It’s now officially hurricane season. Here in northwest Louisiana, it’s also thunderstorm, tornado, and flash flood season. However, over the years we’ve been spared some catastrophic weather despite dire and urgent predictions. Major snowstorms that were predicted here this past winter had Louisianians as far south as New Orleans in real-life snow globe scenes, while up here we saw nary a snowflake. Other severe storms have bounded us in nearly all directions, while leaving us unscathed.
If you believe the local legends, we owe those unforeseen clear skies to “the Barksdale Bubble,” a mythical force field that pops up to protect Barksdale Air Force Base, and by extension, the Shreveport-Bossier area. A report done by KSLA News in April, 2021 said they could not track down the absolute origin of this legend, but posits it became common local folklore with the advent of Doppler radar at the Shreveport airport in 1995. The resulting colored real-time radar images in local weather reports made the ‘bubble’ visible, when viewers could see the most ominous colors swirling just around Shreveport-Bossier. Starting in the 2000’s, the station argued, social media made the “Barksdale Bubble” moniker truly ubiquitous.
In the mid-20th century, well before social media, there was another “Bubble” with a Barksdale connection. Contributing Editor Maj. Fred Meurer, USAF featured the phenomenon in the April 1975 Air Force Magazine. He straightaway explained his concept of a “Bubble” as the command, control and communications network otherwise known as the Tactical Air Control System (TACS). The article’s title was announced by the teaser, “Six individual improvement measures are under way to give commanders real-time tactical information that would be essential in large-scale operations, either in Europe or elsewhere. Piece by piece, TAC is…BUILDING A BETTER BUBBLE.”
Both SAC and TAC were founded in 1946, along with the third pillar of modern air power, the Air Defense Command. The Strategic Air Command (SAC) was founded to deter nuclear warfare by making the threat of U.S. retaliation credible and ever-present, with the hope of “winning the war,” before it’s even begun. Tactical Air Command (TAC) was founded to compliment Strategic Air Command’s approach of threatening to deliver a nuclear onslaught with the tactical role of fighting limited wars with conventional arms. One of the six components that Major Meurer said was building a better “bubble” under TAC was the Air Support Radar Team (ASRT), known during its use in Southeast Asia (including Vietnam and Laos) as “Combat Sky Spot.”
Colonel James W. Crabb , who at the time was Executive Officer at Hq. 1st Combat Evaluation Group (SAC) at Barksdale Air Force Base, wrote a letter to the editor that was published in the July 1975 issue of Air Force Magazine to make sure that SAC, and specifically the First Combat Evaluation Group (1CEVG) at Barksdale, got its due.
On 1 August 1961, SAC's 1st Radar Bomb Scoring (RBS) Group at Carswell AFB (Fort Worth) merged with the 3908th Strategic Standardization Group to form the 1st Combat Evaluation Group at Barksdale. This new organization had the dual mission of providing radar bomb scoring services as well as standardization and evaluation services, filling the constant need for challenging training and testing scenarios.
In the mid-1960s, 1CEVG personnel at Barksdale modified SAC RBS equipment to make it capable of directing aircraft at extended distances to the precise release point over the target. After several months of testing, this ground-directed bombing system was deployed to southeast Asia from various SAC RBS sites, maintained and operated for more than ten years by SAC personnel on temporary duty assignments (TDY). During deployment, the forward area commander had control of the system, but overall command and administrative control remained under SAC’s 1CEVG at Barksdale.
Combat Skyspot was the Air Force’s ground-directed bombing (GDB) operation in the Vietnam War. Combat Skyspot's command guidance of B-52s and tactical fighters and bombers at night or in bad weather was used for aerial bombing of a variety of targets. Using a combination radar/computer/communications system in Southeast Asia, a typical bombing mission had an air command post turn over control of the mission to the radar station. The station provided corrections as the bomber approached the target and designated when to release its bombs.
In writing his letter to the editor of the Air Force Magazine, Barksdale’s Col. James Crabb wanted to be sure that the personnel who manned the radar systems, and support personnel were recognized. He especially want to laud the Air Force’s auto-tracking radar technicians, who in most cases had World War II era vacuum tube-style radars to maintain. He wrote, “I have personally seen them work twenty-seven hours straight, grab a two-hour nap in the corner, and return to duty to place the bomb in the box.”
If you have stories or photographs of people connected to SAC at Barksdale, or have served our community in any capacity, please visit or contact us at the History Center. We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive, Bossier City, LA and are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org For other local history facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.
Images:
- Insignia of the 1st Combat Evaluation Group of the Strategic Air Command.
- Col. James W. Crabb. Photo accompanied the announcement of his assignment as the Deputy Commander for Maintenance for the 416th Bomb Wing at Griffiss AFB in Rome NY, in the Daily Sentinel, Rome, New York, Aug 17, 1977.