Stewart received an honorable discharge that summer and returned to his Hollywood career, maintaining his military career as well, as a colonel in the Air Force Reserve. Even though his return to movie making took up most of his time, Stewart conscientiously attended his Reserve drills. In 1959, President Dwight Eisenhower promoted the 51-year-old Colonel Stewart to the rank of brigadier general in the Air Force Reserve, a controversial appointment in which his celebrity status had actually worked against him. At the first mention of Stewart’s one-star promotion two years earlier, a political firestorm had erupted, but the Air Force stood behind Stewart and reassigned him to a more prestigious post, easing his eventual confirmation by the U.S. Senate. Throughout his years in the Reserves, Stewart maintained familiarity as a SAC bomber pilot in the B-36, then the B-47, and finally the B-52.

Now, 22 years and one day since he had earned his first Distinguished Flying Cross for his Liberator mission over Germany in 1944, General Stewart was going on another combat mission—to Vietnam—seated in a B-52 behind Captains Amos and Meyers. The pilots ran through the checklists, fired up the engines and departed Andersen field for the 5-plus hours flying time to their target. When it came time to refuel, some three hours later, Amos contacted the tanker’s boom operator while in the precontact position behind the KC-135.

Amos had Stewart repeat the command: “Green-2 stabilized in the precontact position. Ready for contact.” There was an unusually long pause before the tanker boom operator responded, as though he might have been trying to remember where he had heard that voice before. “Cleared for contact,” he finally said. At plug in, Stewart replied, “Contact.” After refueling, Amos let the tanker know who the extra pilot was. The boom operator replied: “Thank you sir, it was our pleasure to serve you. Today we are giving double stamps.” Stewart had a good laugh.

As they approached the coast of South Vietnam and were running their checklists, Stewart asked if they were at the Pre-Initial Point on the map. He then moved to the edge of his seat so he could view the bomb impacts of the aircraft ahead of them. Green-2 was at 33,500 feet, 500 feet above and two miles behind the lead bomber, Green-1. Green-3 was 500 feet above and two miles behind Green-2. The radar navigator, Captain Irby Terrell, found and tracked the bombing offset, and the Time to Go (TG) indicator started the countdown. At TG zero, they started the release of 51 M-117, 750-pound bombs.

Each of the 30 B-52s had an individual bombing aim point so as to completely saturate the rectangular target box where the VC were reportedly located. The bombs were fused to penetrate the many caves and fortifications that were in the target area. When the strike camera film was processed back at Andersen, the crew learned that their bombs fell well within the desired Circular Error of Probability (CEP) that was required to hit the desired target.

When safely outbound off the coast of South Vietnam, Captain Kenny Rahn plugged in the electric frying pan and prepared the planned meal for the crew. “You all really know how to top off a successful bomb run,” Stewart said as he enjoyed his scrambled eggs, bacon and grilled cheese sandwich.

The flight back was uneventful until they began their approach to Guam. Thinking his flaps were damaged, Amos knew that a “flaps-up” landing in the B-52 was possible but he had only practiced it in training down to an altitude of 500 feet above the runway and no actual touchdowns were ever made. The B-52’s attitude during the approach to landing is dramatically different in a flaps-up approach and landing: The normal nose-down attitude becomes a nose-up attitude and requires a different technique in flaring and controlling the sink rate of the aircraft for touchdown with its bicycle-type landing gear.

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