Phase I would be a practising of the above procedures. Head Start was directed to occur in three phases. ДЄfter six sorties, each bomber would receive a major individual inspection, allowing for it to be rotated out of the cycle. After being let go, they would typically go to the Physical Conditioning room for a steam bath and rub down. After landing, the crew would be interrogated prior to being let go, so that maintenance, intelligence, and other crews could be alerted to the performance of the plane and other things that the crew might have noticed during their long flight. This was a standard procedure for all Head Start landings. While entering the landing pattern, the tower would alert the crash trucks to travel to the runway and await landing. The corresponding group for the bomber crews would be the One Gulp Club, for those who had taken on a hundred thousand pounds of fuel without a disconnect. The added benefit of the training runs, is that it made refuelling more routine. During their flight, many of the boom operators would enter admission into the Million Pound Club, which meant that they had transferred a million or more pounds of fuel on ten sorties or less. Frequently, 'Foxtrot: No message required,' messages would be sent to the bomber from Strategic Air Command headquarters at Offutt Air Force Base, with the idea that one of them could tell them to go to war, helping keep the crews on their feet. Д®very six hours, a bomber would then take off with live warheads and continue on a pre-determined path over Greenland and eastern Canada, a trip that would end twenty hours later. After their final briefing, two crewmembers would be sent to pick up specialized meals for their long flight (the meals would later be prepared in an oven during flight). During this final preparation, they would first be taken to the cafeteria, where they would be fed a meal high in protein. For the next twelve hours, crewmembers would enter a period of uninterrupted rest, and use the next three hours to prepare for takeoff.

Inadvertently, this also increased efficiency in terms of maintenance and other pre-flight routines. At least fifteen hours before takeoff, the crew would thoroughly pre-flight their aircraft.

Д«efore each flight, a briefing would be held, alerting the crewmembers to basic world events as well as safety criteria. Through the actions of the crewmembers, it helped to demonstrate that a continuous airborne alert could be maintained successfully. Operation Head Start was experimented at Loring Air Force Base, from September to December, 1958.

Head start