List of B-47 units of the United States Air Force

In the following years, B-47s were gradually delivered to the Military Aircraft Storage and Disposition Center (MASDC) at Davis-Monthan AFB.

The first operational B-47B Medium bombers were delivered to SAC in July 1951 to the 306th Bombardment Wing, MacDill AFB, Florida.

[1] The RB-47 was designed to replace the RB-29 and RB-50 Superfortress aircraft which were serving in the long-range photo-reconnaissance role but which were rapidly approaching obsolescence.

Delays in delivering the RB-47E, led to 90 B-47's being converted to an interim reconnaissance fit with an 8 camera bomb-bay pod.

It was used as an airborne weather information gathering system which would fly near the Soviet Border and sampling the radioactive fallout from nuclear tests.

[1] Phaseout of the RB-47E began in October 1957, but the aircraft remained in service for another decade, with the last SAC B-47, a RB-47H (53-4296) of the 55th SRW was flown to Davis Monthan AFB for storage on 29 December 1967.

It was flown from Hickam AFB, Hawaii to Boeing Field, Washington, where subsequently it was restored to its SAC configuration and put on display at the Seattle Museum of Flight where it resides today.

[1] The aircraft was flown from Hickam AFB by Lt. Col Bill Payton and Major Ray Hamilton.

B-47 training was originally planned to have been performed at Wichita AFB, Kansas, with Boeing manufacturing the aircraft on one side of the base as a joint tenant beginning in 1951.

However a variety of problems converting the Wichita Municipal Airport to an Air Force Base kept training from being performed there until 1954.

This article incorporates public domain material from the Air Force Historical Research Agency