Originally Posted by
tdracer
......
BTW, legit question - did the BUFFs have ejection seats? Or if they were hit, did the crew need to somehow make it to an escape hatch to bail out?
All B-52 forward crew had ejection seats, with the upper deck crew ejecting upward through individual hatches above their crew stations (pilot, co-pilot, EWO), and those on the lower deck ejected downwards (nav, bomb/nav). The tail gunner on the A-F models, egressed by jettisoning the entire tail cone where the guns were and "stepping out" the opening where the guns were. G & H gunners were moved from the tail to the upper flight deck, before gunners were eliminated (the seat was retained for instructors etc.) Any extra crew members (relief pilots, instructor pilots, instructor nav/EWO, VIP's etc could manually bail out one of the lower hatches once the nav or bomb/nav had ejected downwards.
The seats were not zero/zero and especially obviously for the lower deck and rear gunner positions, sufficient height and speed was required for ejection.