KNOB NOSTER, Mo — KNOB NOSTER, Mo. -- The Pentagon is moving the jet that fired the opening salvos of the last two U.S. wars to within easy striking distance of Iraq, erecting tent-like portable hangars for the batwinged B-2 bomber on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.
Four of the new $2.5-million maintenance hangars, each serving two planes, will be built on the British-held isle and one at Fairford, England. It will be the first time B-2s will be stationed overseas instead of here at Whiteman Air Force Base.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday December 03, 2002 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 19 inches; 693 words Type of Material: Correction
Enola Gay -- A Nov. 7 story in Section A stated that the Pentagon's B-2 bombers are housed at the same base from which the Enola Gay left to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II. In fact, the B-2s are based at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri; the Enola Gay, a B-29 bomber, departed from an air base on the Northern Mariana island of Tinian in the South Pacific, where it was based.
The foreign positioning of the radar-deflecting aircraft has been in the works for years, officials say. But the timing suggests the key role the B-2 is likely to play if there is a second war in the Persian Gulf, military analysts say.
If the U.S. launches war on Iraq, the B-2s will be critical in taking out an antiaircraft system that has been improved with fiber-optic communications and updated equipment and has had a decade to adapt to the tactics of U.S. and British planes patrolling "no-fly" zones over Iraq.
Diego Garcia is a five-hour flight from Baghdad. B-2s based there could each make three sorties every two days, military analysts say. It took nearly two days for the B-2s to reach Afghanistan from central Missouri.
The futuristic bomber -- housed at the same base the Enola Gay left to drop the first atomic bomb, on Hiroshima in 1945 -- was created to carry nuclear weapons into the Soviet Union. But by the time the first plane, the Spirit of Missouri, touched down at Whiteman in 1993, that enemy was gone.
In both Kosovo and Afghanistan, military analysts say, the B-2 adapted well to its new mission: carrying conventional weapons in the opening strike of a war.
"The B-2 bomber was designed specifically to kick the door down and kill targets," said Col. Doug Raaburg, commander of the 509th Bomb Wing at Whiteman.
The Pentagon has long planned to station B-2s at three sites from which they can strike trouble spots throughout the world within 24 hours: Guam for Asian targets, Britain for European targets and Diego Garcia for the Middle East.
Military officials wouldn't say exactly when the B-2s bound for Diego Garcia and Britain -- as many as 16, some of them housed in permanent hangars, out of a fleet of 21 -- will be in position. But they will be ready "in case we get the call," Raaburg said.
Even many B-2 advocates concede that the aircraft played no more than a cameo role in Afghanistan, where air defenses were few.
