If you are even slightly interested in aviation, military hardware or just screaming ear-bleeding earth shattering bowel loosening noise, then you need to know about MITO. MITO is the military abbreviation for Minimum Interval take off, and put simply it’s a scramble to get airplanes airborne as quick as possible. The airplanes in question are B52 bombers, and although I know very little about the specifics, I understand that a MITO was to conducted when a threat to the continental united states was detected, in order to get the bombers airborne and dispersed (or on a retaliation strike) as soon as physically possible. In some of the videos below, as was the practice during the early days of the cold war, they launch with a 15 (or sometimes even 12) second interval. In more recent times, the interval is more like 30 seconds. I’ve no idea if the practice is continued with the modern B2 long range bombers, but it’s known that you’ll never see B52′s doing this again. The videos I’ve found on youtube are below, with their descriptions.

This is how we did the MITO back in the day, BEFORE the colapse of the Soviet Union. These are B-52G’s and KC-135A’s from the 416 BMW, at the former Griffiss AFB, NY. The Buff with the old “lizzard” paint scheme is piloted by Capt. John Hannen. The loud voices you hear are the maint specialists that stayed up all night getting the air[lanes ready.

Note the AGM-28 Hound Dog cruise missiles under the wings…Sometimes the Hound Dog’s engines were running to boost take-off thrust. Also, the restricted area badges clipped below their left shirt pockets.
The B-52G was proposed to extend the B-52′s service life during delays in the B-58 Hustler program. At first, a radical redesign was envisioned with a completely new wing and Pratt & Whitney J75 engines with a water injection system to assist on takeoff. The water injection adds approximately a 17% increase to the takeoff power, also leaving the runway covered in a dense smoke screen.

MITO was used by the Strategic Air Command during the cold war to get as many airplanes off the ground as quickly as possible.
The beautiful clouds of black smoke are indicative of water injection takeoffs.

Alert response and 15-ship B-52 Minimum Interval Take-Off (MITO), in support of Exercise GLOBAL THUNDER, Minot AFB, ND, June 09

If you know of any more MITO videos, please leave them in the comments.