An RB-45C piloted by Colonel Howard S. Myers in 1952 making its takeoff from Yokota Air Base, Japan, a major reconnaissance base for the US Air Force throughout the Cold War years.
The RB-45Cs were equipped with a remarkable suite of high- and low-altitude cameras designed by the renowned Harvard astronomer James G. Baker. An incredibly capable airplane for the dangerous missions it was soon to fly under both British and American colors. In late 1949, after flying the Berlin airlift, Colonel Harold R. “Hal” Austin, then a captain, was assigned to the 324th Reconnaissance Squadron of the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Wing at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, equipped with the brand-new RB-45C. The other squadrons in the wing were the 322nd and the 323rd, the latter later commanded by Colonel “Hack” Mixson. Austin related: “Everyone of course had to see how high we could get in the airplane. We got it up to around 50,000 feet, it took forever. In the early days there wasn’t anyone up at that altitude except for a few F-86s. So we flew cruise climb, that’s what the contractor told us to do. We’d end up over Barksdale at 43,000 feet. Pull the power back and the aircraft hardly slowed down. We had no speed brakes, nothing to slow down the airplane. So you start pushing the nose of the airplane down and you are in a high speed buffet, and of course, once you start pulling it back up, you are in a high speed stall—or right between buffet or stall. Coffin corner. You couldn’t get it out of the sky. The airplane had other problems, they never got fixed—we just learned how to manage them. When the Brits later flew the airplane they used to joke with us, ‘Yank, we had to pull the power back over Archangel’sk to land at Sculthorpe.’” It was a very clean airplane, which, once airborne, didn’t want to come down.24
Airmen in the process of reattaching the nose cover for the low-altitude camera of the RB-45C. High-altitude cameras were located in the former bomb bay.
Air force pilots fly whatever airplanes they are given. In a period of one year, the 91st SRW lost eight of its thirty-three RB-45C aircraft, 24 percent of the force. Each aircraft carried a crew of three. In most cases, all aboard the doomed aircraft perished. This was the sort of attrition flying experienced in combat. But this was routine peacetime flying in the early 1950s. Captain Harold Austin coped with day-to-day stress by focusing on those aspects of the airplane that gave him pleasure. And the RB-45C was a pleasure to fly when compared to most piston-engine aircraft. When the RB-45C was first put into service, in 1950, it was early in the jet age. If there had been time, the airplane would have been flight-tested sufficiently to discover more of its problems. But there was no time for testing. The Korean War had started. SAC needed a fast, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft to complement the slow RB-29s. The RB-45C was that airplane.
“Soon after I checked out in the RB-45C at Barksdale, I was sent in May 1951 to RAF Sculthorpe,” recalled Mixson during our interview. “Our presence at Sculthorpe consisted of the twelve aircraft of the 323rd SRS, which I commanded. By the time I arrived, RAF crews had already joined the squadron and flown one or two joint missions. By the end of July I returned to Barksdale accompanied by three RAF crews to continue their training. The three crews and a couple of extras were led by Squadron Leader John Crampton. Crampton was a tall, lean man with extensive World War II experience. His lead navigator, Flight Lieutenant Rex Sanders, had a similar combat background. Only those two were privy to the real purpose of their training at Barksdale. For the others, and anyone else asking questions, the story was that the RAF was considering acquiring a number of RB-45Cs on loan and wanted to conduct air refueling trials. B-29s had been provided to the Royal Air Force under a previous agreement, so this seemed like a reasonable explanation. Each RAF crew consisted of a pilot, a radar navigator, and a flight engineer. The flight engineer sat in the seat normally occupied by an American copilot. None of the RB-45Cs assigned to the Strategic Air Command carried defensive armament, so there were no gunners on the crew.” The B-45A bombers assigned to the 47th Bombardment Wing, United States Air Forces in Europe, based at RAF Sculthorpe, did have 20mm tail guns installed and consequently carried a gunner. As far as SAC was concerned, the gun represented extra weight, which would diminish the range and altitude capability of the aircraft. So, they had them taken out and put in storage.
Mixson went on: “As for my role in this extremely sensitive and highly classified operation, I was in charge of the planned overflights of the Soviet Union as far as SAC was concerned. To a limited degree, I was involved in mission planning and accompanied Crampton and Sanders to Bomber Command Headquarters at High Wycombe, near London, to sit in on their briefings. There, the routes were drawn up, and we met with Air Chief Marshal Sir Ralph Cochrane, vice chief of Air Staff, to discuss issues regarding the loan of the aircraft. I don’t think SAC or anybody else on the American side had any real input into where the Brits were going. The RAF did the planning and provided the aircrews; the US Air Force provided the aircraft. We rotated the three 91st Wing squadrons into Sculthorpe. Because of my experience with the RAF crews and as the only one knowledgeable of the real purpose of their being there, I remained behind when my squadron rotated home. Meanwhile, plans were made for the first deep penetration of the Soviet Union. Four RB-45Cs at Sculthorpe were stripped of their US Air Force markings and repainted with Royal Air Force roundels on the fuselage and RAF colors on the tail fin. Aircraft numbers were omitted. On March 21, 1952, a night mission was flown into East Germany, east of Berlin, to find out how the Soviets would react to such an incursion. Their reaction wasn’t sufficient to dissuade the planners from going ahead with the overflights planned for the night of April 17, 1952. In a letter to the Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, Squadron Leader Crampton recalled, ‘Even though the story leaked out of the woodwork two or three years ago, I still find it strange to talk and write about it. While it was happening it rivaled the Manhattan Project for secrecy. While off base we weren’t allowed to THINK about it. It was all well above top secret.’
One of three RAF Special Duty Flight RB-45Cs refueling from an American KB-29 tanker over Denmark the night of April 17, 1952.
“On the night of April 17, 1952, three RB-45Cs in RAF colors rose into the East Anglia sky and proceeded to their individual air refueling areas—one over the North Sea; another over Denmark. The three aircraft topped off their fuel tanks from US Air Force KB-29 refueling tankers and proceeded on their individual routes, flying at 35,000 feet in total radio silence into the heart of the Soviet Union. One plane photographed targets in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania; Poland; and the former German province of East Prussia. The second aircraft flew across Belarus, as far as Orel. And the third, piloted by Squadron Leader Crampton, with Sanders as his radar navigator, flew the longest and most southern route, crossing the Ukraine and penetrating as far as Rostov on the Black Sea. Each route had frequent turning points to expose a maximum number of assigned targets.”25
While Colonel “Hack” Mixson described this undertaking from the perspective of an American whose function was to serve as the SAC point man, provide the airplanes, and ensure the training of the British aircrews who would fly them into harm’s way, his role was passive. John Crampton’s perspective is that of a man who was to “do or die.” “My experiences in overflights of denied territory grew from my World War II service with RAF Bomber Command,” recalled Crampton at the 2001 Early Cold War Overflights Symposium in a lengthy memorandum. “I flew Whitley and Halifax bombers, and after the war I flew the first RAF jet fighters, the Meteor and the Vampire, for RAF Fighter Command. In 1952 I took command of the RAF’s first Canberra unit, while also serving as the commander of the Special Duty Flight, flying the American RB-45C. In July 1951 I was the happy boss of 97 Squadron when the Commander in Chief of Bomber Command sent for me and said that I was to assume command of an RAF Special Duty Flight under conditions of utmost secrecy. This secret flight was to be equipped with the American RB-45C four-engine jet reconnaissance plane, and the RAF crews would proceed al
most immediately to the United States to begin sixty days training in the aircraft. The other eight aircrews, as much in the dark as I was about our immediate future, joined me at RAF Sculthorpe for a flight on a SAC C-97 Stratofreighter for Barksdale AFB, Louisiana. There we spent ten days with a B-45 squadron, coming to grips with the airplane, before moving on to Langley AFB in Virginia for our indoctrination into the RB-45C reconnaissance version.
“On September 2 we flew to Lockbourne AFB, Columbus, Ohio, home of the 91st SRW, then operating the only three squadrons flying the RB-45C. In our second month of flight training at Lockbourne, one of my pilots made a very heavy landing one night. The airplane was written off but the crew was unhurt. The dramatic result of this incident was that Lockbourne’s base commander along with myself and the pilot concerned were flown to Omaha, Headquarters of the Strategic Air Command, to be interviewed personally by the Commander in Chief of SAC, General Curtis E. LeMay. The CinC SAC did not like people who destroyed his airplanes, and he left us in no doubt of that fact. His anger was directed mainly at the wretched RAF pilot, who departed for home shortly thereafter. I learned subsequently that he had been posted away from his unit, where he had a reputation as a ‘Pranger.’ He was immediately replaced by an RAF pilot who was on an exchange tour with a B-45 unit. We completed our training on December 1, 1951, and returned to RAF Sculthorpe. We still had no idea what was being planned for us. It was a tense time for us and our host, because having nine RAF aircrew flying with an elite US Air Force squadron raised eyebrows. The situation eased when Colonel Marion ‘Hack’ Mixson arrived in early 1952 as our liaison officer, fielding many of the difficult questions.
RAF overflight routes, April 17–18, 1952.
RAF Gloster Meteors, flown by Squadron Leader John Crampton of 12 Group at RAF Horsham St. Faith in 1948. Robin Olds at the time flew the Meteor with 11 Group at RAF Tangmere and became commander of Number 1 Squadron.
“In late February 1952 I was summoned to RAF Bomber Command headquarters at High Wycombe, with my navigator, Rex Sanders. This was the moment of truth, and I confess to some apprehension when the charts were unrolled to show three separate tracks from Sculthorpe to the Baltic states, the Moscow area, and central southern Russia. The deal was for the three routes to be flown simultaneously at night, departing Sculthorpe in rapid succession to rendezvous with tankers to the north of Denmark. After top-up we were to climb to the highest altitude the nighttime temperature would allow. Our targets were Soviet air bases and similar areas of strategic importance. We were to take 35mm photos of the aircraft’s radar display. Timing was critical because our intelligence agencies would be listening for the Soviet air defense reaction to our deep penetration of their air space. And they had devised certain diversionary exercises to keep the Russians clear of our routes. We were of course to fly without navigational lights and maintain radio silence. It was a relief to finally know what was expected of us. However, I was concerned about my crews who were not volunteers. My fears were justified; on learning of the mission, one of the original pilots washed his hands of the whole affair and returned to his unit. This pilot was soon replaced by one posted to a B-45 squadron as an exchange officer.
“Before the date had been finalized, I took my crew on a gentle probe of the air defenses by flying over the Soviet Zone of Occupation of eastern Germany for an hour or so. Our Intelligence people monitored radio and radar activity. Nothing of consequence was noted and we judged ourselves ready for the big one. Four RB-45C aircraft had been allocated to us and were stripped of all USAF markings and repainted in RAF colors. With the approval of the Prime Minister presumably secured. [A very informal note marked ‘Most Secret to the Secretary of State for Air, from Prime Minister Winston Churchill, dated 24 February 1952,’ on Downing Street stationery stated, ‘Operation JIUJITSU will be done by us if the Americans cannot be persuaded to do it. I am to be informed at least a week before it happens.’ Signed.] Late in the afternoon of 17 April 1952, the three RAF RB-45Cs departed Sculthorpe and headed toward Denmark for refueling. All was going well, and Rex Sanders was getting good plots on his radar and feeding me with the courses to steer to the 126 air intelligence targets. We had the long-haul sortie across Russia. My most abiding memory of the route across the Ukraine is the apparent wilderness over which we were flying. There were neither lights on the ground nor any sign of human habitation, quite unlike the rest of Europe. We continued our gentle climb to 36,000 feet and covered our briefed route and photographed the assigned targets. It was all so quiet as to be distinctly eerie. We landed at Sculthorpe after ten hours and twenty minutes in the air. Farther to the north, the other two aircraft had covered their targets, making the operation a complete success. A few days later we flew our aircraft, still in RAF markings, to Lockbourne AFB, Ohio, and the following day we traveled to SAC Headquarters to again meet with General LeMay under much happier circumstances. He was most gracious in his compliments. It was all very heart warming. I assumed command of a Canberra squadron; the seat of the Canberra seemed very small after flying the RB-45C, not unlike driving a Ford Escort after having given up a stretch Cadillac.”26
In October 1952, “Hack” Mixson was again alerted for a possible RAF mission planned for that December. “Four aircraft were repainted in RAF colors,” Mixson recalled, “but at the last minute the mission was canceled. It was December 18, 1952, just before Christmas and everyone wanted to go home. I called Headquarters SAC in Omaha, and they decided to have us fly the airplanes home without first repainting them. While there were four airplanes, the RAF had not enough pilots to crew them. I flew one of them back with a British engineer in the back seat, and Rex Sanders as my radar navigator; Captain Naftel, one of my squadron pilots, flew another. It was a long and tiring ten-hour flight, since the engineer could not help me fly the airplane. We landed at Keflavik Air Base, Iceland, and Goose Bay, Labrador, to refuel. Snow was blowing at Lockbourne when we arrived. There were some surprised looks by the ground crew when we taxied in, resplendent in the colors of the Royal Air Force.
“In January 1953 SAC began transferring our RB-45Cs to the Tactical Air Command, and I left Lockbourne temporarily to get checked out in the new six-jet B-47. Between January and March 1953 I checked out in the B-47 at McCoy AFB, Orlando, Florida, along with Hal Austin and many others who once flew the RB-45C. Late in the year I received a message from General LeMay to come and see him immediately. Once I got to Offutt AFB, General LeMay instructed me to get down to Shaw AFB in South Carolina, pick up four RB-45Cs, take them to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio for modifications to their radars, and then fly them over to RAF Sculthorpe. TAC crews flew the aircraft to Wright-Patterson. The modifications to their radars took about a month. The radar fix significantly improved the picture to very crisp and clear. When the aircraft arrived at Sculthorpe in early April 1954, Crampton and his bunch were there waiting for the airplanes. They were repainted in RAF colors, and we waited for a launch date on routes nearly identical to those flown in 1952. The date of the mission was April 28, 1954, ten days past the two-year anniversary of the 1952 flights.”
RAF overflight routes, April 28–29, 1954. Flight routes courtesy of Rex Sanders.
“I was again summoned to High Wycombe and told that the Special Duty Flight was to be revived once again,” wrote Squadron Leader Crampton. “By this time I had viewed the entire project as mine and would have been most upset if the job had been offered to anyone else. So, in March 1954, it was back to Sculthorpe. At this point, however, so many people knew we were up to something. Our flight line procedures under which crew chiefs could call stores or any other department using walkie-talkies to discuss our aircraft problems and movements in clear, unencoded language, was a worry. The least competent Soviet spy or sympathizer in the locality with a small radio tuned to the Americans’ radio frequency could have written a manual on events at Sculthorpe. After a month of hard work the aircraft were again repainted; I again went to Bomber Command headquarters, accompanie
d by Sanders, to collect the flight plans. The southern route this time around was much longer and required a different in-flight refueling location inbound as well as outbound.”
Again, Squadron Leader Crampton took the longest, most southern route, extended to Volgograd, the former Stalingrad. In his letter, Crampton wrote of this mission, “The RB-45C squadrons who were our kind and courteous hosts during that very dicey period from which I have always thought we were very lucky indeed to survive, especially now that we know that the Ruskies knew we were to fly a second mission in 1954, and shot at us all ’round our route—and frightened the life out of me over Kiev when they finally got our height right and sent up a highway of predicted flak, a real highway, fantastic it was, but by the grace of God they got our speed wrong and chucked the stuff just ahead of us. Even the hot shards of shrapnel missed us. My reaction was instinctive. The throttles were opened wide and I hauled the airplane around on its starboard wing tip until the gyrocompass pointed west. I told Sanders to give me a heading for Fürstenfeldbruck, our refueling rendezvous over West Germany and emergency alternate. We had about 1,000 miles to go, and I urged Mac, flying as copilot, to keep his eyes peeled for fighters. Much later I learned that there were fighters about in the night sky, with orders to ram us on sight. Maximum speed was essential and I flew the RB-45C just on the right side of the buffet and it sort of trembled affectionately. The early firings had all misjudged our height, and thank God, the Kiev defenses misjudged our speed. They had chucked everything up a few hundred yards ahead of us. I thought for a moment of jettisoning our now empty 1,200-gallon wing tip tanks. Their absence might have added a few knots to our speed, but once found their maker’s name and address would have revealed that they came from the United States and resulted in a major incident. Anyway, the thought of them bouncing down High Street of Kiev at two o’clock in the morning, disturbing the ladies and frightening the children, did not appeal. We were not flying over the USSR to do that. Moreover, based on past experience, General LeMay could be expected to object at my scattering expensive bits of his airplane over the Soviet Union. So I kept the tanks, and finally we met up with our tanker over West Germany. The refueling boom would not stay connected, so I decided to land at Fürstenfeldbruck and refuel the conventional way.” Although all three RB-45Cs returned safely, it was a close thing. It was the last flight in the RB-45C for the RAF. Not for the RB-45C, though, it wasn’t finished yet overflying the Soviet Union—this time under American colors and flown by American aircrews.27
Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage Page 5