SILENT
WARRIORS,
INCREDIBLE
COURAGE
SILENT
WARRIORS,
INCREDIBLE
COURAGE
The Declassified Stories of Cold War Reconnaissance Flights and the Men Who Flew Them
WOLFGANG W. E. SAMUEL
Colonel, United States Air Force (Ret.)
Foreword by R. Cargill Hall
University Press of Mississippi / Jackson
The University Press of Mississippi is the scholarly publishing agency of the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning: Alcorn State University, Delta State University, Jackson State University, Mississippi State University, Mississippi University for Women, Mississippi Valley State University, University of Mississippi, and University of Southern Mississippi.
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Copyright © 2019 by University Press of Mississippi
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Manufactured in the United States
First printing 2019
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Samuel, Wolfgang W. E., author. | Hall, R. Cargill, author of foreword.
Title: Silent warriors, incredible courage : the declassified stories of Cold War reconnaissance flights and the men who flew them / Wolfgang W. E. Samuel ; foreword by R. Cargill Hall.
Description: Jackson : University Press of Mississippi, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2018041329 (print) | LCCN 2018045460 (ebook) | ISBN 9781496822802 (epub single) | ISBN 9781496822819 (epub institutional) | ISBN 9781496822826 (pdf single) | ISBN 9781496822833 (pdf institutional) | ISBN 9781496822796 (cloth : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: United States. Air Force—Airmen--Interviews. | Aerial reconnaissance, American. | Aerial observation (Military science)—History—20th century. | Cold War—History. | LCGFT: Personal narratives.
Classification: LCC UG626 (ebook) | LCC UG626 .S27 2019 (print) | DDC 358.4/54097309045—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018041329
British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
Dedicated to the brave men who flew alone into harm’s way to ensure the survival of our country in the nuclear age.
In memory of all those who could talk to no one about the dangerous missions they flew and who perished serving our country, resting in their watery graves.
I wrote this book so we do not forget what a few did for the many—at the risk of their lives.
CONTENTS
Terms and Abbreviations
Foreword
Preface and Acknowledgments
When Peace Came to America (1945)
The Peace That Wouldn’t Take (1947)
More Secret than the Manhattan Project (1952)
To the Yalu River and Beyond (1950)
“Honey Bucket Honshos” of the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron (1952)
The 19th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron (1955)
The Incredible RF-86F Sabre Jet (1952–1955)
Remembering Major Rudolph “Rudy” Anderson (1953–1955)
The Last Hurrah of the “Wild Bunch” (1954–1955)
The Short-Lived RB-57A “Heart Throb” Program (1955–1956)
The RB-57A-1 Heart Throb: A Challenging Plane to Fly (1955–1956)
A P2V-7 Neptune Surviving the Czechoslovak Border (1956)
Franz Josef Land (1952)
Teamwork: P2V and RB-50E (1952)
Challenging the Russian Bear (1954)
Slick Chick RF-100As (1955–1956)
Project Home Run: RB-47s over Siberia (1956)
Fate Is the Hunter: The Shootdown of RB-47H 53-4281 over the Barents Sea (1960)
The RB-57D That Killed the SENSINT Program (1956)
The Cuban Missile Crisis through the Eyes of a Raven (1962)
The Last Flight of RB-47H 53-4290 over the Sea of Japan (1965)
An Unintentional Overflight of East Germany (1964)
The Reasons Why (1948–1960)
The Price We Paid (1945–1993)
Notes
Bibliography
TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS
AAA
Antiaircraft artillery
AAF
Army Air Forces
AC
Aircraft commander in SAC
AFB
Air Force Base
AGL
Above ground level
Aileron
Moveable wing control surface to bank an airplane
ATC
Air Training Command
CFC
Central Fire Control RB-29/RB-50
CG
Center of gravity
CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
CO
Commanding Officer
CP
Copilot
DFC
Distinguished Flying Cross
DIA
Defense Intelligence Agency
DMZ
Demilitarized Zone
ECM
Electronic countermeasures
EGT
Exhaust gas temperature
EOB
Electronic Order of Battle
EW
Electronic warfare
EWO
Electronic warfare officer
FAA
Federal Aviation Administration
FEAF
Far East Air Forces
GCA
Ground control approach radar
GCI
Ground control intercept radar
Heart Throb
RB-57A-1 reconnaissance aircraft
HF
High frequency
IFF
Identification friend or foe (responder)
IFR
Instrument flight rules
Indicated
Airspeed as shown on an airspeed indicator; not necessarily the actual speed of the aircraft
IP
Instructor pilot
LSO
Landing ship officer
Mach
Speed in relation to the speed of sound
MiG
Russian aircraft designed by the Mikoyan and Gurovich Design Bureau—MiG-15, -17, -19, and -21
NCO
Noncommissioned officer
NRO
National Reconnaissance Office
NSA
National Security Agency
PARPRO
Peripheral Reconnaissance Program
POW
Prisoner of war
PRC
Peoples Republic of China (Communist China)
RAF
Royal Air Force
Raven
Electronic warfare officer (55th SRW)
ROK
Republic of Korea (South Korea)
SAC
Strategic Air Command
SAM
Surface-to-air missile
SENSINT
Slick Chick
F-100A aircraft modified into an RF-100A-1
SRS
Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron
SRW
Strategic Reconnaissance Wing
Stall
The point at which a wing no longer produces lift
TAC
Tactical Air Command
TDY
Temporary duty
TRS
Ta
ctical Reconnaissance Squadron
TRW
Tactical Reconnaissance Wing
UHF
Ultrahigh frequency (radio)
USAF
United States Air Force
USAFE
United States Air Forces Europe (USSTAF)
USSTAF
United States Strategic Air Forces
USSR
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
VFR
Visual flight rules
FOREWORD
In the work of intelligence, heroes are undecorated and unsung, often even among their own fraternity. Their inspiration is rooted in patriotism; their reward can be little except the conviction that they are performing a unique and indispensable service for their country and the knowledge that America needs and appreciates their efforts.
—President Dwight D. Eisenhower, November 3, 1959, at the cornerstone laying ceremony for CIA headquarters, Langley, Virginia
Serving as Supreme Commander of Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe during World War II, Dwight David Eisenhower oversaw the invasion of France in 1944 and subsequently led Allied forces to victory over the Axis powers on the Western Front. A General of the Army, he is now recognized as one of the most notable American military leaders in our history. Elected president of the United States in 1952, on taking office in January 1953 he directed his attention to ending the Korean War and secured an armistice in July between United Nations forces and those of Communist China and North Korea, which ended hostilities if not the war itself.
A few years before, in August 1949, the Soviet Union exploded a nuclear device and followed in August 1953 by exploding a thermonuclear device. With TU-4 long-range bombers that could deliver these weapons against America, the need to know with assurance of Soviet economic resources, nuclear capabilities, and military preparations had never been greater. Given his wartime experience, President Eisenhower knew that periodic overflights could collect reliable intelligence of Soviet strategic forces and arms facilities, and provide indications and warning of impending nuclear surprise attack. Moreover, the intelligence product would also permit him to size American military forces to meet real instead of imagined threats—with a corresponding savings of national treasure. In early 1954, the president authorized, and a few trusted advisers established, a clandestine project in compartmented channels to acquire precisely this kind of strategic intelligence by conducting in peacetime periodic, high-altitude aerial overflights of potential foreign adversaries. By doing so, however, the United States most definitely would be violating the terms of international aerial navigation treaties to which it was a High Contracting Party. Because of the international repercussions certain to occur should an airplane be brought down, the president could not have come to his peacetime overflight decision lightly.
The first of these efforts, the Sensitive Intelligence Program, known as SENSINT, contained within it a separate WIND FALL compartment for air force–acquired photographic products, products shared with the Central Intelligence Agency. Conducted between early 1954 and the end of 1956, SENSINT missions, directed by the Department of Defense, relied on available navy and air force military reconnaissance aircraft or modified versions of them. Deep penetration overflights employed air-refuelable reconnaissance bombers of the Strategic Air Command, the RB-45C and RB-47E. The air force modified high-performance reconnaissance fighter airplanes, the RF-86 and supersonic RF-100 in particular, to mount cameras and extra fuel tanks for shallow penetration missions. Finally, the service contracted for reconnaissance versions of the British Canberra bomber, which were built in America under license. Air force and navy pilots who flew SENSINT missions and the military and CIA photo-interpreters who analyzed their WIND FALL product would know only that piece of the puzzle with which they were directly associated. The participants directly involved did not discuss these missions with anyone, not even with their fellow flyers.
The second of President Eisenhower’s overflight programs, which he approved in November 1954, produced the high-flying U-2 reconnaissance aircraft operated by the CIA with air force logistical assistance and piloted by “sheep-dipped” air force pilots who represented themselves as civilians. The U-2 program was shrouded within its own Secret Compartmented Information (SCI) cocoon between 1955 and mid-1960. Fewer than 350 people in the country, including the Lockheed designers, maintenance personnel, and pilots, knew about the U-2 and its actual use. Known to these few as AQUATONE, when overflight operations approached in 1956, it was subsumed in the TALENT access and control system, a Top-Secret compartment whose imagery products were separated into two additional access-limited compartments called CHESS (European Theater) and CHURCHDOOR (Asian Theater). Indeed, the SENSINT and TALENT programs were so closely held that neither ever appeared in the deliberations of the National Security Council—at least not until the U-2 “tore its britches,” as one participant phrased it, in May 1960 and acquired thereby the unwanted international attention that these missions risked.
The president approved each U-2 mission, and the first two of them occurred on July 4 and 5, 1956, when U-2s flew over the Soviet cities of Leningrad and Moscow, respectively, among other regions of European Russia. The last flight, however, ended rather more dramatically when, on May 1, 1960, the Soviet Union shot down a U-2 deep inside its territory. The resulting international furor mightily embarrassed the administration. The president at first offered a “plausible denial”—a weather research airplane over Turkey had strayed off course—a cover story that collapsed after the Soviets produced the pilot and charged him with espionage. The U-2 shootdown also ended a summit conference almost before it had begun, with Soviet leaders demanding a personal apology from Eisenhower, one that would not be forthcoming. Nevertheless, Eisenhower announced publicly that the United States would not, in the future, conduct clandestine aerial overflights of the Soviet Union, a pledge that he and his successors would keep. Fortunately for the United States, Eisenhower’s earth-orbiting strategic reconnaissance satellites (not covered in this volume) succeeded aerial overflights and began successful operations in August 1960.
Russian MiG-21s ran frequent intercepts on PARPRO mission aircraft, along with older MiG-15s, MiG-17s, MiG-19s, and two-seat Yak-25 interceptors, some resulting in shootdowns, always over international waters. Although RB-45C and RB-47B/E/H aircraft on several occasions overflew the Soviet Union, the only overflight loss was that of Francis Gary Powers on May 1, 1960, flying a high-altitude U-2 reconnaissance aircraft brought down not by fighters but by SA-2 surface-to-air missiles. The introduction of the SA-2 fundamentally affected not only high-altitude reconnaissance overflight operations but also the very nature of aerial warfare, a lesson yet to be learned.
This work serves well those interested in early Cold War aerial overflight intelligence programs. Colonel Samuel’s Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage surveys, describes, and explains these crucial, highly classified programs told through declassified records and the recollections of their participants, a history fine-tuned by his own experience as a flying member of the US Air Force Peripheral Reconnaissance Program, PARPRO. It is an important history of the United States’ application and first wide-scale use of technical intelligence collection using overhead assets to acquire secrets hidden within “denied territory.” And it underscores President Eisenhower’s immense contribution to America’s security during the Cold War. To my knowledge, there is no overall history of these early classified endeavors like this one available in the “open literature.” I recommend it to you.
—R. Cargill Hall
Emeritus Chief Historian
National Reconnaissance Office
Department of Defense
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We found thousands of families huddled in the debris of buildings and in bunkers. There was a critical shortage of food, and thin faced, half-dressed children approached, not to beg but to sell their fathers’ war medals or to trade them for
something to eat. Nixon was profoundly moved by the spirit of the children who would not beg.
—Lucius Clay on Congressman Richard Nixon’s visit to Germany in 1947, in Jean Edward Smith, Lucius Clay: An American Life
The first overt Cold War confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Berlin blockade in 1948, was surely not the beginning of the Cold War but rather a manifestation of long-simmering conflict between the West and the Soviet Union. As early as April 1945, before World War II came to its final end in Europe, Marshal Konstantin K. Rokossovski’s Second Belorussian Front swept across the northern German plain, driving before it what remained of a once powerful German army. Rokossovski had encountered more German resistance crossing the Oder River than expected and was behind schedule. I was a ten-year-old boy at the time, fleeing with my mother Hedy and my little sister Ingrid with a German army unit, heading west. We survived dive bombers and strafing, artillery and rocket attacks, SS troops not willing to give up, attempting to block our way, Russian tanks, and the general mayhem of war. I had no idea where we were going, when to my great surprise, on a brilliant morning in late April 1945, we surrendered near Wismar to soldiers of the 82nd Airborne and the 7th Armored Divisions.
Where did the Americans come from? I later learned that American and British Intelligence had intercepted Russian communications revealing their intention to make a grab for Denmark. General Matthew B. Ridgeway’s XVIII Corps cut the Russians off. “We moved at least 30 miles eastward of the line which originally had been set as the point where Allied and Russian forces would meet—and on Montgomery’s orders I clung to that ‘Wismar cushion,’ so that it could be used for negotiating purposes…. We made contact with the Russians on the Baltic on the 2nd of May. I saw my first one, a Russian general, a day later.” Ridgeway and one of his division commanders, General James M. Gavin, met with their counterpart on May 3. The Russian seemed displeased. The furtive attempt to grab Denmark had failed.1