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.