DEFENSE: Quick Kick
At 1:25 o'clock Sunday afternoon a combat-loaded Strategic Air Command B-52 Stratofortress plunked down at Baltimore's Friendship International Airport after a history-making journey. In 26 hours it had flown 13,500 miles, from Loring Air Force Base near Limestone (Maine) to Goose Bay (Labrador), to Thule (Greenland), north to the Pole, south to Anchorage (Alaska), thence to Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Abilene, Tampa, Key West, Miami, Atlanta and, finally, Baltimore.
Precisely 45 minutes later, another B-52 set down at Baltimore: in 31½ hours it had hurtled 16,000 nonstop miles (with aerial refueling) from Castle Air Force Base, Calif, to Goose Bay, Thule, the North Pole, Anchorage, Seattle, San Francisco and across the U.S. to Baltimore.
Both planes were part of an eight-plane (four from Loring and four from Castle) training mission known as Operation Quick Kick. When crew members landed at Friendship their main impression of their speed-for-distance endurance flight was that their bottoms were terribly numb. To the U.S. and the world it meant far more than that: it was a timely reminder that the B-52 can reach (with hydrogen-bomb payloads) and return from the Soviet Union at jet speed if the need should arise.
Most Popular »
- Retailers Gear up for Black Friday
- 2012: End-of-World Disaster Porn
- Now It's Official: There Is Water on the Moon
- Does Mexico City Need a Red-Light District?
- Did a Time-Traveling Bird Sabotage the Collider?
- It's Twilight in America
- Obama in Southeast Asia: Mending Fences in a Key Region
- Why We Shouldn't Give Christmas Gifts
- Iraq's Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Daughters
- How a Bank Robber Became an Antihero in France
- In a Malaria Hot Spot, Resistance Grows to a Key Drug
- Retailers Gear up for Black Friday
- Iraq's Unspeakable Crime: Mothers Pimping Daughters
- Did a Time-Traveling Bird Sabotage the Collider?
- Five Things the U.S. Can Learn from China
- Another Cause of Obesity: The Bacteria in Your Gut?
- How to Make Money from Viral Videos
- 2012: End-of-World Disaster Porn
- Behind the CDC's Soaring H1N1 Death Totals
- London Museum Asks Public What to Pitch







RSS