“180 seconds to go.” The radar-navigator speaks with a faint country-music twang.
“Roger, RN,“ says the pilot softly, “you have second station.” The radar-navigator is now controlling the flight of the B-52 with the tracking handle of his computer-radar bombing system.
Over the radios we hear an urgent call for action: “Attention all personnel, this is Crown on Guard, there is an Arc Light strike in progress at 18-08N 105-37E; all aircraft evacuate this area IMMEDIATELY! I repeat . . .”
“Roger, pilot, this is RN, I have second station.” The aircraft ripples quietly and seems to move imperceptibly.
“120 seconds to go.” Two minutes until bomb release. We fly straight into the storm.
Great White Death, indeed it is, and it rises above us and it eagerly reaches out to grab and enfold us.
We fly Great Black Death, penetrating like a lover, and we close together at ten miles every minute.
A dark shadow falls across our flight deck as a thunderstorm moves between us and the moon, and the B-52 ripples with a change in the currents of this high tropi
cal air. The faces of the crewmembers glow red reflecting the light from the instrument panels.
“Sixty seconds.” The aircraft moves again, tucking a little to the left.
Some of the flashbulbs can be heard, and some of them seem to be above us now. Hope not.
“Thirty seconds.” We now seem to be flying into a great white canyon. The thunderstorm has risen far above us like an enormous Christ of the Andes with its great arms stretched out to receive and destroy us. Great violet crystal rays radiate from it and race up and down its length into and out of the ground. Snow blossoms out of its great white shoulders, and antiaircraft explosions reflect back from its clouds. Our own artillery can be seen off to the right - looks like it’s right off our wing. The aircraft shudders with returning turbulence, and it is fishtailing a little. And we fly straight into that Great White Death.
“Fifteen seconds.”
Far off to the right, through two other great thunderstorms, lies the ocean, the Gulf of Tonkin. Moonlight shines on its surface. Memories of days by the Florida gulf coast rise in my memory. Some day, I think, some day soon, I’ll be back there again. Back on the beach with my kids, camping in our trailer, and the sea will look like that.
“Four, three, two . . . “ and as the Radar Navigator punches the release button on the tracking handle, which releases the bombs, “Hack.”
The aircraft shudders, and a fast impulsive ripple runs through it as each bomb releases. The B-52 is striking its target, quivering and hunching as if in orgasm, 108 times in 22 seconds.
Now, the right wing drops deeply, pointing at the target, as we enter and leave the high-flung snow of the storm and sweep the night air out of the arms of that great thunderstorm. We sail briefly through its mist as we soar lazily, languidly into a great turn that will take almost three minutes to complete and which will head us home. From far below comes a very faint “fumph-fumph-fumph-fumph-fumph-fumph,” cadence five times a second that lasts for more than twenty seconds, a sound that seems to be heard and also not heard. The great thunderstorm lights up like a grotesque, pulsating, neon bonfire.
Mission accomplished. Page 312+ from "Into the Sun: Air Force Memories, 1956-1976 – The Rise to Power" by John Womack. Available through Amazon
