B-52s Not of the Rock Lobster/Love Shack Variety

It is occasionally shocking to consider that I have only been active duty military since January. I feel largely comfortable with day-to-day life on a military installation. Wearing digital camouflage to school no longer seems bizarre. I no longer have a mental panic attack regarding salute procedures when a superior officer approaches. Life is good. 

Just outside of the JAG School is a gigantic reminder of the mission we are all training to support - a B-52 Bomber, affectionately known as the BUFF (Big Ugly Fat "Fellow", though another four letter word has been ocassionally used).

 It is the real deal, having dropped iron on target over North Vietnam throughout the entire Linebacker II campaign. It is literally next door to us at AFJAGS. To say this thing is gigantic seems to sell short both the plane and the word gigantic. The wingspan on this sucker is 185 feet. Front to back is 154 feet and it holds 70,000 pounds of ordinance. That's like a payload of 200 really fat people. The B-52 was first introduced in 1955 and it is STILL in service, 54 years later.

For scale, I've provided three Judge Advocates. I could not keep them visible in the picture and have the entire B-52 in the frame.

The B-52 is just part of a larger outdoor museum featuring pristinely restored war planes from World War Two, Korea, and Vietnam. We are fortune to have the entire museum just outside the front doors of the JAG School. What makes the planes even more remarkable is that they all flew combat sorties before being decommissioned.

The above picture features a WWII-era B-25 bomber. Fun Fact: The letter that prefaces the numerical designation on almost any war plane tells you its primary mission. B = Bomber, F = Fighter, R = Reconnaissance, A = Ground Attack, C = Cargo, etc. So without knowing much about any given air frame, you can figure out its primary mission by the alpha-numeric designation.

The B-25 is famous for being the plane Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle (later a full four-star general) used to launch the "30 Seconds over Tokyo" raid on Japan following the attack on Peal Harbor. For those of you who endured the 2001 Michael Bay cinematic catastrophe that was "Pearl Harbor," this was the bomber Alec Baldwin (playing Lt. Col. Doolittle) struggled in having fly from an aircraft carrier. You may also recall Ben Affleck struggling to do anything that related to acting in the film.

Dear B-25 Bomber: Please drop bomb on Ben Affleck ASAP. Thx!

The next plane was a real treat for a military history nerd like me to see up close. The F-86 Sabre (if you have been paying attention, you know this is a fighter due to the F designation) . It is best known for its role in the Korean War in dominating the air space over the peninsula and keeping air superiority out of the hands of the filthy Communists. 

If looks could kill, we probably would not need the Sabre's six .50 cal machine guns, two rocket pods, two AIM-9 Sidewinder Missiles, and 5300 lb bomb payload. Those elliptical shaped holes to the upper left of my head are where three of the six .50 cal guns are stored. The opposite side of the nose houses the other three.

The last plane was the famous Vietnam-era Fighter/Fighter-Bomber F-4 Phantom II. The F-4 played a critical role in not just air superiority in Vietnam but also air-to-ground attacks. The F-4 was not just employed by the USAF but also had modified variants for the Navy and the Marine Corps as well.