Operation Secret Squirrel
A handful of elite airmen from the United States Air Force’s 596th Bomb Squadron were awoken by the sound of a blaring alert siren on the dawn of January 16, 1991. After months of training for a highly secretive mission they were not even fully informed about, the mysterious endeavor suddenly became real. As a result of the Iraqi leadership’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, 57 aviators aboard seven B-52 Stratofortresses carrying a highly secretive new American weapon were about to embark on the longest aerial sortie ever conducted to that day. It was dark, rainy, and with high winds when Operation Senior Surprise was launched, and it would take exhaustive efforts to keep the iconic B-52s aloft. After 15 hours of arduous conditions above the Atlantic and into the Middle East, the airmen now faced an even more daunting challenge: to deploy the new weapon accurately and hit all their desired targets…
Credit Dark Skies
