Word: bomber
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...than a year, patrolling the skies in unbroken guard while many a defense critic was orating that the U.S. is unprepared for Russian missile attack. First flights were made out of Loring Air Force Base in Maine. Since then, the alert has flown 6,000 sorties, with no alert bomber landed until another has relieved it on station. The duty is now rotated so that each of SACs twelve B-52 wings has one aircraft on patrol at all times...
Chin-ups & Blivits. Like all other SAC operations, the airborne alert routine is fenced by narrow restrictions and standardized procedures. Briefing is held a week prior to scheduled takeoff. On take-off day, other crews run through the three-hour preflight checks on the alert bomber to lessen the fatigue of the crew going on duty. Take-offs are scheduled for around 10 a.m. to allow for a full night's sleep. (The crewmen's physical condition is attested by the fact that they must be able to run a reasonably fast 250-yd. dash and perform five...
...Power's plans, the alert will continue through the years (estimated until 1965) that the U.S. is building a reliable missile-warning system. Some airmen think that the airborne alert will be a part of SAC life as long as there are any nuclear bombers in the picture (estimated until 1965). Costly as it is, the airborne alert is an economical way of stretching the effectiveness of the strategic bomber as long and as far as possible. Says Lieut. General Walter ("Cam") Sweeney, commander of the Eighth Air Force: "I think we'll never go back...
...cramped cockpit of the black, needle-nosed little aircraft shackled under the right wing of a B-52 jet bomber. Air Force Major Robert White threw a releasing switch, moments later pulled back on his throttle. By the time he returned to earth, Test Pilot White, at the controls of the U.S.'s experimental rocket plane X-15 over California's Mojave Desert, had flown faster than any human before him. His speed of 2,905 m.p.h. was nearly 4½ times the speed of sound and 630 m.p.h. faster than he had flown...
Born. To Captain Freeman Bruce Olmstead, 25, copilot of the RB-47 bomber shot down by Soviet fighters over the Barents Sea on July 1, who spent nearly seven months in a Soviet prison before returning home last January; and Gail Olmstead, 26: their second child, second daughter; in Topeka, Kans...