United States Air Force B-50 Superfortress being refueled in mid-air by a converted KB-29 tanker on its round the world flight. |
There was a time when a big aviation
first would be a huge deal—newspaper headlines, magazine covers,
weeks in the newsreels, ticker tape
parades, a hand shake with the President, may be even a movie.
The pilot would become a household name and instant celebrity.
Those
days were passed.
Aviation was out of its infancy
and after years of war—much of it conducted in and from the air—it accomplishments were beginning to seem routine. The public
had other things on its mind, shiny new technologies like infant television to tantalize their interest.
Not that the event escaped notice. It did made headlines. Very
big wigs indeed were on hand to congratulate Captain James Gallagher and his 14 officers and men including two other pilots and two complete flight crews when they landed
the Lucky
Lady II, a B-50 heavy bomber,
at Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas on March 2, 1949. They
had just completed the first non-stop flight around the world—23,452 miles—in 94 hours and one
minute. The flight was made possible by mid-air refueling.
Pictures
of the crew with the welcoming committee of Secretary of the Air Force W. Stuart Symington; Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt S. Vandenberg; Lieutenant General Curtis LeMay, Commanding General of the Strategic Air Command
(SAC); and Major General Roger M. Ramey, Commanding General of the Eighth Air
Force did make the papers. That’s
was a hell of a lot of brass and an indication of how important the flight
was considered in the new Defense
Department.
If the American public did not remain long enrapt by the story, the real intended
audience far away in the Kremlin
certainly got the point. In the USSR
Joseph Stalin clearly got the message even if General LeMay had not
pointedly made told the press that the Air Force now had the capability of flying bombing missions from
anywhere in the United States to “any
place in the world that required the atomic bomb.” And by anyplace, he meant Moscow.
Secretary Symington, who knew that the Soviets would be aware that there was only a small fleet of B-50s and other heavy bombers, upped the ante by pointing out that with mid-air refueling even medium range bombers could carry out such long-range missions.
American relations with the Soviet
Union had deteriorated badly
since the heady days of the end of World War II. The Russians
had moved decisively to create a
sphere of influence in Eastern Europe and established vassal Communist
Republics from the Baltic to the
Balkans. It was pressing
hard to bring in neutral Austria
and backing a civil war in Greece.
The Allied Zones of the divided city of Berlin, deep within the
Soviet Occupation Zone in Germany, had been blockaded since May of 1948 and survived only by a massive airlift
operation. The Cold War was on and threatening
to heat up.
Officials
at the highest levels had decided only in January that it
was time to send an unmistakable message
to Moscow. Five planes and crews from the 43rd
Bombardment Group were selected to train
and prepare for the mission in six
weeks. The B-50 was an upgrade and modernization of the B-29
that had come into service at the
end of the War and delivered the Atomic
Bombs to Japan. Like its predecessor,
it was designated the Superfortress. The planes were modified by the addition of an extra
fuel tank in part of the bomb bay
and were armed with 12 .50-caliber machine guns. They were to carry no payload, atomic or conventional
bombs on this mission.
Each crew and plane was to stand by to take off on the mission in succession until one would succeed. The first, Global Queen, took off
from Carswell on February 25 but was forced
to abandon the flight in the Azores after
an engine fire.
The round the world flight of the Lucky Lady II carefully avoided Soviet Air Space. The star points represent Carswell AFB and the four re-fulling spots. |
Lucky
Lady II, named for a famous 8th Air Force B-17 shot down in 1943, took off the next day. She headed
east over the Atlantic Ocean
following a flight plan that would
take her well south of the Soviet
Union and only clip a remote region
of China before undertaking the long trip across the Pacific.
The plane was refueled four times by KB-29M tankers—converted B-29 bombers—over the Azores, Dhahran Airfield
in Saudi Arabia, Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, and Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. The three pilots rotated on four hour shifts and the two flight crews every six hours.
If Capt. Gallagher and his crew never became household names, they were
honored. All crew members were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and they won
the Mackay Trophy recognizing the outstanding flight of the year by the National Aeronautic Association and the
Air Age Trophy of the Air Force Association.
The B-50’s would soon be phased out as the Air Force’s prime strategic bomber by the huge new B-36 with its six piston push engines eventually supplemented with two jet engines.
The B-36 would have intercontinental
capabilities without refueling. By
the later 1950’s that aircraft would be replaced by the all jet B-52 Stratofortress, versions of which
are remarkably still in service 60 tears
later.
Just eight years after the first non-stop
flight Lucky Lady II, a B-52 flew a similar mission in 45 hours and 19 minutes, less than half the time the Lady
II.
As for the target audience of the stunt, it certainly got Stalin’s attention. He ramped up the Soviet atomic bomb project and was able to detonate a weapon later that year on August 29. He also put a program to build an intercontinental bomber fleet into high gear and put a lot of chips on a missile program that he
hoped would leapfrog the USSR ahead
of the USA in the now full-blown Arms Race.
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