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Do you think you could get through to your target? a B-52 electronic warfare officer is asked. "Not really," he says. "If the Soviet equipment works the way it's supposed to, a lot of us don't want to go to war," says another.
But apocalyptic speculation has been left behind in the rush of business, the minute-by-minute need to cope with a 448,000-lb., $15 million aircraft. And things soon go better for NOR-08. Kyme manages to work out most of the bugs in the navigational gear. "See how this airplane heals itself?" Kyme says cheerily on the intercom. Someone else chimes in, "Well, the urinal works."
By 10 o'clock, in fact, the plane is orbiting 24,000 ft. over Lake Thabaska in Canada. The sky is clear and bright, and every man concentrates on getting to the final target. Meanwhile, the two men known as "defense"—the electronic warfare officer and the gunner—are preparing to elude Soviet SAMS and MiGs. The e.w. officer is leaning toward the bank of transmitters, designed to jam enemy radar as NOR-08 makes her approach. One transmitter is down, but no problem. The other 15 are working.
At 10:18, NOR-08 breaks out of orbit and streaks south at 320 knots toward a low-level run over two tiny, almost featureless snow-covered lakes in a desolate Canadian wilderness dotted with thousands just like it. At 10:38, the plane settles to 3,700 ft. Ten minutes later, the navigator calls out: "You're cleared t.a.," meaning the pilot can take it down to 500 ft. At that height he must rely on his own skills, and t.a. (for terrain-avoidance radar), to save the ship from a possible 380-knot collision with trees and hills.
It is like roaring down a pot-holed washboard road in an old car with bad shocks, this surging, bucking run to the target. The pine trees seem so close, you could reach down and grab a handful of needles as they blur beneath the nose. The bomb bay doors come open. Together, Schlaht and the navigators aim the plane over the first lake. "Bomb away." It is spoken without drama, a simple statement of fact. There is no bomb, of course. Only a pair of cameras, that record the exact point of impact, had a bomb been released. It's a bit like blasting those enemy spaceships on an Atari TV game. The crew of NOR-08 is sure they have "shacked" the lake, putting the imaginary bomb within the 3,000-ft. radius considered satisfactory shooting for nuclear crews. As to the second lake, they're not so sure. Later, strike photos show the first attack was on target, the second 30 seconds too soon, a nuclear near miss that put a theoretical bomb into a whole other lake.
In what the crew calls "the real world," meaning World War III, targets would be more identifiable. Crews would have studied them for months in advance. At 12:54 p.m. the Minot runway is in sight. Six hours after it began, the mission is ended. In the real world it might have taken 18 hours just to reach the target.
—By Don Sider