A year ago today I created this blog as an extension of my own fascination with aviation history, from the aircraft to the personalities that shaped the development and use of aviation since its earliest days. I've always been an inverterate reader when it comes to aviation books and any given time I'll have several books I'm rotating through covering diverse topics in aviation history. I started this blog last March to share even just a bit of the enjoyment I get out of my trips through the history of flight and that became the subtitle for Aviation Trivia of the Day- "Short Trips on the Long Road of Aviation History".

I thought finding an appropriate bit of aviation trivia for Christmas was challenging, trying to think of something appropriate for the one year anniversary of this blog was even harder. I remembered one time having a discussion on Airlinebuzz with my fellow aviation geeks about heroes and role models in aviation. A lot of what happens now in aviation is shaped by many individuals working for a common goal and less so do we have figures like the Orville and Wilbur Wrights or the Donald Douglases or Scott Crossfields and Neil Armstrongs to even individuals like C.R. Smith or C.E. Woolman. Sure, we have standouts now and then these days like Burt Rutan or Herb Kelleher, but I suspect that kids today don't name the personalities of aviation as their role models and heroes.

Mind you, I was virtually an "avgeek" from the get-go, so growing up I had an natural inclination to want to read as much about these folks as I could, whether it was aces like James Jabara or Robin Olds, designers like Igor Sikorsky or Jack Northrop, test pilots like Al White, or pioneers like Amelia Earhart or Yuri Gagarin.

I'm every bit still an avgeek despite a day job that has nothing to do with aviation. So I figured for today I'd talk a bit about one of these aviation figures that always impressed me and to this day as an adult still do. I'll admit this is an unusual choice, but for me it's a mix of what United States Air Force General Bernard Schriever set out to do and what his legacy today has become.

Born in 1910 in Bremen, German, Bernard Schriever found himself bound for the United States as a young boy when the passenger ship his father served on was interned during the First World War in New York. His family settled in the Texas Hill Country where many German immigrants of the day settled and though his father passed away in an industrial accident in 1918, the young Schriever worked hard in school, graduating with honors from San Antonio High School and would go on to graduate with honors as well with a degree in architectural engineering from Texas A&M in 1931. He excelled in ROTC and this earned him his pilot's wings at Kelly Field in San Antonio in 1933.

But Schriever applied himself to his hobbies as well- he worked as a caddy through school and managed to become quite the golfer himself. During the inter-war period, he even briefly played professional golf in addition to flying with the US Army's air mail service, commanding a Civilian Conservation Corps, and even flew for a while for Northwest Airlines.

But his calling came with World War II, flying 63 combat missions in the Pacific with the USAAF's 19th Bombardment Group. He was one of the key personalities in the postwar independent United States Air Force that shaped the USAF's emphasis on technology as he had come to work with the famed aerodynamicist Theodore Von Karman on emerging technologies that would be of use for the nascent USAF. He became the defacto technical expert in the USAF in this field, often clashing with the pragmatic and often bombastic Curtis LeMay, head of the Strategic Air Command.

In the 1950s, LeMay's emphasis on the manned bomber as the main nuclear deterrent force on the United States was near-unassailable. The Navy had a small carrierborne deterrent, but that was it. Schriever saw the future of nuclear deterrence and the security of his adopted homeland would not be with bombers, but with ballistic missiles as he observed the leaps and bounds made by the Russians in their space program. After all, if they could put in Sputnik into orbit, it wasn't that much more of an effort to put a nuclear warhead in the United States.

Having won the confidence of his superiors with his technical knowledge and unassuming style (Schriever's superiors also happened to be General LeMay's superiors) that enabled him to outpace LeMay, he became the head of what was then called the Western Development Division of the USAF and given nearly free-reign to not just handpick his staff and subordinates, but also to engage a new defense procurement and management style that was radical for the day- the WDD would act as a systems manager and integrator, and subcontract parts of weapons systems to defense companies. He actively promoted competition amongst the contractors to spur technological progress but also divided subprojects amongst deserving companies to reduce risk.

When President Eisenhower declared fielding an operational intercontinental ballistic missile was of the "utmost national priority", General Schriever had all the pieces in place to lead the development and fielding of a nuclear deterrent that would eclipse LeMay's bomber force in strength, technology, and security. This was one of the reasons LeMay saw Schriever as a threat- what Schriever could deliver would make LeMay's massive bomber fleets irrelevant in the nation's nuclear strategy. When Schriever got his fourth star, LeMay remarked "If it were up to me, he'd never have gotten that star."

By the time the Atlas ICBM project was underway, the Western Development Division had along with the contractors over 18,000 scientists, 17 major defense companies, over 200 subcontractors, 3,500 suppliers for a total of approximately 70,000 people in an effort that dwarfed the Manhattan Project. Just before Sputnik's launch in 1957, the Western Development Division became the USAF's Ballistic Missile Division (BMD) and under Schriever's leadership, the USAF not only rapidly fielded the Atlas missile (first flight was in June 1957 and the first missile went on alert in January 1958), but also developed, flight tested and fielded the Thor IRBM, two version of the Titan ICBM (the Titan I and the more advanced Titan II) and three versions of the Minuteman ICBM (Minuteman I and II, and Minuteman III, today still the cornerstone of the United States' missile deterrent). And this all occurred in a seven year period between the first Atlas contractor awards in January 1955 and the first operational Minuteman missiles going on alert in November 1962!

By comparison in the same time period, the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger interceptor took ten years from initial awards to operational deployment. To this day, what General Bernard Schriever accomplished in such a short period of time is still unparalleled. The technological burst that arose from the ICBM programs not only benefited the US space program, but formed the robust seed of the modern American industrial technology from advances in materials science, computing, and production methods.

But General Schriever's name is little known in many historical and business/industrial circles this day, but then I suspect from what I've read of him that was fine by him. In his later years, he always considered what his work brought to the US manned space program and scientific exploration of the solar system to be of greater satisfaction and significance than the creation of the ICBM force.

General Schriever passed away in 2005. He was laid to rest amongst other heroes at Arlington National Cemetery where his head stone reads "Bernard A Schriever General US Air Force, Father of the Air Force's Ballistic Missile and Space Programs". Noted military historian Walter Boyne puts it more succinctly "The Right Man in the Right Place at the Right Time".

Source: Beyond the Wild Blue- A History of the United States Air Force, 1947-2007, Second Edition by Walter J. Boyne. Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press, 2007, p117-123.

The First Production ECM Pod for Jet Aircraft: Tee Town

In the late 1950s Soviet defenses against the bombers of the Strategic Air Command were improving by leaps and bounds as more capable fighters, radars and surface-to-air missiles were deployed not just on the periphery of the Soviet Union but also around key cities and industrial centers like Moscow and Leningrad. At the time, SAC's bomber force consisted of 100 Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses, over 1,000 Boeing B-47 Stratojets, and 200 Convair B-36s that were gradually being phased out. As the tip of SAC's spear, the B-52s had a comprehensive electronic countermeasures suite as well as an onboard electronic warfare officer who could constantly reconfigure the jammers to meet the threats.

The B-36s being piston-driven (despite the addition of four jet engines) was soon to be phased out, so there was no need to upgrade to the ECM systems. But the B-47 made up three-quarters of SAC's offensive striking force and unlike the B-52, didn't have the space or power for additional jamming systems to put it on par with the Stratofortresses.

The solution came with a $2.5 million contract code named Tee Town. Carried out in 1958 to 1959 with the assistance of Douglas Aircraft's Tulsa Division, Tee Town consisted of two 14-foot long pods mounted on cantilevered pylons attached to the bomb bay doors. Each pod carried four ALT-6B jammers on the lower half of the pod and covered by a fiberglass dielectric fairing. Ram air was ducted around each of the jammers for cooling and Douglas added upgraded electrical generators on the Tee Town aircraft to handle the increased electrical demand.

Tee Town was planned as an interim measure pending deployment of the specialized Phase V jamming escort version of the B-47 that would accompany strike cells of nuclear-armed Stratojets. Sixty B-47s were modified to carry the Tee Town pods and were assigned to the 303rd Bomb Wing at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona and the 509th Bomb Wing at Pease AFB in New Hampshire.

Although only 120 of the Tee Town pods were built, it marked a historical point as the world's first electronic warfare jamming pod designed for high speed aircraft to go into production.

Source: The History of U.S. Electronic Warfare, Volume II- The Renaissance Years, 1946-1964 by Alfred Price. The Association of Old Crows/Port City Press, 1989, p191-192.

The Ad Hoc Solutions to Get Air-to-Ground Capability in the Navy's Phantoms in Vietnam

When the McDonnell F-4 Phantom II was conceived, it was for the role of fleet air defense but McDonnell wisely made it strong enough to carry a sizeable bombload, a hold over from a previous design incarnation of the Phantom that was optimized for strike missions. Once the first F-4Bs headed out to the fleet, the avionics of the new fighter were geared around air defense but it did have a bombing computer- one for nuclear "toss-bombing" and one that many Phantom crews in Southeast Asia found wholly inadequate for the strike mission they were called upon to perform in the mid-1960s as the Vietnam War escalated. Many squadrons lacked any air-to-ground training and some were lucky just to get triple-ejector racks (TERs) or multiple-ejector racks (MERs) to improve their bomb-carrying capacity.

There were, however, some resourceful crews in the Navy Phantom squadrons headed to Southeast Asia. In those days, most of the Phantom pilots came from the F3H Demon and F4D Skyray communities with new RIOs (radar intercept officers) being trained by Marine Skyknight crews. Those pilots were trained in fleet air defense and didn't have any air-to-ground backgrounds but some pilots came from the attack community (A-1 Skyraider and A-4 Skyhawk) and some were proficient in gunnery having come from F-8 squadrons. Throw in a few motivated officers from the air defense group and you had the making of a solution that improved the Phantom's bombing performance in Vietnam.

The first squadron to come up with a fix to the lack of a proper bombing computer on the Phantom was VF-96 on their mid-1960s cruise aboard the USS Ranger. With the carrier stopping at Subic Bay on its way to the Gulf of Tonkin for line operations over Vietnam, the crews came up with a way remove the fixed reflector sight on the cockpit coaming of the Phantom and replace it with the lead-computing sight from the Douglas A-1 Skyraider. The Skyraider's sight allowed lead angles to be entered and based on calculations made the strike-minded pilots in the squadron, they were able to create a reasonably effective bomb sight for dive attacks. Special mounts were cast in the foundry at Subic Bay that allowed the Skyraider sights to be mounted on the Phantoms and some of the pilots tested them out before the Ranger deployed, becoming the first USN Phantom unit so equipped! Their sights even allowed for more effective use of rockets in ground attacks as well, a weapon used in flak suppression missions.

The pilots of VF-114 who were embarked on the Kitty Hawk had more lead time to prepare than VF-96. Before leaving the United States, the strike-minded pilots in the squadron calculated the sight settings to use on the existing Phantom sight to allow for dive bombing attacks at any angle between 10 to 45 degrees from various altitudes, the thought being that having more time, they might be able to make the stock Phantom sight workable. They found that carrier deck landings jarred the sight settings, repeatedly knocking the fine tunings out of whack. A resourceful ordnance officer went to Litchfield Park in Arizona where a number of retired Skyraiders were being stored and he collected enough Skyraider sights (that as I had mentioned could compute lead angles and were also quite robust) for the Phantoms of the squadron. Low profile mounts were devised that improved the visibility particularly during carrier landings and along with extra MERs and TERs that they had managed to get from a Marine attack squadron, VF-114 became the second squadron to improve its air-to-ground capability.

Both squadrons managed to this on their own without any external assistance from the Navy or McDonnell and for the most part, kept their tactics in use all the way through the 1960s!

Source: Gray Ghosts: US Navy and Marine Corps F-4 Phantoms by Peter E. Davies. Schiffer Publishing, 2000, p74-75.

Before the Rutan Voyager: The BD-2 LOVE ONE

Although he had his career begin at North American Aviation, Jim Bede's real passion was for light aircraft- more importantly, light aircraft that were within the reach of most Americans at a time when ownership of even a two-seat Cessna or Piper was out of reach for most private pilots. In 1961 Jim Bede formed Bede Aviation to produce the BD-1, a two seat low wing monoplane that would be kit built, something that had never been tried before in the general aviation market. Changes in the business plan at the time pushed him to offer the BD-1 as a fully-built aircraft instead of a kitplane. The new company was called American Aviation but a conflict between Jim Bede and the shareholders resulted in Bede being forced to relinquish leadership of his company. The BD-1 became the AA-1 Yankee with Russ Meyer as its president. Russ Meyer would later go on to become president of Cessna and American Aviation was acquired by Grumman in 1972 and the AA-1 would set the pattern for a series of light planes from the company in the 1970s.

Jim Bede, however, decided to refocus his efforts on one of his other aviation dreams- to fly around the world, solo, nonstop, and without refueling. Long before Burt Rutan's Voyager accomplished the same feat but with two pilots in 1986, Jim Bede started work on his aircraft twenty years earlier in 1966.

Using a Schweizer 2-32 sailplane as the basis for what he called the BD-2, he fitted it with a modified 225-horsepower Continental IO-360 six-cylinder piston engine in the nose that could run the prop at low power levels. The wings were sealed to form a large fuel tank and special wingtips were added to the BD-2 to increase the aspect ratio of the wing, increase its fuel capacity and ease ground handling. Additional fuel tanks were built into the fuselage as well. During the flight tests, Jim Bede demonstrated that at 20,000 feet, the BD-2 could cruise at 135 mph using only 20 horsepower which amounted to an impressively low rate of fuel consumption. With a takeoff weight of 3,000 lbs, it was an impressive feat of creative engineering.

Bede christened the BD-2 "LOVE ONE" for Low Orbit Very Efficiently No.1" and managed to stay aloft in the BD-2 for over 70 hours flying back and forth between Kansas City and Columbus, Ohio in 1969 before an electrical fault ended his flight having only covered 9,000 miles- while short of what a global circumnavigation would have entailed, it was still an impressive feat for such a small aircraft.

He never attempted the round-the-world flight in the BD-2, having gone back to his ideas of kitplanes. With the more successful BD-4 and BD-5 designs, he would go on to fame as creating the modern kitplane market.

Source: Air Enthusiast, Volume 4, Number 2, February 1972. "Mr. Bede's Dreamboat" by John Fricker, p69-72.

Four years after its first flight the Republic F-105 Thunderchief in the form of the first production variant, the F-105B, finally reached operational status. Two years prior, though, planning had already begun for the definitive Thunderchief variant, the F-105D, and it was this variant that made up the bulk of the F-105's production run. The USAF's early plans were for 800 F-105s to equip 11 fighter wings of the Tactical Air Command. However, when the US Navy's new McDonnell F-4 Phantom II began smash existing records with its performance, Thunderchief production was abruptly curtailed in favor of the first USAF versions of the Phantom which offered a multirole versatility that the strike-optimized Thunderchief lacked.

Of the 833 Thunderchiefs built, 610 of them were F-105Ds and 143 were the two-seat F-105Fs that would later be converted into the F-105G Wild Weasel aircraft. All were built at Republic's Farmingdale, New York, facility on Long Island.

The Vietnam War, however, decimated the ranks of the F-105s. In the seven years that the F-105 flew combat missions in Vietnam from 1965 right into the 1972 Linebacker II attacks, of the 753 F-105D/F/G models that fought in the war, 395 of them were lost in the war- 296 of those losses were the single seat F-105Ds and the balance of that nearly 400 losses were the F-105F/G models. In addition to those staggering losses in the face of some of the most intense air defenses of the time, an additional 61 F-105s were lost in Southeast Asia from non-combat causes ranging from mechanical failures, engine problems, even mid-air collisions.

When the F-105Ds were withdrawn from combat in 1970, there were only enough Thunderchiefs for three USAF wings- the 347th TFW at Yokota AB in Japan, the 23rd TFW at McConnell AFB, and the 57th FWW at Nellis AFB. In less than two years, those F-105Ds were then passed on to Air National Guard squadrons (yes, squadrons- attrition left only enough Thunderchiefs at this point for single squadrons instead of entire wings) in New Jersey, Kansas, Virigina and the District of Columbia. Three USAF Reserve squadrons briefly operated the F-105D as well, but heavy combat use in Vietnam led to stress and fatigue in the Thunderchief's structure.

The Wild Weasel F-105Gs fared a bit better, having fought on to 1972 before US involvement in Vietnam ended in 1973. Enough of the G model Wild Weasels survived the war to equip three squadrons at George AFB in California where they served as trainers for crews destined for the more advanced McDonnell F-4G Phantom Wild Weasel. The survivors at George AFB ended up with the Georgia ANG.

With few Thunderchiefs left after Vietnam and many having used up their flight hours by the late 1970s, the F-105 had the dubious only of being the only US combat aircraft to be withdrawn from service solely on account of attrition rather than obsolescence.

Source: International Air Power Review, Volume 6, Autumn 2002. "Warplane Classic: The Republic F-105 Thunderchief" by Larry Davis, p120-155.

The Checkered Development of the Westland Wyvern

The original piston-engined Wyvern

The development of the only turboprop fighter to go into production in service was quite checkered, to say the least. The Westland Wyvern underwent three different changes of engine before ending up with the definitive Armstrong-Siddeley 3,667-horsepower Python engine- the first versions used the 24-cylinder Rolls-Royce Eagle engine, then a change to the Rolls-Royce Clyde turboprop before ending up with the Python in the S.4 version of the Wyvern. One of the reasons for the Wyvern's protracted development was that the first prototypes had three new components that test pilots were less than eager to test- a new airframe, a new engine, and a new contra-rotating propeller mechanism.

The original piston engine, the Rolls-Royce Eagle, was the largest and most powerful piston engine ever developed in Great Britain with a power output as high as 3,500 horsepower, the Eagle had an H-configuration (12 cylinders on the top, 12 cylinders on the bottom) and resembled a scaled up Napier Sabre engine. The power output of the Eagle required a contra-rotating propeller and it used two three-bladed props and early contraprops were quite literally engineering and maintenance nightmares. To simplify the mechanism of the Wyvern's contraprop, the ability to feather the props in the event of an engine failure was left out. Should the Wyvern's engine fail, those non-feathered props acted like a giant airbrake and the proscribed engine failure procedure was to enter a steep dive to maintain flying speed and hope that the pullout was judged correctly for a safe landing.

Handing issues and technical failures during the first months of flight testing culminated in the first of many test pilots killed in the flight test of the Wyvern. Squadron Leader Peter Garner suffered an engine failure, dove his Wyvern to avoid stalling and pulled out too late in the dive and the resulting belly-landing knocked him unconscious as his aircraft burned. The result of this was that Westland could not find volunteers to fly the Wyvern prototypes as many in the company and outside the company didn't feel the increased pay was worth the risk of flying a plane that already had a dangerous reputation.

Eventually Westland hired on one of Rolls-Royce's engine test pilots who helped develop the Eagle engine for flight test duties. But despite this, several more test pilots would lose their lives in Wyvern accidents, even as the engines were changed from the piston Eagle to the turbine Clyde engine and finally the definitive Python turboprop.

Squadron Leader Cliff Roger would have two close calls flying the piston-powered Wyvern, One of the Rolls-Royce engine test pilots who flew for RAF Bomber Command in the Second World War, Roger was flying a full-throttle test in the Wyvern when the engine overheated and quit. Before he put his aircraft into the prescribed steep dive, he recognized Lincoln Cathedral and remembered a disused airfield from his Bomber Command days just to the west of the city. Missing several obstacles on the way, he safely touched down in the field only to notice his control column moving by itself. Outside was an old man who was jerking the aileron and beating the aircraft with a stick- apparently he was an old farmer who bought the land that used to be the airfield and thought that his land was being taken back to be an airfield again. After Roger explained his situation, the farmer took him back to his farm house for a sumptous meal and for years afterward he allowed Garner to hunt on his land!

On another test flight, Rogers' Wyvern Eagle engine exploded and he again recognized a local landmark, the Lichfield Cathedral and knew of another old RAF airfield near his location. With his engine stopped and this time on fire, he entered a steep dive but this time missed the old runway, instead landing on a soccer field with a game going on as players and referees scrambled out of the way. Rogers considered retiring from test flying after another safe landing, but he stuck it out and ended up the Chief Test Pilot for Rolls-Royce.

Source: Tests of Character- Epic Flights by Legendary Test Pilots by Donald Middleton. Airlife Books, 1995, p95-100.

By 1944, the US Navy's unrestricted submarine warfare against Japanese shipping had reached its highest totals in terms of shipping sunk and it was taking its toll on Japanese industry. As an island nation with few natural resources, Japan was dependent upon shipping for the importation of raw materials and oil for not just its industry but also for it military forces. The Imperial Japanese Army Air Force looked at using transport gliders to bring oil from Sumatra to Japan, but the fuel costs to do so outweighed the volume of oil brought in. The Imperial Japanese Navy, however, with its experience in operating large seaplanes, asked Kawanshi to develop a large transport seaplane to make up for the shipping losses.

Kawanshi had already designed and put into production two large flying boats, the H6K (Allied code named "Mavis") and the H8K (Allied code named "Emily"). Kawanshi had also modified its production flying boats for the transport role as well. Kawanshi's design for a large transport flying boat was designated H11K Soku ("Blue Sky").

Since metal alloys were desperately needed in the production of fighters for homeland defense, Kawanshi's H11K would have been made of wood wherever possible- making it in a sense a Japanese counterpart to the Hughes HK-1 "Spruce Goose". Starting out by scaling up the H8K but having a nearly identical fuselage keel, the H11K was powered by four 1,850-hp radial engines with most of the wings and fuselage made of wood. The two deck fuselage had a clamshell-opening nose to allow straight-in loading of cargo.

Kawanshi built a full-scale mockup of the H11K for inspection and review by the IJN at one of its facilities on the west coast of Japan. However, the deteriorating war situation meant that after design began in 1944, the full-scale mockup was nearly completed on 1 April 1945 when it was destroyed along with most of the Kawanshi facilities in a bombing attack. No further work was attempted on the H11K Soku after the attack.

Source: Japanese Secret Projects: Experimental Aircraft of the IJA and IJN 1939-1945 by Edwin M. Dyer, III. Midland Publishing/Ian Allan Publishing, Ltd, 2009, p63-64.

Contrary to common belief and the traditions of the Grumman "Iron Works" embodied in the F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat, the F8F Bearcat was designed from the outset to be as light as possible to give it the highest performance possible. The big Pratt & Whitney R-2800 radial engine of the Bearcat weighed about 3,000 lbs and the airframe itself weighed in at only 4,000 lbs empty- quite literally making the Bearcat "half-engine"! To make the aircraft as light as possible, many features common to other Grumman fighters were left out or reduced on the Bearcat- not to mention limits on the fuel load and armament. After the Bearcat landed on the carrier deck, the deck crew would have to manually stow the tailhook and used a pry bar that fit into a socket in the wings to manually fold the wings. Even the prop spinner was left off to save weight.

But by far the most unusual feature originally intended for the Bearcat in pursuit of lightness was what Grumman called the "Safety Wing Tips". The designers of the Bearcat figured out that if the outer wingtips of the Bearcat could be designed to tear off if 9Gs was exceeded in combat, then the wing inboard of that point could be lighter yet still support the specified 13G ultimate load- instead of having a whole wing to support 13Gs, they'd only have enough structure on the outer 3 feet of wing for 9Gs.

Well, there's a problem with that idea- the Bearcat's small wing meant that losing 3 feet of wing on one side would lead to control issues with asymmetric lift. Primer cord was fitted inside each wing to blow off each wingtip simultaneously- the first wingtip to shear off if 9Gs were exceeded tripped a microswitch that detonated the primer cord on the other wing to shear off its wingtip. It actually got flight tested and chase pilots were less than thrilled about the idea of all the flying shrapnel, so the system was redesigned to use explosive bolts.

Unfortunately in an accident during flight testing a ground crewman was killed when one wing's explosive bolts fired off, so the controversial system was scrapped and Grumman had the wing re-stressed for a lighter G load.

Source: Aviation History, May 2010. "Engine with a Saddle: What the bantamweight Bearcat lacked in finesse in made up for with brute strength" by Stephen Wilkinson, p25-31.

During the Second World War, Germany supplied large numbers of Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers to Italy, Romania, Hungary, Croatia, and Slovakia. But as the war progressed, there were instances of the Stukas being turned around and used against German units.

Slovakia was one of the smallest users of the Stuka after having allied itself with Germany in 1940. In return for sending units to fight with the Wehrmacht in Russia, the Slovak Air Force received Ju 87 Stukas that were assigned to the 11th Letka (Squadron) in 1943. By the summer of 1944 anti-German sentiment was at an all-time high in the country as the Soviet Red Army was advancing through the Balkans. To maintain control over Slovakia, the Wehrmacht occupied the nation, triggering a nationwide uprising. As the fighting increased, the 11th Letka used its Stukas against the Germans before having to seek sanctuary with the advancing Red Army.

The Romanians got their first Ju 87 Stukas in 1943 with the arrival of the Ju 87D "Dora" variant. Forty-five aircraft were assigned to Grupul 3 Bombardement Picaj (No. 3 Bomber Group) which was composed of three "escadrillas" (squadrons). Grupul 3's Stukas were first committed to the Eastern Front, supporting the German units against the Soviet Red Army. In May 1944 a second Romanian Stuka group was established, Grupul 6, again composed of three squadrons. The two Stuka groups were involved in heavy fighting against the advance of the Red Army and heavy losses were sustained in the face of Soviet air superiority. In August 1944, a coup d'etat overthrew the Fascist regime of Romania and the nation switched sides to join the Soviet forces against Germany. The Luftwaffe tried to seize some of the Romanian Stuka's but enough remained in Romanian hands to combine Grupul 3 and Grupul 6 into a single unit to support the Soviet Red Army in its advance through Moldavia and Slovakia. The Romanians continued to use the Stuka against the retreating Germans until the spring of 1945 when they re-equipped with Soviet ground attack aircraft.

By far Italy was the largest export user of the Ju 87 Stuka with the first examples arriving in the summer of 1940 for use in North Africa. Most of the Italian Stukas saw action in North Africa but beginning with the British victory at El Alamein and the American landings in Morocco, the Italy's Stuka force began to decline. In July 1943 Mussolini was overthrown and killed and the provisional government switched sides to join the Allies. At the time of the 1943 switch, only the 121st Gruppo (Group) based on Sardinia was operational with the Stuka and unit switched sides to join the Allies as some Italian units remained with the puppet Fascist regime installed in northern Italy by the Germans. However, the effectiveness of the Stukas in the hands of the new Italian C0-Belligerent Air Force was mixed as spare parts shortages rendered most of the 121st Gruppo's dive bombers useless.

Source: Military Aircraft Monthly, Volume 9 Issue 1. "Airfile 21: Stuka! The Junkers Ju 87 Stuka" by David James, p46-48.

As the Cold War entered its most heightened period in the 1960s, the United States shifted its nuclear deterrent strategy from massive retaliation to that of what was called "flexible response"- instead of one all-out retaliatory launch, flexible response meant that the President and the National Command Authority (NCA) would have the ability to conduct a more limited nuclear exchange against specific targets. Implicit in the shift to flexible response was the need to have a secure and survivable link to all of the elements of the nuclear forces even after an initial nuclear strike on the United States.

Even though a 15-minute ground alert for the bombers of the Strategic Air Command and alternate underground command centers (in addition to SAC Headquarters at Offutt AFB in Nebraska, there were alternate command posts at Barksdale AFB, Louisiana, March AFB, California, and Westover AFB in Massachusetts) improved the survivability of SAC's nuclear assets, improvements in the Soviet ICBM force meant that only an airborne platform would be the most survivable command post and in 1960, that meant basing such a command post on the Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker.

In July 1960 not only had SAC managed to put one-third of its bomber forces on a 15-minute ground alert, but it began a six-month experiment on using KC-135s converted into airborne command posts in the event that the ground command posts were knocked out by a Soviet missile strike. Five KC-135s were put on ground alert at Offutt AFB and tested on their ability to not only takeoff within 15 minutes, but also their ability to perform as an alternate command post and assume control of the nation's bomber and missile deterrent in the event of the loss of the primary command posts. On board each KC-135 was an AEAO- Airborne Emergency Action Office- at first a SAC colonel, but later a general, who would assume command in the event communications were lost with the SAC HQ and the National Command Authority. After six months of testing, the program was a success and the head of SAC, General Thomas Power, ordered more KC-135s converted into emergency command posts.

By July 1961 50% of SAC's bomber forces were now on 15-minute ground alert in addition to Chrome Dome, having a portion of SAC's B-52 Stratofortresses on airborne alert as well. The Titan II and Minuteman ICBMs were quickly replacing the more cumbersome Atlas ICBM as well.

To control these growing forces, SAC relied on what was called PACCS- Post-Attack Command and Control System that used the airborne command post KC-135s along with specially-equipped EB-47 Stratojets that orbited near ICBM missile fields to act as radio relays between the airbone command posts and the ICBM silos. In 1965 the Stratojet relays were phased out and replaced with specially-equipped EC-135s as the airborne command post KC-135s had been redesignated.

The first operational Looking Glass airborne command post mission flew on 3 February 1961. The name Looking Glass indicated that the entire PACCS network "mirrored" the functions of SAC's underground command posts. The primary Looking Glass EC-135 maintained the airborne alert with other EC-135s that functioned as auxiliary command posts and relay aircraft sitting on 15-minute ground alert. On 17 April 1967 the battle staff aboard a Looking Glass aircraft demonstrated the ability to launch a Minuteman ICBM from Vandenberg AFB in California. In addition, a command post dedicated to the President sat alert at Andrews AFB under the code name Night Watch. In 1974, the Night Watch aircraft were upgraded to the larger and more capable E-4A Advanced Airborne National Command Posts (AABNCP).

In the event of a national emergency, the Looking Glass EC-135 would orbit over the central USA along with two auxiliary EC-135 command posts (called AUXCAPS). Three more EC-135s would scramble and these were designated ALCCs (Airborne Launch Control Centers) and they would orbit over the ICBM missile fields in Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas. Two more EC-135s would act as radio relay platforms to connect the President aboard the E-4 command post to the Looking Glass aircraft and the AUXCAPS aircraft.

Should contact be lost with the National Command Authority or SAC HQ in Omaha, after satisfying a strict set of guidelines, the battle staff aboard the Looking Glass would assume control of the US nuclear forces and "assess battle damage, communications, radioactive fallout and the location and strength of surviving forces". Once responsible for executing the SIOP (Single Integrated Operations Plan, the nation's nuclear battle plan), four officers on the Looking Glass all had to validate the intent to launch and simultaneously turn their launch keys. The four officers were the AEAO, the communications officer, the operations officer, and the aircraft commander.

The final Looking Glass mission landed at 2:28PM EDT on 24 July 1990, ending what had been a continuous airborne alert by Looking Glass command posts since the first flight in February 1961. Only twice did the airborne alert get interrupted, both times to drop off an critically ill crew member and relaunching within 20 minutes. Today the role of Looking Glass has been assumed by the Navy's E-6B Mercury TACAMO force which for the first time allows airborne control of all three elements of the nuclear triad- bombers, ICBMs and the SLBMs aboard the Navy's Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines.

Source: Boeing KC-135 Stratotanker- More Than Just A Tanker by Robert S. Hopkins III. Aerofax, 1997, p113-118.