What is the name of the B-52 bomber in Dr. Strangelove?

What is the name of the B-52 bomber in Dr. Strangelove? The answer is Leper Colony.

Leper Colony is the aircraft’s call sign in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. The bomber crew follows orders to attack the Soviet Union after a breakdown in the film’s nuclear command system, driving the story toward its deliberately absurd catastrophe.

The aircraft itself is a fictional B-52, standing in for the real American strategic bombers operated during the Cold War. Kubrick cross-cuts between the crew’s tense mission, military command rooms, and the political crisis in Washington. That structure turns technical procedures and military jargon into dark satire about deterrence, bureaucracy, and accidental escalation.

Viewers sometimes remember “B-52” as if it were the bomber’s name, but that is its aircraft type, not its call sign. The Doomsday Machine is also a major term in the film, but it refers to a Soviet retaliatory weapon rather than the bomber.