Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage
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Although no shots were fired in anger, there were losses nevertheless. One of our RB-47H aircraft searching for the missile-laden Russian ship crashed on takeoff from Kindley Air Force Base in Bermuda. Four of our friends and fellow flyers lost their lives. A subsequent investigation determined that the civilian contractor did not properly mix the water and alcohol mixture we used on takeoff to gain additional power. The water/alcohol ratio was supposed to be 28 percent alcohol, 72 percent water; the mix that was pumped into Major William A. Britton’s water/alcohol tanks was between 12 and 13.6 percent alcohol, far short of what was required. The aircraft crashed into the rocks just beyond the runway. A totally preventable and unnecessary accident. A second RB-47H taking off one minute after Major Britton was able to stop in time after seeing the fireball emanating from the crashed RB-47H. A third was in takeoff position. Both of those aircraft also had the bad alcohol/water mixture. Another RB-47H from the 343rd SRS crashed on takeoff from MacDill Air Force Base near Tampa, Florida. All of the crew died. Funeral services were held in the Forbes Air Force Base chapel. We young officers, who had reported to our new duty station only months earlier, were sent on the sad task of escorting our dead brothers in blue to their graves in places like Kansas, Iowa, and Nebraska. Freedom isn’t free, never has been. We learned that hard lesson very early in our careers.
Three months later, on January 3, 1963, a cold, blustery, and snowy Kansas morning, my young wife drove me to base operations. I was leaving for RAF Brize Norton in England, to fly the periphery of the Soviet Union to glean secrets the nation desperately needed to counter the Soviet threat. The Kola Peninsula, Novaya Zemlya, Kaliningrad, Klaipeda, and other strange-sounding names few Americans have ever heard of were on our agenda. My wife bade me farewell with a hurried kiss. I swallowed hard. I couldn’t let her see my pain. She held our tiny son Charles close in the blustery cold. Our baby boy was ill. We didn’t know what he was suffering from, but his temperature was inordinately high. She touched my face with her hand, put the baby into his carry-cot next to her in the car, and drove off toward the base hospital.
Crew S-67—Rusty, Howie, Joe, Harry, Chuck, and Wolf—flew out of England for three long winter months. Our aircraft would lift off from dimly lit runways at night with no radio calls to alert a vigilant foe that we were coming. On one cold February day, we headed north to the far-off Kola Peninsula; a KC-135 aerial refueling tanker flying in trail behind us gave us one last drink of precious fuel near Bear Island off the coast of Norway. Then he turned back for Brize Norton. His mission was done; ours was just beginning. High over the Barents Sea, in the dark of night, we flew nearly wing tip to wing tip with the bombers of Russia’s strategic forces as they tested their newest air-to-surface missile. We surprised them. Harry picked up the radars of MiG-19s searching, locking onto their own aircraft, not finding us. As we flew among our foes, we took their secrets with us. Our intelligence officer at the mission debrief pulled us aside, then said, “We watched you going in. Normally, we would have recalled you. But this was such a unique opportunity.” We were flying over the same area where, on July 1, 1960, on a daylight mission, Major Palm and his crew, flying an RB-47H aircraft just like ours, was shot down by Russian MiG-19 fighters. We knew exactly where we were and what the Russians were capable of, even though we were flying over international waters, off their coast.
On a daylight mission over the Baltic Sea, we headed for Kaliningrad, the former East Prussia, which had been taken over by the Russians at the end of World War II. There, the Russians always kept some of their latest fighters and radars. We came in high. Rusty pulled the power back, and the RB-47 dropped out of the sky like a rock. Down and down we went. The Russians went crazy trying to track us. Turning on radars we had not seen before. Sending up a horde of MiG-17s to nail us. But they were too late to catch us. Like the mission high up over the Barents Sea, it was a very productive mission and revealed much about the Soviet air defense system, including their weaknesses. We carried an ALD-4 reconnaissance pod on the side of the aircraft, which automatically picked up whatever we Ravens might have missed—the location of a radar, its frequency, its pulse width and pulse recurrence frequency. The pod had been developed by the E-Systems Corporation, now a part of Raytheon; its data subsequently was read out at SAC headquarters, and in time we would receive a briefing on all we had brought home on every one of our missions—but not those flown by others.
RB-47H, tail Number 4304, viewed from our accompanying KC-135 tanker in February 1963 on our way to the Barents Sea and the Kola Peninsula, where the Russians conducted much of their R&D testing. On this mission, the MiG-19s tried their best to get us. The ALD-4 pod on the side of the aircraft’s fuselage automatically collected all radar emission parameters and site locations—information that was read out at SAC headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska, and incorporated into the Radar Order of Battle. Flights over the Barents Sea, adjacent to the Kola Peninsula, and at the far eastern end of the Baltic Sea frequently brought out Russian fighters.
We returned to our home base in April 1963 after flying eighteen lone reconnaissance missions. Each of us was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for the missions flown over the Barents Sea off the Kola Peninsula, and the mission over the Baltic Sea near Kaliningrad. A couple of weeks after we returned from deployment, we were directed to review our mission results at SAC headquarters in Omaha. It was always amazing to see what we had accomplished. It was also gratifying to hear that two of the Russian air defense sector commanders in the Kaliningrad region had been fired because their MiGs didn’t manage to catch us and shoot us down. I flew a total of over a hundred PARPRO missions while assigned to the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at various locations around the Soviet Union. When I left the wing to obtain a master’s degree at the Air Force Institute of Technology in 1967, the venerable RB-47 was being phased out and replaced with the more capable RC-135. For me, flying with the 55th Wing was a dream come true—and, yes, a couple of our pilots had flown the Berlin airlift, which had inspired me years earlier as a young refugee boy living in a desolate camp in a devastated Germany. There are times when dreams come true—they did for me.
THE LAST FLIGHT OF RB-47H 53-4290 OVER THE SEA OF JAPAN (1965)
On their third and final firing pass, I thought I scored a hit on the lead MiG. It nosed up abruptly, then pitched over and descended straight down in what appeared to be an unrecoverable position.
—First Lieutenant Henry Dubuy, copilot of 4290
On a warm and softly pleasant afternoon in 1961, at the age of twenty, Joel Lutkenhouse passed through the main gate at Harlingen Air Force Base, Texas, and became an aviation cadet. Harlingen, then a small agricultural community in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, was home to a navigator training base, one of many flying training bases scattered along the Texas-Mexico border. Here, in the land of blue and empty skies, potential air force navigators spent the better part of a year learning the intricacies of aerial navigation in twin-engine Convair T-29 aircraft, the military version of the widely used Convair 240 airliner. The oldest of five children, Joel entered Staten Island Community College in 1958. One day in the school cafeteria, a classmate mentioned to Joel that he soon would be leaving to enter the air force’s aviation cadet program to train as a pilot. “You don’t have a college degree,” Joel replied; “how did you get in?”
“You only need two years of college, Joel,” his classmate replied, “not a degree. You can pick up a degree sometime in the future if you want to do that. But right now, I want to learn how to fly. I am really excited. I can’t wait to leave. Why don’t you come too? If I can get in, you can for sure. You are a lot smarter than I am.” His friend smiled. For days afterward, Joel thought about what his friend had said. It represented an opportunity to become an officer in the US Air Force, an opportunity to give his life direction. He decided to take a closer look, visited with an air force recruiter, and took the required tests. Although he passed the tests, his score was not high
enough to get into pilot training. When offered, he took the opportunity to train as an air force navigator. So here he was in January 1961 on a palm tree–studded air base in the remotest corner of the United States. “On an oil-stained tarmac,” Joel recalled for me, “I saw row upon row of twin-engined navigation trainers. I suddenly felt excitement rising within me. Those planes were my future. I really wanted to fly. I promised myself I wasn’t going to fail at the biggest thing I’d ever attempted in my life.”
In November 1961, Joel Lutkenhouse exchanged the shoulder boards of an aviation cadet for the brown bars of a second lieutenant and pinned on the wings of an air force navigator. But instead of a flying assignment to practice what he had learned, his orders directed him to report to Mather Air Force Base near Sacramento, California, to spend another ten months to qualify as an electronic warfare officer, an EWO. Upon graduation in 1962, he was assigned to the 376th Bomb Wing at Lockbourne Air Force Base near Columbus, Ohio. Lockbourne was the same base from where Sam Myers and Hal Austin once flew their RB-45C and RB-47E reconnaissance aircraft on deep penetration missions into Red China and the Soviet Union. Joel’s squadron flew B-47E bombers converted to a radar-jamming role, and instead of carrying nuclear bombs, they carried two electronic warfare officers in a capsule in the former bomb bay from where they controlled a number of electronic jammers and chaff dispensers to support attacking bombers—in case “the balloon went up” and nuclear war commenced. Four times during his two years at Lockbourne, Joel “Reflexed” to RAF Brize Norton in the United Kingdom, where he sat alert with B-47 bomber crews for two out of three weeks. Sitting alert meant living in his flight suit in a concrete bunker near his aircraft, cocked to launch at a moment’s notice should the klaxon sound. The klaxon never sounded in earnest, and in May 1964 the 376th Bomb Wing disbanded; Joel received orders to report to the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Forbes Air Force Base, Topeka, Kansas. Joel was assigned to the 343rd SRS, the same squadron I flew with. Once certified combat ready, he was assigned to crew E-96 as a Raven 3. In the 55th Wing, the EWOs were referred to as Ravens, and he would occupy position three in a capsule located in the former bomb bay of the RB-47H electronic reconnaissance aircraft.
Another young officer was on a career track that for many years nearly paralleled Joel’s. Second Lieutenant George V. Back was a little older than most lieutenants, born in 1936 in Syracuse, New York. He joined the Army National Guard as a teenager. By the time he entered aviation cadet training at Harlingen in 1961, he already held a reserve commission as a second lieutenant in the infantry. But George had always wanted to fly, and when the opportunity offered itself, like Joel, he grabbed it. George and Joel were in the same cadet class at Harlingen and were commissioned on the same day. Together, they completed electronic warfare training at Mather and upon graduation were assigned to the same wing at Lockbourne. Once that wing deactivated, both were assigned to the 55th Wing and ended up on the same RB-47H electronic reconnaissance crew—E-96. In George Back’s words, “the 55th was considered a closed union, and we were the first brown bars to come into the unit in a couple of years. Most of the crew members were lieutenant colonels, majors, or senior captains—intimidating for us young guys—and we thought we better do things right. Matt—Lieutenant Colonel Hobart Mattison—my aircraft commander, was a no-nonsense kind of officer when it came to flying. Every mission, we lined up under the left wing of the aircraft for inspection—our parachutes on the ground in front of us, our helmets on top of the chutes—and Matt conducted a short premission briefing. After his briefing we did a left face, marched forward until clear of the parachutes, and began our individual preflights. In flight, we addressed crew positions when talking on the intercom—‘Raven 2 to pilot’ and so on. We said what needed saying, and that’s it. No frivolous banter. First names were left at the Officers’ Club.”
On March 30, 1965, Joel Lutkenhouse and George Back deployed with crew E-96 to Yokota Air Base near Tokyo, Japan. Yokota had hosted various air force reconnaissance elements over the years and at this time served as one of several operating locations around the periphery of the Soviet Union for aircraft of the 55th SRW. I personally flew missions out of Yokota Air Base in RB-47H aircraft in 1965 and again in 1967. Many of the routes flown by the RB-47Hs of the 55th Wing were “canned,” meaning they were flown repeatedly along the periphery of the Soviet Union, by their very nature providing the Russian military with tacit assurance that these missions were routine and without hostile intent. All of these missions were flown over international waters, meaning that the United States had every legal right to fly them. However, at times the reconnaissance routes and tactics were modified to cause the Soviets to turn on their radars and possibly reveal wartime techniques and modes of operation, which under normal circumstances they would not do. All radar emissions were recorded for subsequent analysis, and the emitter locations were incorporated in the master Electronic Order of Battle maintained at SAC headquarters. It was a never-ending game, so to speak, of one-upmanship to ensure that air force military tactics and weapon systems remained relevant to the potential threat posed by the Soviet Union. Reaction to such reconnaissance flights over the years had varied, depending on the sensitivity of the information gathered or the whim of a Russian politician or military commander.
Since the early 1950s, a fair number of US Air Force and Navy reconnaissance aircraft had been lost to Russian fighters. Such losses received little publicity from either side unless it proved politically advantageous, such as the downing of Francis Gary Powers’s U-2 by Soviet SA-2 surface-to-air missiles in May 1960 over the Soviet Union. The last 55th Wing aircraft lost to hostile action had been an RB-47H shot down by Russian MiG-19 fighters over the Barents Sea on July 1, 1960, only two months after the downing of the U-2 near Sverdlovsk. Although all peripheral reconnaissance missions were flown over international waters, that didn’t keep the Russians from sending out their fighters to run intercepts on us. Some of those intercepts were with hostile intent.
The front-end crew of E-96 was led by Lieutenant Colonel Hobart D. “Matt” Mattison, an experienced and skilled aircraft commander; First Lieutenant Henry E. Dubuy served as the copilot and gunner, and Captain Robert J. Rogers was the radar navigator. The back-end crew, the Ravens, were led by Captain Robert C. “Red” Winters, who flew as the Raven 1 and was principally responsible for monitoring airborne threats. First Lieutenant George V. Back flew as the Raven 2 on his first operational deployment, as did First Lieutenant Joel J. Lutkenhouse, the Raven 3. Each of the Ravens controlled a set of similar receivers, analyzers, recorders, and direction finders allowing them to back each other up if necessary. The essential difference between the three positions was that each covered a set of assigned radio frequencies, covering the entire frequency spectrum used at the time by various ground-based and airborne radar emitters. On takeoff, the three Ravens sat strapped into web slings in the aisle below the two pilots. Once the aircraft was airborne and temporarily leveled off at 2,000 feet above the terrain, the Ravens crawled aft, on hands and knees, through a narrow tunnel into their compartment located in the former bomb bay of the aircraft. Their operating compartment was surrounded, front and aft, by fuel tanks. The B-47 aircraft carried no fuel in its wings; all the tanks were located in the body of the aircraft. The Raven 2, the last to enter the compartment, locked the capsule door, and the Raven 3 would then pressurize the compartment. As the aircraft climbed to its assigned altitude, usually somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 feet, the pressurization in both the front and back end was kept at 14,000 feet, meaning that the crew had to remain on oxygen for the duration of its flight. The two pilots sat in conventional upward-firing ejection seats, while the navigator and the Ravens sat in downward-firing seats. Over the years of B-47 bomber operations, the reliability of the upward-firing ejection seats had been proven many times over; however, downward-firing seats, especially for the Ravens, provided no such sense of operating reliability. Throughout the twenty-t
wo years of operational service of the RB-47H, starting in 1955, of which thirty-five were built, all assigned to the 55th SRW, not once did a Raven choose the option to eject. If given a choice, they preferred a belly landing on a foam-covered runway over ejection from the aircraft.
Colonel Mattison and crew flew aircraft number 4305 over to Japan, but it had autopilot problems and could not hold a heading. On a subsequent test flight over the Sea of Japan, 4305 still couldn’t hold a heading; not the kind of aircraft one would want to fly near Soviet airspace. In case of an error in navigation, the Russians would shoot first and ask questions later. The 55th Wing operating location commander at Yokota, Colonel James R. Gunn, asked for an aircraft replacement, which was quickly provided. The new aircraft, tail number 4290, was flown from Forbes Air Force Base to Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska, then on down the Aleutian chain of islands to Yokota. Lieutenant Colonel Howard “Rusty” Rust, with whom I had flown numerous missions in the past, delivered the replacement aircraft, accompanied by the 55th Wing commander, Colonel Marion “Hack” Mixson, who flew as copilot. Hack Mixson of course was an “old head” when it came to flying reconnaissance against the Soviet Union, going back to his days in the RB-45C.
On takeoff and landing, the three Ravens sat in slings in the aisle below the pilots. Their capsule had downward ejection, and there was no chance of escape in a runway emergency situation.