BUFF 'Ghostrider' back up and out of the boneyard
 

From Boneyard to Barksdale, a mothballed B-52 Stratofortress flies again.

Cheers

It struck me as odd, from this and other reports, that an airframe kept in the best and most ready state would still take over two years to be returned to front line duty...

Tocsin

This report says that the arframe was pulled from storage in 2014 and returned to service in mere months - where did two years come from?

mikip

It hasn't returned to service yet. And it won't do so until sometime in 2016. It's all in the link provided, strangely enough...

-RP

The active BUFFs have been getting regular updates to the avionics and such - perhaps part of the 2 years is to bring this aircraft up the current operation spec?

tdracer

That's essentially what it says in the link. All the kit has to be stripped out of the jet it's replacing, refitted, airframe inspected and repaired where necessary whilst at Barksdale, then off to Tinker AFB for PDM to bring it up to spec with the rest of the fleet and return to service sometime in 2016...

-RP

Ok I accept that I am being over pedantic but it went from storage to flight in months and the extra time is to add all the mods that it would have received if it had not been stored, or to put it another way way it went from storage to what was front line condition whenit was stored in mere months.

I was merely trying to point out that the storage conditions were so good that the frame could be made servicable again very quickly up to date electronics require a little longer

It wasn't brought up to 'frontline condition' in mere months! It was made airworthy at AMARG, the rest of the mods to bring it up to 'frontline condition' will be done at Barksdale and Tinker AFB! :ugh:

Have you actually read the article in the link?

-RP

Neat story- the first to really escape the boneyard.

Yes some of the major overhauls at Tinker can take many months.

And good on Colonel Shultz- I would not have thought of any "tall-tail" B-52 driver would still be on active duty. 7,000+ hours on type! That's an impressive shoulder patch.

yes I have read the article I said fron line at the point it was stored not current front line line condition

This is funny, you guys are arguing while saying the same thing.

exactly - and what is few months here or there in the life history of a B-52.....

Very true, years ago, very many years ago, I read an article in the 'Tinker Takeoff' (yes Tinker AFB has its own newspaper) about a B-52 that had just come out of a major overhaul/upgrade and the only piece of original equipment/part in the aircraft was the co-pilot's left rudder peddle.

Everything else, including the aircraft skin had been replaced over the years since this particular B-52 rolled off the Boeing assembly line.

Would be really neat to be in the component business for those babies that's for sure...

Don't forget the data plate con. :E

How can that be? To remove the aircraft skin leaves a skeletal frame. If the frame isn't replaced (at which point you've entirely dismantled the aircraft anyway), then at least the frame remains original. I find it hard to believe that an aircraft would be entirely reduced to parts and then rebuilt. Especially in a fleet of 700+.

Nah - Paddy's axe.
Ten new handles and five new heads.
Still the same axe though...
Sat in a pool in Tuscany once and watched x2 BUFFs way up overhead heading to Kosovo I think?
Thought they were 747s at first then thought, no - 747's don't formate, they're too slow and that's quite a bit of smoke.
Then realised what they were.

No first hand experience here, but what I've read and heard suggests that replacement of main structural elements (e.g. wing spars) is pretty rare on the BUFF, but they've all been 're-skinned', at least the wings (and given the amount of readily visible 'oil canning' of the fuselage, I'd guess fuselage skin replacements are common as well).

I once did some inspections on a high time 737 going through a 'D' check. There wasn't much there aside from primary structure (although at least in the case of the 737 the original parts would, for the most part, be used when it was put back together).

I think the key words here are parts. I think you will find much of the structure (frames, ribs, basic airframe structure) is the same metal that rolled off the assembly line decades ago. Parts, componants and some structure including skins may have been swapped out, but the skeleton likely includes a good deal of original material.

One thing that always impressed me was the collapsible nut developed for it.