AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 130 / 172

Plate 130 of 172 · Cold War · Strategic bomber

Boeing B-52D Stratofortress

B-52D, painted as 56-0689, IWM Duxford’s Boeing B-52D Stratofortress and the only B-52 in a British museum, a B-52D-40-BW (c/n 464060) that joined the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, in October 1957, flew more than 200 bombing missions in the Vietnam War and was flown into Duxford by a 7th Bomb Wing crew on 8 October 1983, the largest aircraft ever to land there, standing outside until it moved into the American Air Museum in 1997: an eight-jet strategic bomber of 185 ft span with Pratt & Whitney J57 turbojets in four twin pods under a thin, shoulder-mounted wing swept at 35 degrees, 3,000 US gallon fuel tanks near the wing tips, the B-52D’s tall fin, a tail turret with four .50 calibre guns and a bicycle undercarriage of four twin-wheel trucks with outrigger wheels under the outer wing, shown standing level with the wing drooping under its own weight: the Vietnam-era South-East Asia scheme as displayed today, tan and two greens on the upper surfaces over gloss black sides, fin and undersides, a yellow ‘689’ under the cockpit and a small red ‘0689’ on each side of the nose, a red data block and rows of red mission symbols on the port side behind the cockpit and a red ‘60689’ on the fin (no national insignia, as on the aircraft today).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as 56-0689, IWM Duxford’s Boeing B-52D Stratofortress and the only B-52 in a British museum, a B-52D-40-BW (c/n 464060) that joined the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota, in October 1957, flew more than 200 bombing missions in the Vietnam War and was flown into Duxford by a 7th Bomb Wing crew on 8 October 1983, the largest aircraft ever to land there, standing outside until it moved into the American Air Museum in 1997: an eight-jet strategic bomber of 185 ft span with Pratt & Whitney J57 turbojets in four twin pods under a thin, shoulder-mounted wing swept at 35 degrees, 3,000 US gallon fuel tanks near the wing tips, the B-52D’s tall fin, a tail turret with four .50 calibre guns and a bicycle undercarriage of four twin-wheel trucks with outrigger wheels under the outer wing, shown standing level with the wing drooping under its own weight: the Vietnam-era South-East Asia scheme as displayed today, tan and two greens on the upper surfaces over gloss black sides, fin and undersides, a yellow ‘689’ under the cockpit and a small red ‘0689’ on each side of the nose, a red data block and rows of red mission symbols on the port side behind the cockpit and a red ‘60689’ on the fin (no national insignia, as on the aircraft today). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (1.3 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (B-52D); engine, crew and dimensions are for the B-52D modelled here.

History

The B-52D Stratofortress

Boeing began work on an intercontinental bomber for the US Army Air Forces in 1946, first as a straight-winged turboprop. In October 1948, with Pratt & Whitney’s J57 turbojet in prospect, a small Boeing team in a Dayton hotel reworked it over a weekend into the shape that was built: a thin wing swept at 35 degrees, mounted high on the fuselage, with eight jets in four twin pods. The YB-52 flew from Seattle on 15 April 1952, and Strategic Air Command took its first B-52Bs at Castle Air Force Base in California in 1955. The bomb bay sat between two pairs of main wheels in tandem, so outrigger wheels near the wing tips kept the drooping wing off the runway.

Boeing built 744 B-52s at Seattle and Wichita, in eight models, the last delivered in 1962. The B-52D, of which 170 were built, first flew in May 1956 and was meant for long-range bombing rather than reconnaissance. It kept the tall fin of the early models and a tail gunner in a turret at the very back with four .50 calibre machine guns. From late 1965 the D models were rebuilt under the ‘Big Belly’ programme to carry up to 84 500 lb bombs inside and 24 750 lb bombs on racks under the wings, about 60,000 lb in all.

B-52s began bombing in Vietnam from Guam in June 1965 under the name Arc Light, and from 1966 the B-52D did most of the work, flying from Guam and from U-Tapao in Thailand. In the Linebacker II raids on Hanoi and Haiphong in December 1972, B-52Ds and Gs flew more than 700 sorties in eleven nights and fifteen were shot down by surface-to-air missiles. The last B-52Ds were retired in 1983. The B-52H, the final model, is still in service and is being re-engined to keep it flying beyond 2050, a century after the first flight.

This airframe

B-52D 56-0689

56-0689The airframe modelled

56-0689 is a B-52D-40-BW, built by Boeing at Seattle. It joined the 28th Bomb Wing at Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota, in October 1957, and flew more than 200 bombing missions in the Vietnam War. As the B-52D was being retired it was set aside for the Imperial War Museum, and on 8 October 1983 a 7th Bomb Wing crew flew it into Duxford, the largest aircraft ever to land there. It stood outside for fourteen years until it was moved into the new American Air Museum, which opened in 1997. It is the only B-52 in a British museum. The model shows it as displayed today, in the Vietnam-era South-East Asia scheme: tan and two greens on top, gloss black sides, fin and undersides, a yellow ‘689’ on the nose and rows of red mission symbols behind the cockpit.

See it at IWM Duxford

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the B-52D Stratofortress in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 172 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.