We used to say, "A suck for SAC is a blow for freedom." The other was "Peace is our profession. War is our hobby." It was definitely a different culture.

I don't remember the year but in the middle of the night, the Sq Commander called and said, "Start the regeneration." I figured it was an exercise but he said it was the real deal. So, we repositioned all the airplanes; all the BUFs were repositioned and loaded with nukes. The BUF crews lived on the airplanes for about 3 days before we stood down. Interesting. Reportedly it was an incident with North Korea. We never got a full briefing on it.

But seeing all the nukes trotted out for real was a bit of an attention getter.