Smaller 'Bomb Comp' to return, 8th Air Force saysAwards ceremony to be held March 4 at Hoban Hall.
By John Andrew Prime • jprime@gannett.com • January 29, 2009 2:00 am
n what may be a welcome return to the past for many old Air Force hands, the 8th Air Force plans to revive an old tradition, the annual Bombing and Navigation Competition, or "Bomb Comp."
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Competition, now under way, will culminate with a March 4 awards ceremony in Barksdale's Hoban Hall, the original event's traditional roost.
"This won't be the big 'Bomb Comp' we used to have," 8th Air Force commander Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder Jr. said.
Simulated bombing, ordnance loading and security exercises are taking place at bases and ranges around the country, with a symposium immediately preceding the awards ceremony.
"The symposium is to bring people together (who) were in the competition, to talk about the lessons they learned," Elder said. "One of the big values of the competition in the past was that it really forced people to examine their processes and look for better ways to do things."
The symposium will be part of a continuing series by 8th Air Force and partners that include the RAND Corp. and Argonne National Laboratories. These will focus on different aspects of the Air Force and its strategic deterrence mission and how its capabilities can achieve effects around the globe, including support of ground forces.
Since it will happen so soon and there are fewer bomb wings than in the 1980s, it won't have the international flavor of the old Bomb Comps that involved international partners from Great Britain and Australia, but it will involve B-2 and B-1 units, he said.
"Our goal is to get it off the ground this year and spur on to an even larger one the following year," Elder said. "We're hoping to do the competition annually. We'll have to wait and see."
The bombing and navigation event is being called PROUD SHIELD II, while the loading and security component is called GIANT SWORD II.
The original Strategic Air Command events, which began in 1948, had similar names, such as GIANT VOICE and PROUD SHIELD, through which, for most of five decades interrupted only during the Vietnam War, SAC's best crews gathered annually to match skills and test equipment.
Over the years a variety of airplanes, from B-36, B-47 and B-50 bombers to today's B-1, B-2 and B-52, have competed.
It was not only heavy bombers that took part, 8th Air Force Museum Director H.D. "Buck" Rigg said.
"The B-58 and FB-111s, both being medium bombers, gave the 'Big Boys' a real run for the money," he said.
In later years bombers from allied nations, such as the Royal Air Force's Vulcan, also took part. In the event's final years, there even were visits, though not participation, from former adversaries, as when Russian "Bear" bombers visited Barksdale in a rare exchange in the early 1990s.
The last Strategic Air Command competition was in 1992, and the only one for Air Combat Command was in 1994.
Trophies awarded during the competition, named after such generals as Muir Fairchild, Curtis LeMay, John C. Meyer, Russell E. Dougherty and B.L. Davis, recognized excellence in some area of navigation, bombing or precision delivery of weapons as systems evolved and airplanes came and went.
"The Symposium was a proper forum for the close of the Bomb Comp Competition," a page on the Web site honoring the F-111 states. "SAC crews who participated joined their commanders, distinguished civilian visitors, SAC staff members, numbered air forces and air division officers to exchange ideas at two symposiums ... the symposium was a valuable tool to exchange information and ideas to improve proficiency and better understand SAC's mission."
Elder said though the number of bombing wings in the Air Force has almost halved since the 1980s, the B-2 and B-1 and F-15 participation will make for a lively event, even though it will take a lot to move the B-52 from the top of the heap.
"If we have a category for bombing above 30,000 feet, the B-52s will always win," he said.
Source
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/article/20090129/NEWS01/901290328/1060
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