The D models with the water injection engines we flew from Okinawa had a hard time getting airborne with full fuel and a heavy bomb load. I heard one pilot remark "This thing's like a buzzard- - - -gotta flap the wings real hard to get off the ground!" The wingtips would move 22 feet from taxi position to inflight. For a while they were leaving Okinawa with 1000 pound bombs internal and 750's under the wings, instead of the normal load of 34 750's internal and 24 500's on the external racks. That required taking off with half a fuel load and topping off from a tanker enroute to the target of the day. Those thousand pounders were left over from Korea, and some of them were so rusty the ID stripes on the nose of the bomb were gone- - - -they weren't exactly sure what was inside. They figured most of them would go off, or at least make a big crater when they hit if they didn't explode!
Jerry
