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Barksdale bombers expand B-52 capabilities

Three Barksdale Air Force Base B-52s used a modern twist to a historic mission almost 70 years old to add a dramatic new capability to the bomber’s long list of tricks.

Flying almost 10 hours and putting about 3,500 miles under their wings Friday, the trio of veteran bombers pinpointed a specific ship several hundred miles east of Bermuda then spent two hours gathering images and information about it.

In May 1938, three B-17 bombers from what was then the 2nd Bomb Group intercepted the Italian cruise liner Rex several hundred miles east of New York City.

Friday’s mission, called Rex Redux, quickly found the target, the USNS 2nd Lt. John P. Bobo. The B-52s then electronically shipped intelligence gathered by a targeting pod, called LITENING, to planners on land, who in a war or emergency could have directed the bombers to take further action.

The three B-52s represented the range of cooperation involved in transforming LITENING into a cyber-age weapon married to the veteran, versatile and long-range B-52.

The mission leader was Lt. Col. Robert Nordberg, of the Air Force Reserve’s 93rd Bomb Squadron, which pioneered the use of LITENING on the B-52. With him was fellow reservist Lt. Col. Bill “Sleepy” Floyd, one of the foremost developers of the system.

A second airplane was commanded by Lt. Col. Ricardo Beruvides, of the 49th Test Squadron. The third was under the command of Lt. Col. James Noetzel, of the 2nd Bomb Wing’s 96th Bomb Squadron. The flight marked the active-duty Air Force’s first such use of LITENING.

“It was a first-rate mission,” an exultant Col. Robert Wheeler, new head of the 2nd Bomb Wing, said during a briefing that followed the bombers’ return just after 6 p.m. “But this is just a first step.”

Hints of future uses for the capabilities proved in Friday’s mission could come from “targets of opportunity” tasks the bombers were given on their leg home. They were sent to give reports on selected targets, from a dam on a lake to an airport parking ramp, exactly the targets terrorists might wish to destroy or that could be damaged in natural disasters.

The impetus for the mission came from the highest echelons of the Air Force. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the service’s chief of staff, suggested the Rex mission of 1938 as a model for a demonstration of the new capabilities of the LITENING/B-52 team.

The May 1938 mission caused some furor with other branches of the military, which saw the air strike capability as an assault on entrenched and historic means of defending the nation.

“The airmen generated a great deal of heat over the mission,” Moseley wrote of his troops at Barksdale. “But the image was forever burned in the minds of folks.”