Nicknamed the 'Big Ugly Fat Fella' (the more polite version!), or 'Buff' for short, Boeing's B-52 has for years epitomised American air power. When the first of the breed took to the skies above Seattle on 15 April 1952, no one dared imagine that the huge shiny bomber would be retained as a key ingredient in the nation's nuclear'triad' for nearly half a century. Today, nearly forty years down the road, only 270 of the original 744 airframes remain in front-line service, yet the 'Buff' continues to eclipse its successors numerically. What is all the more remarkable is that many of these so-called follow-on bombers have already been retired, relegated to the status of gate guardian or museum piece, or left to rot amidst the scrub and sand at the Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, 'boneyard'. The glamorous B/TB-58 Hustlers were cleaved by giant axes into so many chunks of scrap metal during the early 1970s; a solitary, unairworthy XB-70A Valkyrie is parked at the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio; and Strategic Air Command's fleet of sixty FB-111A 'Aardvarks' look set to follow a similar fate long before the thick black smoke of a Stratofortress 'cart start' becomes a sight of yesteryear.
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