Word: sac
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Hound Dog was developed in record time of 30 months. Back in August of 1957, SAC put in a hurry call for an air-launched missile. The order: get it ready by 1960. To meet the deadline, Air Force Research and Development people made a missile out of existing systems. They...
...carrying destruction, and that there were 15 minutes in which to get off the ground and head for preassigned Soviet targets. There would be no time for second thoughts, no room for second-guessing as to whether some button-pusher was running a test. To the SAC alert crews, the klaxon is a cry to arms...
...study rooms, poring over target data (they never discuss targets with other crews; no crew knows the target of another). And all the time they wait for the horn. There is no itchy tension: their sharp reflexes have been honed by intense training, their character hardened by one of SAC's most successful ingredients-motivation...
Sentries & Showers. But SAC rarely runs an alert beyond Alpha (crew in the cockpit) or Bravo (engine run-up), never beyond Coco (takeoff position on the runway). SAC does not fly cocked aircraft. Reason: any change in a plane's ground alert status is regarded as "uncocking" and lessens the alert capability. Alert planes returning from a practice mission would be in no shape for a real-life turn-around to actual war missions: if they were in the landing pattern when the klaxon sounded the real thing, they would have to be refueled and their crews would need...
Nevertheless, SAC crews play their deadly game of Beat the Clock as if each alert were the real thing. And when they get the sign-off, they return to their moleholes to await again the sound of that eerie klaxon; it could come again in five minutes or five hours. Usually, though, the alert crews can count on enough time to clean up. "The only time you dare take a shower," says one pilot, "is right after an alert. Some day they'll fool us and blow the horn again just after we get back...