Fresh Start 2002: Nonstop Flight

The B-52 Stratofortress, the big-shouldered U.S. Air Force bomber, has inspired fear as a weapon and respect as a pillar of nuclear deterrence. It has inspired whimsy too: The band the B-52s took their name from the slang expression for a beehive hairdo that looks like the bomber's nose. In Dr. Strangelove, the B-52 inspired satire as a symbol of Cold War excess.

What the B-52 has not inspired in a long time is technological awe. That's because the B-52 is old. The youngest B-52 that is still flying was delivered to the Air Force on October 26, 1962. Most of the nation's 94 active B-52s have been in service for more than four decades. In an era when a 9-month-old laptop already feels retro, when people who keep their cars for six years are considered quaint, the fact that the most powerful military in the world relies on a fleet of 40-year-old bombers is pretty astonishing. It would be hard to envision keeping something as common as a Honda Accord going for more than 20 years.

And the B-52 is not some creaky relic that the military keeps around for air shows. The planes have seen more combat in this decade than in the previous three decades combined. B-52s dropped one-third of the bombs that were loosed on Saddam Hussein during Desert Storm. They flew 33 out of 34 days during the bombing of Slobodan Milosevic's capital, Belgrade. And on Sunday, October 7, 2001, B-52s flew in the opening wave of attacks on the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The Air Force remains so enthusiastic about its 40-year-old bombers that it has publicly declared that the B-52 will continue to be a crucial element of the nation's war-fighting ability for another 40 years -- until 2040. At that point, the B-52 will not only be older than all of the people flying it -- it will have outlived most of the people who have ever flown it. If the B-52 does remain in service for 80 years, it will be like using a weapon from the Civil War to win World War II.

"It boggles the mind," says retired Brigadier General Guy Townsend, who was one of two pilots on the very first B-52 test flight on April 15, 1952. "Right now, there are three generations of pilots who have flown that plane -- grandfather, father, and son -- in the same family. If it lasts until 2040, five generations will have flown the same plane."

How the Air Force maintains and upgrades the B-52 -- a plane designed during the Truman administration, using what was then the best vacuum-tube technology, to carry weapons that have long since been relegated to museums -- is a story of persistence, steadiness, and patience. It's an approach that is much out of fashion in our increasingly disposable business culture. But as the United States turns from an economy with a mild recession into one that is deeply troubled and operating through a war, and as capital budgets evaporate and companies look for ways to scrape by rather than buy new, the saga of the B-52 offers a window on what real adaptability requires. Forget making a fresh start. The B-52 is the plane that never stops.

Everything Old Is New Again

When you sit in the pilot's seat of a B-52 and look around the cockpit, there is no confusion about the era in which the plane was made. The instrument panel is dominated by electromechanical gauges -- the kind with white needles that vibrate and flutter when the B-52's eight jet engines are running. There are black plastic knobs that might have come off of an old stove. Small warning lights poke up, many with explanations etched directly onto the panel: "Blinking amber light indicates 'no flow' condition."

Maintenance chief Mike T. is giving a tour of a B-52 in a maintenance dock at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City; the plane is in the process of being dismantled and put back together again. (Editor's note: Due to the war in Afghanistan, the Department of Defense has requested that those who are directly responsible for keeping B-52 bombers flying not be identified by last name.) In 1970, Mike started working at Tinker as an electrician's helper, and he began working on B-52s in 1974. With occasional side trips to support other planes -- including the B-1, which was supposed to replace the B-52 -- Mike's career has been dominated by B-52s. He is now in charge of the 353 men and women who do scheduled maintenance on them. "I love this airplane," he says. "It's been my life."

The cockpit of the B-52, like the airplane itself, is a little misleading: It's not quite as antique as it looks. Mike nods at a circuit-breaker panel to the right of the copilot. "That breaker panel is original equipment," he says. "But see these two breakers near the bottom? We installed those in the '70s, I guess. Those are for the eyes." In the mid-1970s, each B-52 was upgraded with a pair of "eyes" that were mounted on the plane's belly near the nose. The left eye is a low-light television camera; the right eye is an infrared imaging system.