Word: 52s
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Intelligence Gap. The AMSA concept took a long time to develop and was further delayed by two big Ms-money and McNamara. The former Defense Secretary could never be persuaded of AMSA's immediate merit. He argued that the current B-52s and the troublefraught new FB-llls could be modified with advance defense-penetration devices that would make them effective into the mid-70s. Further, he was reluctant to commit the nation to a vast defense expenditure (210 FB-llls would cost about $1.5 billion, 210 AMSAs would cost $8.1 billion) in view of the gap between development...
After every bombing by the B-52s, everyone, from cadre to soldier, became nervous, worried and afraid. This exerted a tremendous influence on the fighting morale. Because they fought the fear of the B-52s in their minds, they weakened after combat and were more tense. Many of them did not want to go far away from the trenches because by remaining in the trenches there was some hope of preserving their lives...
Since June 1965, when the giant, eight-engined jets first raided Viet Nam, B-52s have dropped an enormous 670,000 tons (equivalent to 25% of the total dropped by both the U.S.A.A.F. and the R.A.F. on Europe during World War II) in more than 26,000 sorties. Most of their bombs are aimed south of the DMZ, where few if any antiaircraft missiles exist to threaten the lumbering, relatively slow-moving attackers. Some 80 of the Strategic Air Command's older D and E models of the B-52, originally designed to haul nuclear weapons, have been converted...
Invisible and Inaudible. The B-52s wheel in from bases in Thailand, on Guam, Okinawa and Taiwan to dump their huge loads. They fly so high that they are virtually invisible, and their bombs detonate on the ground only seconds after the faint whine of their engines is audible-and by then it is too late. They concentrate on areas of Communist pressure-as last week in the Central Highlands near the Cambodian border, where waves of B-52s attempted to break down Communist troop buildups. For a pilot's view of a raid, Robert Wildau of TIME...
...after day, night after night, U.S. B-52s rumbled over the hills outside the Marine perimeter while the garrison fought off probes and small infantry assaults. By the end of the 77-day siege, the bombers had dropped more than 100,000 tons of explosives, about one-sixth the total used during all of the Korean War. The raids probably helped to prevent the big ground assault that everyone expected. The attack never came, and finally, in late March, the pressure eased. The bothersome question remained of whether Khe Sanh had been a massive diversion to pin down U.S. troops...