The video is long, but very detailed.
This Is The Most Incredible Tour Of A B-52 Stratofortress We Have Ever Seen
t may be an overused axiom, but the B-52 is truly like a fine wine — it just keeps getting better with age. With the Stratofortress — the youngest of which will hit 60 years old next year — finally getting new engines, the type will have more range and better field performance, payload, maintainability, and economy. This, combined with significant sensor, avionics, survivability, weapons, and networking upgrades, as well as its new internal smart bomb racks, will see the “BUFF” through to the second half of this century and probably beyond. Yes, 100-year-old B-52s flying in active service isn't just possible, it is becoming more probable with each passing day.
I have discussed the iconic Cold War-era air-combat system with those who flew and maintained it, regularly written about it at length, and just generally never stopped learning about it year after year. Yet the video below, posted on aviation photographer Erik Johnston's fabulous Youtube channel, is the most comprehensive tour of a B-52 I have ever seen.
Running nearly two hours in length, the video goes into so many tiny details about the aircraft, which exists today as a hodgepodge of early Cold War engineering and retrofitted modern technology. The tour is led by Lt. Col. Aaron Bohl and his highly experienced crew, based out of Barksdale AFB in Louisiana, as well as a crew chief for the B-52 being examined, which carries the nickname "Politically Incorrect" embossed below mushroom cloud nose art. The B-52 community retains its nuclear mission, of course, albeit without nuclear gravity bombs — just nuclear-tipped cruise missiles are used these days. Also, just the idea of being a B-52 crew chief sounds overwhelming, doesn't it?
From discussions of a B-52H's tire pressure and "six-engine approaches" — apparently, it can go around on just two engines in some circumstances — to pointing out where the 20mm cannon shells once dropped out of the tail when the type still had a tail gun, this video is as fascinating as it is thorough. We even get a very intimate description of how the B-52's now famous, but once-secretive, swiveling landing gear — which is critical to the type's ability to accomplish crabbed crosswind landings — is set from the $#@!pit.
Then there is the reality that B-52 Weapons Systems Officers crawl into the weapons bay in flight. Another little door at the other end of the bay is where the gunner would have to squeeze through to get to their lonely station in the tail.