To a Darkling Target Aboard a B-52

From Guam, TIME's Tokyo Bureau Chief Herman Nickel reports on one B-52's mission over North Viet Nam:

UNLIKE the bombers of more glamorous wars, this one wore no buxom bathing beauty on her fuselage. Nor was a girl's name painted on her nose. In accord with Strategic Air Command practice, only a number--6623--stenciled in yellow on her four-story-high black tail distinguished her from the 85 other B-52s of SAC's 43rd Strategic Air Wing that lined the tarmac at Andersen Air Force Base on Guam.

In the 16 hours or so since she had returned from her last mission, 6623 had been refueled and her bomb bay rearmed with 42 stubby 750-lb. bombs. In addition, 24 thin, cigar-shaped 500-Ib. bombs had been attached in clusters to her long, swept-back wings (total span: 185 ft.). At 10:30 p.m., as low-hanging clouds raced past a sickle moon, a beat-up bus unloaded 6623's six-man crew for the night. The aircraft commander, Captain Ed Petersen, a 27-year-old graduate of the Air Force Academy, walked around the big plane, flashlight in hand, with the sergeant who was in charge of the ground crew. Petersen spotted a suspicious puddle of liquid beneath the plane. "I drank it. It's water," reported the crew chief.

Reassured, Petersen climbed the narrow steps up to the flight deck, where his copilot, First Lieut. Joseph Czarkovski, had already started the preflight checkout of the plane's complex systems. Unlike air crews in World War 11 or Korea, who got to know all the foibles of their particular aircraft, Petersen and his men are not assigned to one plane. It was their first flight in 6623, and they might never fly her again. The crew had been together only since mid-January, and Petersen was substituted at the last moment for the regular aircraft commander, who had developed back trouble. But no sweat, as the SAC men say. Each member of a B-52 crew is a professional, and that counts far more than sentimental attachments.

Precisely on schedule at 11:23, Petersen started the B-52's eight engines, and 6623 taxied to her place as the third plane in a three-bomber flight. It took 45 agonizingly long seconds to lift her 500,000 Ibs. into the air. "I'm scared every time we get one of these machines off the ground," said Czarkovski, with cheerful candor. The three B-52Ds climbed slowly to approximately 30,000 feet and set a course for North Viet Nam, 2,600 miles west. They flew strung out in a loose formation about two miles apart, to later confuse North Viet Nam's Soviet-supplied radar. -

Not far from the Asian mainland, 6623 made a rendezvous with a KC-135 tanker, which topped up her tanks for the run over Viet Nam and back. A short time later, Captain Larry Underwood, 27, the electronics warfare officer, detected the first traces of enemy radar bouncing off 6623. Seated at a console behind the flight deck, Underwood began employing a number of top-secret jamming devices to conceal 6623 within its own protective bubble of electronic countermeasures. As the B-52 came within range of surface-to-air missiles, Underwood employed other devices that blocked the missile radar from locking on to the big plane. Meanwhile Captain Petersen started to put the plane through turns to make 6623 a more elusive target.

As they wove toward "the heavily defended area"--an Air Force euphemism that usually means North Viet Nam--the crew, who at night never see the land below them, knew almost nothing about their target. It had been picked by others and would remain almost completely anonymous. The target was given only as a set of coordinates on a map. As the bisecting point of those coordinates drew near, Major Harold Clayton, 39, the radar navigation officer (the new term for bombardier), directed the final approach.

The release of the bombs, all 43,500 Ibs. of them, was oddly anticlimactic. There was no sudden lurch upward, hardly even a gentle shudder. Captain Petersen turned the plane eastward to ward Guam. The run over North Viet Nam had taken only ten minutes. So far as the electronics warfare officer could tell, no one had fired at 6623. "It's odd," he said, "but they don't take every target that comes their way."

On the return homeward leg, Petersen warmed up a TV-style steak dinner. Other crew members, by choice, munched on sandwiches. Then, while Petersen and Captain Kenneth Temple, 29, the navigator, flew into the morning sun, the others slept intermittently. Staff Sergeant Gerald Clemens, 26, who is isolated from the rest of the crew in the tailgunner compartment, about 150 feet away from the flight deck, also got permission to doze.

Guam emerged like a green emerald in the blue Pacific, and Petersen brought 6623 in for a perfect landing; a yellow chute billowing from the tail aided the plane's brakes. Slowly 6623 rolled to the assigned parking spot, and the first of six stiff-legged, unshaven and slightly grubby men stepped to the ground. To the minute, the mission had lasted twelve hours.

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