FineScale Modeler 12 2002

My first exposure to the B-52 Stratofortress was unforgettable - I felt it in my feet! Three long, low rumbles, barely audible - like distant thunder or an earthquake. ''Arc Light," a staff sergeant casually muttered as he sat across the table from me at the Tan Son Nhut base library in Vietnam in October 1972. I was "in-country" only a week, so he could see I needed more than a two-word explanation. "A cell of three B-52s dropping bombs maybe 30 miles from here.'' Incredible! Thirty miles away and 1 could sense the devastation. Boeings eight-engine heavy bomber, often dubbed "BUFF'' for "Big Ugly Fat Fellow" took the place of the equally amazing Convair B-36 Peacemaker as the Strategic Air Command's ''big stick" in the mid-1950s. The B-36 was never used in combat but stood nuclear alert during the Korean War. Unlike the B-36, the B-52 has seen action in all but the briefest U.S. military campaigns since the mid-1960s.

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