 Proudly, we hail. From New York City where the American stage begins, here is another program with a castling Leon Janney as the narrator. Public service time has been made available by this station for your Army and your Air Force to bring you this story as proudly we hail the United States Air Force. Our story is entitled, Dry Run. This is a story of the Strategic Air Command, one of the mighty arms of the United States Air Force. Our first act curtain will rise in just a moment after this important message. Can you qualify to wear the silver wings of a pilot in the United States Air Force and fly the speedy jets? If you have two or more years of college training and are between the ages of 19 and 26 and a half and are otherwise qualified, a visit to your nearest United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station will start you on your way to your future in flight. The city sprawled along the coastal plain, a disjointed hydro-like mass of homes, buildings and factories. One blackened irregular lip of it rested on the wide river's edge and here the ships made their way in from the sea to take on our disgorged cargo. It was a big city, an important one, where at three o'clock in the morning the majority of its two million inhabitants slept in peace and tranquility. Have you been one of the few still awake? You might have heard this sound and wondered. You might have stopped where you were and looked up into the inky darkness, listening, thinking. Those babies sure sound like they're up there. Hope they're ours. Wonder where they come from. To find the answer to that question you'd have to travel westward 1500 miles and go back in time 12 hours to a telephone call. Oh, yes, he's here. Just a minute. I'll call him. Face, I think. Oh, just when I was going to take a snooze. Here. Hello. Right. Okay, right away. You've got to go. That's what the man said. Don't they even give you Sunday off? Mrs. Hunter, haven't you learned in this business all days of the same? Well, I think there ought to be a law. Sell our sickle-headed pals in the idea and who knows, I might even get Saturday off too. What'll I tell Susie when she wakes up? He promised to take her swimming. Tell her daddy had to go on a trip and that he'd be back as soon as he can. As a man named Dan Hunter, your Sunday afternoon has been suddenly interrupted by a telephone call. 20 minutes later, you pull up before a formidable-looking gate and before your own and have gone through the routine a thousand times, you still must produce identification. Identification, which is checked carefully and returned with a snappy salute. Beyond the gate, you've entered a different world, a place that is all business and no foolishness, a place for highly trained, privy men goes armed, even the cooks. Here every building is guarded, every installation watched. Here security is so tight, not even red ink could leak in. And the reason for such constant and thorough precaution is found in the three-letter word, S-A-C, strategic air command. S-A-C, the long-range punch in the fist of the United States Air Force, a fist that's ready to strike at a moment's notice any time of the day. And then as you leave the buildings behind, you come upon the lethal strength of the fist and the sight of it hits you as it always does right where you live. A group of them rest in an orderly line and their bigness is something that dwarfs everything in range of your eye. You don't think of them as monsters, for there is a sharp, wonderful grace and awe-inspiring beauty to their clean, glittering lines. They're big. B-36s, the biggest bombers in all creation. Wing length, 230 feet. Bomb load, 10,000 pounds. Range, 10,000 miles. 42,000 horsepower. Speed, over 400 miles per hour. A few statistics can't paint a proper picture, and once you've seen a B-36, stood under its bomb bay into which three freight cars could be fitted. You know all the statistics in the world could never describe the sight of her. A giant with wings is what she is, and you, Dan Hunter, are her pilots. Hi, Joe. Hi, Dan. And here we're gonna take a little trip. I guess so. How was she? The ground crew's been swarming all over since early this morning. They find any burn spots on the blades of the number two jet? I think they did. The crew chief has a report on it. The blades have been replaced. Good. Where's the gang? They just took off at the briefing room. Everybody present and counted for? All right, gentlemen. Give me your attention, please. Your attention, please. Your target for tonight is right here, a city you're all familiar with. You'll recall that last month when you destroyed it, your route was along this path to the target, and then back by way of this course. Now, your flight tonight will follow an entirely different plan. Something on this order. As you can see, you'll be over water for approximately half of it coming in from the east. We'll get specific in a moment, but I... If you weren't, Dan Hunter, if you were just a stranger who happened in on the briefing office's lecture and knew nothing about the circumstances which governed it, you might very well get the impression that a war was on, that this was the real thing and not just a dry run. But as Dan Hunter, the members of his crew or any of his squadron mates, you'd know this is a simulated mission. Routine in the sense that you have been and will continue to go on many such missions. Simulated in the sense that the city you bombed tonight will never know the fury of your attack, but real in every other respect. Real in the flight you will make, the distance you will travel confront you to and from the target. Consider this fact alone. A B-36 is the most complicated airplane ever built, ever flown. Within its massive frame are contained, among other things, 27 miles of electrical wiring, 72 electrical meters, 2,000 electronic tubes, and a mile and a half of control cables. The air that blows through its de-icing system would heat 120 five-room houses. Before takeoff, a B-36 crew must check more than 600 different items. As Dan Hunter, plane commander of a B-36, you and your crew of 14 spend a good hour and a half checking the finer points of your flying dreadnought. Each man is responsible for a particular group of items. It's a matter of teamwork. You go over her with a fine-toothed comb, from nose to tail, nothing is left to chance. You don't take chances with $5 million worth of airplane. How about it, sergeant? They take out okay, Captain. Ah, they look out there, Tinker. Raring to go, sir. Captain, the crew assume you take off positions. You scanners keep on your toes when we taxi out. Give the tower a call, Joe. Aye. Air Force 4982, the tower. Air Force 4982, the tower over. Tower to Air Force 4982, go ahead. Plane checked out and ready for taxi instructions over. Air Force 4982, you're cleared to taxi on strip four. Takeoff is runway six. Wind is from the east, northeast at 12. Metametric pressure, 9.94. Call us when you're ready to take off. Call us when you're ready to take off. Over. Roger, tower out. You don't taxi a B-36 the way you taxi the ordinary bomber. The same principle is involved, of course. You, as the pilot, are at the controls. You use your feet, your hands, and your eyes accordingly. But from where you sit, you can't see the engines and you can't see the wheels. That's why in the rear compartment, back by the tail, two of your crewmen act as scanners, watching the behavior of the engines, watching the wheels, and reporting by interphone accordingly. You, your co-pilot, your flight engineer, and your scanners. The five of you guide this massive thing of flight out to the runway on which you will take off. Colonel, 4892 is on one way six. They've asked for clearance to take off. That's Hunter, isn't it? Yes, sir. Hunter, this is Colonel Grindley. These weather reports indicate you'll be bucking strong headwinds on your approach. The navigators will have to be on their toes. You'll be over the sea a good bit of the time. Right, Colonel. I'll pass it on. Remember, you're flying a lone mission. We know the main flight will be intercepted. You can sneak through. The mission will be that much more of a success. Good luck, Captain. Right. Old Grindley gets me. Remember, Captain, you're flying a lone mission. You're being cautious, Joe. It's kind of serious business. Oh, it is to me, too. Well, then what do you say we get down to the serious business of taking this baby up into the air? Captain, the crew. If you were to stand in the tower looking out with Colonel Grindley, who takes nothing for granted and believes that a good pilot can never be good enough, you'd find watching the takeoff of a B-36 an awesome and beautiful sight. From your vantage point, you'd see this gigantic creation of gleaming metal and thunderous power swing slowly off the taxi strip onto the long, wide concrete pathway to flight. You'd hear its total of ten engines, four of them jet, assert their incredible strength in a steadily mounting roar. You'd see the result of their drive as this titan of the skies gathers speed quickly, racing ever faster down the runway with the sun's rays dancing brightly off her stretching wings. And as you watched, one part of your mind might ask, how is it possible for men to build and control anything as big as this? And then suddenly, almost in disbelief, you'd see her lift from the ground, the landing gear like a living thing tucking its great talons into place. You'd hear the sound of her voice change from a roar of defiance to one of satisfied contentment as she mounted upward into the immensity of the afternoon sky. You'd watch her on her way. Knowing before she came to roost again, she'd span 10,000 miles of trackless space. You'd know too that as a thing of flight, her beauty was majestic and overwhelming. But as a weapon of destruction, she was terrible and unmatched. Leon Jenny as the narrator in the Proudly We Hail production, Dry Run will return in just a moment for the second act. Here's an important word today about your tomorrow. There's a future in flight. Yes, for you young men between the ages of 19 and 26 and a half who have completed two or more years of college and are otherwise qualified, there's an excellent opportunity for a great career in your expanding air force. You can secure an important job as a pilot, navigator, radar observer, or flight engineer, and fly the mighty aircraft of this jet age. Remember, there's a future in flight. Visit your United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station for details today. You are listening to Proudly We Hail, and now we present the second act of Dry Run. At nearly 8 miles above the Earth, the sky above you is dark, yet luminous blue. There's a kind of burning brilliance in it that conceals its 60 below zero temperament. Here, should your winged world spring a leak in its pressurized frame, you and your crew would have no more than 12 seconds in which to clamp on oxygen masks. Far below you, the elements have been weaving a carpeting of white over the land. As far as your eye can see, it has been tucked firmly into the horizon and is now being pulled up under and behind you. And suddenly the Earth is completely hidden from your view, and you bore on through the limbo of space where quickly shifting light patterns encourage strange thoughts in your mind. Could it be there is no land below the clouds? Suppose it's all a dream and we're but voyagers here in this emptiness forever. Take over, Joe. I'm going back and see how the boys are. Yes, sir. What do I do if an engine drops off? A lot and pick it up. Seems like a reasonable answer. I always give a reasonable answer to a reasonable question. Try to keep it flying upside up, will you? For you, sir, I shall endeavor to do my utmost. Oh, it's the rich. You leave the front office in the hands of your capable co-pilot and move on back to where your chief flight engineer and his assistants carefully watch and closely monitor the surging heartbeat of the ship. Here, before panels whose rows of dials tell a clear and constant story, they feel the pulse, watch the blood pressure, and converse about their charge like doctors discussing an important case. We can lean out number five just a bit more. I think... oh, hi, Dan. Hi. How to behave in, Jeff? You want to make a statement, Sarge? Well, do come. Which means when translated, they're purring like so many kittens. Joe said the head temperatures on the number four port engine ran pretty high on takeoff. Oh, she's the new one just put in last week. Bound around a little high until she's broken in. Yeah, I thought that was probably it. She seemed to get off the ground pretty smoothly. You're like a bird. Where are we? About halfway across the Gulf of Mexico. We're indicating better than 400. Pretty good time, huh? Got a good tailwind. We'll pay for it when we start back in. You leave the engineers to their work and move on to where the navigator on duty pours over his charts figuring wind and speed and drift. Taking into consideration the magnetic variation, the compass deviation, the rotation of the Earth, he magically computes bearings out of what seems like thin air and at a moment's notice tells you exactly where you are in relation to where you've been and where you're going. What do you say, Lee? Hi, boss. How far are we from somewhere? My calculations are correct. We should be landing on the planet Mars in another hour. I thought it was Venus you were taking us to. Would be nicer, wouldn't it? Well, here's where we are now. We'll be over the keys in 12 minutes. Have we got a direct tailwind? Wind's pretty near due west. We'll be heading north like this in a little more than two and a half hours. Coming back soon we'll really be bucking it. Wouldn't be a bit surprised if we ran into some weather on the run-in. Probably hit it right over the target. Probably. When Zach relieves me, I'll bring you and Joe a cup of coffee and an old bone to chew on. For which we shall thank you, one and all. You carry two bombardiers and two radio operators. You check things with them and then you take an 85-foot journey on a miniature railway past the Bombay to the rear compartment of the ship. Here you find the remainder of your crew, these scanners, who are responsible for the array of 20-millimeter cannons that can spit lethal poison down the throats of audacious interceptors. Here comes the 802 Express. Right on time, Ticker. Need a hand, Captain? No, thanks. Nothing like a little exercise on a cold, windy day. How are things, man? Oh, everything's under control, Captain. Think they might send a few jets up after us? Well, theoretically, we won't be over enemy territory until we start in for the coast. You can expect them any time after that. We'll be coming in alone after the main attack, trying to catch them napping. Clever aren't we, sir? Ask me that after we've made our run. You shoot the breeze with Tinker and his fellow gunners a minute or two and then hop your miniature railway back to the forward compartment. It's simple. You just lie on your back on the trolley and pull yourself hand over hand on a line slung from the top of the tube. That done, you go back to your seat and take over the business of flying the big baby. Navigator to pilot. Hesley, turn to a heading of 3, 4, 5 degrees. 3, 4, 5 it is. Left that cloud layer behind. Who made it coming back? Sure a lot of water down there. About as much as there is sky up here. I'll take up here, like just as well. 3, 4, 5 degrees on the bottom. Now flying on an orderly heading with the crenellated surface of the sea reaching out to touch the sky on all horizons. You become witness to a symphony and time and mood and color. From a ringside seat some 40,000 feet up you watch the sun reluctantly lose its supremacy and sink helplessly into a purplish haze that rings the western rim of the earth. You watch its rays spill out across the sea like so many shimmering golden tentacles searching for a grip hold and finding none slipping defeatedly away. You watch their counterparts thrust skyward in a fan-like reach that yields them nothing but bathes the surrounding area in a reddish profusion and then it too is silently and irrevocably suffused and drained away. While this drama unfolds to the west an all engulfing darkness is racing in from the east a malignant snuffer of light it sweeps to the dome of the sky and spills hungrily down the western perimeter driving the final lingering vestiges of daylight before it. Within the cockpit the luminous instrument panel offers its ghostly yet friendly comfort. Night has fallen and you fly on a trespasser in its dark kingdom. Allow me to spell you for a while. She's all yours. You should be heading in soon. Looks like we've got a good dark night for it. The radar doesn't care how dark it is. Never get in the pilot. What say, Lee? Time to make a left turn. Your heading is 260 degrees. Line her up on 260, Joe, right? Captain the crew, everybody give a listen. We're starting in. As of right now we're over enemy territory. We're about four hours away from our target. As soon as their radar picks us up they'll be after us. We've got some top cover that may help a little. You radar men, don't be afraid to sing out no matter what you pick up on your screens. Everybody keep a weather eye and stay off the intercom unless it's absolutely necessary. Taking into account the force of the headwind which you now buck, you are moving through the night at better than six miles a minute. Like a knife cutting through the foals of space you rapidly whittle away the distance to the target. It's not likely the fighters will swarm up to find you for a time yet. Still in this business you take nothing for granted. Ever. An hour slips away. Another. And then a question arises to plague you. Your copilot voices it. Dan, at this altitude shouldn't we be seeing some lights from the mainland? Yeah, we should see reflections on the horizon. The only reason I can think of why we're not must be a storm. Radio operator to the pilot. What do you got, Sergeant? Just picked up a report from a ship 100 miles off Cape Hatteras. They report a bad gale blowing. At the first report you've heard on it? Yes, sir. They said it came up suddenly. See if you can pick up something from the mainland. Lee, what do you think? That's the weather I said we might run into. Shouldn't bother us up here though. You hope. Sam, looks like you may do your bombing through the cloud cover again. After that the routine of the flight vanishes and things begin happening fast. The interceptors are not asleep. They're not caught off guard. Their radar ceaselessly probing has found you. Jet's coming up fast. A whole flock of them. Pilot to crew are going down into the storm. Hold on. The storm doesn't seem to bother those babies very much. It won't help their rain, Mini. Two of them coming in at four o'clock. Navigator to pilot. We'll be breaking out of this stuff in another 10 to 15 minutes. Right, Lee. Pilot to crew. We're gonna grab some altitude. I'm reaching for the stars trying to rid yourself of the angry swarm that follows you. You wonder, were your cannons loaded with more than film? How many of them you'd have sent spinning down into oblivion? You wonder too, were their guns armed? Could they have destroyed you? Later the aggregate of film will paint a clear enough picture. Its effect serving as a lesson and nothing more final. We lost them. Probably low on fuel. They were with us for quite a while. Yeah. And we were supposed to snake through. In one sense, I'm not sorry we didn't. Suppose we'd meant this. Navigator to pilot. We're 10 minutes due east of the target. 10 minutes due east of the target. And then five minutes. And then suddenly the cloud cover is gone, ripped away in tatters and rags and far below the lights of the city lay. Naked, defenseless. The Bombay opens. The Bombadier has the ship. And then his voice echoes matter-of-factly in your ear. Bombs away. Down there the lights will continue to shine. The city sleeps on in peaceful unknowing. You've made another dry run. Now it's time to find your way home. How about a kiss for a long last time? Oh my goodness, you look tired and you look hungry. Feed me and put me to bed. Where's my girl? Still asleep. Oh wonderful. Sit there, coffee will be ready in a minute. Can I have a long trip? Well, you might put it that way. The proudly we hail production, dry run. Now here is an important message. Young man, there's a future in flight. Today's jet age offers unlimited opportunities for young men between the ages of 19 and 26 and a half who have completed two or more years of college and are otherwise qualified. Yes, you can proudly wear the silver wings and fly the mighty aircraft of your United States Air Force when you've completed your training. For full details, visit your nearest United States Army and United States Air Force Recruiting Station today. Remember, the sooner you apply, the sooner you fly. This has been another program on proudly we hail presented transcribed in cooperation with this station by the United States Army and the United States Air Force Recruiting Service. This program featured Leigh-Anne Jeanne as narrator. This is Kenneth Banghart speaking and inviting you to tune in the same station next week for another interesting story on proudly we hail.