B-52 Bomber | Behind the Wings 

As long as they keep upgrading and advancing its tech it should serve us well.

They should be breaking down soon, no ammount of upgrades would replace that degrading chassis.

@@Tonius126 there is a such thing as aircraft maintanance and aircraft modification. For example: I fly a Cessna 172, it's a newer model, but most of the Cessnas that I've been around are more than 40 years old.

@@AlittleIron saves us a lot of money.

@@nostradamusofgames5508 being 21 over 21 trillion in debt that's a smart decision. Being the B2 2 billion an aircraft

Awesome

That was literally my dream as a kid lol.

There is NO bunk area. None. You just lay on the frigging floor. The potty is behind the pilot (a bucket named the honey bucket), and the urinal behind the Radar Nav downstairs. I was a Navigator on these things. They are NOT comfortable. The aircraft you saw was a B-52G model.

Right that's why I watched, what a waste of time

It was damaged in the fire . . .

@@mikehillsgrove1612Wrong.... Yes they did have small bunks in the BUFF. Back in the cold war era S.A.C crews would fly 40 to 50 hour flights. They had a relief crew onboard. I toured a H model that had a small...very small berthing area with a small toilet as well. Not sure if they do still have small bunks or not.....but back then they did with 2 crews on board in flight refuelling.

@@miller7759 I flew in the cold war era, post chrome dome. Just where do you think they would put a bunk?. Yes, they sometimes would fly an extra pilot. The EW and gunner required no relief and the navs seldom had an extra. There isn't that much room. Behind the pilots you had air refueling valve and behind that the hatch downstairs. We had a floor. some boxes with maps in em and if you need to rest you use them.

Me too dude the American display at duxford is fantastic isn’t it

I’ve had one of these fly over me and my god they’re huge RIP Loring AFB at Limestone, Maine You were what held this community together

Maybe it was an previous plane

@Cliff Yablonski Nice, I didn't know the 52's had EW equipment actually?

@Cliff Yablonski what EW equipment was onboard? I'm lookin at being an EWO on the P-8's in the RAAF

@Cliff Yablonski sorry mate. Just passionate about the tech. Didn't mean to be annoying or anything

@Cliff Yablonski Damn, crazy to imagine this was all in the 70s/80s. Wish I knew what they had nowadays. Massive respect for you guys operation these things.

@Cliff Yablonski Not gonna lie, I love the ingenuity of air force technology in the 80s.

The serial number reflects the year an aircraft is ordered. Rather than when it’s flown and delivered

I was a B52H Crew Chief at Min(dr)ot AFB, ND from 9/89-4/93 when I went to the B2A at Whiteman AFB, MO. The BUFF will always hold a special place in my heart. The "H" was quite different from the older models, and yet there were many things that remained the same. I actually got the chance to crawl around in NASA's Mothership "B" model before it was retired out at Edwards AFB, CA. That was a cool experience.

@@TJRohyans I cut my teeth on jet engines on the Buff. We had H's at El Forko Grande (Grand Forks) when I got there, then got G's that were ALCM capable. I worked in shop overhauling TF-33's and some J-57's on the 135 A's, then worked on the line for the rest of my time in the USAF. The Buff was such a cool airplane to an freshly minted 18 year old jet troop, and the airplane also holds a special place in my heart. I watched a video of them cutting up some G models down in the bone yard, and watched them cutting 2580, which I worked on.....Broke my heart. I have been in a D model but would like to see the inside of the Mothership B2A must have been quite interesting after the Buff, not to mention the change in locals. Going from that flat, barren, wind blown ice desert of despair and drunkenness that is North Dakota, to a desert of a different type, talk about a 180. Must have been interesting.

@@rudedog302 - At the time I got to crawl on the NASA B model, I was already with the B2 program and was out at Edwards TDY to the B2 CTF and the N-G Plant at Palmdale. I was never stationed out there. I was very happy to get out of Minot, but also glad I wasn't stationed in CA. I don't care at all for the desert southwest. A few years later I was cross-training as a Helicopter Flight Engineer and was station in Albuquerque, NM. Did not care for it one bit. I now live in Mobile, AL. Hot, humid and green!

Was that capsule for para-dropping the recons in-country?

I was in the civil air patrol or started out to be as a teenager while my father was in the Airforce. I actually have been inside one of these things during one of the yearly events where the A.F.B. would let family members come out and see the planes and actually get a tour of the inside. Just amazing some of these beasts. I can't remember if we did this At Kincheloe A.F.B. or Grand Forks A.F.B. that did this every year but Grand Forks for sure.

I worked on both G and D models. The older planes, like the D, had a hatch in the cockpit and in the rear. There was a crawlspace thru the plane where you could go the length. It had to be done with below 10,000 since the area was not pressurized. The hardest part was over the horizontal stabilizer with it's adjustment mechanism. Also, over the fore and aft landing gear was fun because it was cramp and full of hot gear. The forward avionics bay was small and hot. And the rear gunner's seat folded down so he could climb in and place his feet into the seating position and pull the seat back up and then pressurize the rear cabin. On the G model the tail gunner sat up front and used a rear looking camera and radar to remotely control the gun. He never had to go into the craw space to get to his gun. Did hear a story once about a B-52 taking off from March AFB in California. The plane had been told to level off after takeoff and pulled back power on the engines. The tail gunner tried to call the cockpit to ask what was going on but didn't get any response, and fearing they had left the aircraft punched the canopy off and rolled out. He landed in a field and was pickup by the farmer who took him back to his base. When the flight landed they were met by their gunner.

It's awesome. One of the planes you see once and remember for years like it happened yesterday. I saw one once do a fly by at a airshow where I live. Was the first time I saw one fly and it was awesome.

We still had guns on 'em when I first started working on them. The Gunners were retired in '92 IIRC. I went to the B2 in '93 to work in Phase Mx.

@@TJRohyans, I went to Tech School the old "H" model at Rantoul AFB in 1966. I never worked on them though as I was shipped to a MAC base to work on the C141's. MAC was so much more laid back than SAC as you know, so I was happy. The last 50 years has flown bye.

A commie liberal

a true patriot

A rage filled tRump,pimple faced, video game playing,teenage, Russian loving Maga moron. Bet they will respond to this with a hate filled response. lol

@@humbleone6405 well aren't you just a ray of sunshine!

@@StormLaker: He was hoping for lots of responses. I'm glad he got none.

nope, condoms and the pill are. ppl who don't exist don't have to worry about anything you see

Oookay - Bull Shannon Night Court

Oops. A big oops! lol

Us too! I hope the people who live there find themselves lucky.

@@Wings_Museum Yeah... unlike the idiot with the gas can.

We lived under the flight path of the B-52s in Atwater, CA when they were shooting touch and go's in training the new crews transferring from B-47s at Castle AFB.

That's what I'm saying. That was really cool, the plane is amazing, so lets see more of it! Why you holdin' out??

Yeah no video of the Bomb/Nav station, and the door from the wheel well is on the lower deck. So you had to come in that way. Ok he did show the toilet, that is on the lower deck.

@@rudedog302 - On "H" models the pisser was on the lower deck, but the "Honey Bucket" was on the upper deck.

@JetMechMA I'm guessing the later models with the remote gun and the gunner sitting next to the EWO was a better set up.

@JetMechMA I remember watching a documentary on the B-52 on the Discovery channel or something (back when the channel actually aired something worthwhile). One of the crew said the since the gunner was the only enlisted guy, he made the coffee 🤣. Oh snap! 😅. I bet he wished he was in the older model so he could be all alone with nobody bothering him 😄. And yeah, I remembered the same documentary talking about the Operation Chrome Dome missions. 😨 Wow, that was crazy. Imagine, at one point in time, there were three (?) nuclear armed B-52 up in the air 24/7 on stand by. Just in case. I heard about one that went down in Spain during refueling. Thank goodness none of the nukes went off. And all the nukes were recovered. But I recall that just to be sure, the soil around the area where the nukes were recovered, was skimmed. Then placed in 50 gallon drums and stashed away at a nuclear waste disposal facility.

Raceball01...There are three B-52 bomber wings still flying and they all are H models built between 1960 and 1961. If there is an old grandpa that kept his flight records from from that time and a new pilot that flies them now, all he/she has to do is match the tail numbers up. It's possible to have great grandkids that fly and maintain the B-52.

RocKiteman _ 2001. That is exactly what i was thinking!

We had a pigeon infestation and those guys are gross! Even with a good steam cleaning, it's still pretty nasty in there. MB

From 1964 to 1973 the USAF secretly flew over 580,000 separate bombing missions into Laos & dropped an estimated 2 million tons of ordinance, according to U.S. government records. Of that total, nearly 300 million cluster bomblets were dropped, & an estimated 80-100 million bomblets never detonated. The result: approximately 50,000 civilian causalities since the mid sixties, of which nearly half were children . Literally thousands of Laotian children are killed every decade by cluster bombs...it still continues today, it never ends. As of 2018, less than 1% of all unexploded ordinance in Laos has been cleared. My country, The United States, which caused this ongoing crisis has done basically nothing to remedy it over the past 40 years.

you may find he has a sense of humour. And you....have not. ;

Most civilians are at a kindergarten level relative to the subject.

@Sven >>> Who would be crazy enough to speak to kindergarteners when sober? 😝