32 hours is a long time to spend in an airplane.  It would be one thing if it were a 747 with flight attendants, in flight meal meals, and a bathroom, but it’s a horse of another hue when it’s a B-52 with no place to even stand up and stretch your legs.  So, as the expression goes, “there I was” on my first deployment to beautiful, tropical Guam.  Home to lots of brown tree snakes and Japanese tourists.  It was the very early 80s and we were keeping the pressure on the Iranians and the Russians by making our presence known in the Persian Gulf.  Even if it was just a pair of B-52’s working with a carrier task force and taking pictures of ships and it was making the point that we could project power anywhere in the world if need be.  So, because there weren’t that many bases in that part of the world which could, or would, support the Buff, we were launching two-ship formations out of Guam and making the 32 hour non-stop round trip.  We would takeoff with four tankers who would top us off over the Philippines.  The tanker crews would land at Clark AFB, do a little shopping,  get a nice dinner, go to bed, get up, file their flight plans, preflight their airplanes, takeoff, and join up with us to top off our tanks for the final sprint back to Guam.  The gas-passers always had it better than us!

On my first mission, I was a lowly lieutenant and I was flying with my lieutenant colonel aircraft commander and, to “augment” the crew, an extra pilot, a major.  Obviously, I was the low man on the totem pole.  The extra pilot got in the seat for 3 of the 4 air refuelings but, otherwise, he slept on the floor.  My AC, an old C-47 pilot, decided that the lieutenant could use the flying time so I flew the airplane for at least 24 of the 32 hours.  Now, while the B-52 does have an autopilot, it was prone to failure and, you guessed it, it failed about 6 hours after takeoff.  Not only did I find myself hand flying the airplane, but we were #2 in formation.  3000′ behind lead, in and out of the weather gets pretty old after awhile.

We descended into the Persian Gulf, did our low level work with the Navy, which included buzzing the deck of an aircraft carrier at 100′ surrounded by 20 Navy aircraft, climbed back to 39,000′, topped off with tankers  out of Diego Garcia, and watched the sun slip below the horizon behind us as we started the long leg back to Guam.

It was a beautiful night.  Not a cloud in the sky.  It was filled with billions of stars with no ground lights to wash them out and, occasionally, a little green St Elmo’s fire dancing on the windscreen.  If I hadn’t been awake for over 24 hours, if lead could have held a constant heading and not been continuously turning back and forth, if the autopilot had been working, if I could have just taken a good dump, it would have been perfect.  At some point, I think it was about 2 AM, I realized that I was the only one awake on the airplane.  I think the gentle swaying of the airplane as I tried to stay in position behind lead, who I found out later had also lost his autopilot and copilot instrument lights and he was the only one awake trying to fly by looking cross cockpit to the pilots instruments, had rocked my crew to sleep.

We were coming up to the Straits of Malacca when I noticed something to the right, out of the corner of my eye.  I turned my head to get a better look and several thousand feet below me I saw flashing lights.  At first I wasn’t sure what I was seeing, but as it continued to move away from under us, I realized that it was another airplane.  Normally I would just assume it was a commercial airliner and think nothing of it but, in my sleep deprived state, my brain went through some odd scenarios.  I thought, “Why is lead heading that direction?  He was in front of me just a minute ago”.  It took a few seconds, but I did come to the right conclusion and then turned my attention back to the task at hand, staying behind lead.  But when I did turn my head back to find lead I was in for a surprise.  Flying is sort of like driving.  Unless you’re careful, your hands will follow the direction you’re looking.  If you’ve ever taught someone to drive you know that new drivers tend to keep their heads looking straight ahead.  It takes some practice checking for threats by moving your head to see what’s going on all around you while still driving the car straight ahead.  The same is true in an airplane.  You’ve got to keep your head on a swivel yet keep your head disconnected from your hand. Well I had failed to disconnect the two and, while I had been looking at the airplane cross beneath us, I had rolled the airplane into 90 degrees of bank.  All I saw outside was stars and blackness and my HSI was telling me that something wasn’t right.  It took a second to realize the instruments weren’t lying so I fought with the seat of my pants and slowly rolled the airplane level and climbed back up to altitude after losing nearly 2000′.

I picked up lead in the distance and as I gradually worked my way back into position I realized that everyone else in the airplane was still sound asleep.  I guess it’s best to die in your sleep but I’m glad I wasn’t the one to facilitate it.  Adrenaline got me through the rest of the night and I figured the rest of the crew didn’t need to know how close they came to death so this is also a “Story my old B-52 crew has never heard”.