WI: SAC Adopts the B-60

The B-52 is a legendary aircraft and there is a huge tendency to wank about it.

Too excess.

The thing that has kept the B-52 going in no small part is that there were so many built to begin with. 744. Remember only 10% of that number flies today.

Compare the B-52 to the B-1B (100 built) after they had both been in service for 20 years.

After 20 years, about 67% of the B-1s were still in service while less than 50% of B-52s were still in service (this was still while the Cold War was raging, early 1980s).

Now people will say "Lots of B-52s were lost in Vietnam".

I would counter that the B-1B was assigned the dangerous, brutal, and very wearing low level missions that really cut into airframe life.
 
Why would you say that lots of B-52s were lost in Vietnam? Fifteen in Linebacker II, sixteen at other points, mostly due to pilot error or mechanical failure. There were several lost to accident during the cold war, but not that many.

The bulk of them were retired in the late seventies and early eighties, the hundred and ninety- two G models were upgraded, saw out the cold war, but were peace dividend casualties in the nineties, still with usable life when they went to the boneyard; arms treaties have caught up with them since.

The repeatedly upgraded H models are the ones left, ninety- six built the last in 1962, eighty- five active and nine reserve, two accidental losses.

It is highly unlikely the later marks of B-36, which the B-60 is not far off, would have lasted anything like as well; they were called Featherweights for a reason.

Speaking of Vietnam, a lot of those losses could be attributed to bad tactics, the repeated bomber streams of the first three days- you can argue, some old Crewdogs apparently do, that those were avoidable losses and largely the result of command malfeasance. No aircraft is resistant to it's bosses being fools.

What I would hope for out of a complete cockup with the B-60 is that somehow- what, I didn't drop enough hints?- the B-70 has to fill the void.
 
Now people will say "Lots of B-52s were lost in Vietnam".

I think 17 shot down, and about the the same that were written off.

Nowhere close to the rate F-105s were lost

Handwave away Vietnam, and the 'D's would have been out baking in the Desert boneyards anyway by 1970.
 
It is highly unlikely the later marks of B-36, which the B-60 is not far off, would have lasted anything like as well; they were called Featherweights for a reason.

Though the BUFFS went thru many rebuilds for spar, airframe and skin upgrades, starting in 1959 with the 'Big Four' and 1960 with the 'Hi-Stress' Program, and 'Big Belly' for the Ds in late '65 and redos of those Ds with ECP 1581, that was nearly a whole new wing for 80 aircraft, the rest to be retired. Other BUFFS would get ECP 1185, reskinning most of the fuselage and ECP 1124 to do the tail

Bs, Cs, Es and Fs were mostly gone by the mid '70s. too many hours, too expensive to rebuild

So that left a few Ds, and the Wet Wing Gs and H models, that were the 'Featherweights' of the B-52s, much lighter built than the earlier marks.
This was somewhat recified with the ECP 1050 program to beef up the wing.

Other rebuild would continue to this day.

So in the ATL, you would have Convair/General Dynamics toss money at rebuild/upgrade programs in place of Boeing.
 
They were more lightly built, when the dry weight went up by thirty thousand pounds? That looks like the exact opposite of what should be expected if they really were lightweight construction. As the last built, the G's and H's had all of what were modifications to the earlier marks incorporated on the production line, avionics upgrades- especially the EW gear- have continued.

I heard that the main irreplaceable factor is the main wing spar; they can no longer be forged, the tools and techniques have changed- could be duplicated, maybe, with modern methods, but considering how much the wing is able to flex, it wouldn't be easy.
 
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