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Planning For 80-Year Old B-52s

Posted by Hemos on from the keep-'em-going dept.

Merry_B.Buck writes "The B-52 Stratofortress, famous for its carpet bombing (or, as the Pentagon prefers, "long sticking") was designed in the 1940s to carry boxcar-sized atomic bombs. This Fast Company analysis describes how the US plans to keep these planes -- the youngest of which was built in 1962 -- flying until 2040. "

2 of 484 comments (clear)

  1. Bomb/Nav by greygent · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hooyah!

    I was a Bomb/Nav tech on the B-52's and can definitely attest to their resilience. While the airframe is old, they are running early 80's era technology throughout many areas.

    The bombing systems run off of 3 computing units, each with as I remember four Z-80A processors. Data is loaded from harden (and sloooow) tape drives.

    The Nav/bombardier compartment is on the first floor, but it does sit quite a ways back from the pilot. Underneath the pilot's is the main radar antenna.

    The FLIR and STV systems were top. The FLIR was especially handy in the blizzard-ridden hellhole I was stationed at. We could use them to discern the sex of people from far away (different hotspots), and we could also located our boss driving the trick in a whiteout. He was a chain smoker, so we would just aim it out on the flightline, and wait for the telltale thin white heat line of a man driving a work truck with his cigarette hanging out the window....

    Sgt. Barker if you're out there, give me a ring at:
    greygent [at] absent [dot] org

    I loved working on B-52's, they were excellent, quality planes...and I actually do miss the flightline life...

    Working on B-1s...was another story. Nothing scares a pilot thats about to take off, more, than when an advanced avionics tech rushes up into the plane to fix a problem with a rubber mallet (sticky relays). when I was in the military, I read a report that stated as things stand, even though the B-1 is 20 years newer, the B-52 airframe will still far outlast the B-1.

  2. Re:Good design = scary by snake_dad · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Although, didn't the USSR have a long range bomber like the B52 that was a turboprop?

    Yes. The have (had?) the Tu-95 /142, NATO codename Bear heavy bomber. They used to be intercepted over the northsea all the time by aircraft from the squadron where I served.

    a propeller plane that could go stratospheric and insanely fast.

    It also was insanely loud :-)

    --
    karma capped .sig seeking available Slashdot poster for long-term relationship.