“Weather over the archipelago was a controlling factor from the photographic standpoint. We were briefed to contact SAC personnel when we arrived at Thule Air Base, and their weather forecasters would attempt to forecast the best conditions for our mission. We took off for the air base at Goose Bay, Labrador, serviced the aircraft, and on September 4 made an early-morning takeoff for Thule. I informed Headquarters SAC that we were in place awaiting an execution order. Everyone was issued the essential Arctic clothing and assigned quarters in a building that resembled a cold storage box. Thule Air Base, on which construction had begun in May 1951, featured rudimentary facilities. While waiting for a break in the weather over Franz Josef Land we decided that the outside ramp was not a suitable place to park our aircraft if we were to maintain it in a constant state of readiness. A solitary black-colored hangar had recently been erected, and I decided that this was the place for our aircraft. The base commander thought otherwise. He had no knowledge of our project. I suggested he call SAC headquarters. He soon advised me that hangar space was available after all. President Truman’s approval of the overflight of Wrangel Island and eastern Siberia and search for air bases was secured on August 2, 1952. My flight crew and support team was assembled a few days later to prepare for the Franz Josef Land mission. Neither planning nor after-action records have been found. Why we were briefed and debriefed at Headquarters Second Air Force in Louisiana rather than SAC headquarters in Omaha remains an open question. Many more questions regarding our mission remain unanswered, and perhaps will never be answered. In any event, on September 8, 1952, we received orders to execute the mission. We planned the overflights so that the sun would be over the islands when we arrived to give us the best possible light conditions for the photography. This dictated a takeoff in predawn darkness. I filed a ‘round robin’ flight plan with base operations for a flight time of fifteen hours. Our alternative, in the event Thule was socked in on our return, was the air base at Sondrestrom Fjord, some 750 miles south of Thule.
Thule Air Base housing. Even everyday human necessities became a problem in an environment of minus 40 degree temperatures. Here shown a human waste removal truck trying to keep toilets functional—they didn’t always succeed.
“The next morning we started engines, received the light signal for taxi clearance, and moved into position at the head of the runway. While performing the pre-takeoff checklist, the flight engineer informed me that we had no control over the number two engine propeller. John Goolsbee observed electrical arcing near the propeller governor junction box. I canceled the flight for that day. We taxied back to the ramp and shut everything down. With the aircraft in the hangar, we proceeded with the repair of the malfunction. During the engine run-up, a fuel leak was discovered in a right wing fuel cell. The tank was defueled and repaired with much difficulty and refueled. On September 10, I advised SAC headquarters that the aircraft was in commission and we were ready to go. On September 16, we received word to proceed the following day. That morning the base was enveloped in dense fog. After starting engines and preparing to taxi, the fog became so thick that I could not see the runway centerline. I could only see one light at either side of the runway. On lining up on the centerline, I set my gyrocompass to the runway heading. Sergeant Goolsbee made an engine run-up check, and I advanced the throttles to full power and began my takeoff roll into the fog. Lift-off was smooth, and we leveled off at 18,000 feet. Shortly after level-off, we began fuel transfer from the 700-gallon pylon fuel tanks mounted beneath each outboard wing panel. The right tank would not feed. We had a booster pump failure. Quick calculation indicated that even without the 700 or so gallons of that tank we would be able to complete the mission.
“Navigation in the Arctic requires a totally different approach to navigation in the lower latitudes. The magnetic compass is useless because of errors induced by the magnetic pole. A gyro compass also degrades near the pole, as does a fluxgate compass. Grid navigation is what we had to fall back on, a system devised by the Strategic Air Command for its bomber crews who would have to operate in those high latitudes. All three of my navigators were intensely involved in keeping us on track. Radar was good as long as we were over land, but our charts were of course of questionable accuracy. One navigator maintained a dead reckoning plot, while also shooting the sun. Another would plot the sunlines to determine an accurate line of position [and] compute wind direction, velocity, and ground speed. After leaving the northeast coast of Greenland, we faced some thousand miles of Arctic Ocean. The accuracy of navigation from this point depended entirely upon the accuracy of sun observations, the dead reckoning plot, and the navigator’s computation of wind direction and velocity. At this time, we test-fired our guns. They worked.
“About six hours into the flight our navigator told us that we were near Franz Josef Land. Major Heiman, our radar navigator, saw some of the islands creep up on his scope. Earl Schureman, the electronic countermeasures observer, advised that his search for electronic radar signals produced nothing. Flying over a lower overcast cloud deck, it was obvious that photography from our planned altitude was impossible. The SAC weather forecast was a complete bust. I made a decision and descended down to about 2,500 feet to give our mission the best shot at success. The visibility at this lower altitude was surprisingly good. I reduced airspeed to about 180 knots. At that altitude and airspeed, photography with our camera installations was not practical. So this part of the mission became mostly one of visual observation as we passed the islands. In our flight at 2,500 to 3,000 feet over numerous large and small islands, we did not see anything that would indicate a Soviet presence. We had been flying over the islands for a considerable length of time when someone over the intercom yelled, ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’ I had no desire to stretch our luck, and agreed.
“The navigators provided a heading for our return to Thule, and I started climbing back to 18,000 feet. After leveling off, I alerted the gunners and had them fire their guns. Firing the guns fulfilled a SAC combat crew training requirement, and I had no intention of taking any live rounds back to Thule anyway. On approach to Thule I descended to 8,000 feet, having maintained radio silence throughout the mission. Remembering what the weather was like fourteen hours earlier, I had no assurance that things had improved. I broke radio silence, and the tower advised that the weather was above minimums. It was a relief to know that the GCA was operating. I trimmed the aircraft to compensate for the nearly 4,500 pounds of fuel remaining in the right pylon tank. Our landing was normal, turning over the aircraft to our waiting ground crew. I advised SAC headquarters of mission completion. On September 22, we returned to Barksdale Air Force Base. Intelligence personnel collected all of our film, logs of whatever kind, tape recordings, and so on. We could report with assurance that we detected no Soviet military presence whatsoever.
September 17, 1952, overflight route of RB-50 High and Lonesome of Franz Josef Land by Major Roy E. Kaden and crew.
The RB-50E reconnaissance version of the B-50 bomber was flown by the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing in the early 1950s. A total of six RB-29/50 reconnaissance aircraft were shot down by Russian fighters—the last as late as September 1956 over the Sea of Japan.36
“After the debriefing at Barksdale, we were left without a shred of evidence that we had ever flown over Franz Josef Land. Our orders gave no location or ultimate destination. All directions and instructions were given verbally. Some weeks later, the record of our flying time arrived in the form of a memo that included points of takeoff and landing, as well as our round robin flight from Thule. In all of my flying experience, nothing impressed me as much as the low-level flight over those forbidding, desolate, ice-covered islands. All of us on that mission knew then that we had seen an utterly fantastic land, a land that few people in the world will ever see.”
TEAMWORK: P2V AND RB-50E (1952)
A Forbes AFB RB-50 from the 38th SRS on temporary Alaskan duty was attacked by two MiG-15 jet fighters 25 miles o
ff the Kamchatka Peninsula on March 18, 1953. T/Sgt Jesse L. Prim peered through his sights and pulled the trigger that sent six guns into action in the top turrets of the RB-50, the Laboring Lady. Prim said the Soviet jet was coming in fast and flames and smoke from his guns were plainly visible. I don’t think I hit him. He broke off his attack when I fired.
—Bruce Bailey, We See All
Commander Richard A. Koch in 1952 was the copilot on a P2V Neptune antisubmarine aircraft assigned to Patrol Squadron VP-931, then flying out of Kodiak, Alaska. VP-931 flew a variety of twin-engine Neptune P2V-2, P2V-3, and P2V-3W aircraft on sea surveillance, antisubmarine, and electronic reconnaissance missions over the Bering Sea and the Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia. “From late 1951 until late 1952,” recalled Commander Koch at the Early Cold War Overflights Symposium, “my squadron operated out of both Kodiak and Adak, Alaska. In the latter part of 1951, Intelligence indicated that Soviet TU-4 long-range bombers were moving into air bases in northern Siberia. Such a buildup, if true, presented a threat to Alaska and the west coast of the United States. Part of my squadron’s mission involved flying the Bering Sea on passive electronic reconnaissance missions. We had new receivers and direction-finding equipment installed in our P2V-3W aircraft, which allowed us to intercept and locate any Soviet search radars in nearby Siberia.
“In March 1952, a meeting was convened by the commander, Fleet Air Alaska, at the naval air station on Kodiak Island to plan the eastern Siberia operation. This meeting involved both my crew, piloted by Commander James H. Todd, and air force personnel. The aircraft involved in this reconnaissance mission were our specially modified P2V-3W, an air force RB-50E photo reconnaissance aircraft, and a rescue boat–equipped B-17. At the meeting, we established our routes to be flown, communication and emergency procedures, and the operating dates. The P2V-3W, RB-50E, and B-17 rescue aircraft assembled on Shemya Island in the Aleutians. All three crews met on April 1, 1952, to address altitudes to be flown, the location of the B-17 rescue aircraft, and the radio frequencies we intended to monitor. The following day, on April 2, we flew our first mission. No radio contact was made throughout the operation, even during takeoff and landing. The three aircraft maintained visual contact until the B-17 departed for its offshore track over international waters, where either the RB-50 or P2V were to go in case of an emergency. The RB-50 flew at 15,500 feet altitude, with the P2V-3W slightly lower, at 15,000 feet.
All missions flown by the P2V-3W and the RB-50E were flown from Shemya Air Force Station on Shemya Island, shown above, at the very end of the Aleutian chain of islands. Shemya, renamed Erickson AFS, in future years would become a key operating base for the 55th SRW to monitor Soviet ICBM/nuclear tests.
“Flying north over the Soviet coastline, we proceeded to intercept and track Soviet radars in the vicinity of Rukavichka on the lower Kamchatka Peninsula. Using our direction-finding equipment, we homed in on the Russian radar and overflew it and the nearby airfields, taking radar photography, while the RB-50E photographed the radar sites and airfields. The RB-50 took overlapping time-coded photographs, and our radar intercepts were also time coded so that the lines of intercept could be overlaid on the photographs taken by the RB-50 to precisely locate the radar site. With two or more lines of intercept, the position of the radar site could be located with great accuracy.
“Our joint reconnaissance flights were scheduled to be flown between April 2, 1952, and the end of June. The total effort involved three increments, referred to as Leg 1, Leg 2, and Leg 3, to be flown in a total of nine or ten missions by each aircraft involved. The legs involved overflights of Soviet coastal areas. To the best of my recollection, the first leg to be flown along the coast and over the Kamchatka Peninsula proceeded from Rukavichka, directly to Kamchalskly Poluostrov, then on to the vicinity of Ostrov Karaginskly and Kavacha. The second leg, or segment, commenced at Kavacha and proceeded to Beringovskly to Kivak. And the third segment commenced at Kivak, then to Uelen and finally to Val’Karay southwest of Wrangel Island, Ostrov Vrangelya, in the Chukchi Sea. Because of weather conditions, two or three missions were flown to complete each increment, or leg.
P2V-3W and RB-50E overflight routes, April–June 1952.
“Upon departing Wrangel Island on a later mission, the RB-50 separated from us and proceeded back to Fairbanks, Alaska, for refueling. Maintaining radio silence, penetrating the Air Defense Identification Zone, ADIZ, we were intercepted as an intruder by air force F-94 fighters and escorted to Ladd Air Force Base near Fairbanks, landing in complete radio silence. After parking near base operations, we were confronted by gun-waving military police, had to throw our identity cards onto the tarmac, and were confined aboard our aircraft for some time until someone could be found at higher headquarters to vouch for us.
An RB-50E of the 55th SRW at Eielson Air Force Base, near Fairbanks, Alaska. Ladd Air Force Base, also near Fairbanks, was turned over to the US Army in 1961 and renamed Fort Wainwright. The 55th Wing tail insignia was a V in a rectangle when assigned to the 2nd Air Force; it changed to a circle when the wing transferred to the 15th Air Force in 1952. In the mid-1950s, such unit tail designators were dropped.
“The same RB-50E flew on each of the missions, its crew, like our own, being the only one in its squadron cleared for them. On two occasions, MiG-15 aircraft intercepted our P2V-3W and the RB-50E—once over the Bering Sea near Saint Lawrence Island and once over Soviet territory. The Russian fighters flew next to us for a time and, although creating immense tension for the aircrews, did not take any hostile action—probably because we were flying parallel to the coast and not on a course heading directly into Siberia.” Just months later, Russian MiG jet fighters were much less charitable toward American overflights, or even peripheral reconnaissance missions flown over international waters. An RB-29 of the 91st SRS flying a PARPRO mission was shot down on October 7, 1952, by Russian fighters near the Kurile Islands with the loss of eight airmen.37 And on July 29, 1953, an RB-50E flying out of Yokota Air Base, Japan, on another peripheral reconnaissance mission was shot down over the Sea of Japan by a MiG-15 jet. Of the crew of sixteen, only the copilot, Captain John E. Roche, survived.38 The Cold War wasn’t very cold for American reconnaissance crews flying dated World War II–vintage aircraft in a world of jet fighters.
“One amusing incident occurred on the first mission. Our flight path took us south of the Komandorski Islands, west-northwest of Attu, at the end of the Aleutian chain of islands. The US Coast Guard ship Sugar, stationed many miles southwest of Attu, on the flight path between the Aleutians and Japan, detected our clandestine flight. They called for over thirty minutes to inform us that we were off course and not heading toward Japan, but westward toward the Soviet Union. This was done on unguarded frequencies that could have been monitored by the Russians, which probably gave them notice of our approach. The last of these missions, which completed the three legs of our planned track, was flown on June 29, 1952, and I returned to the United States on July 13. The electronic and photographic data collected was forwarded to Washington, DC, and other places unknown to us. It is very likely that the intelligence we collected in our joint overflights that spring was used in planning the subsequent overflights into Siberia from the area of Wrangel Island by two B-47Bs on October 15, 1952.”
COME THE B/RB-47 STRATOJET (1952)
On the morning of July 19, 1948, high-level air force brass visiting Seattle had virtually no interest in the XB-47. Even though they would be flying over Moses Lake that afternoon in their B-17 on their return to Dayton, they were so disinterested in the XB-47 that they were unwilling to spend even a few extra minutes stopping at Moses Lake to see it. Boeing president, Bill Allen, was finally able to convince them to stop just briefly. Major General Wolfe, on a twenty-six-minute demonstration flight in the XB-47, followed by a spectacular four-minute flight using eighteen JATO rockets, was so impressed that within ten days Boeing had an informal order for ten B-47As to jump-start production.
&nb
sp; —Mark Natola, Boeing B-47 Stratojet
The B-47 jet bomber was part of a design competition in 1944. It featured, like all the other contenders, straight wings. Nothing out of the ordinary about these planes, except that they didn’t have propellers. George Schairer, the senior Boeing design engineer for the B-47 program, heard of an opportunity to accompany Dr. Theodore von Karman, General Hap Arnold’s technical adviser, in April 1945 on a mission to Germany, to review German jet and rocket aircraft developments. He jumped at the opportunity and learned of the benefits derived from sweeping an aircraft’s wing backward by 35 degrees, plus other insights that benefited the development of the B/RB-47.39 Just a bit over two years later, the XB-47 made its maiden flight on December 17, 1947, from Boeing Field in Seattle, Washington. Nearly four years later, on October 23, 1951, Colonel Michael McCoy, the commander of the 306th Bomb Wing, flew the first operational B-47 bomber from the Boeing Airplane Company plant in Wichita, Kansas, to MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida. This B-47, serial number 50-008, was christened The Real McCoy, the first of a total of 2,042 B-47s built. The B-47 took the US Air Force into the jet age, but at a cost. Over a period of seventeen years, the aircraft’s service life from 1951 to 1967, a total of 203 aircraft were destroyed with heavy loss of life.
In the late 1940s, the Russians had begun to exercise their growing TU-4 Bull bomber fleet and deployed them on exercises at northern bases, posing a potential threat to the United States. In December 1950, President Truman authorized the first overflight of Soviet territory to determine with certainty what the Russians actually had deployed at Dickson Island in the Kara Sea, at Mys Shmidta on the Chukchi Sea, and at Provideniya on the Chukotskiy Peninsula, just across the Bering Strait from Alaska. The fourth B-47 coming down the Boeing production line in Wichita, Kansas, was yanked off the line, B-47A 49-2645, one of ten A-models built, and modified to carry appropriate cameras for an overflight of eastern Siberia. Headquarters SAC picked Colonel Richard C. Neely, the primary B-47 test pilot, to command this mission. Neely and his crew flew the modified B-47 bomber to Eielson Air Force Base near Fairbanks, Alaska. On August 8, 1951, some say it was August 15, while the crew was awaiting weather conditions to improve and authorization to proceed with the mission, the aircraft caught fire on the ramp during refueling. General LeMay was livid, and the accident set back the planned overflight of Russian air bases in Siberia for a year until additional aircraft could be modified to fly such a mission.
Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage Page 16
