Question about the S.A.C crew.

[B52STRATO 215]

Having recently returned to a specific old book about the KC-135 a detail struck me about the crew of the 'Silver Sows'. Everyone aboard wears a helmet with visor, I have a feeling that this is a copy looking like those worn by the crews of B-52, I could be wrong. But why the 'Stratotanker' crews wear these helmets ? As most of the pictures come from a KC-135Q, was it to protect them from the corrosive danger of JP-7 or to be protected against a nuclear flash ?

 

Someone got an idea or the response ?

[+ST0RM 145]

Because the SAC crews (both bomber and tanker) back then were performing the nuclear deterence mission and the helmets had mounts for the nuclear flash blindness goggles. Additionally, our Tech Orders specified the wearing of helmets during bailout. Since then, they've relaxed the regs to allow us to wear our headsets for the flight, but have our helmet close by, attached to an oxygen source.

 

Hope it answers your question.

 

-Jeff

[B52STRATO 215]

It responds well to the question, and thank you for kindly reply. One can easily imagine that these helmets shouldn't be comfortable to wear during these racetrack missions that lasted many hours.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

This may be of interest: interview of early 1960s era -52 pilot Ovidio Pugnale (now board member at B-52 Assoc.).

 

here ~> INTERVIEW WITH OVIDIO PUGNALE - 30.8.1996

 

Its a three page interveiw, little arrows at the bottom take one to the next page, and they cover flash curtains and eye patches. Very interesting.

[B52STRATO 215]

Thank you, "Lexx", this link is exciting and rewarding about the behavior of S.A.C flight crews, I'm drowning in all these stories since last night !

Several men of exception will continue to fly the old reliable 52 again for a while.

 

In a similar category, there's the testimony of Major Tom Allison, first pilot to have taken the SR-71 over Europe on 20 May 1977.

[Lexx_Luthor 57]

Did you see this...? This is insanely fascinating.

 

page 1::

:

:

Later on we got more sophisticated to the extent with forward looking infra-red we were able to detect that if a target that was assigned to our particular sortie had been struck, you could tell with infra-red because of the heat coming out of that target area and we knew where the target was, then we would withhold our weapons and go on to another target. So we were given a series of targets because more than one weapon system was assigned to a specific target to assure one hundred percent target destruction.

 

~ http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-12/pugnale1.html

 

In trying to develop my own StrikeFighter game campaign, thinking about how far grafix need drawing, I'd be thinking of flying along in a B-58, and you pass giant massive mushroom clouds, say a few hundred kilometers on either side, made by earlier strikes. Of course you won't see them at low level under clouds or at night if you are wary of eye flash protection and don't want to look out the window. In a computer game, you want to look out the window all the time...until some game developer models flash eye damage then you'd be motivated to keep the EyePatch and FlashCurtain controls ON all the time. Maybe TK would go for that -- Nah, forget it.