Counterfactual: What if the United States Never Built the B-52 Bomber?

Robert Farley

Security, Americas

The decision would have affected not just the Air Force but the entire military, and the outcome of the Vietnam War. 

Key Point: The U.S. would have had to rely on older models of planes and newer planes might never have been developed either.

Over the years, it has been assigned to other missions, including conventional strategic bombing against Vietnam, anti-shipping missions against Soviet naval forces, conventional interdiction and attrition against deployed Iraqi forces, and a multitude of different tasks during the Wars on Terror. Current projections have the B-52 outliving the B-1B, the B-2, and nearly every human who was alive during its first flight, with final retirement not coming until after 2050.

But what if the BUFF had not survived the procurement battles that embroiled the Air Force and the rest of the U.S. defense establishment in the 1940s?

How would the Air Force, and the broader U.S. defense establishment, have filled the hole vacated by the B-52?

Vanishes:

The months and years following the end of World War II saw a bewildering array of different bomber designs. The U.S. Army Air Force (soon to be the U.S. Air Force, or USAF) had put advanced design work on hold until the end of the war in order to concentrate on the B-29.

The introduction of jet propulsion and of nuclear weapons transformed the procurement agenda, and left the piston-engined Convair B-36 Peacemaker as the only viable transcontinental strategic bomber. But the B-36, which saw initial development in the early 1940s as an anti-German weapon, was clearly insufficient to the demands of the jet age. Thus, new design work ensued even as the USAF went to bat for the Peacemaker. The earliest versions of what would become the B-52 hit paper in late 1945.