Word: sacs
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...California morning last week, bomb-shaped General Curtis Emerson LeMay, boss of the Strategic Air Command, landed at March Air Force Base near Riverside, stepped off the ramp, glanced at his watch, then stared dourly at the calm, brilliant sky, and waited. Soon three big, eight-jet B-52 SAC bombers streaked into view in tight formation, peeled off and landed a minute apart, their huge brake parachutes billowing from their tails. Throttled down, the planes sedately taxied two miles to the base-operations building, their high-pitched, throbbing scream searing the air. Then, abruptly, the planes were silent, immobile...
...announced the happy LeMay with transparent modesty, was "just another training mission, no different from dozens and dozens of others." In some ways, this was true. The crews were as carefully briefed and seemingly as routinely inured as for any long-distance trip. Yet as they proved once again SAC's enormous everyday striking power, it was also clear that SAC's able flyers had made the kind of history that would soar to the top of man's unending catalogue of conquests over nature...
Speaking for itself after Twining's speech, SAC pointed out that "Operation Powerhouse" took place during "the change in seasons when the North American continent experiences its worst weather ... On the day operations were most intense, there were three major weather fronts across the North American continent. The Civil Aeronautics Administration was hard pressed to keep abreast of all SAC and civilian air traffic." Despite such difficulties, tough, exacting General Curtis LeMay's SAC put on a near-perfect display of massive, smooth-functioning air power: every plane took off on schedule, every aerial refueling...
Perhaps the most important fact of the exercise was that Operation Powerhouse, immense as it was, represented only a part of SAC's striking power. Excluded from the operation were SAC's B-52s, B-36s, F-84Fs (fighters with a nuclear strike capability) and a large number of B-47s. These were held in readiness against the event of actual war-for which SAC has stood on round-the-clock guard for the last eight years...
...baby," he explained later. But Christina, who had probably given birth only three minutes earlier, was too dazed to attack him. She scurried into a retreat cage, and Thomas closed the door after her. Then he rushed with the baby to the zoo kitchen and removed the sac. He noticed that the baby was having difficulty breathing and began slapping her on the back. She caught her breath and lost it again. "I knew the strongest stimulant for respiration is carbon dioxide," Thomas said. "I started breathing into her mouth." He kept it up for 15 minutes...