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.
