There is nothing routine about flying an aircraft loaded with four hydrogen bombs, each of which is a hundred times more powerful than the bomb which obliterated Hiroshima.
But for the seven crew members of the B-52 Stratofortress that took off from Seymour Johnson Air Force base in North Carolina almost exactly 50 years ago, on January 16, 1966, this was very much business as usual.
Their mission was part of a huge operation called Chrome Dome, which had been running for six years and was a vital part of the United States' nuclear capability.
In order to provide the superpower with the constant ability to retaliate in the event of a Soviet atomic strike, bombers were continually flown on 24-hour missions all the way across the Atlantic to the east coast of Italy, before turning back to the States.
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