B-52 cockpit crew

Here's the view the other way, looking backward through the cockpit of B-52H in 2010. The aircraft can fly at 650 miles per hour and has a ceiling of about 50,000 feet. Its range is 8,800 miles, but that can be greatly extended with midair refueling. "The use of aerial refueling," the Air Force points out rather drily in its B-52 fact sheet, "gives the B-52 a range limited only by crew endurance."

In September 1996, to give an extreme example of that endurance, a pair of B-52s traveled from Barksdale AFB in Louisiana to Baghdad to launch cruise missiles at power stations and communications facilities as part of Operation Desert Strike. The round trip totaled 16,000 miles in 34 hours.