Kevin Brooks wrote:

"Guy Alcala" wrote in message
.. .
Kevin Brooks wrote:

snip

What the man said. BUFDRVR, pull out your copy of Boyne and look up
"Advanced
Capability Radar" in the index. Boyne says the Hs got them first, but
they were
backfit to the D, F and G.

Actually, Guy, the man said the C models also got it.

Boyne doesn't, which was the source I used. He may have missed or
forgotten
them, or FAS may be wrong.

My point is that the sources all seem to differ, so making any concrete
assessment is a bit difficult as yet. From what I gather the C models were
still flying operationally (versus the training birds) as late as the
mid-sixties; their ability to perform down in the weeds has not been
conclusively established.

Boyne's got a table compiled by the SAC historian, which shows C models still in
service (don't know if they were used operationally) as late as '71. There are
always D, E or F models also listed in the same wing covering at least the same
time frame as the Cs (post '50s), so they may well have been used for training.
The last Es seem to have toddled off to the Boneyard in 1978 (from Castle), if
the '78 isn't a typo for '68, with all the other wings withdrawing them no later
than 1970, and most being gone by 1968.

FAS as a source is not
infallible, though in this case it remains unclear a sto which models
got it
and when they actually got it. If the aircraft did start getting T/A
radars
in 1961, it would have taken some time to outfit the remainder of the
fleet,
which IIRC was pretty darned big at that time.

Given SAC's priority at the time, I doubt it would take all that long, as
our
ICBM force was still mostly Atlas and Titan, and Polaris was just entering
service.

In 1961 there were some 571 B-52's in service (
http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/nudb/datab7.asp ), and by the following year
that had climbed to some 673; I doubt that any major program such as the
addition of a TA radar was completed in a period of less than three or four
years at best for a force of that size (just based upon the '61 size); doing
it in two years would have required a modification rate of nearly one
aircraft per day, sevven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year.

Elsewhere in Boyne he states that the Es "were the first to use the new low
altitude equipment which was then deemed necessary to elude the ever-expanding
Soviet missile and radar network." However, it appears you are correct about
the time it took to fit the fleet. See below.

snip

The low level seems to have started even earlier, perhaps by 1959 which is
when
the first BUFF crashed due to structural failure (horizontal stab) while
in low
altitude flight.

That is when a couple of sources indicate the *training* of B-52 crews in
low level operations began; those same two sources indicate that the
modification work to the aircraft did not start until 1961. A site i ran
across had a story posted by a former BUFF crewmember from that era, and all
he said was that they began to fly low-altitude work "in the early sixties";
unless he was in one of the last crews to make that transition, then it
appears the high altitude work was still ongoing. There was also an airframe
modification program initiated to strengthen the structure so that it could
absorb the increasedfatigue loads of low altitude work--I have not seen any
indication of when that effort was completed, either, or whether it ever
addressed either the C or E models.

FWIW, Boyne provides a table of major ($50million+) mods to the BUFF. Mod 1000
is titled "Low Level Capability," cost $313.2 million over FY 59-69, applied to
C-H models, and was "to improve bomber penetration capability by flying at 500
feet altitude or below; Includes: Terrain Avoidance Radar (ACR), Improved Radar
Altimeter, Increased Cooling Capacity, Equipment Mounting Provisions, Secondary
Structural Improvements."

There was also Mod 951, High Stress I, II, II, "Strengthening of critical
structural areas," which applied to the B-G and cost $62.9 Mill over FY 62-64.


As to repainting the SAC BUFFs, I wonder how critical it was considered,
given
their (presumed) night/bad-weather mission and the availability of Hound
Dog
(which doesn't seem to have been camo'ed).

I never knew SAC was restricting its operations to night/adverse weather :-)
. I have seen some photos of camo'd Hound Dog's, presumably from their later
years in service.

snip

I was forgetting that Hound Dog didn't apply to the tall tails, so they'd pretty
much have to be on the deck, or else come in late to bounce the rubble.

Guy