Inside the B-2 raid: Pick-up pills, 18 hours flying, then bombs away

Times

27-06-2025

It's a long haul racing the sun from Knob Noster, Missouri, to the mountains of Qom and the nuclear bunker buried deep at Fordow. At 37-hour haul, to be precise, there and back.
Even before the pilots charged with flying their $2 billion B-2s to drop the world's largest non-nuclear bombs on Iran were in position, they would have already spent 18 hours in the air.
Given the secrecy surrounding the B-2, a projection of military power that paradoxically exists never to be seen, little is known about who the men and women who flew the sorties that effectively forced the regime into a ceasefire with Israel. They were, the Pentagon said, as far from the macho shirt-off volleyball-playing fighter aces portrayed in Top Gun as you could care to imagine.
It is, however, possible to piece together how the mission unfolded, beginning long before the planes took off from Whiteman Air Force Base, about an hour east of Kansas City, racing to strike as the Iranians slept.
For the aviators and air crews from the US air force and the Missouri air national guard, ranked from captain to colonel, the raid felt like the Super Bowl, military chiefs said this week, with 'thousands of scientists, airmen and maintainers all coming together'.
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In the previous weeks they would have flown to Fordow and back dozens of times in a state-of-the-art simulator at Whiteman base, near Knob Noster, which includes a replica of the B-2 cockpit, complete down to the cot where they can sleep and the toilet that is used by the pilots; only if they really must.
In many ways, when President Trump gave the go-ahead, the real mission would have felt similar to the simulations. One former pilot said the big difference would be over Iran, where they would 'feel the clunk' of their weapons bay doors opening, then a lightening of the aircraft as it was relieved of its two massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) bombs, each weighing 30,000 pounds.
There would have been a sharp turn as soon as 'bombs away' was called as the stealth bombers headed out of Iranian airspace. Then, one pilot on the mission said, there was the 'brightest explosion I have ever seen, it literally looked like daylight'.
By that time, according to pilots, the two in the cockpit may already have felt the need to take two pills that have long been issued to those who fly long missions. The so-called 'pick-up pills' or 'go pills', which are likely to be amphetamine-based to keep aviators awake, have been issued to bomber pilots about to undertake missions through the night.
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If Melvin G Deaile, who flew the longest recorded B-2 mission at 44 hours to Afghanistan and back in 2001, knows whether the pilots needed the pills, he was not saying this week. Speaking to The Times, the retired air force colonel said the pilots would have been remarkable for being unremarkable. 'The B-2 is still a technological marvel,' said Deaile, 59, of the bomber that entered service in 1997.
There were originally plans to build 132 B-2s, but the cost of each and the end of the Cold War brought an end to that. The 21st and last B-2 entered service in 2000. 'The amazing thing is, whether it's the pilots this past weekend or myself or anybody, they're just average Americans who signed up to do a mission and go out and do it.'
The bomber has seen action in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan, where Deaile flew in October 2001 after President Bush ordered strikes on the Taliban in response to the 9/11 attacks. Though perhaps not quite as fraught with risk as attacking Iran, which once had a proud air force and strong air defences, the mission to strike the Taliban was complicated by a late change of targets while they were in the air.
For military planners at the Pentagon, however, Fordow has always been the main prize in Iran. Alongside Captain Brian Neal, Deaile piloted a B-2 named Spirit of America — poignant, given the raid took place in the months after 9/11. He admitted they had been given pills to keep them alert during the mission, which included multiple refuellings and spending two hours over Afghanistan.
The mission was so long because after dropping 12 JDAMs — guided bombs — on Taliban forces, commanders asked them to go back over enemy territory and release four more explosives. Deaile and Neal finally touched down on the Diego Garcia military base after being in the air for 44 hours and 20 minutes.
According to some reports, the pilots who completed the Iran mission had a microwave oven on board to provide warmed-up snacks for the trip. That is a luxury Deaile, who grew up on a farm in Fresno, was not afforded. While the army has 'meals, ready-to-eat' (MREs), Deaile said the air force equivalent was kinder to the digestive system and better adapted to long flights. He also brought sandwiches on board and was allowed a flask of coffee. But sometimes the snacks would go uneaten.
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'Most of the time we didn't really eat that much after a day and a half in the cockpit because we weren't really exercising,' he said. 'You don't really get hungry if you're not doing much.'
Even if the work is not too physically demanding, the pilots must still sleep. Deaile used to have a cot behind the two seats so that an airman could sleep when not in 'critical phases of flight' — take-off, landing, mid-air refuelling and bombing. It was not a luxury bed, but good enough.
'It's the military; you learn to sleep wherever you can,' Deaile said. 'And we'll get the job done and if it means staying awake for 40 hours, we stay awake for 40 hours.'