In the 1960's B-58 bomber crews from Bunker Hill AFB, Indiana
practiced their radar bombing skills over a variety of cities.
Selected cities and rural sites featured ground radar tracking
stations to precisely score simulated bomb drops by Strategic Air
Command (SAC) aircrews.
St. Louis, Missouri was one of those Radar Bomb Scoring (RBS)
sites we frequently used. At the site was a van-mounted
radar system positioned on a prominent hilltop from which a wide
radar view enabled acquisition and tracking of high altitude
bombers.
On a typical training flight we made several simulated RBS runs
against St. Louis area targets from various angles. An overhead
view of our flight path appeared like a flower, described by petal
loops across and around the city. Each inbound approach usually
involved a seventy-five mile straight course, followed by a
departure course off in another direction.
During these RBS exercises, we often made six or eight passes
over the St. Louis area. To comply with Federal Aviation
Administration (FAA) and military traffic control procedures
required us to keep a variety of people on the ground apprised
of our flight path, planned activities and current position.
We operated in congested airspace sharing the skies with
commercial traffic and other military planes.
My job included radio communications chores. On approach to the
St. Louis area we were required to establish radio contact with
Chicago Air Traffic Control Center (ATRC), Indianapolis ATRC,
Kansas City ATRC and the RBS site. Radio frequencies were assigned
by geographic area, so depending upon where you were at the moment
you changed frequency. Each ATRC area was divided into sectors with
each sector having different radio frequencies.
I recall one flight where I kept a record of all of the frequency
changes required for about six RBS runs at St. Louis. In the
span of two hours we changed frequencies sixty times as our
flower petal or cloverleaf flight patterns crossed various con-
trol regions. Sometimes on one seventy-five mile leg into a
target we would change frequencies three to five times.
On missions where we had but one radio working, normally we had
two, keeping track of frequency changes and who you were talking
to became a real chore. Of course all that was in addition to
the other onboard activities of making bomb runs, navigational
changes, electronic countermeasures tests, monitoring fuel and
checking center-of-gravity conditions. We were busy.
In fact, St. Louis was our least-popular RBS site because of the
communications hassles. We preferred bombing practice elsewhere,
anywhere else but St. Louis. No other RBS site that I can remember
posed such a demanding communications workload.