What Major Billy Kenyon was all excited about was something his radar navigator, Ray, pointed out about their route of flight on this all-important evaluation mission. Ray had just completed drawing up the flight charts for the upcoming operational readiness inspection (ORI) flight and observed that Billy's cousin had a farm not far from the target where they were to make a simulated bombing run.

"Hey Billy, look here," Ray called out. "Didn't you say that you had relatives down here in southern Missouri?"

"Yeah. Why?" Billy retorted without really looking up from the girlie magazine he was more interested in than drawing up charts and doing detailed mission planning.

"Well it looks like we'll be flying pretty close to that hilltop you told us about, the place you used to go hunting." Ray Clifton remembered Billy's elaborate yarns about turkey hunting along a creek bed running down the side of a hill near the farm.

Billy's curiosity was aroused enough for him to come over and lean across Ray's shoulder at the flight chart. He looked as Ray pointed to some hills indicated on the chart. "Isn't that the place, Billy?"

"Well, I'll be damned if it ain't," Billy acknowledged. Looks like we'll be crossing over the "forks", that Y-shaped road intersection. Hell, that's right on Wilbur's property."

One could almost see the wheels turning in Billy's deviously crafted brain, when he asked, insistently, "So how many seconds do you reckon it'd be from that intersection to the bomb release point, Ray?"

Captain Ray Clifton, the crew's barely-average radar navigator did some quick calculations and determined that it would be just 22 seconds from passing over the forks to the simulated bomb release point. "Why do you want to know that?"

Billy didn't answer, but the smirk on his face and that nervous rubbing of his chin clearly indicated that an idea was forming in that scheming brain of his.

By then George Lawson, the third member of the B-58 crew began to get curious about what his pals were doing. George had been waiting for Ray to complete the route charts and basic flight plan so he could begin his own fuel calculations.

"What's going on?" George chimed in.

"Damned if I know," Ray replied. "But I think Billy's got an idea and I'm worried."

"Worried that he finally had one? .. or what it might be?" George quipped.

"I don't know, but Billy seemed awfully interested in how long after we pass this fork in the road it is to bomb release," Ray explained while pointing to the flight chart.

The two crewmen went on about their work, preparing flight plans, fuel curves and other stuff for the anticipated ORI evaluation mission. Such a special mission would be a grueling part of the overall nerve-wracking annual performance test for their B-58 bombardment outfit.

Nothing more of the matter was mentioned for days. The crew went about their normal duties, including another week on ground alert in the "Mole Hole" facility next to their war-ready bomber.

While on alert one morning, the crew was scheduled to brief the Wing Commander on their assigned ORI mission. They had to explain in detail every aspect of the flight, from take-off to refueling and then to low-level route descent and to their assigned target.

Billy seemed unusually confident this time, so much so that the Wing Commander, fully aware of Billy's usually laid-back style, inquired if he had turned over a new leaf and was changing his ways.

"Yes, sir, Colonel," Billy retorted. Your are looking at a crew determined to go for it. We're going to show you that we're not merely a marginal combat-ready crew, we're ready for designation as a Lead Crew." Billy was trying to convince the "old man" that his crew wouldn't stay at the bottom rung of the totem pole ranking system, used to differentiate the good from the no-so-good.

"Well, Major. If your crew does well on this mission, you just might get your wish." Billy grinned an evil grin, the kind that some folks display when they know something that others don't.

Now don't get the wrong idea about Billy. Yes, he was lazy and he would cut corners to get by. But nobody in the outfit could deny that he was a natural pilot, and he loved flying. "Sure beats working for a living," he often said.

Just about the day that most crews predicted it would happen, the ORI was called. The inspection team from Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters arrived on a rainy Tuesday afternoon. All hell broke loose as the flight crews, ground support teams and others responded to the various exercises they had to endure to demonstrate that the Bomb Wing was fully trained and ready to complete their assigned mission.

Billy's crew actually passed the written tests given on alert procedures and security matters. And they were assigned to be on the first wave of bombers to be launched for the all-important evaluation mission. Crew R-49 was ready and they would be taking off at 0200 hours that Wednesday morning.

Just before heading for their airplane and take-off on that special flight, Billy made a very important phone call. He called his cousin Wilbur down in Missouri, but he didn't tell anyone about that call, not even his own crewmembers.

The mission went surprisingly smoothly. They hit their tanker right on schedule and took on the prescribed 25,000 pounds of jet fuel. Within two minutes of flight plan they began the descent to the low level route through the Ozark Mountains to the target area. And even more surprisingly, all the equipment was still working as they approached the Initial Point (IP) enroute to the target.

That target was a simulated intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silo located in a remote rural area of southern Missouri. It was not the kind of target that Ray could see on his radar scope, nothing there to directly take aim upon. It was one of those targets that had to be bombed using an offset aiming point, an off-target feature that would show up on the radar, but which would be some distance away. Ray would have to set in the computer the coordinates of the aiming point and the offset displacement values to make the bomber able to aim at one place but hit another.

As they proceeded along the flight path from the IP toward the target, flying at just 500 feet above the ground in the pre-dawn sky, Ray was having some difficulty finding that offset aiming point.

Just a couple of minutes before the planned bomb release point, Ray declared over the intercom, "I think that's it. Yeah. I think I've got the aiming point, Billy."

"Don't sweat it guys," Billy replied. "So have I. George. At my mark, start your stopwatch."

George was not surprised to have the job of timing the bomb run, for on many missions it was one of his regular chores to assist in the "fixed angle" timing from a known reference point to the bomb release point. Only this time he didn't know that a very special reference point had been designated. It was still quite dark out there, and the topographical features were not visible at all.

"There it is," Billy excitedly shouted. "Stand by George. Ready, ready .. NOW." George obediently started his watch.

But Ray was still having trouble. The radar appearance of the offset aiming point was not as well-defined as he'd expected. He was unsure of just which part of the echo return image he should keep under the cross-hairs. "Not really sure of my aimpoint," Ray muttered over the intercom.

"Not to worry," Billy responded. "I got it .... How's the timing, George?"

"Coming up on fifteen seconds. Tone coming on." The radio tone that would be used to mark the release point would be shut off at the exact instant.

" ... 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 ... Tone OFF." George declared, as he switched the radio briefly to another channel so that the tone would be sure to cease on the radar bomb scoring (RBS) site frequency. In a couple more seconds he would return the radio to the RBS channel so that Ray could report his True Heading and speed to the folks on the ground that would calculate the expected impact point of the simulated bomb drop.

"All right ... Hot Damn. We did it," Billy excitedly shouted. It won't be crew R-49 after this. No sir. The Colonel will be calling us L-49 by this time tomorrow."

One the way back home from the low level bombing run, back up at a leisurely and more relaxing cruise of 35,000 feet, Billy finally explained what he'd done. And he explained his pre-takeoff phone call to Missouri.

Billy had called his cousin, Wilbur, and instructed him to build a bonfire at the "forks" intersection. When they flew over that flaming pile of old rubber tires it would be just 22 seconds to a perfect bomb score. And that's the trick that R-49 had used to score the best bombing run they'd ever made. And it turned out that Billy's crew was among the top three of the Wing, when the results were posted a few days later.