Steeljaw Scribe is one of my favorite military aviation Websites. The site recently carried a super story on the development and deployment of the B-58 Hustler. Certainly one of the finest "looking good" airplanes of all time.
As a young lieutenant in 1967 I had control of SAGE air defense radars across Washington, Montana, the Dakotas, and Canada during an exercise called “Snowtime.” I was in charge of ECCM at the Great Falls SAGE Direction Center.
We thought we were in pretty good shape because of the frequency diversity we enjoyed in the radars. Sitting near Malmstrom AFB we had an FPS-24 operating at 200MHZ and there was an FPS-35 a little north operating at 300 MHz. We knew from previous experience with the B-52s at Minot and Grand Forks that they didn’t have the jamming gear to touch those low frequency radars. So, we had them peaked and tweaked and were accepting all the data they could process down two phone lines. (1200 baud x 2 if memory serves)
We watched the Buffs take off out of Minot and head north well over Canada before they turned around to make their attack run. Even down low, we picked them up pretty well because of the high terrain and, frankly, really good radars! They were about to reach the CAP line when poof, everything went white.
We jumped radar frequencies, fiddled with receivers and antennas, and did all the things that you do, but we were having a hard time getting a skin paint on anything. At the debriefing, the word came out. Two B-58s, one low and one high, had taken us down across three states. Poof. Better jammers and antennas than the Buffs.
An interesting lesson in the power of that beautiful bird.
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