The 'Bone yard'

[old crow]

I see some handsome E model B-47s there, the first acft I worked on as an ECM tech starting in the summer of 64. Elegant acft, fast for their time and even today if they were still airborn. Co- pilot was copilot, gunner and ECM operator working from a swiveling ejection seat so that he could face forward, left or aft depending on his needs. A "teat-like radome" on the nose and on the tail carried the APS-54 airborne gun-laying radar receiver unit and had early diodes that had to be changed out too frequently; the fiberglas radomes had dozens of short phillips-head screws around the circumference for attachment of the radome and in 0 degree weather, up on a B-5 stand, fumbling with wool inserts in stiff leather gloves the job sometimes amounted to trying to insert a few dozen screws and sweeping up the "misses" from the ramp before engine-start. The good Sgt O'Rourke did his best to manage me but...