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Boeing B-52 Stratofortress or "How I learned To Love The Bomber": the airplanes that wouldn't die.

Article Excerpt
The Second Interim Bomber

The two decades beginning in the late-1930s saw the rise and fall of the manned bomber as the strategic weapon of choice. The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress, Consolidated B-24 Liberator, and Boeing B-29 Superfortress significantly influenced the outcome of World War II. Initiated in 1941, the Convair B-36 program resulted in arguably the first true intercontinental aircraft. That bomber, which made its maiden flight in 1946, was, perhaps, the ultimate development of a piston-engine airplane, but at the beginning of the jet age, it was intolerably slow. The Strategic Air Command (SAC) considered the B-36 an interim bomber pending the delivery of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, which began entering the operational force in 1955. However, despite being 50-percent faster than the B-36, the B-52 was still not fast enough for General Curtis E. LeMay, commander of SAC. In LeMay's mind, the BUFF was just the second interim bomber.

The Air Force continued to investigate faster concepts, and the Convair B-58 Hustler became the first supersonic bomber. Magnificent as it was, the B-58 was at best a medium bomber--like the Boeing B-47 Stratojet--and lacked true intercontinental range. Because of the complexity of a machine designed to fly at sustained speeds of Mach 2, the Hustler was also a maintenance nightmare, and its tenure was very short. What LeMay really wanted was an aircraft with all the capabilities of the B-36 or B-52 combined with the speed of the B-58. A wide variety of alternatives were studied, including aircraft using exotic boron-based fuels (WS-110A) and atomic-power (WS-125A), but none seemed feasible. In the midst of all of this, the Air Force was investigating even more advanced bombardment concepts, boost-glide vehicles that flew at 10,000-15,000 mph and achieved global range via suborbital flight paths. These revolutionary concepts, such as the MX-2276 and System 118P (BoMi and Robo), were so futuristic that the Air Force could not ignore them, and a great deal of time and money would be expended before the ideas were ultimately abandoned.

During the late-1950s, while engineers tried to figure out how to make a heavy bomber fast enough for LeMay, SAC had more immediate needs--replacing the early model BUFFs--and embarked on the development of the 'Improved B-52' (what became the B-52G/H). It had become obvious that a Mach 3 bomber would not be available before 1965, so the Air Force expected the Improved B-52 to stay in service until 1970. As it turned out, they only missed by half a century.

Of course, the Mach 3 bomber did come. North American engineers applied some engineering voodoo to an exotic stainless-steel honeycomb airframe and created the B-70 Valkyrie. This incredible delta-wing airplane largely satisfied the requirements for speed and range laid down by LeMay. However, politics eliminated any hope of a production program and the...

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