The 15th TRS pilots, June 1954, the “Wild Bunch,” at Komaki Air Base, Nagoya, Japan, in “moon suits” as they referred to “poopie suits” at the base swimming pool for a practice sea-survival session. Right to left, John Shinn, Hank Parsons, Rudy Anderson, Don Reynolds, Wilbur Regero, Sam Dickens, Walt McCarthy, Will Dickey, and the survival instructor (name unknown).
By 1956, the 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing had relocated to Yokota Air Base, near Tokyo, and the 11th and 12th TRS reequipped from the RF-80 and RF-86 to the brand-new RB-66B, C, and W photo, electronic, and weather reconnaissance aircraft. The 67th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing’s mission had changed as well from overflights of North Korea, Communist China, and the Soviet Union to flying PARPRO surveillance missions with the RB-66C electronic reconnaissance aircraft along the borders of the USSR, North Korea, and Communist China. Yokota Air Base would continue to serve as a reconnaissance base for the US Air Force throughout the Cold War years, and in the early and mid-1960s I flew several reconnaissance missions out of Yokota from the Gulf of Tonkin to the Sea of Okhotsk when assigned to the 343rd SRS of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, home-based at Forbes Air Force Base, Topeka, Kansas. For some of our reconnaissance missions, the Sea of Japan proved to be a very hostile environment.
REMEMBERING MAJOR RUDOLPH “RUDY” ANDERSON (1953–1955)
After Rudy was shot down, we got the word that Kennedy had warned Castro and Khrushchev that if another reconnaissance airplane was shot down, we would stage an all-out bombing attack against these installations. The rumor was he was prepared to nuke the island. If we heard that rumor, figure the Cubans did too.
Ben Rich and Leo Janos, Skunk Works
“The Korean War began on June 25, 1950, when I was a senior at the University of Iowa. Although General Douglas MacArthur declared that United Nations troops would be home by Christmas, after the Chinese Communists entered the conflict in November it soon became apparent that the war would be long. I enlisted in the US Air Force the following year and passed the cadet pilot exams. A year later I was ordered to report to Marana Air Base, Arizona, for basic training flying the North American T-6 trainer. Advanced training followed at Williams Air Force Base, near Tempe, Arizona, and then on to instrument training at Moody AFB, Valdosta, Georgia—which was the best course I ever attended in my entire life. Reconnaissance training at Shaw AFB, near Sumter, South Carolina, finished my training cycle, and I found myself heading to Korea to a reconnaissance squadron. Finally, in November 1953 I flew on a C-54, packed to the gills, from Travis AFB, California, to Hickam AFB, Hawaii—twelve hours of misery. I thought that if one of the engines coughed, we’d all go down. The next stop was Wake Island and, finally, Tokyo, Japan.” Robert J. “Jerry” Depew was worn out by the time he got there. One final hop took him to Kimpo Air Base, near Seoul, Korea, to the 15th TRS. Hostilities had ceased after the armistice that July, and Jerry wondered what kind of reconnaissance he could possibly fly with the war at a standstill.
“Korea was an ugly, mountainous, bitter-cold land where we lived six to a tent. At that time, the South Koreans were at least fifty years behind Japan on anything you’d like to think of. They had almost no motor vehicles, and I saw no paved roads. They plowed their fields with oxen, and we had to shower with our mouths closed because the water wasn’t purified. Seoul had been devastated during the war, and there were very few structures over one story still standing. I left base only once when I went to the front lines to celebrate New Year’s Eve with my former college roommate, an infantry lieutenant. I wore my air force uniform and his outfit thought I had flown all the air strikes they called in during the war. Since I never told them otherwise, they bought me drinks all night long—something I regretted the next morning. To cope with Korea and its challenges, I concentrated on honing my flying skills and, for the first time in my life, learned to appreciate reading books. Our squadron was equipped with RF-80As and RF-86As. Some of our flying was on a voluntary basis, so I volunteered every day. By the time four months had passed, I was one of the top pilots in flying hours each month.
December 1953—houseboy Kim, Jimmy Black, and Jerry Depew. To get out of this environment, Jerry flew as much as he could.
“One day in March 1954 I was ordered to fly a mission along the west coast of North Korea in an RF-86F; it had no guns, unlike the A-model I had flown in the past. Seven F-86 fighters from the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing, located across the field from us at Kimpo, were to serve as escorts. Why I was picked, one of the newest arrivals, a second lieutenant with minimum RF-86 time, was a puzzle to me. I attended the briefing and off we went, or sort of. Two of the fighter escorts never made it off the ground, [and] two more aborted in the air, leaving three escorts and one shutterbug to finish the mission. Poor weather in the target area made us turn back. I never said anything about the aborts, but I questioned the fighter squadron’s maintenance. The balance of my subsequent missions I flew together with one other RF-86F, without escorts. Our motto was, ‘We kill ’um with fillum.’ On April 1, 1954, the 15th TRS transferred from Kimpo to Komaki Air Base, Japan. It extended my time from twelve to twenty-one months, but it got me out of South Korea and into a more civilized and actually fascinating country. Our transfer to Komaki was due to the arrival of RF-86F-30 Haymakers, not allowed to be based in South Korea under the terms of the armistice. The same rule applied to any other aircraft not based in South Korea at the time of the armistice. In Japan, we lived in Quonset huts in the town of Nagoya, about fifteen miles south of the air base. There was an officers’ club downtown where the food was great. We were one of three small military units around Nagoya, so the town was not overrun with Americans. The Japanese were friendly, even though their city had been 85 percent destroyed during the war.
“The new RF-86Fs were dynamite ships. They had about ten hours on the airframe, and they even smelled new. Shortly after our squadron transferred to Japan, the operations officer, LaVerne Griffin, asked me if I would like to become a part of a special team of five or six pilots to fly classified photo reconnaissance missions in the Far East. I accepted immediately. The National Security Agency had apparently already investigated my background, and shortly thereafter I received a top-secret security clearance. I was told that the JCS selected our targets and that President Eisenhower personally approved all overflights of the Soviet Union. In the months that followed, I flew four classified missions over three Communist countries. I like to think that I flew more missions over more countries than anyone else, although none of us discussed these missions and I can’t be sure. We flew far enough north requiring us to wear “poopie suits,” one-piece waterproof suits designed to withstand the cold waters long enough to allow inflation of and ability to climb into a life raft. The suits went on over a quilted liner and were very difficult to get into. In addition to the poopie suits, we wore g-suits and a Mae West life preserver, a backpack parachute, a hard helmet, and oxygen mask.
“The service ceiling of the F-86 was about 42,000 feet. When we reached 54,000 feet with the RF-86, handling the plane became very touchy. It was almost like riding the edge of a stall. The aircraft also assumed a distinct nose-up attitude, which we corrected by cracking the wing flaps by about one and one-half inches. We had no viewfinder, like other recce aircraft, and the only way to be certain of our position in reference to the target was to stack the plane 90 degrees on one side and then 90 degrees on the other in order to be able to see the target and ensure that we were coming right over it. This maneuver, though, could slice away a lot of our precious altitude in a hurry.
Jerry Depew, Ted Gesling, and Max Morris going through their morning rituals—make do with what you have.
“I flew my first mission on May 1, 1954. The target was Dairen in the People’s Republic of China. Dairen, renamed Luta by the Communists after 1949, was a large port city. The camera focal length and our altitude allowed us to cover the entire target area including airfields, submarine pens, and so on. The distance of t
he target ruled out staging the mission out of Japan. To evade the UN inspectors, we took off at 0400 in the morning and an hour later landed at Kunsan Air Base, on the west coast of South Korea; refilled our oxygen and fuel tanks; and quickly took off again. My wingman was First Lieutenant Rudy Anderson from Greenville, South Carolina, a Clemson graduate and one of our best pilots in the squadron. His responsibility was to be my backup in case I had a camera malfunction, or one of my drop tanks didn’t drop. In addition, it was his responsibility to warn me of any MiGs, should they appear, although this information was of dubious value since we didn’t have any guns. We maintained radio silence from takeoff to touchdown and flew with about one mile separation. Much of our mission was over water. There were air-sea rescue aircraft, nicknamed Dumbos, on station during our overwater segment, but I had zero confidence they would ever find me should I go down.
Jerry Depew, center, with Fred Jeremias to his left and Hank Parsons on his right, in front of his RF-86F Haymaker, after flying his final mission before going home in July 1955.
“Following our take-off from Kunsan, we leveled off at 35,000 feet and burned off the fuel in the 200-gallon external tanks, then dropped them. We then climbed up to 43,000 feet to burn off and drop the two 120-gallon tanks. All jettisoned perfectly, and we slowly climbed up to 54,000 feet. Things were very quiet and very lonely. I kept a close watch on the instruments, scanned the air for enemy fighters, and eagerly looked forward to locating Dairen, take our photos, and then get the hell out of there. Finally, we sighted land ahead. We came in to the right of our target, corrected our heading, and turned on the cameras. The cameras were equipped with an intervalometer, which automatically took pictures at the proper intervals, compensating for our speed over the ground [and] ensuring properly spaced pictures for the use of the photo interpreter. Dairen was in the clear, and we did a wide 180-degree turn to the left in order to photograph Port Arthur. We saw no evidence of being detected, such as fighters. On our return, we put our aircraft into a shallow descent, picked up air speed, and made a quick return to Kunsan. The maintenance crew quickly refitted us with two 120-gallon wing tanks, and off we went to Yokota Air Base, near Tokyo, where they removed the film for analysis.
“The combination of wearing a poopie suit all day long, and drinking very little, combined with the stress of flying at great altitude, caused me to lose seven pounds. The following day, Rudy and I went to FEAF headquarters in Tokyo. This was the only time I ever got to see the film from any of my missions, going over the pictures with the photo interpreters who were pointing out to us what they could identify. During the film viewing, one of the colonels present said, ‘Jesus Christ, look at all the submarines.’ I asked him to point them out, and we counted fifteen. I don’t know if the US Navy knew of Communist China’s sizable submarine force, but until that moment I am sure the US Air Force didn’t have a clue. That afternoon Rudy and I returned to Nagoya. No one asked where we had been. All I, and others, knew was that a couple of ships would disappear for a couple of days and the pilots came back smiling. Who could ask for more? I flew three additional overflight missions in 1955. One was of the Soviet Union and the other two were over North Korea.
Cover sheet for pilot’s Sensitive Intelligence (SENSINT) briefing folder describing the mission he was scheduled to fly, the target, and related flight information. A pilot’s knowledge of the program was restricted to the particular flights he was involved in. In my experience flying PARPRO missions in the 55th SRW, the same rules applied. WIND FALL meant the product was shared with the CIA.
“After being reassigned to Larson Air Force Base in Washington State, I decided to leave the air force. Here, at the Early Cold War Overflights Symposium, I had the great privilege to again meet George Best, Jimmy Black, Sam Dickens, Larry Garrison, and LaVerne Griffin to exchange experiences we couldn’t talk about when we were flying with the 15th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron. I wish to remember and acknowledge my wingman during my 1954 overflights, Major Rudolph “Rudy” Anderson Jr., United States Air Force, who at age thirty-five lost his life over Cuba when his U-2 reconnaissance aircraft was shot down by a surface-to-air missile during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. He was one of the very best.”
Jerry Depew was not the only one to fly with Rudy Anderson on these super-secret, deep-penetration reconnaissance flights; Jimmy Black was another. “I was born in York County, South Carolina, in 1927. I went to school in York, a small town of about three thousand about thirty miles south of Charlotte. After graduating from high school, I attended Clemson University for two semesters. It was 1944 and I decided to enlist in the navy, about three months before my eighteenth birthday. I took the written tests to get into flight training, which I passed, but I only had two semesters of college; the navy required four. So they sent me to Saint Mary’s College in Winona, Minnesota. There was a small airport near the school. Since I was now making fifty dollars a month, I decided to see if I was cut out for flying. When the weather was nice I started taking flying lessons in a J-3 Cub with a 40-horsepower engine, flying off a grass strip. They also had an Aeronca Champ, but my preference was the Cub, for you really had to pay attention to make a good landing in the Champ. The Cub would almost land itself if you pointed it at the runway and pulled off the power. V-J Day came in the middle of August, and the navy was kind enough to let me finish the term before sending me to Great Lakes Naval Station for reassignment. I ended up at Treasure Island, California, to serve on a seagoing tug in San Francisco Bay. When my time was up I returned to Clemson University, graduating in January 1950. I still wanted to fly, and when the Korean War started that June I inquired about getting into the air force. I filled out the paperwork and never heard back from them. About a year later, in 1951, I went back to see the air force recruiter, inquiring about my status. It turned out, they had lost my paperwork at the Air Force Personnel Center. So I again filled out the forms, and this time around I got an assignment as an aviation cadet to Bainbridge, Georgia, class 53-B. I reported to Bainbridge on February 2, 1952. Flew the T-6 at Bainbridge, then was transferred to Laredo, Texas, for three months of flight training in the T-28, followed by three months in the T-33 jet trainer. Upon graduation I was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Air Force. I was twenty-six years old.
“Prior to graduating from flight training, I had a conversation with one of my instructor pilots, and I told him that I wanted to be a fighter pilot. Said he, ‘If you go into fighters, you’ll be Blue Four, tail-end Charlie, for four or five months.’ Meaning that the most junior person will fly the tail end of a four-airplane flight for that long or longer. He suggested I consider flying reconnaissance. After I learned that reconnaissance training was conducted at Shaw Air Force Base, about ninety miles from my home, I decided reconnaissance was for me. I first went to Moody AFB, Valdosta, Georgia, to instrument school, then to Shaw for RF-80 photo-reconnaissance training. The western part of Virginia, eastern Tennessee, and Kentucky simulated North Korea. They would send us up there with only a surface chart, using time and distance, no radio, to go find somebody’s bridge, somebody else’s dam, and take pictures. And you had to watch out where you were going because they would send out an instructor ahead of time, and if he got a picture of you, or your tail number, that meant that you were ‘shot down’ for that day. This was pretty realistic training as far as I was concerned. Once I finished Shaw I was assigned to the 15th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron at Kimpo Air Base, K-14, near Seoul, South Korea.
Jimmy Black on his Honda in front of his Quonset hut at Komaki Air Base, Japan, August 1954.
“I got there in mid-October 1953, and as a junior pilot I was assigned to fly RF-80s, the ship I trained in at Shaw. We had three RF-86A Honey Buckets. Those were flown only by pilots who had gone through F-86 training at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. We slept six to a tent in the winter cold in what was then a primitive, backward land. Four months later, we received twenty-four new RF-86Fs, Haymakers, with a hardened wing that c
ould carry four drop tanks. We transferred to Komaki Air Base in Japan, near Nagoya, and I finally got to fly the RF-86F. When I got to Komaki in January 1954, some of the older pilots had already started flying secret overflight missions. They were referred to as ‘spook missions’ because nobody told anybody anything about them. They just disappeared with several airplanes, and a day or so later they would reappear with big grins on their faces. Security about these overflights was extremely tight. I finally got to fly one of those ‘spook missions’ in early March 1955. Rudy Anderson was the appointed flight leader of a three-aircraft flight. Fred Nichols was number two, and I was tail-end Charlie, number three.
“We flew from Komaki to Kadena Air Base, Okinawa, where we spent the night. Rudy Anderson briefed us on our route and the targets we would be photographing. To get into China, we used jet navigation charts—but for the target area, the targets were outlined for us on detailed surface charts. We took off from Okinawa around ten o’clock in the morning to get to our target area at noon. We were using full power, maximum EGT, and cruise climb, carrying four tanks, two 120-gallon tanks, and two 200-gallon tanks. We used the fuel from the 200-gallon tanks first and punched them off. As we burned off fuel and got lighter, we got as high as 50,800 feet. We flew parallel to each other with about 2,000 feet separation, Anderson in the middle, Nichols on the left, and I on the right. We flew in a northwesterly direction, coming in over the bay south of Shanghai, Hangchow on our left. Nanjing was the second target area where we turned right over the Yangtze River, coming back over Shanghai. I saw Rudy punch off his 120-gallon tanks just as we passed over Shanghai. He had not briefed us on that, so I punched off my tanks as well. We encountered no other aircraft and pulled no contrails. We arrived safely back on Okinawa right after lunch, around two o’clock. Our total flying time was three hours and forty minutes. We only stopped in Okinawa long enough to install two 120-gallon drop tanks, replacing the ones we punched off over China, refuel, go to the bathroom, and grab a quick sandwich. Then we flew to Yokota Air Base, FEAF headquarters, where the film was downloaded, developed, and analyzed. Lieutenant General Earl Partridge sent word that he wanted to see us. We were a little apprehensive because we thought maybe we made a mistake somewhere along the line. But as it turned out, all he wanted to do was tell us, ‘Well done.’ We had a conversation with him in his office. It was an honor to meet him. Needless to say, this was all pretty heady stuff for a first lieutenant.
Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage Page 11