“DOOM 34” does for bomber crews in the first Gulf War what the movie “12 O’Clock High” did for the World War II era. (Lyons Press)
The fighter pilot has always held the lion’s share of attention in popular culture, from Manfred von Richtofen to Robin Olds. But who can name a bomber pilot?
Pick up a copy of “DOOM 34, a First-Hand Account of the Top-Secret Mission That Launched Operation Desert Storm,” available this month from Lyons Press, and by the end of its 257 pages, the crew of the eponymous B-52G Stratofortress will be familiar names.
“DOOM 34” does for bomber crews in the first Gulf War what the movie “12 O’Clock High” did for the World War II era.
Author Trey Morris, now a retired colonel and an electronic warfare officer at the time, recounts the mission he and his fellow crew members flew at the opening of Operation Desert Storm, and the 35-hour combat flight record that stood until the war in Afghanistan following 9/11.
Seven B-52G Stratofortresses, including Doom 34, carried the first stand-off, precision-guided cruise missiles into combat, at the time a fresh concept never tried in wartime. The seven bombers flew in secret, mostly, from Barksdale Air Force Base, La., to their launch point in the Middle East.
“It was a paradigm shift,” Morris wrote, a weapon of unprecedented accuracy that could be launched from hundreds of miles away to deliver the destructive force of a 2,000-pound bomb. The concept relied on the relatively new, “sparse and sporadic” GPS system.
Dubbed the Secret Squirrels (a riff on the operation code name, Senior Surprise), the flight crews carried 35 conventional air-launched cruise missiles with guidance technology capable of putting the warhead within inches of their targets — Iraqi power grids and communication nodes.
That’s the technical and historical side of the story.
Morris also tells the human side, starting with the monotonous stretches on alert status to disappearing suddenly from wives and girlfriends. Apparently, the B-52 is no luxury liner and while expected, even today, to cross entire hemispheres as part of global task forces, its cramped interior offers little comfort.
The Squirrels catnapped or dozed in shifts between in-flight refueling episodes, as empty miles passed to the teeth-clenching trip along North Africa, into the conflict zone and back again.
The U.S. Air Force may be part of a powerful and capable military but the extent to which it sometimes gets the job done despite bad weather, bad luck, bad timing and equipment failure staggers belief.
Doom 34, for example, loses an engine almost immediately after take-off. Another bomber loses one on the return trip. One or two make the U.S. East Coast on fumes. The first batch of CALCMs proved balky and some failed to slide away from their bomber hosts.
An episode involving towering thunderheads and a canceled flight of refuelers is as unsettling as a horror movie. Fears that air traffic controllers along the way will puncture their envelope of secrecy plague the bombers all along their flight.
The wing-and-a-prayer aspect of combat aviation that soaks every airborne page in narratives like “Masters of the Air” is still alive after nearly 50 years. Morris’ story involves only one fighter threat and a series of radar queries.
“Doom 34” is a primer on operational security, group dynamics, Air Force culture, flight operations and geopolitics. It will appeal to pilots and technocrats as well as readers of military history and lovers of a good adventure tale.
