Arlie E. Judd Interview, 27 February 2001

Very young. You couldn't wait to get in there?

I really didn't have any alternative. I was finished with high school and when that was over, the alternatives were working construction or doing something of that nature, so—

You were going to work with your dad?

Yes. And I had enough of that, so I enlisted in the Air Force and I got selected for radar maintenance and went to school at Denver for a year—was stationed at Salina, Kansas and worked on B-47's, for the bomb nav radar on B-47's for almost 10 years. And so I spent a lot of time at Smokey Hill and West Smokey Hill and then it was Schilling Air Force Base. And from there I went—they had what they had a gunnery range outside of Salina, Kansas and worked out there for about 2 years. I was still working on radar—on radar tracking systems for gunnery drones. And I applied for B-52 gunners training and was approved and went to school at Castle Air Force Base.

When you say gunnery drones can you explain what you mean?

It was to train B-52 gunners, and they flew OQ-19 drones. Had a wingspan of about 15 feet and a fuselage about the same length. Four-cylinder engine, and it flew about 120 knots and they would fly those, and the gunners would lock onto 'em from a ground radar system. Same system they had in the aircraft, but it was on the ground, but they would lock on and track that drone and actually fire—live firing.

And knock it out of the air?

Yes, and they knock 'em down. But that complex out there they had a complete field maintenance shop and they'd run that injured drone, if it didn't completely collapse, run it through the assembly line process and bring it out the other end and it looked great. There was a recovery process there.

Interesting. I guess I had never thought about how they trained the gunner.

That was good training for 'em up there, and they started out training the gunners when they fired the 50 calibers from a pedestal, and that started way back out there a long time ago when they had to fire the 50 calibers back—the hand held, and then they got to advanced systems. With the B-52 they had automatic tracking and radar control. Four-50 calibers.

And the guns were mounted in the fuselage somewhere?