‘Vintage car’ bombers of U.S. strategic defences

Press, 31 October 1983, Page 12

‘Vintage car’ bombers of U.S. strategic defences

By

Nigel Hawkes

in Rapid City, South Dakota

It was raining and water dripped steadily through the winashield of the 852 as it sat on the apron at Ellesworth Air Force Base. The glass covering the instruments had faded yellow, and a message scribbled on a panel next to the seat said it all: “Why should I work? Nothing else does.” The United States Air Force once had the smart idea of indicating which of its planes was old by prefixing the number on its tail with the letter 0, for obsolete. Any aircraft in service for more than 10 years qualified. Today, if the practice had not been long abandoned, the letter would have to be V, for venerable, or A, for antique. Not a single one of the 852 s still flying is less than 20 years old, and many are several years older. The 852, the third leg of America’s nuclear “triad” — intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines and bombers — is a very old plane. Conceived in 1946 and brought into use in 1954, it was designed for the era when S.A.M. was still just a name given to little boys. Flying at 40,000 feet, out of range of antiaircraft guns, it could drop its bombs with impunity. The coming of the surface-to-air missile changed all that. Today the only way the 852 is going to get its nuclear weapons on target is by ducking under defence radars at a height of a few hundred feet, dodging the S.A.M.S, or “standing off’ to launch nuclear missiles

from a distance. It was designed ! for none of these things, and i cannot do them as well as a modern bomber could. But the U.S.A.F. has no modern bomber. President Carter cancelled the 81, and although President Reagan has reinstated it in the defence programme, it will be several years before it features on the active list. Until then it will be the 852, an aircraft of the 19505, which will carry the latest weapon of the 1980 s, the air-launched cruise missile. Of the 700 852 s built, some 300 remain in service. All are either G or H models, introduced in 1958 and 1960. The last of the D models, dating from 1956, were withdrawn from service last year, and the remaining G and H models were shared out between the wings of Strategic Air Command so that everyone should have something to fly. Keeping a warplane in the air is never easy. For every hour flown the 852 s need, on average, 50 hours of maintenance on the ground. What makes the job harder is the fact that, although the 852 is America’s only strategic bomber, keeping it flying is rather like running a vintage car. The company that made the original castings for the undercarriage no longer exists. Today there is no firm in America capable of making such huge castings, so they have to be ordered from Canada or Japan. The sub-contractor who

built the hoists for lifting things into the aft hold is another victim of the march of time. To replace such hoists today means a special order, at enormous expense. “The 852 is becoming untenable,” says Colonel Karl B. Krueger, Commander of the 28th Bombardment Wing at Ellsworth. “We’ve exceeded the lifetime of the aircraft. In the long run it’s going to be cheaper to build the Bls.” Critics argue that the day of the bomber is over, that modern air defence could eliminate them long before they reach their targets. The huge, subsonic 852 would be particularly easy to pick up, despite the incorporation of electronic counter-measures designed to fool air defence radars. But the argument has not prevented the Soviet Union from building modern bombers. “The Soviet Union has got its Bl already — it’s up and flying. And by the time we have our Bls, they’ll have something better,” Colonel Krueger grumbles. For the moment the young men who fly aircraft as old as themselves still seem to believe the 852 s can do the job — though they admit that when flown in exercises against United States air defence they are usually “shot down.” In its long career the 852 saw action only in Vietnam. Copyright — London Observer Service.