After maintainers disassembled, inspected and repaired Ghost Rider, Miracle performed functional check flights on the B-52 to ensure its reliability and safety. The first regenerated B-52, nicknamed “Ghost Rider,” was restored in 2015 and also has ties to Miracle. “That’s difficult to do in a B-52 that flies every week, so to have done it with an airplane that sat for almost 11 years in storage-to crank up and get out of there in one shot was pretty impressive.” “We took off on the very first attempt,” he added. It probably is uncommon to regenerate one that’s this big and this complex. It’s not uncommon for them to regenerate an aircraft. “Regeneration, it’s in the name of AMARG. “They’ve got it down to a science for sure,” he said. Miracle said he wasn’t shocked by the maintenance work done and also praised AMARG for helping get Wise Guy back in the sky. “It took four months to get ready, so it was really a small effort on the aircrew side and a major effort on the maintainer side.” Robert Burgess, 307th Operations Group commander who was also part of the three-person team who flew Wise Guy. “This was a command-wide effort, with reservists and active duty offering a great deal of experience,” said Col. 29, 2007, about 10 months before the aircraft was originally sent to the desert of Arizona.Īccording to an article written by the 307th Bomb Wing Public Affairs office, the B-52 had more than 17,000 flight hours before arriving to the Boneyard, and it took a collective effort to make it air worthy again. “He wasn’t all that surprised to see one, and it’s just neat that it happened to be his airplane that he wrote that note on.”Ĭurious to see if he personally had any flight time with the previously-retired aircraft, Miracle checked his log books and found out he too flew the bomber while at Minot. “It almost is kind of a prophetic thing that he wrote that on there,” he said. After seeing his name signed on Wise Guy, Miracle said he reached out to Hedrick to talk about his foretelling call. Miracle and Hedrick flew B-52s alongside each other more than a decade ago at Minot AFB, North Dakota. Aaron Hedrick, who is now a lieutenant colonel with the 96th Bomb Squadron at Barksdale. Take good care of her … until we need her again.” The note inside the cockpit read: “AMARG, this is 60-034, a cold warrior that stood sentinel over America from the darkest days of the Cold War to the global fight against terror. This particular B-52, nicknamed “Wise Guy,” had been resting there since 2008, but was called back into duty after another B-52 crashed in 2016 at Andersen AFB, Guam. The Boneyard, which is maintained by the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), is a storage facility known for housing decommissioned aircraft. But to do something as unique as that, made it special.” “Every time you fly that airplane,” Miracle said, “you feel like you’re flying a piece of history, because it is. The feat was only the second time a Stratofortress returned to service from Davis-Monthan's "Boneyard." Stephen Miracle, 10th Flight Test Squadron B-52 flight commander, recently took part in a mission to fly a regenerated B-52 from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona, to Barksdale AFB, Louisiana. When a Reserve Citizen Airman entered the cockpit to operate a B-52 Stratofortress that hadn’t been flown in nearly 11 years and saw a written message from an old colleague, he knew the moment would be one to cherish.
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