Boeing B-52 Stratofortress RB-52B

The RB-52B was born of a doctrinal dispute over what the B-52 was for. Development of the reconnaissance version, briefly referred to as the RX-16 (the XR-16A designation, reserved for test versions of high-altitude aircraft, was allocated but never used), dated back to early 1951. Air Force Headquarters wanted the new aircraft to concentrate on reconnaissance missions, while Strategic Air Command (SAC) preferred a bomber to which pod-mounted cameras could be added as required. In October 1951 the Air Staff settled the matter provisionally: all B-52s would, for the time being, be completed as reconnaissance aircraft that could be adapted for bombing. That is why the contracts of 1952 and 1953 spoke of RB-52Bs rather than B-52Bs.

The technical answer was a multi-purpose capsule carried in the bomb bay. Initially 17 pods were ordered, solely as flight-test articles. They were pressurised and fitted with downward-firing ejection seats for their two-man crew, who joined the bomber's six. For electronic search the pod housed one AN/APR-14 radar receiver at the low-frequency station and two AN/APR-9 receivers at the high-frequency station, each station with two AN/APA-11A pulse analysers, plus three AN/ARR-88 panoramic receivers and a wire recorder on which every signal was logged. Photographic equipment comprised four K-38 cameras at the multi-camera station, one vertical camera (a T-11 or K-36) and, for mapping, three T-11 cartographic cameras. The pod mock-up inspection in December 1951 went well, with no major changes requested.

SAC also wanted a dedicated electronic-reconnaissance ("ferret") pod. Air Research and Development Command worked out that a single ferret-equipped aircraft could gather in one flight what had previously taken three conventional RB-52s, but the Air Staff cancelled the project in December 1952 and a second SAC request in 1954 fared no better. By 1955 the original pods had become "general purpose capsules" carrying the latest search, analysis and direction-finding devices: they did not meet all of SAC's requirements, but they were a clever, cost-saving expedient. The capsule was winched in and out of the bomb bay, added only 300 lb to the weight of the basic aircraft and was so simple to install that it took just four hours to convert a B-52 to the reconnaissance configuration.

In every other respect the RB-52B was a B-52B: the same J57 engines, the same MA-6A bombing-navigation system and the same airframe. According to The War Zone, the first RB-52s retained the four-gun .50-calibre tail turret inherited from the B-52A, while the remainder introduced the new turret with a pair of 20 mm cannon. The real difference lay in the crew, which grew from six to eight with the capsule installed, and in the ability to switch between bombing and optical, electronic or radar reconnaissance depending on the package carried.

The letter contract of September 1952 called for 43 RB-52Bs and became definitive on 15 April 1953; together with the 17 aircraft of the November 1952 contract, Boeing had 50 RB-52Bs on its books in May 1954, after an amendment moved ten aircraft to the RB-52C standard. On 7 January 1955 the Air Force reversed the 1951 directive and gave the B-52 first priority as a bomber, with reconnaissance relegated to a secondary role; the decision coincided with an order for specialised reconnaissance versions of the Martin B-57 Canberra and, later, with the arrival of U-2s at SAC. As a result the 50 RB-52Bs were redesignated B-52Bs. As finally built, only 27 of the 50 B-model aircraft could carry the capsule and deserved the RB-52B name; the other 23 were pure bombers.

The first RB-52B flew at Seattle on 25 January 1955, several months ahead of the latest schedules, and capsule-equipped aircraft began reaching the 93rd Heavy Bombardment Wing at Castle AFB, California, on 29 June 1955. That first SAC B-52, 52-8711, was itself convertible for reconnaissance. The actual missions flown by the RB-52s remain obscure and the Air Force did away with the designation fairly quickly, so in practice the aircraft served as B-52Bs in the 93rd's main role of crew transition and training, a task they performed until the mid-1960s. They shared the pure bombers' early troubles with engines, alternators and fire-control systems, the groundings of 1956 and the later modification programmes.

The phase-out of the 27 RB-52Bs followed the B-52B's pattern: from March 1965 SAC retired aircraft as they reached the end of their structural life, and by the end of June 1966 all were in storage at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona. Aircraft 52-8711 was donated on 29 September 1965 to the museum at Offutt AFB. A former RB-52B, 52-005, is preserved at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum in Denver, Colorado.