…..He asked, “What’s the highest peak in the rest of the route?”, and the Navigator answered, “Just under 10,000 feet”.  “We’ll fly the rest of the route at 11,000″……

Let’s start at the beginning……..

My first operational assignment was flying B-52s.  I had graduated #2 in my class and somehow I was deluded into thinking the higher you graduated the better chance you had getting the aircraft you wanted.  The problem was that I wanted a C-130 or C-141 but I was FAR (Fighter, Attack, Recce) qualified and, unbeknownst to me, that combination set you up for the venerable B-52.  It all worked out in the end, but I found myself at the most northern of SAC’s (Strategic Air Command) southern tier bases.  Only in the Air Force would South Dakota be considered a “southern” base!

After a year in the buff my first Aircraft Commander, a crusty old LtCol, was moved to a staff job. We ended up getting a brand new, straight from upgrade, AC.  With an experienced AC you usually got the “good” deals but once you got a new guy you were stuck with the less than desirable duties.  In this case, we were doing a practice ORI (Operational Readiness Inspection) and since our new AC wasn’t fully trained yet the rest of the crew was stuck flying as safety observers.  This meant that I would sit in the instructors seat, which was no more than an aluminum box with space for size 10 boots, I wear a 13, with a parachute on my back and no ejection seat, for a 10 hour mission, at night.  But at least I was flying with the S-01 crew.  They were the number 1 crew in the wing and the “S” meant that they were a Standardization/Evaluation crew.  The creme de la creme.  I figured I could at least pick up some new techniques.

The route we were flying was a brand new route that no one in the wing had ever flown.  It snaked its’ way through Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska  and a bit of Colorado.  Three hours of low level flying 300′ above the ground at 350 miles per hour in extreme mountainous terrain.  SAC’s idea of a good time.  To truly appreciate the hazards of this type of flying you have to understand that this was long before the days of NVGs (Night Vision Goggles).  The aircraft had two cameras mounted under the nose.  A FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) and a Low light.  The Low Light was an early generation night vision system but required some pretty significant moonlight or starlight to give even a grainy image.  You could select which camera image you wanted to be presented on your screen in the cockpit.  Along with the video presentation the screen also included a ribbon radar altimeter (height above the ground), airspeed, a little cartoon airplane in the center and, what I called, the “squiggly line”.

The squiggly line was a continuously updated presentation of the highest terrain in front of you at either 3, 6, or 10 miles.  The shorter the distance the more aggressively you would fly the route.  Theoretically, if you kept the cartoon aircraft above the cartoon squiggly line you would miss the, not cartoon, mountain by 300 feet.  All of this at night, with no moon, in unfamiliar terrain.  To add to the fun on this particular night, the gyroscopic stabilization of the squiggly line was malfunctioning.  This meant that the line was totally unusable unless the aircraft was straight and level.  Good times!

Now that I’ve set up the scenario, and given you way more information than you really needed, let’s proceed with the rest of the story.  So there I was, at 1:00AM( 0100 for those in the military), sitting on the little aluminum box, parachute on my back, helmet on my head, in the mountains, a lowly 1st lieutenant, flying with the #1 crew, 300′ above the ground, 350 miles per hour, a less than stellar terrain avoidance system, peering into the blackness.  We had just crossed over a 9,000 ft mountain peak and had started a large left, descending turn into a valley.  The squiggly line was useless and, since there was no moon, the cameras showed nothing.  There was that odd silence that occurs when an entire crew is unsure of the situation.  It’s a very unnerving silence that, once you’ve flown long enough, sets off a little voice in the back of your head.  At that point, inexplicably, I did something that you normally wouldn’t do while flying low level at night, I looked up.  On the B-52 there are two windows high up in the cockpit.  They’re used during air-refueling to see the tanker.  Otherwise you rarely use them.  What I saw, through those windows, were stars but the stars ended in the blackness of the silhouette of a mountain straight ahead and thousands of feet up.  I reached forward, pushed all 8 of the throttles to the wall, pulled the yoke back into the pilots lap and screamed “Climb!”.  Once the AC realized what was happening he took control of the aircraft and all I could do was watch as the airspeed bled down to 200 knots and the radar altimeter descended through 500′, 400′, 300′, 200′ and then started climbing again after it bottomed out at 134′.  After what felt like an eternity, someone finally spoke.  It was the AC.  He asked, “What’s the highest peak in the rest of the route?”, and the Navigator answered, “Just under 10,000 feet”.  “We’ll fly the rest of the route at 11,000”.  It was a very quiet flight home.