BUFF...

BUFF...  The venerable B-52 Stratofortress first flew in 1952, just a few months before I was born.  It's still in service today, and is expected to remain in service until at least the 2040s.

What's the BUFF?  I first heard the B-52 referred to as a BUFF while I was in the Navy, in the '70s.  At the time, the ship I was on (the USS Long Beach CGN-9) was on PIRAZ duty off the coast of Vietnam.  We were tracking numerous B-52s flying bombing missions over North Vietnam.  The radar trackers kept calling them BUFFs, which I didn't understand.  They told me: it was an acronym for Big Ugly Fat Fucker.  They should have gotten “noisy” in there somewhere, too – the engines on the B-52s were loud!