B-52: History’s Greatest Bomber

As the B52 approaches the momentous 2021 decision on its new power plants – which will usher in the prospect of the aircraft flying until the 2050s, this timely and fascinating documentary takes a long overdue look at the aircraft that has adapted to and indeed defined arial combat. This documentary comes at perhaps the defining moment of the B52’s ongoing service.

With no obvious replacement for the type, the USAF and congress have been engaged in a bitter tussle to re-engineer, and critically re-engine the type, replacing it’s 50 year old power plants with new, commercial engines that will fly it to it’s 100th birthday.

That multi billion-dollar decision will be revealed in May 2021, forming the largest commercial aircraft engineering contract ever awarded by the Department of Defence.

Equally loved and hated by its crews, this documentary, made in close co-operation with the USAF, takes us inside the operation of the deadly Goliath – and not just in the face of conflict. We learn of its critical role in the space race, as mothership to all manner of experimental craft. We also reveal the chilling truth of the lost B52s – bombers that crashed, complete with their nuclear payloads – and that doomsday scenario played out on more than one occasion. We examine why and how these crashes happened.