Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage

by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel

The 4083rd Strategic Wing base operations facility at Thule Air Base, Greenland. Ice, snow, and minus 40 degree temperatures were the norm during the long winter months.

  When Thule closed and an aircraft had to divert to an alternate or emergency airfield, few options were available. The most practical choices open to a pilot were emergency airfields on Greenland itself—fields that provided a minimum of support and required a maximum of pilot skill. Recovering aircraft from emergency airfields such as Weather Station Nord became a major operation fraught with risk to the aircraft as well as to the maintenance crews who tried to get the marooned jet airborne again. One such emergency landing occurred in April 1958 at Station Nord, on the northeast tip of Greenland. An RB-47H electronic reconnaissance aircraft, tail number 53-4281, of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing and piloted by Captain Kenney Addison, was returning from a routine reconnaissance mission off Siberia when Thule closed for Phase III winds. The winds blew across the runway at a right angle and resulted in zero-zero conditions—zero visibility and zero ceiling. Either the severe crosswind or the limited visibility was enough to keep the RB-47 from landing. Only two practical alternatives offered themselves to the tired aircrew. One was Sondrestrom, on the west coast of the southern third of Greenland, with an approach up a fjord and a runway facing a towering ice shelf. The other option was Nord. The crew chose Nord, a barren airstrip adjacent to a Danish weather station that offered only a snow-and-ice-covered 8,000-foot runway. However, Nord had runway lights, the only sure way for a pilot to positively identify the runway in wintry conditions.

  “I was startled when my phone rang,” Charlie Phillips recalled. “The senior command post officer asked me to try, if I possibly could, to come over. I dressed quickly and as warmly as possible. I pulled the hood of my fur-lined parka around my face and stepped into the Arctic whiteout. It was unusual to be asked for anyone to go outside after a phase had struck. When I reached my destination, my parka was encrusted with a thick layer of ice and frost. I was told that the RB-47 reconnaissance aircraft which had launched the night before had landed at Station Nord, and that as soon as the winds died down, I was to lead a rescue party to get the aircraft back to Thule. I sat down and began planning the recovery of the stranded RB-47H with tail number 53-4281.”

  Aircraft 53-4281 had made an uneventful landing at Nord. Captain Kenneth Addison of the 343rd SRS, of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, and his copilot John Draper had taxied the aircraft to the center of a small parking area near a building that they presumed was the Danish weather station. Before shutting down the engines, Addison blew the approach and landing chutes off to one side. Then, as the engines spooled down with a high-pitched whine, an eerie silence settled over the aircraft. In spite of their helmets, the six-man crew had endured hours of incessant wind noise as they had cut at five hundred miles per hour through the cold skies of the Arctic world at 38,000 feet. One of the three Ravens sitting in the aisle below the pilots opened the entry hatch and let down the aluminum access ladder. The crew emerged slowly, dressed in their bulky winter flying suits, stiff from sitting for hours strapped into their ejection seats. The crew secured their classified logs and tapes and secured the aircraft. Then they turned to their Danish hosts, who greeted them in good English.

  It was an occasion to celebrate. Rarely did anyone drop by in the winter months for a visit, emergency or otherwise. The arrival of the Americans was a welcome interruption for the Danish weathermen. The aircrew quickly learned that Danish Aquavit kept ice cold and drunk in one bold gesture was lethal. They enjoyed the cheese that was served and the sleep-inducing drink. Their hosts provided blankets and they slept on the heated concrete floor of the station’s laundry room. To fly back to Thule, they knew, they would need outside assistance. They had no way to start their engines. Three days after 53-4281 had landed at Nord, the winds died down at Thule, and Charlie Phillips and his rescue crew got underway.

  A C-47 transport landing on the snow-covered runway at Thule, Greenland. Note that it is almost impossible for the pilot to tell with certainty where the runway is, unless there are some lights along the edges to serve as a guide. In conditions of blowing snow or darkness, even with lights, it is a nearly impossible task to bring in an airplane.

  Phillips continued: “I took two KC-97 aerial refueling tankers with full fuel loads from the 100th Air Refueling Squadron and sent them off to Nord. The 100th came from Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire. They were pulling a six-week rotational tour at Thule. Then I had an MD-3 power cart loaded on a Berlin airlift–vintage C-54 transport to power up the RB-47’s engines, and I put a maintenance crew on the same plane, and I followed on one of the KC-97s. First and foremost on my mind was the safety of my men and the aircraft we were to rescue. I knew that everything we had to do had to be done carefully and deliberately. I wouldn’t have anything bad happen to that reconnaissance airplane. As the team leader, I decided that I would personally handle the potentially most dangerous operation myself—operating the forklift in close proximity to the RB-47. I was told that a forklift was permanently positioned at Nord to unload aircraft delivering fuel to Nord in fifty-gallon drums. After our arrival, I had the Danish lift operator explain its operation to me, and then I practiced driving, tilting, and lifting for half an hour before I certified myself as being ready to operate the lift.

  “The outside temperatures were in the 40 below zero Fahrenheit range. With the forklift, I lifted the maintenance officer, a major from the 55th Wing, up onto the nose of the RB-47 to enable him to connect a flexible refueling hose to the aircraft’s refueling receptacle. I carefully drove the lift within inches of the RB-47, lifting the major on a pallet to his icy perch. Once the hose connection was made, the KC-97 started three of its four engines—one to power its brakes, the other two to run the fuel pumps. Since there was no tug to tow the KC-97 into position, the huge aircraft had to be backed in by reversing the propeller pitch. It was a slow and tedious process. Once the first tanker discharged its fuel, it had to be disconnected from the RB-47 and taxied away, and the second tanker had to be backed into position, again very carefully. During the refueling with the KC-97s, the icy wind blast from their running engines frosted up the RB-47. The frost had to come off the jet before it could fly. I had two ropes tied around the waist of one of my men and lifted him with the forklift up on a wing of the RB-47. Two men on each side of the wing held the ropes tied around the wing walker’s waist to keep him from slipping off while he brushed off the ice and snow, using a simple push broom. A hazard to the wing walker was a double row of vortex generators sticking up on top of each wing near the wing tips. Each blade was two inches high. A fall onto these knife-like blades could cause serious injury. The operation took over six hours from start to finish. No one was injured, and nothing was damaged. We also installed new approach and landing chutes in the RB-47. Then I wired the command post at Thule for instructions, which came by teletype over the Danish weathernet. Judging from the telegram, the Thule weather forecast wasn’t all that good. Conditions varied with blowing snow, winds at 25 knots gusting to 35, and moderate to severe turbulence. We were advised to depart at 0200 Zulu time, Greenwich mean time, on the twenty-eighth, during the best anticipated weather conditions. KC-97 tankers would be standing by at Thule to launch if additional fuel was required.

  Colonel Charles Phillips operating the forklift, 1958, at Weather Station Nord, Greenland. Maintenance men standing on the pallet of the lift are connecting a flexible fuel hose to the tanker’s extended boom.

  “When the time came for the RB-47 to launch, everyone at Nord came out to watch. I remember the RB-47 taxiing out to the end of the snow-packed runway and then, as it so often happened, the heat from its six engines generated a huge ice cloud. The cloud settled between us watchers and the RB-47. We didn’t know if the cloud also enveloped the RB-47. Then we heard the throaty roar from six jet engines, and suddenly the aircraft emerged from the other side of the ice cloud as it rose into the mi
lky white sky above Station Nord heading for Thule. We all cheered. At that moment it was ‘our’ plane. We had put our full energy into getting that bird airborne, and we felt good about our accomplishment. There were smiles all around. I shook hands with everyone and thanked them for their hard work and a job well done. After the two KC-97 tankers departed, our Danish hosts invited the rest of us to share some food and drink with them. We did for an hour or two, then exhaustion and the Aquavit overcame us. We slept on the same heated floor in the weather station’s laundry room where the RB-47 crew had slept before us. We left the next day in the C-54.”

  On July 1, 1960, only two months after the shootdown of Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 photo reconnaissance plane near Sverdlovsk, an RB-47H reconnaissance aircraft with tail number 53-4281 took off in the early morning darkness from RAF Brize Norton, United Kingdom, also known as Operating Location 1 of the 55th SRW. The RB-47H, the same aircraft that two years earlier had recovered at Weather Station Nord in Greenland, was on a peripheral reconnaissance mission. Its route was similar to that flown by Captain Harold Austin, except that the plane was not tasked to overfly the Soviet Union. Rather, its mission was a “routine” peripheral reconnaissance flight staying thirty nautical miles off the Russian shoreline. Captain Willard Palm was the pilot, Captain Bruce Olmstead the copilot, Captain John McKone the navigator. The three Ravens flying in the reconnaissance capsule located in the former bomb bay area were Captain Eugene Posa and Lieutenants Oscar Goforth and Dean Phillips. The aircraft was officially declared missing on July 2, and an intensive search was initiated by the US Air Force. Hypocritically, the Soviet Union announced on July 4 that it, too, would join in the search for the missing aircraft—knowing full well that one of its MiG-19 fighters had downed the RB-47 over international waters. The Russians eventually admitted the shootdown and that they had two of its crew in custody, rescued by fishermen who happened to be in the area—Lieutenants McKone and Olmstead, both of whom were promoted to captain while imprisoned in the infamous Lubyanka Prison in Moscow. Captain Willard G. Palm’s body had also been recovered and was returned to the United States on July 25, 1960, for burial in Arlington National Cemetery. Palm was promoted to major posthumously. The Russians disclaimed having any knowledge of the three Ravens who were lost—Posa, Goforth, and Phillips—and their bodies were never returned to the United States. The shootdown of the RB-47 turned into a major international incident reminiscent of the Powers shootdown in his U-2 near Sverdlovsk by a salvo of SA-2 surface-to-air missiles. McKone and Olmstead were released from Lubyanka Prison after nearly seven months of imprisonment and interrogation in January 1961, apparently as a goodwill gesture by Premier Nikita Khrushchev to President John F. Kennedy, who had succeeded Dwight D. Eisenhower that January. As the release of McKone and Olmstead was announced, President Kennedy held a news conference at the State Department. “Mr. President, did the Russians ask any quid pro quo, or did we make any concessions?” asked a reporter. The president now referred to the statement “which I read to you earlier, in this matter of overflights.” “Does that mean, sir, that they accepted a reassurance of no more overflights as an exchange?” “It is a fact,” President Kennedy responded, “that I have ordered that the flights not be resumed, which is a continuation of the order given by President Eisenhower in May of last year.”43 The overflights were to continue, but by other means than aircraft.

  A Russian MiG-19 supersonic fighter, like the one that shot down Willard Palm’s RB-47H, armed with air-to-air missiles, taxiing for takeoff.

  A flight of five RB-47H reconnaissance aircraft of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing flew in a “missing man” formation over Arlington National Cemetery at the burial of Major Willard Palm, the aircraft commander of the ill-fated RB-47H reconnaissance aircraft shot down over the Barents Sea on July 1, 1960, by Russian MiG-19 fighters.

  THE RB-57D THAT KILLED THE SENSINT PROGRAM (1956)

  SAC did not retain its RB-57Ds very long. Only six remained with SAC by December 1959. In April 1960 SAC disposed of the last one.

  —Marcelle Knaack, Post–World War II Bombers

  Within weeks of the outbreak of the war in Korea, the USAF Board of Senior Officers began looking at options to replace the aging Douglas B/RB-26 Invader. The board agreed that what was needed was a light jet bomber that could operate from short runways and unimproved airfields, one with a ceiling of 40,000 feet, a range of about 1,000 miles, and a maximum speed of around 550 knots. The board looked at what was available, including foreign aircraft. The Martin XB-51 was the first choice, of course, but it was still undergoing flight testing and probably would not be available for a number of years. The North American B-45 was looked at but found unsuitable for the tactical bomber role, limited by a conventional airframe with little growth potential. The Canadair CF-100 failed on many counts, as did the British Vickers Valiant and SAC’s B-47 medium bomber. The one aircraft that looked as close to an off-the-shelf combat airplane as one could hope for was the English Electric Canberra. Air force technical intelligence officers attached to the London embassy were impressed when witnessing its first flight at RAF Wharton in 1949. The Air Staff tasked Brigadier General Albert Boyd, the air force chief of test and evaluation at Edwards Air Force Base, to take a look. Boyd generally liked what he saw. But he wanted the Canberra to undergo rigorous tests and evaluation. Two British Canberras were purchased and flown to the Martin Company in Baltimore. Although the British aircraft exhibited many shortcomings as they underwent detailed examination and tests, the Canberra gained more friends than enemies and became a serious contender to replace the B-26 as an interim night intruder and reconnaissance aircraft for employment in Korea. On February 26, 1951, The senior officer and USAF Weapons Board each chose the Canberra as the best interim aircraft available for service in Korea. General Hoyt Vandenberg, the air force chief of staff, signed off on the recommendation. It was a done deal.

  One of the two English Electric Canberras, with British markings, flown to the Martin Aircraft Company in Baltimore for evaluation to become the US Air Force’s interim medium bomber. Lots of unpleasant surprises were in store for both the Martin Aircraft Company and its USAF customer.

  The Martin Company, testing the XB-51, the Tactical Air Command’s ultimate choice of a tactical bomber, seemed the logical choice to build the American copy of the Canberra. The immediate need was for a bomber in the role of night intruder, and an equally night-capable RB-57 reconnaissance aircraft. Eight B-57A bombers were built before it was realized that this really was not an off-the-shelf airplane. It showed numerous shortcomings that had to be fixed, not the least of which was the J65 engines that took the place of the British Rolls Royce turbojets. The B-57 program stalled. The first flight of a production B-57 did not take place until July 20, 1953. The Korean armistice was signed on July 27. The entire program was nearly killed by a string of spectacular accidents. What saved the B-57 probably more than any other event was the demise of the XB-51. On October 28, 1949, the XB-51 had made its maiden flight. A second airplane was built. In May 1952, during a low-level demonstration at Edwards Air Force Base, California, one of the XB-51s crashed, killing the pilot. The second aircraft soon crashed as well. The contract, for what once was thought of as TAC’s ultimate tactical bomber, was canceled. It was clear, however, that what was needed in the summer of 1952 were airplanes on the ramp rather than more studies. So the B/RB-57 survived its near demise. By July 1954, the first of sixty-seven RB-57s were assigned to the 345th Bomb Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, and the 363rd Tactical Reconnaissance Group at Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina. Others were assigned to Hurlburt Field, Florida; Sembach Air Base, Germany; and Laon Air Base, France. The accident rate remained high, yet with all its limitations the RB-57 served as the principal transition aircraft from the B/RB-26 to the yet even newer than the B-57, the US Navy–derived B/RB-66.44

  The RB-66B photo reconnaissance aircraft required the pilot to have multi-jet engine experience
before qualification in the RB-66 was allowed. The only aircraft available at the time to provide that experience were the B-47 and B-57.

  While the RB-57A, of which 67 aircraft were built, did yeoman service as a jet trainer for future B/RB-66 pilots, it also served as a high-altitude photo reconnaissance aircraft and continued to evolve into the B-57B bomber, of which 202 were built, and the B-57C two-seat version, a modified B-57B. The D-model was to be different from all the rest with a substantially altered B-57B fuselage, new wings, more powerful engines, and varied reconnaissance configurations. A total of twenty D-models were built. The removal of the fuselage fuel tanks allowed the installation of varied cameras, four of which were located forward of the nose wheel well. The RB-57D’s large nose and tail radomes further lengthened the fuselage. The necessary fuel was carried in the wings, which were of honeycomb construction and had a wingspan of 105 feet—replacing the original wing of 64 feet, nearly twice as large in area, totally changing the appearance of the aircraft. The aircraft was designed to fly at altitudes up to 70,000 feet, and fourteen of the twenty aircraft built were equipped for aerial refueling. The first RB-57D was flown on November 3, 1955, with acceptable results.45

  An RB-57D shadowed by an RB-57A, showing the enormity of the new wing, which required a new look at hangar space, parking areas, and runways.

  The twenty RB-57Ds were ordered in three different versions, twelve of which would be one-man Ds carrying two K-38 and two KC-1 split vertical cameras. Another, also a one-man D, was equipped with a high-resolution side-looking radar for radar mapping reconnaissance. The remaining aircraft were two-man versions equipped for electronic reconnaissance similar to the function of the RB-47H, which would be flown by the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing. Because of the perceived urgency of the program to get the aircraft ready for overflights of the Soviet Union, testing was limited and ended in 1956. The first D-model was delivered to SAC in May 1956. By that September, SAC, the 4080th SRW, had taken delivery of eleven Ds and four C-model two-seat trainers.46