Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage Read online

  As World War II in Europe ended, a new conflict between the two former allies had already begun. It would in time be called the Cold War, not so cold after all for many of us who participated in it. Its major way stations were the Berlin blockade (1948–1949), Korea (1950–1953), the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962), and Vietnam (1961–1974). The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 signaled the end of the Cold War, and the Soviet empire ceased to exist two years later.

  In 1955, only four years after immigrating to the United States, I found myself an American airman at RAF Sculthorpe, England, assigned to an air base from which American and British airmen flew night reconnaissance over the Soviet Union. I knew nothing about it. I got out of the air force in 1958, went back to college, and in July 1960 was commissioned a second lieutenant in the United States Air Force. A dream come true. Soon thereafter, I entered flight training at bases in Texas and Mississippi. I ended up in a reconnaissance wing at Forbes Air Force Base near Topeka, Kansas, just in time for the Cuban Missile Crisis. There, I met up with men who had flown B-17 bombers in World War II, bombers that I had watched with great fascination as a child and survived when I lived in Berlin. I flew with men who in 1948 had flown their coal-laden C-54 transports to save Berlin, a city they had bombed only three years earlier. I was a young refugee boy then, living in a down-and-out camp near one of those airlift bases. The Berlin airlift flyers were the men who became central to my life. I wanted to be like them, and in time I was.

  The super-secret world of reconnaissance that I suddenly found myself a part of was an eye-opener. It was a war of reconnaissance, a war of secret flights and overflights, that the American public knew little or nothing about. But out there, high above the Barents Sea, the Baltic Sea, the Sea of Japan, and the Sea of Okhotsk, places few would care to go, over international waters mind you, the Russian MiGs would confront us—and shoot down all too many of our aircraft. When we came home, we didn’t talk to our wives about where we had gone, nor did we talk to other crews about the missions we had flown or the encounters we had survived. This book is all about the men who served our country in that secret war of reconnaissance, men who so readily put their lives on the line because their country asked them to, who maintained years and years of silence, asked no questions, knowing full well that their missions were all about the survival of the country we all love and had the privilege to serve.

  After the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) declassified the early USAF overflights images in 1996, an Early Cold War Overflights Symposium was held at the headquarters of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, DC, on February 22–23, 2001, where pilots and aircrews, for the first time in their lives, had the opportunity to talk freely about missions they had flown so long ago, and to hear what others had done. None of them, including myself, were aware of the scope of the Cold War overflights program, nor did we know at the time who planned or authorized the missions we flew. I participated in the symposium, and it was a privilege and an honor to listen to these men who had come together to share their experiences. General Andrew J. Goodpaster, who for years worked with President Eisenhower on overflight issues, remarked at the symposium as he ended his presentation: “I wish to recognize the incredible courage and bravery of a handful of Americans and Britons who were prepared to do these intelligence collection jobs, who put their lives, their very existence, on the line under the utmost security and secrecy. For reasons of national security, no public credit could be given to them for the job they did. But let me say now it has been a privilege to serve with you.”2 And so it was for me a privilege to serve my country in the company of men of skill and courage, and to be part of the occasion that for the first time revealed the full scope of their accomplishments.

  Captain Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, US Air Force, 355th Tactical Fighter Wing, Takhli Royal Thai Air Force Base, Thailand, 1968.

  All of the stories in this book are based on personal interviews or presentations made by the men who flew reconnaissance missions, including numerous overflights of the Soviet Union, during the early Cold War years. I personally interviewed Sam Myers, Hal Austin, Hack Mixson, John Crampton, Charles Phillips, Francis Martin, Arthur Lidard, Joe Gyulavics, George Back, Hank Dubuy, Joel Lutkenhouse, Bob Rogers, David Holland, Frank Robison, and Joe Grace, who flew F/RF-86, RB-45C, RB-47E, RB-47H, RB-66B, or P2V-7 aircraft. Roger Rhodarmer, Jerry Depew, Stacey Naftel, Mele Vojvodich, Samuel Dickens, Joseph Guthrie, Robert Hines, LaVerne Griffin, Louis Picciano, Robert Morrison, Cecil Rigsby, Gerald Cooke, Roy Kaden, Donald Hillman, Lloyd Fields, George Brown, Barton Barrett, and Richard Koch, who flew RB-17, RB-26, RB-47B/E/H, RB-50, RF-80, RF-86, RF-100, and the various versions of the RB-57, were participants in the 2001 Early Cold War Overflights Symposium.

  I would like to note that I made only minor editorial changes to interviews and presentations in the interest of readability, brevity, and clarity, including providing brief explanations of unfamiliar terms and jargon and adding other supplementary information. In no case did I alter the essence of any story. The photographs in this book came from my own collection, from the collections of those interviewed, from fellow flyers in the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, and in large part from some of our great aviation historians such as Dr. Richard Hallion and R. Cargill Hall. Dr. Hallion, a former NASA and USAF historian, held the General Harold Keith Johnson Chair of Military History at the Army War College and served as senior adviser on aerospace technology and policy for the secretary of the air force. Cargill Hall served as deputy command historian at Headquarters Military Airlift Command, followed by a tour of duty as historian at Headquarters Strategic Air Command, then as chief historian at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and finally as chief historian at the National Reconnaissance Office. Both were kind enough to review the manuscript for this book. I would also like to thank and express my appreciation to Brigadier General Regis Urschler, United States Air Force (Ret.), former commander of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, and Al Stettner, a career Intelligence officer and current docent at the National Air and Space Museum, for reviewing the manuscript.

  My personal praise for Cargill Hall cannot come close to doing him justice for all he has done—preserving and helping make public the story of the men who in great secrecy risked their lives to ensure that our senior leadership had the essential information on which to base decisions regarding force structure, deployments, and alliances. The 2001 Early Cold War Overflights Symposium was made possible by the contributions of many people in the Intelligence community, but it was the focused effort of Mr. Hall that made it all happen. The entire reconnaissance program conducted in the early years frowned on keeping records of any kind. So the symposium was critical to help reveal what happened before the memories of men were lost to the passage of time.

  The Early Cold War Overflights Symposium was a difficult and indeed memorable undertaking led by R. Cargill Hall, then the Chief Historian of the National Reconnaissance Office. As noted in the stories to follow, it was frowned upon by those responsible for planning, approving, and executing overflights to keep records. There are no archives one can go to, no histories of participants or organizations that detail to any depth the decision-making process or the actual execution of the overflights. The missions were flown, and the participants were told never to talk about them to anyone—no pilot talk, no talk to family or friends, no talk to anyone—ever. In my conversations with Mr. Hall, he noted: “When I was organizing the symposium with the DIA History Office, I had no aviator roster to go by. SAC headquarters had destroyed whatever overflights records it had after the Francis Gary Powers shootdown in 1960. So it was a tedious task, mostly by word of mouth. One flyer would tell me the names of others, and I would use his name by way of introduction to others. I would explain to them that the Director of Central Intelligence had declassified the early Cold War overflights experience and that I was the National Reconnaissance Office historian, and we would like you to participate in … I remember call
ing a retired colonel in California and going through my introductory routine. When I finished, there was a pause before he replied, ‘I don’t know you and I don’t discuss activities like that.’ Click. End of call.” In spite of all the difficulties encountered, the effort was rewarded by the attendance at the symposium of flyers of all the aircraft types flown in those very dangerous years.

  On April 17, 1995, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order number 12958, authorizing the review and declassification of US aerial imagery collected prior to January 1, 1976. After that review, the DCI responded on July 3, 1996, declassifying more than six million feet of film imagery in the National Airborne Archive including film taken by U-2, A-12, and SR-71 aircraft, and military aircraft from 1950 to December 31, 1975. The imagery is maintained, not indexed, at the National Archives Records Administration in College Park, Maryland. Although the symposium proceedings, published by the National Reconnaissance Office in 2003, were available to the general public, their distribution was limited. I hope that this book remedies that situation and provides insight and understanding of the essential nature of our search for information about a closed society that had the capability to end life for our nation as we knew it.

  —Wolfgang W. E. Samuel

  Colonel, US Air Force (Ret.)

  Fairfax Station, Virginia

  SILENT

  WARRIORS,

  INCREDIBLE

  COURAGE

  WHEN PEACE CAME TO AMERICA (1945)

  Nothing will contribute more to an understanding of the needs of future security than a clear understanding of what has occurred in this war, the strategic decisions, the reasons for them, and the operations by which they were executed.

  —George C. Marshall, “General Marshall’s Victory Report,” 1945

  War came to America in December 1941 in the form of four hundred Japanese aircraft launched from six aircraft carriers off the Hawaiian Islands, inflicting serious but not war-critical damage, which was soon repaired. That ill-chosen war was effectively terminated on August 9, 1945, when a single B-29 bomber, named Bockscar, of the 20th Air Force dropped on the city of Nagasaki the second of two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Emperor Hirohito bowed his head to the inevitable, and the surrender of all Japanese forces was officially signed on September 2 onboard the battleship USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay. Every major combatant of the Japanese fleet involved in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, had been sunk. Japan’s cities had been burned to ashes by the unrelenting firebombing of B-29 bombers of the 20th Air Force—and the drop of two atomic bombs marked the final act ending a war, the outcome of which was preordained. Adolf Hitler’s “thousand-year Reich” had suffered a fate similar to that of the Empire of the Rising Sun a few weeks earlier, in May 1945. Its armies destroyed, its cities in ruins from relentless bombing by fleets of British and American bombers. The destruction was of such magnitude that rebuilding of Germany’s cities was estimated to possibly take 50 years. In addition, Germany was diminished by the loss of territory east of the Oder and Neisse Rivers. If one of the aims of Hitler’s regime was to expand the territory of the Reich, which it was, the outcome of the war had exactly the opposite effect. Neither Japan, nor a Germany divided into four occupation zones, were likely to have a military future for years to come.

  In August 1945 it appeared to many Americans that the world was finally at peace, able to go ahead and rebuild itself. The most optimistic even thought that the rest of the world might just be ready for the ultimate human experience in government—democracy. Naïvely, this concept, that people of the world really are one and the same, and that all people wanted to be governed the way we governed ourselves, would lead America into future military conflicts, at this moment of victory totally unimaginable. General George C. Marshall, in his “Victory Report to the Secretary of War” in 1945, wrote: “Never was the strength of the American democracy so evident nor has it ever been so clearly within our power to give definite guidance for our course into the future of the human race. And never, it seems to me, has it been so imperative that we give thorough and practical consideration to the development of means to provide a reasonable guarantee for future generations against the horrors and colossal waste of war…. If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known…. Our diplomacy must be wise and it must be strong. Nature tends to abhor weakness. The principal of the survival of the fit is generally recognized. If our diplomacy is not backed by a sound security policy, it is, in my opinion, forecast to failure. We have tried since the birth of our nation to promote our love of peace by a display of weakness. This course has failed us utterly, cost us millions of lives and billions of treasure…. The world does not seriously regard the desires of the weak. Weakness presents too great a temptation to the strong, particularly to the bully who schemes for wealth and power. We must, if we are to realize the hopes we may now dare to have for lasting peace, enforce our will for peace with strength.”3

  Only three zones of occupation were agreed to at the Yalta Conference in February 1945—the French Zone was carved out of the American and British Zones; the same approach was used to give the French a presence in occupied Berlin. The Russian position on the matter was that the French did not contribute to the defeat of Nazi Germany; therefore, they deserved none of the spoils of victory.

  General Marshall, one of our nation’s greater statesmen, was to be greatly disappointed with the way things evolved in the postwar period. His plea for a “sound security policy,” if at all remembered, was soon forgotten. The facts were that America at this moment in time was the undisputed military and economic superpower in the world, the sole possessor of the awesome and feared atomic bomb. With a weapon like that, who needs a standing army? Or so the reasoning went. The boys clamored to come home, to go on with their lives, and the nation’s politicians saw nothing wrong with that. With over sixteen million uniformed men and women under arms at the height of the war, starting soon after August 1945, America’s armed forces shrank to less than two million. The US Navy’s battle fleet of 6,768 ships declined to a mere 634.4 Disarmament was the very first postwar task politicians threw themselves into with a vigor difficult to imagine unless you were there to see it happen for yourself. Colonel Marion “Hack” Mixson, one of my future wing commanders, vividly remembered his own experience in those halcyon postwar days. Born in 1918, a South Carolina boy, he, like so many youngsters of his generation, always wanted to fly. Hack soloed in a little 45-horsepower Aeronca in 1939 at age twenty-one. “What a thrill it was to soar above Charleston on my very own,” he recalled; “I’ll never forget that first flight.” By 1944, Hack Mixson found himself piloting a B-24 bomber out of Italy against targets in Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Hack flew thirty-five combat missions, some so brutal, he wondered how he survived.

  After war’s end, Mixson remained in Italy for another year and recalls: “Many of those B-25, B-24, and B-17 bombers in Italy were destroyed. For a while I flew a brand-new B-25. German POWs took the armor out of it, stripped the paint, and polished the airplane to a high gloss. Although I had orders to turn the plane in to be destroyed, I kept stalling for about two months. Finally, I got a message that if I didn’t turn in the plane I was to be court-martialed. I flew it down to the Pomigliano depot. My buddy flew down in a C-47 to pick me up. By the time we finished filing our clearance for our return trip, they had drained the gas out of that beautiful B-25, cut the engines off, cut holes in the crankcase and into the propeller blades. That airplane was completely smashed in about an hour.”5

  Lieutenant Colonel Marion “Hack” Mixson, second from right, with his navigator Henry Wilson, far left; copilot John Lightbedy, to his left; and Howard Kadow, bombardier, to his right, in front of their B-24 bomber in 1944, at Foggia Air Base, Italy.

  In Landsberg am Lech, in bucolic Bavaria, a former Luftwaffe airfield was filled with B-26 bombers of the 1st Tactical Air F
orce (Provisional). The planes were lined up wing tip to wing tip by the hundreds to be burned and turned into scrap metal by Germans who only weeks earlier had tried hard to shoot them down. Most of the 1st TAF’s P-47 Thunderbolts were simply stripped of their instruments and destroyed, smashed, buried in place. John Hay, while stationed at Holzkirchen, Bavaria, in 1946, remembers removing radios and batteries from 186 brand-new B-17 bombers, never flown in combat, then placing one-and-a-half pound TNT charges in their cockpits and blowing them up.6 The downsizing of the United States military establishment starting in late 1945 fed on its own momentum and seemed headed to take the country back to where it was in the late 1930s—militarily weak. Other than for the mystique of the atomic bomb, there was in fact little combat capability left when the process finished. On August 7, 1945, two days before Bockscar dropped the second atomic bomb on Japan, the United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe (USSTAF) had the word “Strategic” removed from its name and became the United States Air Forces Europe (USAFE)—during the Cold War years, yet to come, I served for four years at Headquarters USAFE, still in Wiesbaden, the site selected for the headquarters by General Spaatz and his staff in 1945. The air power available to General “Tooey” Spaatz on August 7, 1945, was spread over 152 airbases and 226 supporting installations, manned by 450,000 airmen supporting a fleet of over 17,000 aircraft of all types.