Monday, September 10, 2018

Unforgettable Moment, B-52s Scramble, Hill Air Force Base, 1974

B-52 Bombers taking off on full throttle on Strategic Air Command alert

I was stationed at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, from 1972-74. Early in 1974, Strategic Air Command stationed a wing of B-52s on Hill.  

My duty station was four miles from the airfield on the north end of the base.  Sometimes I went to the hangar for electronic parts.  On a warm spring day, I happened to be in the hangar when I heard an enormous roar, then another, then another, and another.  

Six B-52s filled the air with black smoke and the howl of 48 jet engines on throttle. The planes took off one after the other less than a minute apart. When all six formed up in the sky above the base, the giant airplanes flew east toward the Rocky Mountains and disappeared.

It was magnificent.

I was 21 years old when those planes took off.  Those airplanes were about my age, first entering service in 1952, a year before I was born. Like me they have had a lot of maintenance, but still have an active life today. Some of them, like me, are in their 60s.  

No comments:

Post a Comment

Not So Supreme: A Conference about the Constitution, the Courts and Justice

Hannah Arendt At the end of the first week in March, I went to a conference at Bard College titled: Between Power and Authority: Arendt on t...