The Day We Lost the H-Bomb: Cold War, Hot Nukes, and the Worst Nuclear Weapons Disaster in History

“honeypot” earned the unsavory job of cleaning it once they got home.

So far, the trip had been uneventful in all respects. Wendorf, during his break, had time to nap, eat some fruitcake, and smoke a cigarette. The crew expected an easy journey back to North Carolina and needed just one final refueling to get home. The KC-135 tanker that would fill the bomber's fuel tanks had already left the SAC airfield near Morón, Spain, and was circling in the air waiting for the bomber. When the two planes were about twenty-one miles apart, the tanker began its “rollout,” a long, curving maneuver that placed it directly in front of the bomber. Soon the bomber pilots could see the tanker about two miles in front of them and a thousand feet above. Messinger, at the B-52's helm, began to close the distance.

Messinger was about to attempt one of the marvels of modern flight — a midair refueling. In the early days of aviation, flying long distances meant packing your plane with fuel. During its historic flight across the Atlantic, The Spirit of St. Louis carried extra fuel under the wings and a main tank so big it partially blocked Charles Lindbergh's view. Army pilots of the early twentieth century, dreaming of long-range bombing, knew that Lindbergh's strategy would never work for them.

Where would they put the bombs? In military lingo, planes with limited range are said to have

“short legs.” To give planes longer legs, the airmen needed a way to refuel them in the air.

The earliest attempts at midair refueling were just stunts — a daredevil “wing walker” crawling onto the top wing of a biplane with a can of gasoline strapped to his back, leaping onto the wing of a passing plane, and pouring the sloshing gas into the fuel tank. After World War I, the idea stumbled forward for a few decades but never really caught on. Designers found other ways to make planes fly farther, such as larger fuel tanks, more efficient engines, and lighter materials. But with the rise of the Strategic Air Command, midair refueling suddenly became crucial. When Curtis LeMay took over SAC in 1948, he had hundreds of bombers under his command, but none that could take off from America with nuclear bombs, drop them in the heart of the USSR, and get back to safety. All his war plans required planes to attack the Soviet Union from forward bases, mostly in Europe and the Pacific. Analysts pointed out that any forward base within striking distance of the Soviet Union was also vulnerable to Soviet attack. What SAC really needed was a way to fly from the United States to the USSR and back without having to land for gas. By the early 1950s, midair refueling was a SAC priority.

SAC tried a number of refueling methods and tanker-bomber combinations, but each had its shortcomings. One of the biggest problems was speed matching. In 1951, SAC started flying a piston-engine tanker called the KC-97. SAC paired this slow tanker, which had a maximum speed of only 375 mph, with the B-47 jet bomber, which could fly up to 600 mph. Both planes, when linked for refueling, had to fly at exactly the same speed, slowing the bomber dangerously close to a stall.

To avoid this sticky situation, pilots invented a daring maneuver: the two planes linked at a high altitude and then dove in tandem so the less powerful tanker could match the jet bomber's speed.

This technique was imperfect, to say the least, and SAC pilots eagerly awaited jet-to-jet refueling. In 1957, they finally got it. On the receiving end was the B-52. On the tanker side was the KC-135

Stratotanker, equipped with a Boeing innovation called the flying boom. In 1966, the KC-135 and its flying boom were the state of the art in midair refueling, and they remain so today.

The boom is an aluminum tube 33 feet, 8 inches long and about 2 feet in diameter. The far end is bulbous, giving the contraption the look of a giant metal Q-tip. Near the tip, two four-foot wings stick off either side of the boom. These wings were Boeing's big innovation—“ruddervators” that allow the boom operator to fly the pipe into position, a bit like sticking your hand out the window of a moving car and swimming your fingers up and down. Tucked inside the boom is a 12-foot, 3-inch telescoping nozzle that shoots in and out at the boom operator's command. The fuel travels through the nozzle to the receiving plane.