Bomber Down: Part Three

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Introduction to Unsolved Histories

0:30Felix Bunnell here, producer and host of Unsolved Histories. This is part three of our story about Meal 8-8, a U.S. Air Force bomber that's been missing in the Gulf of Mexico since February 28, 1968. This time, we go deep on the history of the B-52 itself. A bomber designed more than 75 years ago, which is still flying vital missions all these decades later. We also meet another family member of one of the crew, the son of the pilot. Now, part three of Unsolved Histories, bomber down.

1:02I had four flights that were all about 26 hours long age. Wow. That was the thing back during the Cold War when we actually, on our particular mission, we took off from Sacramento, flew up to Alaska and headed north towards the pole and hit a tanker and refueled with him. Dave Wellman is nearly 90 years old.

Dave Wellman Interview

1:33He's standing next to a restored B-52 bomber on display outside the Museum of Flight in Seattle. Wellman served in the Air Force in the 1950s and 1960s. He commanded a buff. That's the unofficial nickname for the B-52. In those peak years of the Cold War and the war in Vietnam. And that took 35 minutes to offload 124,000 pounds of fuel. So you refuel and then you fly all the way out to the North Pole, turn around, come back.

2:06Wellman is describing what it took to keep a B-52 aloft for that 26-hour stretch. Part of which is rendezvousing with a giant flying tanker, a Boeing KC-135, to fill up the bomber's tanks two separate times in order to fly from the United States to the North Pole and back without landing. That tanker, he's from Fairbanks, Alaska. He goes down, refuels, and he comes back up and there he is with a load of gas. That may sound easy, but there was no autopilot when Dave Wellman was on the job.

2:40All the precision flying necessary to keep the B-52 connected to the tanker was manual. It was done the old-fashioned way, by hand. And you said it took like 35 minutes to get all that fuel? Yes. So your hand flying this thing for 35 minutes, at the end of that are you kind of tired? Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Okay. When I first started doing it, with any rapidity, I had to go, I went to the gym and lift weights. Wow. Wellman is sharp and energetic.

3:11It's a treat for the museum visitors who get to hear his firsthand accounts from the front lines of the Cold War and the hot war skies of Southeast Asia. I'm a doser here at the Air Museum in Seattle, Washington. I've been here 31 years. And previous to that time, I have experience in the Air Force and working for Boeing. And so I love and I live airplanes down here. And so I enjoy talking about anything airplane and history involved, especially the B-52.

3:45Because the B-52, I flew in Vietnam on a number of missions. Wellman is also partially responsible for this B-52 actually being on display as a tribute to his fellow Vietnam vets. This airplane we have here at the museum, we got this in about 1992. They flew it in up to Payne Field in Everett and it sat up there and it just deteriorated badly.

4:19The old bomber sat for years by the runway at Payne Field north of Seattle, where the museum's aircraft restoration shop is located. A group of us Vietnam veterans, we got together, got with the museum, and we decided now is the time to bring that down here, a thing we call Welcome Home Park. And it's a park here to honor people that served in Vietnam. Because when they returned home, a lot of folks, a lot of the young men and people that served in there,

4:50they were not welcomed well in the 70s. And so now this is a chance to welcome people home. The park built around the B-52 is free and open to the public. No museum admission is required. And it's just a few blocks away from where the very first B-52 rolled out of the factory more than 70 years ago. And this airplane right here is a G model. It has an interview fuel tank. So those wings are spread out there and you're actually got eight wheels in it here.

5:22Along with the tribute to Vietnam veterans, it's the perfect spot for Dave Wellman to share all he knows about the iconic aircraft, including technical details. The B-52 is a swept wing eight engine bomber. The swept wing is the standard swept wing that was designed by the Germans 35 degrees. And the backstory, or the family-friendly part of it anyway, of that curious nickname, The Buff, which is an acronym.

5:53Its nickname is the Big Ugly Fellow, B-U-F. Sometimes modified to a certain extent, but it was a buff, Big Ugly Fellow. It's not very pretty, but it's majestic. Modified with another F, you mean? Well, maybe.

6:15In case you didn't catch that, he's too polite to say the other F-word in the salty nickname whose initials spell B-U-F-F or buff. Dave Wellman is clearly something of a character. And for that matter, so is the B-52. It's one of the most important weapons of the Cold War. And it's the model of playing at the center of this story, about a bomber missing since 1968 in the Gulf of Mexico.

6:44From KSL Podcasts, I'm Felix Bunnell. This is Unsolved Histories, Bomber Down, Part 3. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Because behind every headline is a bottom line. Whether it's the funds fueling AI, or crypto's trillion-dollar swings, there's a money side to every story.

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Steve Salavera Interview

7:34Steve Salavera is in his 60s. During the Cuban Missile Crisis when he was a toddler, his family lived near Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, Texas. We had a 62 Chevy Impala. The trunk was loaded with canned goods and stuff. You know, basically, supposedly, I don't know if this is really true, Carswell was the number two target for Russia because of the B-52s there back in 62 or 60, whenever that was. Steve's dad was a B-52 pilot in the Strategic Air Command. My mother had been instructed that, you know, my dad was on alert, of course, but that she was to drive west, you know, away from Carswell.

8:11Every third week, he was on alert, standing by with the crew of the eight-engine bomber he commanded. The instructions to his wife, to drive west, were for just in case World War III came while Major Salavera was on duty. The early 1960s were heady times, particularly in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. My dad took me to Carswell when President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson arrived in Fort Worth at Carswell. I was on his shoulders, and I remember the bright light shining at the plane.

8:44We were not allowed on the tarmac. It was still probably, you know, 50 yards away. Steve was three years old that time when President Kennedy came to Texas in November 1963. But he took me out there. I was on his shoulders so I could see their arrival because he had privileges at least to get to that, you know, location, you know, at that distance. The next day, the family was at home while the president and his entourage headed for Dallas and into history. And we were watching Cartoon Carnival, which was a local independent TV cartoon, you know, with the Three Stooges and, you know, that kind of stuff.

9:19And they interrupted it, that show, and all three of his kids were out there. And my dad was in the kitchen, and I never heard him cuss, ever. And I heard him come in and say, damn. Steve has a lot of vivid memories of his dad from more mundane times not involving the JFK assassination. Playing catch, doing family stuff with his younger brother and sister, and just being around the house with their mom. And he also remembers that moment in February 1968, when, for his family, everything changed.

9:50I woke up at 5 a.m. before sunrise. Supposedly, the Air Force times us in these situations where a chaplain and some officer comes and shows up at the house. And I think all the wives know this. You know, and you've seen it in movies, too, you know, where they show up. Well, the doorbell rings, I didn't hear that. What I woke up to was the wails of, you know, crying for my mother, wailing. Steve's dad, Major Frank Salaveria, was the commander of Meal 88.

10:23Steve's mom, Frank's widow, was Barbara Salaveria. She passed away a few years ago. As we learned in part one, she's the widow that Cliff Sholin found in the phone book, listed under her late husband's Air Force rank and full name, when Cliff first started researching the monument at Carswell Air Force Base decades ago. She kept her credit cards in his name because women couldn't have, couldn't hold title, that kind of stuff. And so, you know, the gas, back then it was all, you know, Gulf and Texaco and, you know, they had gas cards.

10:54You know, charge cards, whatever. And so everything was in his name. And she maintained his name in the phone book. Major Frank F.M. Salaveria was in the phone book because she didn't want to show up as a single woman. Steve says that along with keeping his name on everything, his mom never really got over losing her husband. She never remarried. She only went on a couple of dates when we were kids because people set her up. From that point on, she said, once you have the best, you know, you never have the rest or some little phrase like that.

11:27Like other families of the men who were aboard Meal 8-8 the night it disappeared, the Salaveria family experienced a loss that they only partially recovered from. I mean, I wonder sometimes if I had my dad, you know, to raise me through my, you know, after age 10, would I have been a different husband and father? Would my career have gone farther? And like some of the other families, they also found support from each other. Steve's mom, Barbara, was particularly close with Cindy Dillaplane, who we met in part two.

12:02Cindy lost her husband, John, and mounted her own search for the plane and actually found debris. Cindy was over there a lot. In fact, I bought my first car, a 1968 Mercury Cougar, from Captain Dillaplane, Cindy's second husband. As a teenager, Steve would drive that Mercury Cougar from the family home over to Carswell Air Force Base, where the Salaverias, because of Steve's late father, still had a few privileges. Three, to be exact. And there was the grocery store, which they called the BX.

12:34The BX was the base exchange, which was a retail clothing, you know, like a department store that supposedly had cheaper things. And then they had the commissary. That's what it was called, the commissary. And my mom would continue to go there. And I think I continued to go there. There were only three reasons. Maybe the pool. I think I also may have used the pool that was on the Officers Club grounds when I was younger, because we didn't live in a country club. And though it wasn't on the way to any of those three places, Steve would sometimes drive past the monument that had been dedicated to his dad and the missing B-52,

13:07the monument that inspired Cliff Sholin's search for the bomber. There was a fork in the road. The main road went to the left, and the fork in the road went along the property on the right. And that's where the chapel was. And I would drive by. I don't think I stopped too often, but I did have to go out of my way to go and look at it. Steve says the reason he would go out of his way to check on the monument was out of a sense of protectiveness, since each of the families had chipped in to fund it. They paid for that, and then once they put it on the base chapel grounds, it became federal property.

13:38And so if I drove by, it wasn't wistful. It was to make sure that what the families paid for was still there. But there's also a little bit more to it than that. To explain how he feels, Steve cites the biblical figure Mary and how she described what she did to try to understand her role as the mother of Jesus. She pondered these things in her heart. There's a story to that extent. Well, over the years, I've always put these little things away, pondered these things in my heart. And that's one item.

14:09I would say that it's, you know, I just tucked it away. I'd say, OK, that's, you know, that's there, you know, different things over, you know, 50 years. Steve isn't consumed with thoughts of the missing B-52 or the loss of his dad. We just went on, and it was like, he's gone. I mean, you know, and we, I mean, we come up, but, you know, she did not encourage the conversation. You know, it was like tucked away, compartmentalized, I guess. However, decades ago, he did look at Air Force documents about the crash that Cindy Dillaplane mailed to his mom.

14:44Later, he also found a website that had information about Meal 88, and he spent time reading accounts of what had happened. Steve says he processed his grief as a child and young man as best as he could. But it was an era before grief counselors, and his mother was reluctant to talk about what had happened. Still, as it can for so many people, the unprocessed part of Steve's grief would occasionally emerge unexpectedly, like one time in the mid-1980s. I was at church, and one of the pastors had a, there was a young kid who was like 13 or 14 or whatever, and he had just lost his dad to cancer.

15:24And Ed, this kid, this was the pastor, he said, hey, Steve, you lost your dad when you were young. Come on here. And, man, I just started sobbing, crying out, because it was 20 years after the fact. And I had not, you know, I just sobbed, like it, you know, brought back all these, you know, the pain for this young guy. It was just weird. And, you know, and I just started sobbing. I couldn't even talk. You know, so 20 years after the fact, I guess I didn't have closure. And here I am in my, you know, mid-late 20s, whatever.

15:55And I, you know, I just sobbed.

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B-52 Origin Story

17:39It is the icon of the Cold War, really. And it's such, it is, you can use terms like venerable, legendary, very much like we think of the Flying Fortress, the B-17, and that, and its incredible history. Mike Lombardi is senior historian for the Boeing company. He's author of a history of Boeing bombers, including the World War II Flying Fortress, and the B-29 Super Fortress, and the Cold War Stratofortress.

18:17Stratofortress is Boeing's in-house nickname for the B-52, since Buff doesn't exactly have a corporate vibe. And the B-52, it just goes along with its legendary status, that it would have this incredible origin story, that back in 1948, so this is how long, we're going back to 1948 for this airplane. Mike loves Boeing history. It's no exaggeration to say that his position with the company, which includes an office at the massive Boeing archives south of Seattle, is a dream job.

18:51As we sit talking in a work area at the archives, we're surrounded by pieces of Boeing history. Old photos, models of famous Boeing planes, and brochures and posters. Buff, Stratofortress. But where does the name B-52 come from? The Air Force has a designation system where there's a letter and a number. The letter is the mission of the airplane. So, for example, today we have the F-15, the F-22, F for fighter, the A-10, A for attack, and then B for bomber.

19:29So, and this started roughly in the 1920s. So, there was a B-1 back in the day, and there's a B-1 today. There was a B-21 back in the 1930s, and there's the new, the latest bomber is the B-21 that Northrop Brumman is building, the Raider. So, that, so it's just the next number in sequence. The bomber that became known as the B-52 has its roots in the earliest years of the Cold War and the concept of deterrence.

20:00Atomic bombs dropped on Japan by the United States at the end of World War II provided a terrifying glimpse at what World War III might look like. Especially once the Soviet Union developed its own atomic weapons, and the standoff began. Beneath that sinister pall of smoke, the world's most destructive force has been unleashed, with what results we know only too well.

20:31The standoff which morphed into the Cold War. With the introduction of atomics, nuclear weapons, on both sides, you just wanted to make sure you had enough force to convince the other side that you don't want to do this. And so, that's really where the B-52 came in, is saying we have this capability that these airplanes have the range, the payload, that they could potentially do just like we did in World War II.

21:02Using air power, they would be able to defeat the enemy in that regards. So, that was the strategy. To implement this strategy, to be able to make good on the threat, which theoretically would reduce the need to ever make good on the threat, the Air Force had to upgrade and modernize from the piston-driven propeller bombers that had won the war in Europe and Japan. Right after World War II, you know, we're still flying B-29s, right? And here they are talking about this jet bomber.

21:34So, the Air Force puts out this requirement. The Cold War has pretty much started. And there's a need for a jet bomber, a jet bomber with the range to fly from the continental United States and reach targets in the Soviet Union. In the late 1940s, jet technology was still relatively new. Boeing had already developed a jet bomber, the B-47 Stratojet, but the Air Force wanted one that could fly farther and carry more and bigger bombs.

22:06Unfortunately, Boeing didn't necessarily see a way to pair nascent jet technology with what the Air Force was asking for. The Air Force is looking for a bigger bomber, more range. Boeing looks at this problem and says, the only way we can do this is to build a turboprop, has used turboprops. The range, just to be able to carry the load, the fuel to get that distance, has got to be a turboprop. So, Boeing puts together a proposal for a big turboprop airplane.

22:38Turboprop planes use propellers, but are driven by turbine engines, which are much safer and more reliable than piston-driven engines. Piston engines were used on the B-17 Flying Fortress and the B-29 Super Fortress. And even on the DC-7C of Flight 293 in Season 1 of Unsolved Histories. Lombardi says the Boeing team went to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio to make the pitch for their turboprop bomber. They go to Dayton to present this to the Air Force, and the Air Force rejects it.

23:11They said, you know, you gave us this jet bomber, the B-47, we really like that. It's cutting-edge technology. We want a big one of those. And this was, Boeing had already addressed this. This was just, it was just something that would seem almost, I wouldn't say impossible, but very difficult to do. And so the, but here's the customer saying, this is what we want. There was no tech sector building computers in the 1940s, but Boeing and other aviation manufacturers can be thought of as the tech sector of that era.

23:44In the years immediately after World War II, resources were pouring into aviation development for civilian air travel and for defense. And the best and brightest minds were being recruited to work at Boeing and its competitors. And fortunately for Boeing, we had the company's brain trust was present there for this, including Ed Wells, who is our greatest engineer, who's to this day, we have a program, the Ed Wells Partnership, that's a mentoring program for our young engineers that have this aspirational figure of brilliant Ed Wells, as well as George Shire, who is our brilliant aerodynamicist.

24:23So this team, they're, with the Air Force telling them, you know, this, this isn't what we want. That's when the Boeing brain trust kicked into high gear. It was a Thursday afternoon. The, the colonel that's doing this evaluation says, Colonel Warden, he says, come back Monday with a better idea. So basically over the weekend. So, so the, like I said, fortunately it's our brain trust. So they huddle in their hotel room there in Dayton, the Van Cleve Hotel.

24:55So they, they pull the dresser over and then clear it off and get out their drafting pencils and they start working this out. There were no 3D printers in 1948, of course, but there was balsa, a soft, trimmable and carvable wood favored by hobbyists and modelers and widely available. George Shire, again, this aerodynamicist, he went down to the hobby shop downtown, bought some balsa wood and a hobby knife and he sets out to start carving a model.

25:27And, and, and Ed Wells leads the team to develop a proposal. So they get, they get on the phone and they call back to Seattle and they say, fire up the wind tunnel. And they go through, go through some calculations. They draw up a jet bomber and they're like, it's going to, it's, they're, it's going to need eight engines. It's so big. So they, they work it all out. Shire makes this model, puts it on a pedestal. So Monday comes and the Boeing team goes back to the Air Force Base.

25:59They go back to the, the Colonel's office there at Dayton, at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and present, they put the balsa wood model on, on his desk and they give him this proposal, 33 pages is all it is. Got a three view drawing and some calculations. And they say, here's our new idea based on your feedback. Here's what, and looks at the model. He opens up, looks at their proposal and he says, I like this gentleman. This is the B-52. The origin story borders on the mythical, but Mike Lombardi says it's all true.

26:34What I love about this story is it's a great leadership story. As that team was, was trusted and empowered to do this. You know, they didn't have to wait. We've got to go back and, and ask leadership at the company. And of course it, it was just four years later that made its first flight in 1952. And here we are today. These planes are still flying. It's safe to say one unusual part of the B-52 story is most definitely true. It was probably beyond anyone's expectations who was there when the B-52 was born that a plane, which first flew during the Harry Truman administration, would still be flying more than 70 years later.

27:15All told, more than 70 B-52s with airframes originally built in the early 1960s are still in service for the Air Force. They've had major technology upgrades, but are essentially the same skeleton and skin. When the Cold War ended, so did the B-52s Cold War nuclear purpose. Since the 1990s, they've been used for conventional military airstrikes in Iraq, Serbia, and Afghanistan, and as recently as 2024 against Islamic State targets in Syria.

27:46Mike Lombardi says the Air Force and defense contractors have tried to replace the B-52 over the years, but nothing has proved as durable or as adaptable. And plans currently call for those 70-plus bombers to keep flying at least until 2050. Will anything ever replace the B-52? Well, eventually, it'll have to be. But it still fulfills, because of its size and its capability, and it can do a number of missions. It's not just locked into, it's a bomber. It can do a lot of, you know, over the years, it's done reconnaissance.

28:22It's had a naval strike role, which it potentially still has that particular role. And still very much with that capability of having that giant bomb bay, they can carry a pretty good load. So that's hard to replace. Like many aspects of military life, M-16 rifles, MRE rations, Jeeps, Hummers, and camo,

28:53B-52s, in their 70-plus years of service, have made their way deep into pop culture. For instance, there's the band from Athens, Georgia, named after the bomber. And the syrupy cocktail made with Kahlua, Irish cream, and triple sec. Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the war room. And perhaps most memorably, it's a B-52 which is at the center of the plot of the dark Cold War farce, Dr. Strangelove, a Hollywood film directed by Stanley Kubrick and released in early 1964.

29:27Starring Peter Sellers in three roles, including President Merkin Muffley, heard a moment ago, and George C. Scott as General Buck Turgidson. If the pilot's good, see, I mean, if he's really sharp, he can barrel that baby in solo. I mean, you ought to see it sometime. It's a big plane, like a 52 room. It's jet exhaust, frying chickens in the barnyard. Yeah, but has he got a chance? Has he got a chance? The full title of the film is Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.

30:02It's about a B-52 mistakenly sent to bomb the Soviet Union and attempts to call it back before it can complete its mission. Peter Sellers also plays the title character, a former Nazi scientist named Dr. Strangelove. Cowboy actor Slim Pickens plays Major T.J. King Kong, commander of the errant aircraft, who ultimately finds a unique way to release the weapon his bomber is carrying. Stay on the bomb around the ice. I'm going down below and see what I can do. Maybe it won't come as a surprise to learn that Cliff Sholand has seen Dr. Strangelove more times than he can count.

30:38Whoever was the technical advisor on that movie did a really good job. During many of those seven-day stints on alert, living just steps from their B-52 and waiting for the horn to go off, meaning 12 minutes to get airborne, Cliff says the film was a popular part of the Air Force video diet. There were several of those movies, and How I Loved the Bomb was a staple of the alert force. We watched it almost every night.

31:07And just laughed. Target in sight. Hey, what about Major Kong?

31:21Not surprisingly, the B-52 is also the star of dozens of old Air Force training and promotional films, some once classified but now readily available on YouTube. And speaking of power, the greatest of all jet bombers is the new B-52, with eight improved-type jet engines, giving it a phenomenal range and load capacity.

31:44We're on runway alert. Stand the mammoth B-52s that are the backbone of the Strategic Air Command. Even these stilted old movies get an important point right. At the heart of every B-52 and its critical Cold War mission is the crew. But just as important as each jet giant are the men who fly them, the combat-ready crews living in low-slung concrete alert barracks beside the runway.

32:12One week each month, the strike crew lives, works, and relaxes together, always in each other's sight. They never know when the klaxon horn will sound the alert, weighs heavily on their minds. Each finds in his own way some form of forgetting. It's this connection to the crew, that personal relationship, which is driving Cliff Sholand and the other volunteers to search for the missing bomber. We've already met the daughter of evaluator Philip Strine, the widow of electronic warfare officer John Pantala,

32:45and the son of pilot Frank Saleveria. The other four regular crew members aboard Meal 8-8 were Captain Charles W. Roberts, Captain Michael L. Carroll, First Lieutenant William T. Causey, Master Sergeant Kermit C. Casey. Also aboard was Captain Thomas D. Childs. Like Philip Strine, he was an evaluator. We'll meet Captain Childs' widow in the fourth and final part of the story.

Search for Meal 8-8

33:11As Cliff Sholand points out, four of the eight wives of the men aboard Meal 8-8 have passed away in the 57 years since the bomber disappeared. Cliff says time is running out. That's why he's eager to mount the search later this year and find the B-52 and the missing men while the remaining four widows are still around. Cliff is busy raising the money necessary to fund the expedition to the Gulf of Mexico, and his group is happy to accept tax-deductible contributions through the project website. The goal is righting the wrong by finding the plane and bringing the men home.

33:45If this goal can be accomplished, it can bring closure. But closure is elusive, and the word can mean something different for each person. And I've talked with my sister and brother about it, and I'm not sure that we have ever thought that we lacked closure. You know, and so we thought, you know, I've been thinking about it, you know, it's, you know, do I need closure? This is Steve Salivaria again, son of pilot Major Frank Salivaria. I mean, if we find the wreck and we get a dog tag out of it or something,

34:18is that going to give me closure? I don't know what, because see, that's the thing. They didn't, you know, we didn't have any counseling or, you know, psychology for us back in, you know, 68 and 69. So, you know, I don't know.

34:32If Cliff Sholin succeeds, Steve and the other family members might finally get to answer this question for themselves. We'll have more about the search and those left behind in the final part of Bomber Down.

34:48For more information, including photos and maps, find us on Facebook and Instagram at unsolvedhistoriespod, or visit our website, unsolvedhistoriespod.com. Episodes are posted every other Tuesday. Each covers an unsolved, little-known, or mysterious event in history. Follow Unsolved Histories by KSL now, wherever you get your podcasts. Unsolved Histories is research, written, and hosted by me, Felix Bunnell. Production and sound design by Josh Tilton. Special thanks to Trent Sell, Aaron Mason, Andrea Smartin,

35:22Kellyanne Halverson, Ryan Meeks, Amy Donaldson, Ben Kebrick, and Dave Cauley. Our executive producer is Cheryl Worsley. Unsolved Histories is produced by KSL Podcasts in association with Rhapsody Voices.

35:47We'll see you next time.