I just got my copy of "The 11 Days of Christmas" and found some sections which may help us understand why a relatively small number of B-52s was shot down. Apart from that, it seems that our job, as we play the simulator, is simpler because some operations don't have to be done manually.

"Tension mounted as the missile crews continued trying to track the B-52s passively on their Spoon Rest search radar by following the jamming strobes instead of using their Fan Song radars in the active mode and risk an attack by anti-radiation missiles. But the passive tracking was not working – the jamming was too intense."

" (...) now the difficult process of tracking the return began. Each of the three guidance officers has a small steering wheel under his radar scope, and each slowly and carefully turned the wheel to track the return while twisting their gain control knobs to try to sharpen the jamming strobe into a useable target. The actions of these three guidance officers were critical. When there was no jamming the radar could be set to automatically track the target, but when the target was jamming the return was too unstable and the missile had to be guided manually. They each had to gently turn their steering wheels to keep the return centered in their scopes, so the missile could follow the radar beam to the target."

"It is difficult enough to guide the missiles manually under normal conditions when the targets are clearly seen. It is even more difficult looking at the silky crepe jamming of the B-52 aircraft on the radar screen. An uneven rotation or a mere jerky movement of the control wheel could cause the missiles to deviate from the target by thousands of meters or even detonate in the air."