July 1960: my very proud mother Hedy at my commissioning as a second lieutenant in the US Air Force, soon heading off for flight training.
In May 1958, when I reenrolled at the University of Colorado in Boulder, I felt like I was on top of the world. This time I was ready, and I had the money to get me through school without taking additional jobs as I had to before. Sometimes, failure is the best educator; at least it was for me. Here, I was to make my dream come true. At the Air Force ROTC detachment, they greeted me cordially but had bad news for me. They had no flying slots available of any kind. “The air force is downsizing,” I was told. “Sorry.” “Does it make any difference if I have prior air force service?” I asked. “Oh, yes, it does. We have slots for prior service students, but all the pilot slots are gone. All we have left is one navigator slot.” “I’ll take it,” I told them. And that was it. No matter what—I had to fly once I got back into the air force. A nonflying job just didn’t interest me. May as well go and make some money in the civilian world and buy my own airplane. In two years, I did three years of college work, went through Air Force ROTC summer camp at Hamilton Air Force Base near legendary San Francisco, California, and on a sunny July day in 1960 I graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree; but best of all, I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Air Force. My mother and my girlfriend pinned on the lieutenant’s bars I had bought back in 1951 in a Denver pawnshop.
Military orders soon arrived terminating my enlisted status in the air force reserve. But most important, a set of orders arrived directing me to report for active duty at Harlingen Air Force Base, Texas. In the weeks that followed, there was little time for me to do anything other than concentrate on what I was there for—learn to navigate air force aircraft in all types of friendly and hostile environments. Our initial training flights focused on the basics of navigation—dead reckoning, sun lines, radio beacons, tactical navigation aids. Our first real challenge was night celestial navigation, a technique widely used to navigate the bombers of the Strategic Air Command, SAC. For our final celestial navigation check ride, we took off at 0100 hours the morning of March 1, 1961, heading for a turning point at Natchez, Mississippi. The weather soon deteriorated. The air became bumpy, making it difficult to keep my sextant focused on a star. The turbulence got worse as the flight went on. I wasn’t going to let anything keep me from completing this check ride. While other students gave up and strapped into their positions, I kept on shooting stars, at times holding on for dear life, calculating our position, keeping up with the aircraft. Six hours later, we arrived at the let-down point near Harlingen. I sat back and relaxed. I did it. I was the only student to finish the check ride. Two days later, I received my score—a near perfect night celestial mission. After the instructor returned my charts and logs, he said to the class, “I commend Lieutenant Samuel for his perseverance and the quality of his work. However, the staff has decided not to count his mission because of the inclement weather on March 1. We will fly the mission over again.” Everyone cheered. I was less than pleased with the outcome. After celestial navigation, we practiced grid navigation, Loran, pressure patterns, and radar. I passed all of my flight checks with flying colors, was designated a distinguished graduate, pinned on the wings of a navigator, was offered a regular commission vice the reserve commission that I’d held since coming on active duty, and, best of all—I would be able to pick my future assignment. My dream was to fly with the men of the Berlin airlift—so I was all geared up to pick the first C-124 assignment available. The C-124 was the principal airlifter at the time, and I figured it was there where I would meet up with the men whom I so idolized.
The C-124, better known to its aircrews as “Old Shaky,” was the principal transport for the Military Air Transport Service, MATS, in the 1950s, later renamed Military Airlift Command, MAC, today known as Air Mobility Command. The name changed, but functions remained the same.
Both my fellow students and instructors thought I was crazy. “You want to go into fighters or bombers” was their recommendation, “not fly with the ‘trash haulers.’” I resented the reference to transport flyers as “trash haulers.” They didn’t understand my motivation; didn’t know or remember that it was these very “trash haulers” who had saved the city of Berlin from the Russians, saved two million Berliners from hunger, cold, and fear of a dark future. But no matter what I wanted, in the end someone other had already made the assignment decision for many members of my class. The Strategic Air Command, SAC, always got what it wanted in those days. SAC wanted the top graduates of navigator training to enter electronic warfare training to man their ever-growing fleet of B-52 bombers. Before I knew what was happening, I held a set of orders in my hands sending me to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi. I wasn’t ready to give up that easily. I made an appointment with my squadron commander trying to convince him to have my orders changed. He laughed in my face. “Samuel,” he said, “this is the best thing that could happen to you. There is no career in flying trash haulers. Get out of my office, and thank your lucky star that you didn’t get what you asked for.”
When I reported to Keesler, a surprise was waiting for me. Our training aircraft turned out to be converted C-54 transports, which during the Berlin airlift of 1948–1949 had flown coal from Fassberg and Celle Air Bases to Berlin. The aircraft still had traces of coal dust in their spars, attesting to their earlier use. To me, it was like a reunion with old friends. On my first training flight, I walked around the aircraft and patted its nose, as if it were a living thing. I said nothing to my classmates about how special these airplanes were to me, how they and I once were together in a place and time when I was still a German boy, dreading to have to live under Communist domination. These planes, and the men who flew them, had been my saviors.
C-54 transports, converted to electronic warfare training aircraft, on the flight line at Keesler AFB, Mississippi, 1961. All of those aircraft at one time participated in the Berlin airlift of 1948–1949 flying coal from RAF Fassberg/Celle to Berlin.
After graduating from electronic warfare, EW, training, we were given a choice of assignments. My class was small, and the assignments were written on a blackboard. There was one to the 55th SRW. I was number three in my class, and I thought for sure someone would choose that assignment before me. I sat there with crossed fingers—no one did. On July 1, 1960, an RB-47H reconnaissance jet of the 55th SRW had been shot down over the Barents Sea. Everyone still remembered that shootdown and didn’t want to have anything to do with an outfit like that. For me, it made up for not getting to be a C-124 navigator. It was, after all, the kind of assignment I was really looking for. Nothing would give me a greater thrill than flying reconnaissance against the Communists, the Russians. And off I went to Topeka, Kansas, to become a Raven on an RB-47H electronic reconnaissance crew.
I was assigned to the 343rd Reconnaissance Squadron, one of three squadrons in the wing, the others being the 38th and the 338th. The 343rd and 38th Squadrons were equipped with RB-47H aircraft, each with a crew of six; and several converted B-47E bombers, Tell 2 aircraft, with a crew of five, which were equipped to monitor Russian missile launches. The 338th squadron flew RB-47K photo reconnaissance aircraft, which had the standard B-47 crew of three. On August 20, 1962, I flew my first training mission in an RB-47H north toward the Canadian border, over the near-empty and barren northern states. Lumbering F-89 Scorpion air defense fighters vainly tried to practice intercepts on us as we sliced through the cold, blue northern skies. It was a daytime mission of eight hours’ duration in a downward-firing ejection seat, which, someone whispered to me in confidence, was a seat designed not to work. Apparently, the knowledge we Ravens possessed was too sensitive to allow us to be exploited by Soviet interrogators should we be shot down and captured. Electronic warfare officers, EWOs, in a reconnaissance aircraft were referred to as Ravens; those who manned bombers and jammed hostile radars were referred to as Crows; while those flying Wild Weasel SAM-killer mission
s during the Vietnam War years, flying F-100 and F-105 fighters, would be referred to as Bears. The importance of electronic warfare in future combat operations was a lesson that had yet to be learned, although the Strategic Air Command in 1962 was probably at the leading edge of this poorly understood form of aerial combat.
Three of us Ravens sat in a sealed capsule located in the aircraft’s former bomb bay. Our sole mission was to glean the secrets from enemy electronic emissions, our only window to the outside world the electronic equipment we had been taught to operate—direction finders, search receivers, pulse analyzers, recorders. This eight-hour flight, my first, was a short training flight, I was told by my Standardization Board evaluator. “Once you are checked out and certified, your missions will frequently be up to fourteen hours long, requiring air refuelings,” the evaluator told me. “You’ll fly in places where the bad guys will be waiting for you, waiting to shoot you down. Enjoy your short eight-hour missions while you can.” He laughed at me as if he had just let me in on a private joke. Our training program was hectic—fly, critique, plan the next mission. Fly August 20, fly August 23, fly August 24. Every flight was preceded the day before by a lengthy mission-planning process. We were not allowed to use any electronic navigation aids, because they surely would not be available over the places where we were destined to fly. So we planned our routes in great detail, determined the best radar returns, and precalculated our celestial requirements to shoot the stars if visible on a clear night. I had no idea why our pace was so hectic.
On September 26, 1962, I passed my flight check, which certified me as a fully qualified crew member on an RB-47H reconnaissance crew. I received my permanent assignment to crew S-67, a select standardization crew, commanded by Major Howard “Rusty” Rust. My flight check had been a night mission. Upon our return to base, as the aircraft initiated its final approach, we all glimpsed a beautiful sunrise. On takeoff and landing, we three Ravens sat in the aisle below the two pilots to give us a better chance at escape in case of an emergency. The wheels touched down with a jolt, and after eating up much of the runway, we blew the approach and brake chutes off to the side with our jet exhaust, then turned onto a taxiway to find our parking place among more than a hundred B-47 and KC-97 aircraft. Exhausted, we slid down the aluminum access ladder to the oil-stained concrete ramp, glad to be able to stretch aching muscles.
Forbes Air Force Base, 1962. More than one hundred aircraft are parked on the apron and the short runway. The dirty spots are the parking areas for KC-97 tankers. The B-47E bombers of the 40th Bomb Wing parked at the northern end of the ramp. Our RB-47 aircraft occupied the ramp area south of our KC-97 tankers.
In the distance, I could see one of our RB-47K photo reconnaissance aircraft from the 338th squadron rolling down the runway for an early-morning training mission. All of us watched its takeoff roll out of habit; that’s what airmen do. The aircraft gained speed on the runway we had just landed on, disappearing from view as it went over a small rise. The next thing we saw was a black mushroom-like cloud rising into the clear blue Kansas sky; tongues of flame shot through the smoke as if a thunderstorm. Shocked by the suddenness of the tragedy, we stood transfixed, witnessing the death of four of our own—two pilots, a navigator, and a crew chief. A lesson, if it was needed, to emphasize that military flying was very different in its challenges from commercial aviation.
The good news, on October 1, I was promoted to captain; a temporary “spot” promotion for serving on a select crew, a promotion that had to be validated every six months. Yet, after barely two years of service, here I was, a captain in the United States Air Force. Howard Rust, our aircraft commander, was promoted to lieutenant colonel; our navigator, Arlen “Zig-Zag” Howe, to major, as well as our Raven 1, Harry Tull. I flew as Raven 2, and the Raven 3, Chuck Myers, also received a spot to captain. We were a happy crew, you might say. I soon learned why our training pace had been so hectic. The Russians were moving SS-4 medium-range ballistic missiles and IL-28 Beagle light bombers into Cuba, a threat that had been a closely held military secret. For the protection of the missiles and the bombers, the island was being ringed with SA-2 surface-to-air missiles and antiaircraft guns. There were no more training flights for us. The wing’s aircraft were entirely committed to flying operational missions in support of the emerging national emergency. During daylight hours, day after day, one of our RB-47H aircraft circled the island of Cuba, searching for SA-2 missile radars and their locations. One day blended into the next, one flight into another. On Monday, October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy, in a televised speech to the nation, announced that the Soviet Union was in the process of installing nuclear-tipped missiles ninety miles off our shore. A naval quarantine was to be imposed on the island of Cuba until all missiles were removed. Missile-carrying ships would be intercepted and not allowed to proceed. The quarantine was to take effect on Wednesday, October 24, 1962. By presidential directive, the Strategic Air Command went from Defense Condition 5—peacetime—to Defcon 3: from a routine alert posture for the nuclear-armed bomber strike forces to a readiness posture where all aircraft were loaded with nuclear weapons and ready to launch. There were no more leaves granted, no more training flights. The United States was getting ready to go to war—and a nuclear war at that. On the day the quarantine went into effect, General Thomas Power, the commander in chief of the Strategic Air Command, unilaterally ordered SAC forces from Defcon 3 to Defcon 2. More than a thousand bombers sat on their dispersal bases crewed and loaded with nuclear weapons ready to strike at the Soviet Union. More than a hundred Polaris nuclear-powered submarines went into their final launch positions, ready to execute the order for which they had been built. The nation was on the brink of a nuclear holocaust. It seemed to many of us aircrews that General LeMay’s carefully crafted strategy of nuclear deterrence had failed. I had survived World War II and thousand-bomber air raids in Berlin, and I knew that neither I, nor my family, would survive a nuclear exchange with the Soviet Union.
Crew S-67, Forbes Air Force Base, Topeka, Kansas, 1962. Lieutenant Colonel Howard Rust (pilot); Captain Joe Racine (copilot); Major Arlen “Zig-Zag” Howe (radar navigator); Major Harry Tull (Raven 1); Captain Wolfgang Samuel (Raven 2); and Captain Charles Myers (Raven 3). Harry was a Tuskegee Airman.
It was an apparently routine surveillance mission on October 26. We had taken off from Forbes Air Force Base. Three hours later, at 38,000 feet altitude, we coasted out over Key West, Florida, heading toward the island of Cuba. The sun was just rising in the east; we Ravens in our sealed capsule in the belly of the bomber were not aware of that. We three Ravens searched for hostile MiG fighters and SAM sites. The interior of the aircraft was bathed in a soft red glow of light as we went about our tasks, hour after monotonous hour. The deafening roar of six jets slicing through the icy air strained my ears. I adjusted my helmet to relieve the pressure of an earpiece. Major Harry Tull, the Raven 1, searched the I-band for MiG fighter radar emissions. I, as Raven 2, searched Echo, Fox, and Golf bands for SAM and AAA radars. Captain Chuck Myers, the Raven 3, searched the lower bands for SAM acquisition radars. The monotony was broken when the APS-54 warning receiver went off with a shrill sound in our headsets. Simultaneously, Tull picked up a powerful airborne radar in tracking mode off our tail—somebody intent on shooting us down. The unknown fighter made a tail-cone approach, flying right into our defensive 20mm guns. Joe Racine, our copilot, swung his seat around, locked his radar on the unknown fighter, and reported to Rust that he was ready to open fire.
“It’s an unknown,” Tull advised Rust over the intercom. “We can’t identify him.” Rust ordered Racine to “stand down your guns.” Joe Racine put his radar in standby, ceasing its emissions, which could be misinterpreted by a trigger-happy friendly fighter. We Ravens knew Soviet radar characteristics, not those of friendly fighters, so by definition the approaching fighter should be one of our own. The unknown continued his approach, his jet wash shaking our RB-47 from tail to nose as he passed
over us at close quarters. Several days later, we learned from Intelligence that the unknown fighter making that “dry” firing pass on us was a US Navy aircraft that had been scrambled to intercept us, thinking we were a Soviet Badger bomber. How easy it was to make a mistake at stressful times and moments. A mistake in judgment could have cost a navy pilot his life, or an air force crew of six could have died just as easily off the coast of Cuba. It was all part of doing business—keep your cool; you can’t take your bullets back once they have been fired. Our flights around Cuba, labeled Common Cause, continued around the clock during daylight hours, day after day in support of our high-flying U-2 photo reconnaissance aircraft. And we searched for that last ship on its way loaded with SS-4 IRBMs. We Ravens found the SA-2 SAM sites. One of our RB-47Hs, ranging across the open spaces of the North Atlantic, found the elusive Russian ship carrying the offensive missiles. All of us in the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing were proud to have found the needle in the haystack. Once the Soviet vessel was located, navy P-3 antisubmarine warfare aircraft took over shadowing it. American destroyers approached—and, after a brief standoff, the Russian ship finally turned around to return to the Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis ended on Sunday, October 28, 1962. There was no nuclear war. Premier Khrushchev agreed to remove all offensive missiles and aircraft from Cuba, never again to reintroduce them. In return, the United States, in time, would remove American Jupiter missiles aimed at the Soviet Union from Turkey and Thor missiles from the United Kingdom.
Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage Page 25
