"of over 2,000 B-47s and almost 750 B-52s" (circa 1956, 50% of SAC aircraft & 80% of SAC bombers were B-47s). In an effort to concurrently enhance it reconnaissance capabilities, SAC also received several RB-57D Canberra aircraft in April 1956, with the aircraft initially based at Turner AFB, Georgia. In 1957, these aircraft were forward deployed to Rhein-Main Air Base, West Germany, in order to conduct reconnaissance missions along the borders of the Soviet Union and other Warsaw Pact nations. However, an unintended consequence of this deployment was that Hawker Hunter fighters of the Royal Air Force stationed in the United Kingdom and in continental Europe often intercepted these classified RB-57 missions as they returned to Rhein-Main AB from over the Baltic. Since it was designed as a medium bomber, SAC's B-47 Stratojet traded speed for range. Because of this shorter range, and in order to better enable the B-47 fleet to reach its target sets in the Soviet Union, SAC routinely deployed its US-based B-47 wings to overseas forward operating bases in North Africa, Spain and Turkey. This program, in effect from 1957 to 1966, was known as "Reflex" with Sixteenth Air Force (16AF), a SAC numbered air force permanently stationed in Europe, having tactical and administrative control of the forward-deployed aircraft and units. Beginning in 1955, SAC also moved a portion of its bomber and aerial refueling aircraft to 24-hour alert status, either on the ground or airborne. By 1960, fully one third of SAC's bombers and aerial refueling aircraft were on 24-hour alert, with those crews and aircraft not already airborne ready to take off from designated alert sites at their respective bases within fifteen minutes. Bomber aircraft on ground alert were armed with nuclear weapons while aerial tanker aircraft were sufficiently fueled to provide maximum combat fuel offload to the bombers. Concurrent with this increased alert posture and in order to better hone strategic bombing skillsets, the 1955 SAC Bombing and Navigation Competition was characterized by radar bomb scoring (RBS) runs on Amarillo, Denver, Salt Lake City, Kansas City, San Antonio and Phoenix; and the 1957 competition (nicknamed "Operation Longshot") had three targets: Atlanta, Kansas City, and St. Louis. This use of RBS with simulated target areas utilizing mobile and fixed bomb scoring sites adjacent to major cities, industrial areas, military installations and dedicated bombing ranges throughout the United States. This format would continue through successive