A B-52 Stratofortress from the 343rd Bomb Squadron at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana takes off from Griffiss International Airport in Rome, New York, on Friday, June 30, 2023. (Rick Moriarty/@syracuse.com)
Rome, N.Y. (Tribune News Service) — A B-52 Stratofortress returned to the skies over central New York this week, 29 years after the last of the mighty bombers departed the region before the closing of Griffiss Air Force Base.
The massive eight-engine plane from the 343rd Bomb Squadron at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana spent a week flying out of what is now Griffiss International Airport in the Oneida County city of Rome. It was all part of an exercise to train airmen to perform combat operations in unfamiliar locations with limited resources.
The bomber arrived at the former Strategic Air Command base on June 23 and returned to Louisiana on Friday.
Three five-person flight crews took turns flying the bomber from Griffiss to the Adirondacks and Fort Drum Army Base and practiced mid-air refueling with a KC-135 tanker from the 328th Refueling Squadron out of Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station.
In wartime, the Air Force wants to be able to shift its airpower from large, centralized bases to networks of smaller, dispersed locations to complicate an adversary’s war planning. That’s why the weeklong training exercise was conducted out of Griffiss, which is no longer a military installation.
“It’s a new set of tactics, techniques and procedures that allows us to go to unfamiliar and maybe even unexpected locations with a small footprint of people and operate in a combat environment,” said Air Force Reserve Lt. Col. Greg Watson, commander of the 343rd Bomb Squadron.
B-52s had not flown out of Griffiss since the last one departed on Nov. 15, 1994, the year before the base closed. The former base, now owned by the county, operates as a public airport and business park.
Watson said its 11,820-foot runway has been well maintained. And he noted the county has kept the runway 200 feet wide, ideal for the B-52 and its 185-foot wingspan. In contrast, the runways at Syracuse Hancock International Airport and most other commercial airports are 150 feet wide, making them unsuitable for the B-52.
“A runway of this size, with it being a retired SAC installation, it’s still a very useful asset for an exercise of this nature,” said Air Force Reserve Lt. Col. Ryan Mowers, commander of the 328th Refueling Squadron.
Designed in the late 1940s, the B-52 has been a mainstay of the Air Force’s fleet since it first entered service in 1955, and the Air Force expects to keep flying them into the 2050s.
The long-range bomber has seen action in all the nation’s wars since Vietnam, its huge belly capable of carrying up to 60,000 pounds of conventional or nuclear bombs or up to 20 cruise missiles. Its crews affectionately call it the “BUFF” (Big Ugly Fat Fellow, though the last word is often substituted for a different one).
The B-52 that flew out of Griffiss this week was built in 1961, making it 62 years old — 12 years older than Watson.
“It was designed very robust, built to last and has been constantly maintained and upgraded,” he said. “And because it is such a large, robustly built design, it lends itself to new things. So, as new technology comes along and new weapons, it’s not difficult to integrate those onto the airplane.”
There’s nothing stealthy about a B-52, and its return to central New York did not go unnoticed.
“We’ve been staying at one of the local hotels for the week and we’ve been out and about, and people have been asking a lot of questions,” Watson said. “I think there’s a level of excitement in the town, a place that had B-52s for so long.”
Will the bomber make more visits in the future?
“We’ve been getting that question a lot,” he said. “I will tell you that, from our experience here this week, we want to continue this. I don’t know a timeline for that. I make no promises. But we have certainly validated that this location is ideal for our training.”
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