{"id":72070,"date":"2017-05-15T08:00:42","date_gmt":"2017-05-15T12:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=72070"},"modified":"2017-05-15T07:47:11","modified_gmt":"2017-05-15T11:47:11","slug":"air-force-chief-master-sergeant-rob-wellbaum-last-tailgunner-retires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=72070","title":{"rendered":"Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Rob Wellbaum; last tailgunner retires"},"content":{"rendered":"

Someone sent us a link to The Drive<\/a> which reports that when US Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Rob Wellbaum retires, it marks the end of an era – the era of the bomber tail gunner;<\/p>\n

When he first joined up in 1987, the non-commissioned officer had signed up for Specialty Code 111X0\u2014Aerial Defense Gunner.<\/p>\n

\u201cI went into the recruiter\u2019s office and asked them what jobs they had for enlisted [personnel] to fly,\u201d Wellbaum recalled in an interview. \u201cMy recruiter listed off loadmaster, boom operator, and B-52 aerial defensive gunner. The gunner job sounded like the coolest job out of the three so that is what I applied for.\u201d<\/p>\n

For the next five years, he served in that role on a B-52 Stratofortress bomber. This aircraft \u2013 more lovingly referred to as the Big Ugly Fat Fellow, or BUFF \u2013 was the last in service to even have a tail gun.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article says that as recently as the Vietnam War, two tailgunners actually shot down opposition aircraft from their station in the tail of the B-52;<\/p>\n

“When the target got to 2,000 yards, I notified the crew that I was firing,\u201d Airman 1st Class Albert Moore, who was responsible for the second kill, explained later<\/a>. \u201cI fired at the bandit until it ballooned to three times in intensity then suddenly disappeared from my radar scope at approximately 1,200 yards, 6:30 low. I expended 800 rounds in three bursts.\u201d<\/p>\n

A gunner in another nearby B-52 confirmed Moore had blasted a North Vietnamese MiG-21. This was the last time a tail gunner from any air force scored a kill.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article reports that the tail guns disappeared from the aircraft in 1992 with the Soviet Union’s demise;<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew something was in the works but we weren\u2019t expecting to be cut,\u201d Wellbaum said of the Air Force\u2019s decision to remove the BUFF\u2019s weapons for good and eliminate tail gunners. \u201cHowever, the Air Force did take care of us and opened up a lot of AFSCs, one of which was flight engineer.\u201d<\/p>\n

In total, Wellbaum accumulated more than 1,000 flight hours as a B-52 tail gunner. His last position was as the superintendent of the 15th Operations Group, the flying component of Pacific Air Force\u2019s composite 15th Wing, which is situated at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Someone sent us a link to The Drive which reports that when US Air Force Chief Master Sergeant Rob Wellbaum retires, it marks the end of an era – the era of the bomber tail gunner; When he first joined up in 1987, the non-commissioned officer had signed up for Specialty Code 111X0\u2014Aerial Defense Gunner. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-force"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4ozh1-iKq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=72070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72070\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=72070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=72070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=72070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}