The BUFF
Wednesday, January 20, 2010 at 6:30AM 
One of the longest serving aircraft in the US Air Force's history is the B-52 Stratofortress bomber built by Boeing. The B-52 made it's first flight in 1952 with a total of 744 being built all together. The B-52 or BUFF (Big Ugly Fat F#%Ker) as it's crews affectionately named it was designed to carry nuclear weapons as deterrence during the Cold War. However it has only every dropped conventional munitions in actual combat. Today there are 76 active B-52's in service with the USAF and there are plans for them to see service until 2040, nearly 80 years after the production of these aircraft ended. The B-52 in 2001 had the highest mission capable rate of 80% and is far cheaper to maintain than what should have been it's replacements, the B-1B and the B-2 bombers. In 2005 the B-52 saw it's 50 years of service with the USAF and still has many more to go.
I took this photograph at the March Air Field Museum just before a rain storm arrived. I always had a fascination with B-52's and had read many books about them. Then when I met Janet I discovered that her father was a navigator on B-52's and used to fly missions lasting up to 28 hours. These missions were part of the Cold War airborne alert duty, meaning that at least 12 B-52's carrying nuclear weapons were in the air on alert to attack the Soviet Union at a moments notice. Here is an article about these missions from Time Magazine in 1961.
Here is a black & white version of the same photograph.
Reader Comments (1)
It looks more like a painting than a photo. Really good.