This ancient bomber is groping upward, electronically blind, attempting to join five others stacked in layers just 500 ft. apart. At 10,000 ft. the sky is an inkwell, and the primary and back-up heading systems are out. The radar works sporadically, and even when it does function, it provides tunnel vision, off to one side. The only dependable navigation aid is a simple compass, just like the ones people stick on the dashboards of their cars.
The pilot and copilot, Don Schlaht and Dave Maher, swivel their helmeted heads, straining to pick up the flashing lights of the other planes, their own faces dimly lit by the soft red glow from the instrument panel. As the minutes pass, tension shows around their eyes. Schlaht begins to think he will have to turn back to base. We are in a plane that can carry more explosive power than was set off by all the participants of World War II. It looks like a flying shark, and is equipped with electronic gadgets that allow it to make a precision bombing run at midnight in the middle of a blizzard—when they work. Navigator John Kyme has crawled under the instrument panel, into the "wine cellar," with a handful of small tools and a look of determination. "I don't know where to begin," he says. "But we'll take it one step at a time."
NOR-08, the plane's code name for this training exercise, is the last and most modern of the B-52s to come off the Boeing line. It has 9,050 flying hours on it, though. If it were human, it would be old enough to vote and buy liquor in any state.
To air crews the B-52 is known as BUFF, a fairly loving acronym that stands for Big Ugly Fat Fellow. But there are Air Force men who think it should have been put out to pasture long ago in the Arizona desert, along with the retired squadrons of B-29s and B-50s. Some of them are hoping for a variant of the expensive but supersonic B-1 bomber, especially in view of the new Administration's defense policy.
Takeoff was from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. It was perilously near the wind-chill factor of 65° F below —the point at which ground crews are excused from outdoor maintenance. Seven BUFFS and three KC-135 tankers were scheduled to roar aloft at 7 a.m., just as 390 other Strategic Air Command planes took the air, in less than ten minutes, from 69 other bases in the continental U.S. and Guam. The mission: a simulated launch in the face of a Soviet missile attack, part of a readiness exercise called Global Shield. It was the biggest mass launch in SAC'S 35-year history.
One BUFF and one tanker aborted on the ground, victims of a balky generator and an engine "trouble" light that would not go out. A second B-52 had to quit formation; its right front-landing gear would not retract, so it could not keep up. Officially, the Air Force has high confidence in these old planes and the young men who fly them. Despite the much vaunted Soviet air defense network, they believe the B-52s can get through, take out their targets, and perhaps even return to base.
Or what's left of it. "The advantage is with the offense," insists Brigadier General John A. Shaud, commander of SAC'S 57th Air Division. The crews are not so sure.