The B-52 Stratofortress is a monster airplane. Its 185-foot wingspan is almost twice the length of the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb. The B-52 is 159 feet long, and its cockpit is almost 40 feet above its belly. It can take off with almost half a million pounds of aircraft, fuel, and payload. The first B-52’s were designed to carry a few hydrogen bombs as part of America’s three complementary nuclear delivery systems. The H models flown during the Vietnam era, however, were modified internally to carry more than thirty tons of conventional TNT bombs.
Nasif Majeed was born Bruce Lightner in 1945 to a prominent family in Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1911, his grandfather Calvin, then among the 1.7 percent of African Americans with a college degree, opened a funeral home with an associated cemetery in the city. (It remains in business and is still owned by the family.) Majeed’s father, Clarence E. Lightner, was Raleigh’s first popularly elected mayor in 1973 and later served in the North Carolina senate.
In 1968, Majeed graduated from North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro with a BS in business administration and a second lieutenant’s commission in the US Air Force. After basic officer training at Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas, he went on to flight school, then graduated to multiengine training on A-37 Dragonfly light attack bombers and was selected for the elite B-52 program, which drew few volunteers. B-52’s are difficult to fly, often uncomfortable for the crews, and require tremendous concentration.
“Flying a subsonic aircraft, you have time to think about what to do, which switch to toggle, which instrument to consult, and so forth,” Majeed explained. “Everything happens much faster in a B-52. You have to speed up your thinking so your mind is moving a little faster than the airplane. I would tell myself, ‘I’m the pilot of this beast. It will do what I want it to do and nothing else.’ Otherwise, things tend to get away from you, and that’s always bad.”
From 1971 to 1973, Majeed served three tours flying B-52H’s from Guam and U-Tapao Royal Thai Navy Airfield to bomb North Vietnam. The Guam missions were long and grueling. During the Vietnam War, Andersen Air Force Base on Guam had the world’s longest runways. Made chiefly of crushed coral, they were slippery when wet. On each takeoff, the thought of sitting in a B-52 cockpit as it slipped sideways with sixty thousand pounds of TNT in its belly was a nightmare.
Even with those long runways, a loaded B-52H needed every foot of the gently sloping downhill airstrip, which ended with an eighty-foot cliff. “It was weird and scary watching the ship ahead of us roll over the end of the runway, disappear over the cliff, and then a few seconds later emerge and climb into the sky,” Majeed recalled.
Because it took so much fuel to get airborne, each B-52 bound for North or South Vietnam refueled over the Philippines. “Flying while hooked to a hose at 400 knots, the controls get sloppy,” Majeed said. This is partly because transferring fuel shifts thousands of pounds from the tanker to the bomber. The B-52 flies only a few feet behind and below the tanker through the turbulence left by the tanker’s passage. “And refueling while flying into a setting sun requires almost superhuman concentration,” he added.
Between the flight from Guam to the refueling point, the B-52 is on autopilot. Crewmen nap, read, listen to music, or chat. The same was true for the shorter flight to Vietnam. As they near their target—identified only as a number—the radar navigator takes control of the aircraft then releases the bombs at the precise moment his onboard computer indicates they will find their targets.
“While all this is going on, the sky is filled with aircraft, missiles, and antiaircraft flak,” Majeed recalled. “F-105 Thunderchiefs attacked the radar sites, while F-100F Super Sabre “Wild Weasels” equipped with radar homing and warning receivers located the signals emitted by enemy missile radar and monitored heat sensors to detect missile launches. Our tail gunner was watching for North Vietnamese MiG-21’s. There were also MiG’s based across the border in China. They would approach at high speed, fire their whole load of rockets at our formation, then skootch back over the border where our F-4 Phantom fighters couldn’t follow them.”
Both authors of this work have observed B-52 strikes on North Vietnamese troop formations or headquarters in South Vietnam. From their vantage point in helicopters a mile up and five miles from the target, they knew the big bombers were seven miles above them, though they could not hear or even see them. Several seconds after the bombers opened their bomb bays, a brown zipper half a mile wide would open in the green jungle below and run for a mile or more. Amid great clouds of smoke and billowing dust, they saw the flashes of the exploding bombs. Shock waves were visible in this dust, radiating out from each bomb at supersonic speed. These shock waves were capable of rocking an aircraft miles away.
On the ground were scenes worthy of Dante’s Inferno or the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Enormous craters were surrounded by huge trees blown flat or into kindling. Small fires burned in the damp foliage. Parts of human and animal bodies were everywhere underfoot, hanging from trees and bushes, plastered to tree trunks. The stench of death mingled with the acrid odor of TNT. The jungle was utterly silent, save for the footfalls of troops exploring this terrestrial Gehenna as they sought survivors.
The B-52 was a powerful weapon, but it was only as effective as the intelligence that selected its targets, and this was as often wrong as right. Further, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong were world-class diggers. With only picks and shovels, they built hundreds of underground bunkers and enormous tunnel complexes, many of them deep enough to survive a bombing mostly intact.
B-52 targets over the North were most often structures. It is difficult to imagine the results of even one five-hundred-pound bomb exploding on a headquarters roof.
Majeed survived physically unscathed 139 missions over North Vietnam. By then he was a captain, and he was pressed to remain in the air force and promised rapid promotion.
“I’d had enough,” he recalled. “More than enough.”
That was how, a week later, he found himself walking down a street in Raleigh with no idea of what to do next, no home of his own, and what would over a few months build into a paralyzing case of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Majeed was angry and irritable and didn’t know why. He had nightmares and flashbacks. He began to drink, and when he was drunk, he would drink more. After months of this sort of behavior, he was admitted to a hospital, where his alcoholism was treated. Along the way to dealing with this and PTSD, Majeed encountered other African Americans who had found a spiritual path to controlling their war trauma and their substance abuse.
“I was raised a Christian, and I was always certain there was a God, a higher power,” Majeed related. “But as time went on, I felt less comfortable calling myself a Christian. The concept of a blue-eyed, fair-skinned, light-haired Jesus who looked nothing like me was something I couldn’t relate to.”
In the hospital, Majeed was introduced to another pathway to holiness, another way to worship God. He changed his name and adopted a different manner of dress as he sought the comfort of belief in a different prophet of God.
When his father died, Majeed founded the Clarence E. Lightner Youth Foundation, dedicated to teaching middle school students the importance of civic participation and community service. Speaking of his father’s legacy, he said, “Helping young people to aspire to be as successful as they can in school and life. That would be his legacy.”
When he was fit and sober, Majeed accepted an offer to fly for Piedmont Airlines. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, however, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States to retaliate for the US resupply of the Israeli military. This caused a nationwide shortage of gasoline, diesel oil, and jet fuel. Airlines curtailed schedules and laid off staff, including pilots.
Majeed was approached by an old friend who held a senior government post in Guyana. He asked him to move to the South American nation and work as an agricultural advisor there. Majeed knew little about agriculture and less about Guyana, which had once been a British colony. Intrigued by the idea, he reenrolled in North Carolina A&T State University and, by 1979, earned an MS in agricultural education. Before he graduated, however, he had second thoughts. While English is the official language of Guyana, the people’s native language is Guyanese Creole. Majeed wasn’t sure how successful he would be in that environment.
Then another friend approached him with a business proposition. As partners, they would buy a Burger King franchise and open a restaurant in Charlotte. But by then, Majeed’s Guyanese friend was prime minister, and he offered Majeed the post of secretary of agriculture.
Majeed thought about his missions over North Vietnam and the dozens of B-52’s that had been shot down by missiles, MiG’s, or antiaircraft fire. He thought about what his life might be like as a high official in a third-world country. He knew he could get fabulously rich without lifting a finger. And he knew that when rich men accept bribes, the poor ultimately suffer. He didn’t need a burning bush or a visit with an archangel to tell him that the God who had saved him from death over North Vietnam didn’t want him to become another corrupt third-world official.
On the other hand, opening a fast-food emporium in Charlotte was an opportunity to provide something the African American community needed more than fast food: jobs for young people, entry-level and first-line supervisory positions that would introduce teens to the world of work, keep them out of gangs, and perhaps lay a financial foundation for postsecondary education.
But Majeed knew nothing about running a restaurant, and neither did his partner. So he enrolled in the University of Florida and earned an associate degree in restaurant management. His Burger King opened in 1981.
Managing a restaurant with a partner left Majeed free for other activities. For the next fourteen years, he served the North Carolina Department of Corrections as a clinical chaplain, working with incarcerated men and their families. He also found time to join Metro-Meck Land Development Company as a managing partner.
In 1991, after serving as president of the West Charlotte Merchants Association, Majeed ran for a seat on the Charlotte city council. He served eight years on the council, during which he obtained more than $200 million in infrastructure improvements in his district. He spearheaded a successful effort to build East Charlotte’s first regional recreational center, a $40 million state-of-the-art facility. He also worked to establish and chaired the board of directors for the West Charlotte Business Incubator, a successful effort to increase job opportunities through the development of new businesses.
He served on the Governor’s Commission on Education for Economic Growth, working to set policies to better prepare North Carolina’s workforce for twenty-first-century jobs through improving educational opportunities.
In 2014 and again in 2016, Majeed was a Democratic candidate for the North Carolina senate in a heavily gerrymandered district. He lost both times.
In 2018, after state and federal courts compelled the Republican-dominated legislature to redraw certain district lines, Majeed won the Democratic nomination for a House of Representatives seat, and then, in the general election, he won the seat.
Why would a Muslim candidate run for office in overwhelmingly Christian Charlotte? “All religion guides us in addressing the needs of people and ensuring that people are served properly,” Majeed explained. “On the city council, we made sure that people had safe communities and that services were provided in a fair manner. I hope to do the same in the North Carolina Assembly.”