B52s on SAC Alert
Thought you might also be interested in another aspect of my tour with the B-52s at Clinton-Sherman AFB, OK - the nuclear aspect. This was the cold war period so our primary mission was to maintain bombers on alert. For this, we had a separate high-security alert area at one end of the base called the "Christmas Tree" (located to the right at the end of the runway as shown on the map below). The parking spaces were arranged this way so the aircraft could quickly pull out and taxi to the runway.
We usually maintained 6-8 alert aircraft. An alert aircraft was "cocked" - meaning it had the arming codes and targeting information on board. The alert area was a "No-Lone" zone, which meant everyone, including guards had to be in pairs and you could never be out of sight of your partner while in the area. If you did, you could be shot. Even worse, you could set off a security alert and be arrested and bundled onto a pickup where you stood with your hands on the cab, a searchlight focused on you and a gazillion M-16s trained on you while you were trundled off to the poky with great fanfare (it didnt' happen to me, but I saw it happen to someone else - frankly, I'd rather be shot 
)
Some of our older planes carried Hound Dog missiles on the pylons and usually two large nukes in the bomb bay. A typical bomb load might be two 1-megaton Hound Dogs and two 20-mt nukes. It was pretty sobering to stand next to a live 20 mt thermonuclear bomb and realize if it went off, you would never know what happened - your brain would be vaporized before it could process what was happening.
The alert crews rode in blue pickups with yellow flashing lights on top. They had the same right of way as emergency vehicles. Each alert B-52 had it's own tanker to refuel it once it was airborne and before it headed off to target. Seeing 8 KC-135s and 8 B-52s taxiing out and taking off was a fantastic sight. Knowing they all made it into the air without breaking was even more fantastic 
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Russ