FP Boeing B52 Stratofortress

Video from the channel Doku Militärgeschichte Kanal about Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 24:35. Language: German. Video type: Documentary.

A German documentary on the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, the long-range bomber that remains one of the mainstays of the US Air Force more than fifty years after its first flight. It traces its Cold War origins, its changing missions and its campaigns, with testimony from bomber crews and from a KC-135 tanker crew.

The documentary places the B-52 within nuclear deterrence doctrine: in 1946 the USAF grouped its long-range bombers into the Strategic Air Command, and in 1952 Boeing unveiled, after more than six years of development, the first long-range jet bomber. Radar-guided surface-to-air missiles of the late 1950s forced a shift to low-level penetration. From 1965 it fought in Vietnam with conventional bombs, and the December 1972 Linebacker II operation was its most intense episode. Attempts to replace it never led to its retirement: the B-1, stalled by the Carter administration and revived by Reagan in 1981, and the B-2 Spirit, which flew on 17 July 1989. After the 1991 START treaty, every example except the B-52H was scrapped in Arizona, and in 1992 the aircraft passed to Air Combat Command.

Nine production versions were built, plus two prototypes and three test examples; the NB-52 served NASA as a carrier aircraft. The B-52H, with more efficient turbofans, is the only version still in service, with 94 aircraft. It has carried the AGM-28 Hound Dog, AGM-86 and AGM-129 missiles and ADM-20 Quail decoys. The documentary puts its range at about 14,000 km, extendable with aerial refuelling at about 3,800 litres per minute. On the first day of Desert Storm (1991), seven aircraft that took off from Barksdale (Louisiana) flew 35 hours non-stop and more than 22,000 km to launch cruise missiles over Iraq. In 1996, during Operation Desert Strike, two aircraft beat that mark with more than 25,000 km from Guam. It is expected to remain in service until 2040.