View from inside the cockpit of a B-52 Stratofortress bomber as pilot and co-pilot fly their giant aircraft on a training mission. Since 1956, there have been more than 95 accidents involving a B-52 with the loss of nearly 360 air crew. The destructive power of the new age of nuclear weapons was large enough to create a 100% kill zone within a radius of 8.5 miles of its detonation point. The typical yield of each nuclear weapon had more than 250 times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima near the end of World War II. of the most powerful weapon known to mankind. In its heyday, the Stratofortress was designed for one mission: To carry thermonuclear multi-tipped warheads to Russia and the Soviet Union’s puppet states in Europe as a retaliatory deterrence to mutually assured destruction from an exchange with the U.S. It’s now capable of flying in excess of 640 mph while carrying 70,000 pounds of conventional bombs. The Buff (big ugly fat fellow) – an eight-engine strategic bomber – has evolved over time since it first rolled off the assembly line in 1955. The accident resulted in the loss of all six of 58-0161’s aircrew and one observer who was catching a lift part of the way to his next duty station in California.Īt the time of the crash, there were no bombs onboard. The B-52 missed clearing the summit by approximately 250 feet. George, a B-52G (registration 58-0161) – call sign LURE 75 – slammed into the 7,050-foot Square Top Mountain. On April 11, 1983, little more than 20 miles northwest of St. On America’s front line of its military deterrent capability has been the B-52 Stratofortress.
GEORGE - Airplane crashes have been a part of life for United States military aircrews since they first took to battle during World War I.įrom the Great War through the Cold War and on into the modern-day battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, American aircrews have lost their lives in combat or during training missions.
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