Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The B-52 Stratofortress

Episode Date: March 19, 2021

World War II was the first major conflict that saw the use of strategic bombers. In the months immediately after the war, the US saw the need for an advanced bomber to replace the bombers which were developed during the war. Moreover, they wanted something bigger, faster, and that used newly developed jet engines. The end result of the process was the B-52 bomber which had its first flight in 1952. Learn more about Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, the plane which is still in service today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

World War II was the first major conflict that saw the use of strategic bombers. In the months immediately after the war, the U.S. saw the need for an advanced bomber to replace the bombers which were developed during the war. Moreover, they wanted something bigger, faster, and that used the newly developed jet engines. The end result of this process was the B-52 bomber, which had its first flight in 1952. Learn more about the Boeing B-52 Stratow Fortress, the plane which is still in service today, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by the Travel Photography Academy. In 2007, I sold my home to travel around the world. I bought an expensive camera that I didn't know how to use and took a bunch of terrible photos.

Several years, 100 countries, and tens of thousands of photos later, I'd improved my photography to the point where I was winning national awards being named Travel Photographer of the Year three times in North America. I created the Travel Photography Academy, so you don't have to spend the many years that I did to improve your photography. Even though we can't easily travel right now, you can still work on improving your photography at home and in your own community. Just go to travel photography academy.com or click on the link in the show notes to start improving your photography today.

In the midst of World War II, American war planners anticipated a possible problem. All of their strategic bombing raids on Germany were flown out of Great Britain. This was a case of proximity and also one of technology. The bombers used in World War II just didn't have the range to fly much farther. In the event that Britain was to fall, and the use of Britain as a staging point for bombing sorties was taken away, they would need a bomber that could fly much farther. They would need an intercontinental bomber that could fly from North America to Europe. Britain, of course, never did fall, and here I'll refer you to my episode on Operation C-Lion. The war also ended before an intercontinental bomber could actually be developed.

The first result of this effort to create an intercontinental bomber was the Conver B-3. The B36 had a range of about 10,000 miles or 16,000 kilometers. It had an 87,000 pound payload and was the world's first nuclear bomber. However, there was something else about it. It was a propeller-driven aircraft. In fact, it was the largest propeller-driven aircraft ever mass-produced. While it did see active service, the problem was that it was pretty much obsolete the moment it arrived in 1946. During its development, the jet engine was created, and that, taught us.

totally changed the future of aviation. The Boeing Corporation was commissioned to develop a new bomber. The working name of the new plane was the XB52. The XB52 originally was designed to be a straight-wing, prop-driven aircraft. In 1948, the brand-new branch of the military called the Air Force called a meeting with Boeing at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. And on a Friday, they basically told them to scrap the design that they were working on. They told him to come up with an idea for a bomber that used jets.

The team from Boeing spent the entire weekend at the Hotel Van Cleve in Dayton, Ohio, and basically designed the B-52 in one weekend. They designed an eight jet bomber with four pairs of two jet engines. The plane had swept back wings at a 35-degree angle. One of the engineers was a good artist, so he created the aircraft drawings. They went to a hobby store and purchased supplies to make a scale model. They also had a secretary work on creating a 33-page bound proposal. The proposal for the B-52 that they came up with that weekend was basically the B-52, which was built.

The first test model, which was ready for flight, was model YB-52. On April 15, 1952, it was flown by test pilot Tex Johnson at Boeing Field in Seattle. It flew for two hours and 21 minutes flawlessly. The Air Force ordered 282 of them. them. Construction began in the first generation of B-52s called the B-52A. There were only three of them made, and none of them ever saw active service. There were a total of eight models which were rolled out between 1954 and 1963. A total of 742 aircraft were built. The B-52 became a cornerstone of the United States' entire defense strategy during the Cold War. It was the nuclear bomber,

and bombers were one of the three legs of the nuclear triad. If you remember back to my episode about the bikini, the nuclear weapon which was dropped on the bikini atoll was from a B-52. The B-52 was heavily used during Vietnam. It was during this time that the defining characteristic of the B-52 became apparent. Adaptability. The planes began being outfitted with brand-new technology and equipment. The operation life of a military aircraft is usually a few decades. In the 1960s, many in the Pentagon began getting worried about the lack of development. for a new generation of strategic bomber. They wanted a supersonic bomber, something that the B-52 just couldn't do, but the program became bogged down and cost overruns in politics.

Through the 60s and 70s, the first generation of B-52s were retired, but the later models kept flying and kept flying and kept flying. Throughout all the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s, the B-52s just never stopped being used. They were used in Operation Desert Storm, Afghanistan, and Operation Desert Shield. There have been training missions conducted where a B-52 crew flew from Louisiana to Australia and back on a test-sorty mission. The round-trip took 44 hours, and the plane never landed. It turns out the B-52 was both under-engineered and over-engineered at the same time. It was over-engineered insofar as they managed to last forever.

They were under-engineered insofar as they weren't completely top. to any one internal system. Many advanced aircraft have navigation and electronic systems so tightly integrated with the aircraft that they're almost impossible to replace. The B-52, however, turned out to be very easy to upgrade. The electronics, navigation, engines, and almost everything else inside the actual plane was upgradable. Today, there are currently close to 80 of the 742 B-52s still in operation.

B-52s which have been retired are. parked at the Davis-Montath Air Force Base in Arizona. They have a giant area with several hundred B-52s lined up in the desert. Some can be used for spare parts, and there have been some planes which have actually been brought back into service. The current plans are for the B-52s to continue in service into the 2030s. The average age of the B-52 fleet is now approaching 60 years old. However, many military analysts think that the B-52s will continue into operation into the 2040s or maybe even the 2050s. At that point, it's possible that the Air Force will have a 100-year-old aircraft active in its fleet.

To put this into perspective, 100 years ago, the military had biplanes covered in canvas. Currently, there are B-52s that have been flown by the grandfathers of the current pilots, and it's possible in the future that it might even be great-grandfathers. The B-52 has had one of the biggest cultural impacts of any airplane. There is, of course, the band named after them, and the Beehive Herdu was also called the B-52 because of its resemblance to the nose of the aircraft. The B-52 just works.

It doesn't have stealth capabilities like the B-2 bomber, and it isn't supersonic like the B-1 bomber. But for most missions, it gets the job done, and that's why it's lasted so long, and why it'll probably be around for decades to come. As many B-52 pilots have said, the last B-52 pilot has yet to be born. The associate producer of Everything Everywhere daily is Thor Thompson. If you'd like to support the show, please donate over at patreon.com.

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