A fact from Operation Power Flite appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 17 September 2010 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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How about adding some historical context about why the US would want to emphasise it could drop these bombs anywhere in the world? - ie it was a bit of muscle-flexing to do with the Cold War? It seems very odd that this hasn't been mentioned, to give the event some historical perspective. It didn't happen in isolation or for no reason, after all ... 81.156.126.8 (talk) 07:30, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I also don't understand how it shows that they can drop bombs anywhere. Wasn't it normal for aircraft to be able to fly to any point in the world during this time? Wenttomowameadow (talk) 07:48, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fairly sure that non-stop flights were not common at this point. We're talking just over a decade after the end of WWII, and the first global circumnavigation was only a few years prior. This is just good ol' Cold War "Lookee what we can do, let's see if the Russkies can top *this*" muscle-flexing, as the top comment suggested.(That's my view, anyway) Johnmc (talk) 08:32, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why would a flight need to be non-stop to demonstrate that a bomb can be dropped there? Isn't a flight from an airbase of the bombing country to the target sufficient, and wasn't that a capability of most military countries at the time? Wenttomowameadow (talk) 08:42, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Again, muscle-flexing and one-upmanship. "Your planes can fly *this* far, our planes can fly further." "You put a man in orbit, we put a man on the moon." etc. etc. Johnmc (talk) 00:50, 18 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
At the time, heavy bombers (which could carry nuclear weapons) were incapable of circumnavigating the globe on their own, due to weight and fuel issues. This stunt focused on the US' mid-flight fueling capabilities, which were being shown off under the argument that such techniques allowed the US to bomb any location. -- 李博杰 | —Talkcontribsemail11:12, 17 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
