Arlie E. Judd Interview, 27 February 2001
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| AJ: | They were in the aft part of the aircraft—in the back. | |
| INT: | They pointed back? | |
| AJ: | Yes. | |
| INT: | Not forward? | |
| AJ: | Right. They pointed back. They thought that the only problem was somebody overtaking from the backside, and they covered almost a 180° expanse in the aft quadrant, so they were covered quite well in the back part. | |
| INT: | In your experience with B-52's were they always attacked from behind? | |
| AJ: | They had enough counter measures and enough warning systems that they would know where the attack was coming from and the B-52's tactics to get away from the fighter attack was to go into a steep climb or steep dive and the fighter had a much smaller turning surface—couldn't keep up with that turn, but the B-52 could really make a steep turn because of the wing surface. But they would come up into formation—when we'd fly in Vietnam they would get into the formation and you couldn't tell on radar if it was cluttered enough to where you could see the other B-52's in the formation, but the fighter would get up and they knew how to blend, and get in there, but they never did attack generally. | |
| INT: | Did you lose B-52's in your unit? | |
| AJ: | Yes, but not to fighters as far as I know. It was always surface to air missiles, yeah. That was the main threat and the gunner's sitting in the tail back there, he had a really good visibility point so you could always see. When that missile started, as long as it wasn't overcast you'd see the flash on the ground and you could see it coming, and so you had a visual as well as the ECM countermeasures. You could turn into that missile and it would go by someplace, but then they started using proximity fuses and they got so that they could defeat the radar, then when they got some new equipment, when they turned their radar on, F-4's would just zero in on that radar beam and attack that, and so they just kept changing their tactics to where they finally got to where they just got in proximity fuses. And then they started putting layers of chaff, and it'd go off on the chaff, and then they'd change the sensitivity and it was just continuous challenge every day. [After the gunnery range] I applied for B-52 flight training and went to Castle for training and got rewarded to go to Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. | |
| INT: | Rewarded? Why do you say that? |
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