By John Burtis
Sunday, September 24, 2006
The news that the US air Force's premier bomb truck, the venerable B-52H heavy bomber, referred to as the BUFF, which has served us so well since 1955, is now employed in a testing program to examine its flying on a coal derived synthetic fuel brought tears of joy to my poor tired eyes.
after all the infernal caterwauling about the US being tied to mid-East oil by the likes of a newly pugilistic John "Billion Dollar Baby" Kerry, especially in lieu of the scrofulous imprecations contained in Michael Moore's cheap cheesy outlandish lampoon of a fraud of a movie concerning our Iraq adventure for the sake of oil alone, the stunning news of our biggest bomber flying on synthetic fuel made from US coal couldn't come at a better time, or make Major "King" Kong, General Jack D. Ripper, or General "Buck" Turgidson any happier.
B-52s are powered by 8 Pratt & Whitney TF-33-P-3/103 turbofans pumping out 17,000 pounds of thrust apiece, unlike their sleeker and saucier follow-ons, who get by on far fewer and more efficient engines. and boy, when they lumber in behind a KC-135 or a KC-10 air tanker, they can sure suck up a load of fuel, especially when they're lugging a full load of 51 bombs of various types, ready for an 8,800 un-refueled run to a target and back, with a total fuel capacity said to hover around 300,000 pounds. and, if necessary, the big boys can strap on a pair of 1,000 gallon wing tanks, those these don't appear much anymore, unless the old boys are assigned to maritime interdiction.
But as any Marine or soldier will tell you, there's nothing quite like a three plane box of B-52s lighting up the night sky and cratering a place up like the far side of the Moon as they send a total of a 153 iron bombs churning through the opposition -- unless it's a broadside from a battleship of course, but that's another sad and sorry story - including those dreaded cluster bombs. But their use always draw a sharp rebuke from the cloud scraping Muslim campaniles at the New York Times and angers those increasingly security conscious Democrats, who wobble and go pale at the use of force in our protection, to say nothing of the lamentations which automatically arise from the taffy candies at the UN, Hezbollah, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and the rest of the international terror organizations and their fawning hand-wringing swells.
So, now we're to be greeted by the medium gray behemoths sporting large black synthetic fuel decals just behind the fuel receptacles on the tops of their fuselages, which will let the stick men in the aerial tankers know that it's ok to run them full of the new mix made from all-american carbon.
Pretty soon, large colorful billboards featuring Boeing B-52s flying over a snow-capped mountain of coal, mimicking Boeing's Mr. Rainier logo, will be adorning the entrances to the coal mines that still dot Kentucky, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania, if the Democrats'll allow them, telling the miners that their work is keeping the big rigs flying.
But think for a moment of the pauvre bandits, the blighted terrorists, the long suffering Taliban, and the pitiable surviving al-Qaeda membership on the receiving end of the bomb barrages. Pretty soon they'll know that the bombers they can't see or hear above them are flying on a fuel mixture designed not only to deliver the instruments of their destruction, but to also to help remove that restive american bogeyman from their neighborhoods.
How will the burnoose attired Pinch Sulzberger react, closeted away in his hall of mirrors, reclining on his prayer rug as he listens to that endless loop of baleful calls for Muslim prayers he recorded in Mecca? How will the New York Times describe this air Force decision to start powering the BUMFs, a less glamorous description of the heavy bomber, with West Virginia syn fuel? What can the natty diminutive and hopelessly maladroit businessman do but decry the use of carboniferous fuels and our military's short sidedness? Especially in light of the fact that bombs are still carried by bombers and not butter. When every Castro worshipping progressive knows that a lengthy sit down and a sharing of conversation, tea, and dawdling over a hookah with evil is the best way to brush it beneath the carpet and to blunt its razor sharp shafras.
and somewhere out there in the wild blue yonder in the very near future, in a flat gray but august B-52H - leaving its fail-safe point with a long filmy, eight-part, white contrail while heading into afghanistan with a full load of J-DaMs - the five person crew will joke over the intercom about raiding the terror nests which spawned 9/11 while being powered by american coal. /p>
and you can hear the conversation through their oxygen masks, over the background noise of eight turbo fans muffled by the hanging insulation, with that characteristic flat tinniness common to military aircraft intercoms.
"Dah, roger, this one's for Randal McCloy, Jr. and every guy that went down with him, eh, Captain, over?"
"Dah, roger that. We're carrying a load of J-DaMs for every last miner in West Virginia and I'll betcha those birds on the ground have no idea we're on the way or that we're flying on good old american coal and not their rotten oil."
"ah, Captain, we've got the ground team up on 321.3445 and we've got the coordinates all punched in on two with a three second delay between 'em for maximum effect, over."
"Dah, roger, coming up on release at 4, 3, 2, 1, away. Good bye to y'all from Upshur County, West Virginia."
and after a few minutes...
"Dah, Captain, from the ground, say perfect, over."
"Roger, we're outta here."
as the old advertisement on the back of wartime National Geographics used to say, "Coal powers america." Funny, it still does, and it'll keep the B-52s flying until 2040.
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