There are very few Americans who know what it's like to fly a B-2 stealth bomber and even fewer that have piloted one for more than 30 hours straight.
One of those people is retired Air Force Lieutenant General Steven Basham, who said he was stunned by the "flawless execution" of last weekend's operation, when American pilots conducted a 37-hour non-stop mission targeting Iran's nuclear facilities.
Before retiring last year, General Basham flew B-2s in 1999 over Serbia, the bomber's first use in combat, and again in 2003 over Iraq.
He gave the ABC an insight into what it takes to prepare and complete such a marathon operation.
'Bland' food and butterflies
To qualify for his own missions, General Basham needed to complete a 24-hour flight simulation as well as a 24-hour "sortie" mission.
The training regime included rehearsing mid-air refuelling, safely landing after being awake for an entire day and managing simulated defences and bomb runs.
After years of training, he received the call-up.
"I remember the surreal feeling when they said, 'We're actually going to go,' and, of course, my wife doesn't know," he said.
"For her, this is like any other night in the last month. I've been going in the evening and coming back home the next morning. It's not lost on me that on this particular occasion, I didn't come back on the next morning."
A 31-hour mission awaited him, and it would not be the only one.
"I remember not being able to sleep," he said.
"Even though we had adjusted our body clocks for many, many weeks prior to the mission, I remember still waking up early and I remember packing my larger than normal lunch."
But even with eight sandwiches and some trail mix in hand, General Basham recalls he wasn't very hungry.
"You will eat just because it gives you something to do," he said.
"My appetite really wasn't there.
"Too many butterflies filling up your stomach — no room for any food."
He intentionally brought "bland" food to not upset the stomach on such a long journey.
Coffee was his main fuel to stay alert along with the occasional catnap, but the adrenaline made it hard to sleep.
"You do not want to let down your nation and so you're going to do everything you can to not fail," he said. "That's not going to allow you to sleep."
In the air, he and the other pilot ran through each step they would undertake in the hours ahead, while ensuring the weapons were in check and the bomber was continuing to perform as needed. They would also maintain communication with other aircraft, like fuel tankers.
Pep pills and piddle packs
Retired Air Force Colonel Melvin Deaile has also piloted the $US2.2 billion ($3.4 billion) aircraft. He took part in the longest ever B-2 bomber mission, flying 44 hours from the US into Afghanistan in 2001.
"All my kids were told is: 'Dad's going to work, I don't know when I'll be back,'" he said.
"After 9/11 there was a hint that the president may want a response.
"We didn't plan on 44 hours. I think the original sortie was 38 to 40 hours."
To help him stay awake, Colonel Deaile had been prescribed amphetamines cleared for crew use, known as "pep pills".
He said his mission initially involved four bomb runs over different target complexes. But after flying out of Afghanistan, he was directed to go back in and complete another run, which extended his total mission time.
"When we went back into the country I dropped some more pep pills," he said.
"Because you think the mission's over, you can kind of let down, but then we had to get another tanker, I had to program new bombs and the other guy had to hit the gas."
The extreme length of time in the small cockpit also takes a toll on the bladder.
The high altitudes and pressurised cockpit mean pilots need to drink a lot of water to stay hydrated.
"We calculated we drank a bottle of water an hour which meant we had to go pee once an hour," he said.
"We didn't want to fill up the chemical toilet too much. It's not designed to hold 44 hours' worth of pee.
"So we made an agreement that we would only use the toilet for number twos and we would use the 'piddle packs' for number ones."
He described a piddle pack as like "a zip-lock bag with kitty litter in it … and the kitty litter combines with it to make it more gel-like so it doesn't leak".
During 44 hours locked in the cockpit with very little room to move, Colonel Deaile estimates he and the other pilot produced 80 piddle packs.
A marathon operation
Both pilots said flying back to base was when the adrenaline started to run thin and the lack of sleep kicked in.
Colonel Deaile said, from his experience, the most challenging part of being a bomber pilot was mid-air refuelling.
"You have to be within 12 feet (3.7 metres) of another aircraft, and you've got to hold the jet in position I would say probably for roughly 20 to 30 minutes … because that's how long the boom is," he said.
On General Basham's first flight in 1999 there was nowhere to sleep, so he and the other pilot sent a note back as soon as possible and small cots were installed inside all the bombers.
"The hardest part of a marathon is not typically the physical part, it's the mental part, and a long duration sortie is like that marathon," he said.
After debriefing back at base in Missouri, he returned home from the 31-hour mission, and remembers cracking a beer at 9am, sitting in a recliner and watching TV.
That afternoon it was his turn to mow the lawn, and before the sun had set he had returned to normal life.
General Basham flew B-2 bombers for about nine years and took part in multiple missions that spanned more than 30 hours.
Colonel Deaile flew B-2s from 1998 to 2002 but Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan would be the only long-distance mission he would take part in.
"I've never said I want to crawl in the cockpit and be there again for two days," he said. "Once was enough."
Above the politics
Last week's mission into Iran involved seven of America's 19 B-2 bombers.
Operation Midnight Hammer was shrouded in deception and secrecy.
A separate package of decoy bombers was sent west over the Pacific, and were picked up by keen flight trackers and reported by news outlets. But the main strike team headed east undetected, catching even the most experienced aviators off guard.
"I almost felt nauseous on Saturday night because I missed this as well," General Basham said.
"I should have realised that, no, there was something else going on.
"That's how well this was executed."
The aircraft unloaded more than a dozen Massive Ordnance Penetrators, also known as bunker busters, on the Iranian nuclear facilities. The weapons, weighing 30,000 pounds (13.6 tonnes), had never been used before in combat.
General Basham said he remembers the "clunk" he felt when releasing weapons from the aircraft, but he had never carried a bomb that came even close to that weight.
"I look forward to hearing from the pilots one day [about] dropping a 30,000-pound bomb, because that's a significant amount of weight to lose in a short amount of time," he said.
There have been questions over the impact the 14 bunker buster bombs had on their targets. CNN and other outlets reported on a leaked early US intelligence assessment that suggested the strikes only set back Iran's nuclear program by a few months.
President Donald Trump and his administration have attacked the outlets and journalists who reported on the early assessment, accusing them of insulting the aviators.
"I think CNN ought to apologise to the pilots of the B-2s, I think MSNBC ought to apologise. Cable networks are real losers, you're gutless losers," the president said.
He has repeatedly said the strikes "obliterated" the desired targets and his defence secretary held a press conference to rebut the reports.
Retired now at 59, General Basham said he didn't think the pilots would be bothered by the political drama unfolding.
"They're not gonna worry about those things," he said. "There's the political world and the policy world – that's not the world we live in.
"We live in the world where we're asked to do a mission, we did our mission successfully, we'll let others determine the efficacy of that.
"But in the end I couldn't be more proud of the pilots, the maintainers, the planners, the intelligence community, everyone, and what they did to make this happen."
