George Back, RB-47H electronic warfare officer
Citation to Accompany the Award of the Distinguished Flying Cross
First Lieutenant Joel J. Lutkenhouse distinguished himself by extraordinary achievement during aerial flight as an Electronic Warfare Officer, from 30 March 1965 to 20 May 1965. During this period, he participated in a program of vital international significance and demonstrated outstanding effectiveness and courage in the accomplishment of missions conducted under exceptional flight conditions. The professional competence, aerial skill, and devotion to duty displayed by Lieutenant Lutkenhouse reflect great credit upon himself and the United States Air Force.
Major George V. Back
Distinguished Flying Cross (4), Air Medal (6)
Captain Henry E. Dubuy
Distinguished Flying Cross, Air Medal
Lieutenant Colonel Joel J. Lutkenhouse
Distinguished Flying Cross (4), Air Medal (6)
Lieutenant Colonel Robert J. Rogers
Distinguished Flying Cross (3), Air Medal
On a warm and softly pleasant January afternoon in 1961, at the age of twenty, Joel Lutkenhouse passed through the main gate of Harlingen Air Force Base and became an aviation cadet. Harlingen, a small, dusty agricultural community in the lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas, was home to a navigator training base, one of many flying training bases scattered along the Texas-Mexico border. There, in a land of ever blue and empty skies, potential air force navigators spent the better part of a year learning the intricacies of aerial navigation in twin-engined Convair T-29 aircraft, the military version of the widely used Convair 240 airliner.
The oldest of five children in a hardworking New York family, Joel entered Staten Island Community College in 1958. In the school cafeteria one day, a classmate mentioned that he would soon be leaving to enter the air force’s aviation cadet program, on his way to becoming a pilot. “You don’t have a college degree,” Joel countered, “How did you get in?”
“You only need two years of college, Joel,” his friend replied, “not a degree. You can pick up a degree sometime in the future if you want to do that. Right now, I want to learn 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 Joel pondered the challenge. It represented an opportunity to become an officer, to give his life direction. Joel decided to take a closer look. He visited the local air force recruiter and took the required tests. Although he passed, his score was not high enough to qualify him for pilot training, so he entered the program as a navigator candidate. In January 1961 he found himself at a dusty, palm-tree-studded air base in what he thought was the remotest corner of the United States. As he looked around, he knew Harlingen wasn’t anything like New York. “But down the road, on an oil-stained tarmac, I saw row upon row of twin-engined T-29 navigation trainers. I suddenly felt excitement rising within me. They were my future. I really wanted to fly. I knew it was the biggest thing I’d ever done in my life, and I promised myself I wasn’t going to fail at it.” Over the next ten months Joel Lutkenhouse forgot about New York. With studying, flying, and classroom work, there was precious little time left for sleep, much less dreaming about his past.
In November 1961 Joel Lutkenhouse exchanged the shoulder boards of an aviation cadet for the brown bars of a second lieutenant and was awarded the aeronautical rating of navigator. But instead of being assigned to a flying unit to practice what he had learned, he was selected to continue training for another year to become an electronic warfare officer (EWO). He had no real concept of what that involved, but he knew he would master it too. After a short vacation at home, he reported to Mather AFB near Sacramento, California. Mather was the exact opposite of Harlingen, nestled in the lush wine country of northern California. Instead of taking celestial shots with a sextant, flying pressure patterns, and taking loran (long-range navigation system) readings, at Mather Joel learned about radar and how to defend against it should he ever have to employ his newly acquired skills in war.
Upon graduation in November 1962, Joel was assigned to the 376th Bomb Wing at Lockbourne AFB, Ohio, the same air base from which Sam Myers and Hal Austin once flew the RB-45C and RB-47E. Joel’s squadron flew B-47E bombers carrying a manned capsule in the bomb bay. The phase-V capsule accommodated two EWOs, who controlled a large number of electronic jammers and chaff dispensers used to provide electronic-countermeasure support for SAC bombers slated to attack the Soviet Union in the event of nuclear war. Four times during his two years at Lockbourne, Joel reflexed to RAF Brize Norton in the United Kingdom. There Joel sat alert with other B-47 bomber crews for two out of three weeks. Being on alert meant living in his flight suit in a concrete bunker near his aircraft, ready to launch at a moment’s notice should the claxon sound. The claxon never sounded in earnest for Joel. In May 1964 the 376th Bomb Wing disbanded, and Joel received orders to report to the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Forbes AFB in Topeka, Kansas. The 55th was composed of two squadrons of RB-47H electronic-reconnaissance aircraft, the 38th and 343d, and one squadron of RB-47K photo-reconnaissance jets, the 338th. Joel was assigned to the 343d squadron. Once certified combat ready, he was assigned to crew E-96 as a Raven 3. In this unit, the EWOs were referred to as Ravens, and “Raven 3” meant that he would occupy position three in a capsule in the bomb bay of the RB-47.
Another young air force officer was on a career track that for many years nearly paralleled Joel’s: Second Lieutenant George V. Back. George was a little older than most lieutenants. Born in 1936 in Syracuse, New York, he had joined the Army National Guard at a young age. By the time he entered aviation cadet training at Harlingen in 1961, he already held a reserve commission as second lieutenant in the infantry. But he had always wanted to fly, and when the opportunity offered itself, George, like Joel, entered the aviation cadet program. He and Joel were in the same cadet class at Harlingen and received their air force commissions on the same day. Together they completed electronic warfare training in California, and upon graduation they reported to the same wing at Lockbourne. Upon deactivation of that wing in 1964, both Joel and George were reassigned to the 55th Wing, and they ended up on the same 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 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 the briefing, we did a left face, marched forward till clear of the parachutes, and began our individual preflights. In flight we addressed crew positions when talking on the interphone—‘Raven to Pilot,’ and so on. We said what needed saying and then shut up. No frivolous banter. First names were left to the Officers’ Club.”
View of RB-47H 4-304, piloted by Lieutenant Colonel Rust of the 55th SRW, on its way to the Barents Sea, 1963. Photo taken from an accompanying KC-135 tanker. Author was on the aircraft as a Raven 2. W. Samuel.
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 that time served as a base of operation for a detachment of the 55th Wing. Detachment aircraft flew missions along the periphery of the Asian mainland from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Sea of Okhotsk. Their principal objective was to update the electronic order of battle. These missions’ bread-and-butter targets were early warning radars and SAM and AAA acquisition and tracking radars, their technical parameters, and locations. Many of the routes flown were canned, meaning that they were flown repeatedly, without significant
variation, thereby providing the Soviet military with tacit assurance that these missions were routine and without hostile intent.
At times routes and tactics were modified to cause the Soviets to turn on their radars to reveal wartime techniques normally not used in peacetime operations. Radar emissions were recorded for subsequent analysis, and the emitters’ locations were incorporated into the master EOB. These flights also kept tabs on the deployment of new or improved radar-guided weapons systems and detected the introduction of new techniques that might render U.S. tactics and countermeasures marginal or ineffective. It was a never-ending game of one-upmanship to ensure that American technology and tactics were on top most of the time. Reaction to reconnaissance flights over the years had varied, depending on the sensitivity of the information gathered or on the whim of a Soviet politician or military commander. Since the early 1950s, a number of reconnaissance aircraft, air force and navy, had been lost to hostile action, mostly to Soviet fighters. These losses usually 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 SAMs in May 1960, an event that Premier Nikita Khrushchev used to embarrass President Dwight D. Eisenhower at that year’s Paris summit. The last 55th Wing aircraft lost to hostile action had been an RB-47H shot down by a Soviet MiG-19 fighter over the Barents Sea in July 1960, five years earlier.
Although most reconnaissance missions were flown along the periphery of nations hostile to the United States and outside their territorial waters, reconnaissance aircraft were frequently intercepted by single-seat MiG-17, MiG-19, and MiG-21 fighters or by two-seat Yak-25 interceptors. Such intercepts did not automatically cause a reconnaissance flight to abort. Aborts occurred only when the fighters showed clear hostile intent, which usually did not become apparent until the MiGs were alongside or behind the reconnaissance aircraft and in firing position. Evasive maneuvers to escape the attackers were often extreme and violent and at times resulted in the overflight of neutral airspace as the RB-47 attempted to flee its pursuers. On April 28, 1965, crew E-96 of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing was going to become part of a very hot Cold War mission.
The front end of crew E-96 was composed of Lieutenant Colonel Hobart D. “Matt” Mattison, an experienced and skilled aircraft commander; First Lieutenant Henry E. Dubuy, who flew as copilot and gunner; and Captain Robert J. Rogers, the radar navigator. The back-end crew, the Ravens, were Captain Robert C. “Red” Winters, who flew as Raven 1; First Lieutenant George V. Back, flying as Raven 2 on his first operational deployment; and First Lieutenant Joel J. Lutkenhouse, Raven 3, also on his first operational deployment. Each Raven controlled a set of similar receivers, analyzers, recorders, and direction-finding equipment. The essential difference between their positions was the discreet radio frequencies they monitored. Prior to each mission, the Ravens received tasking orders and priorities of what to look for in specific geographic areas and within their frequency spectrum.
On takeoff, the three Ravens sat strapped into web slings in the aisle below the pilots. Once the aircraft was airborne and temporarily leveled off at two thousand feet above the terrain, the Ravens crawled aft on their hands and knees through a tunnel to their capsule in the bomb bay. There, the Raven 2, the last to enter the compartment, locked the capsule door and the Raven 3 pressurized the compartment. Then they strapped into their ejection seats. As the aircraft climbed to its assigned altitude, anywhere between thirty and forty thousand feet, the pressurization in both the front and rear crew compartments was kept at fourteen thousand–feet pressure altitude, which implied that the crew was supposed to be on oxygen for the entire length of the mission. Crew members went off oxygen to smoke a cigarette or to relieve the numbing pressure of the oxygen mask on the face. The reason for maintaining a thinner atmosphere within the crew compartments was to diminish the explosive effects of rapid decompression should that occur. Fuel tanks were housed in the aircraft fuselage. Directly behind the pilots, in order, were the main forward fuel tank, the center main fuel tank, the bomb bay fuel tank, the aft auxiliary fuel tank, and the aft main fuel tank. The aft main fuel tank was located in the tail section, forward of the vertical stabilizer, in the area where the American star was painted on the fuselage. The Raven capsule fitted in the bomb bay was surrounded by fuel tanks, and the smell of JP4 in the compartment was a common aspect of life in the capsule. The copilot, who sat directly behind the pilot, also served as aircraft gunner. His seat swiveled around to allow him to operate the twin 20mm guns and the associated radar system. The guns were not known for their reliability. It was standing operating procedure (SOP) to abort a reconnaissance mission if the guns failed upon test firing—not an order, but an SOP. Crews frequently ignored the SOP, pressed on, and got the job done. Getting wind of such independent crew initiatives, SAC headquarters directed maintenance personnel to tape the ends of gun barrels before takeoff. If the guns failed to fire when tested over open ocean, the tape supposedly would not be perforated. If the crew returned from a mission with taped guns, some punitive action would be taken against the pilots. The guns usually fired a few rounds before jamming, so little changed.
The two pilots sat in conventional upward-firing ejection seats, while the navigator’s seat ejected downward without having first to cut through a hatch, as was the case with the Raven seats. For both the Ravens and the navigator, ejection below five hundred feet above ground level was problematic, even with their zero-second lanyards connected to assure immediate chute opening. Over the years of B-47 bomber operations, the reliability of the ejection seats in the forward crew compartment had been proven on many occasions. The Raven seats, however, were a different story. Downward-firing and located just behind the main landing gear, the seats inspired little confidence. No Raven had ever ejected from an RB-47H and lived to tell about it. Rumor had it that the seats were unsafe by design, supposedly because the Ravens were privy to too much sensitive information. The aura of unreliability surrounding the seats caused most Ravens to opt to stay with the aircraft, preferring a belly landing on a foam-covered runway to an ejection. That choice was exercised by 55th Wing air crews more than once, and in all cases without injury.
Ravens in their takeoff and landing positions in the forward crew compartment of an RB-47H in the aisle below the two pilots. RB-47H Technical Order, U.S. Air Force.
The ejection seat was actuated by the Raven raising two leg braces, one at each side of the seat. This action depressurized the aft capsule, locked the shoulder harness, extended two retainers around the Raven’s ankles to keep his legs from flying in his face upon ejection, and released a D-ring between his legs. Once the ring was pulled, the seat first cut through a hatch underneath and then ejected itself and its occupant into the airstream. In actuality, the time lapse between the two events was of such brief duration that to the seat occupant it appeared as one.
Crew E96 flew tail number 3-4305 via Alaska to Yokota. On the flight over and on a subsequent test flight over the Sea of Japan, the aircraft could not hold a heading when on autopilot. It was not smart to take such an airplane near Soviet airspace. In case of a navigation error, the Russians would shoot first and ask questions later. The 55th Detachment commander at Yokota, Lieutenant Colonel Gunn, asked for an aircraft replacement. The replacement, tail number 3-4290, was quickly flown from Forbes via Eielson in Alaska down the Aleutian chain to Yokota. Lieutenant Colonel Howard “Rusty” Rust delivered the new aircraft, accompanied by the 55th Wing commander, Colonel Marion C. Mixson, the same man who in March 1952 commanded the RB-45C detachment at RAF Sculthorpe that lent its aircraft to British air crews to fly them over the Soviet Union on daring night reconnaissance missions.
It was 0700 on April 28, 1965, when Colonel Mattison released the brakes and the sleek six-jet aircraft hurtled down the ten thousand–foot Yokota runway. The RB-47H blanketed the air base with thundering noise. The aircraft slowly vanished into the morning mist, leaving behind a tra
il of black smoke from the water-alcohol mixture injected into its six engines during takeoff to boost power. The takeoff went unnoticed by most, except for the ever-present Japanese photographers at the base perimeter, who took pictures of every arriving and departing aircraft. Mattison flew past snow-covered Mount Fuji and turned north for the Sea of Japan. The mission was scheduled to be a short seven and a half hours, with no need for aerial refueling. The plane was flying one of the canned routes over the Sea of Japan that would take them close to the southern tip of Sakhalin Island; then along the coast of the Soviet mainland past Vladivostok, the major Soviet naval base in the region; and along the east coast of North Korea.
Once the Ravens transferred to their aft compartment, they pressurized and turned on their equipment. By the time the aircraft reached its assigned altitude, the equipment had warmed up and stabilized, the USQ-18 clock was set to Greenwich mean time and was putting its tick marks on every audio and video recording. The Ravens settled back, looking at their world of green scopes and red lights, ready to go on watch once the navigator announced over the intercom that the on-watch point had been reached. The Ravens scanned their assigned frequencies with their APR-17 receivers. The automatic ALD-4 external reconnaissance pod and other automatic systems were turned on at the on-watch point, recording the pulse-recurring frequency, pulse width, radio frequency, emitter location, and other pertinent parameters of every intercepted radar emission. Judging from the activity as they progressed through their mission, it was, according to Raven George Back, “one of those ho-hum missions.”
Back recalled, “Nothing exciting came up, other than the usual Soviet early warning radars. Occasionally a height finder gave us four or five scans to confirm our altitude. The Soviets knew what we were doing. They knew the canned route we were flying as well as we did. They knew we were no threat to them as long as we didn’t deviate from our route. Consequently, they didn’t turn on any of their threat radars or use any unusual techniques. But the Soviet operators monitoring the American spy plane probably passed our track via landline to their North Korean comrades.”
I Always Wanted to Fly Page 24
