawn to dusk with Wednesday off for prayer meeting. The calamity howlers have spread their gospel that America is in terrible condition, but let me assure you that there is nothing whosoever wrong with America that work won’t cure.

I must bring this letter to a close. I have merely scratched the surface of a few important things it will pay you to remember. I do hope you ahve not been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age and don’t let the doleful howls of a few hair-brained spell-binders upset you.

You shall soon be in the greatest service of the greatest and finest nation in recorded history; its principles of free speech and free enterprise shall exist. You have lived as a youngster in a period when economic and social upheavals have caused a temporary distortion in the American manner of progress, but mind you, this is only temporary and America will come out of it, for faith and freedom and security are just as near at hand today as ever before.

You are indeed a fortunate individual in that you are on the threshold of the new America that will arm itself to insure the retention of its principles of freedom, and by the very reason of your being a part of this greater respect and a deeper love of those principles for which America stands.

So in the realization of a real success in the job you have ahead of you and I have complete confidence that you will be a success which can be measured only in terms of Honesty, Simplicity, Tolerance and Respectability — there can be no greater honor or reward that could possibly come to me than in being —

Your Dad,

(unsigned)

P. S. I am enclosing a check in case you might need a little cash before your first pay-day. Remember, never open a pot with two pair when the deuces are wild.

At one point, transcribing this, the tears flowed freely down my cheeks. The words are ever so valid now as then. Words of wisdom. Common words of sense and insight. Words I wish to share with you. And words I need to embrace and remember. Words this country needs to hear and see.

Let freedom ring, brothers and sisters. We cannot, we must not, let this country fall.

Our fathers tell us so.

BZ

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