Fairford’s March weather was exceptionally bad, and their group of eight RB-47s was recalled to Lockbourne after only two weeks. During the two weeks, however, they flew two long-range reconnaissance training missions against the island group of Spitsbergen, high above the Arctic Circle. Once Hal and his crew returned to Fairford in April, they again were directed to plan a flight to Spitsbergen. On May 6, 1954, Austin and five other RB-47E photo-reconnaissance aircraft took off in the early morning hours for their distant target. The countryside reverberated from the throaty roar of powerful jet engines until all six B-47s faded into the morning mist. Slower KC-97 tankers had departed earlier that night to meet them at the prearranged rendezvous point off the coast of Norway. That evening at the local pub, some older Englishmen confessed over a glass of warm beer that they thought World War III had started when they heard those Yank airplanes taking off.
RB-47E photo-reconnaissance aircraft at Lockbourne AFB, Ohio, getting ready for a morning launch, 1954. H. Austin.
The six RB-47E reconnaissance bombers, outfitted with the same camera suite as in the RB-45C, flew in a loose trail formation called station keeping on a great circle route, north out of England. Past the Faroes, over open ocean, the bombers refueled from their waiting KC-97 tankers and continued northward between Jan Mayen and Bear Islands until reaching their target. When they turned their cameras on, the navigators noted in their logs that they were at eighty degrees north latitude, where the ice never melted. They were only miles from Soviet Franz Josef Land, just a few minutes’ flying time east of Spitsbergen. The small crew of the lone Soviet Kniferest early warning radar on Franz Josef Land must have come to life when the American B-47s showed on their radar screen. But after the momentary excitement, even alarm, and after reporting the Americans to Murmansk control, with the blips again faded off their radar screens, the Soviets reverted to their monotonous existence on the Arctic ice.
The 3,500-mile flight took nearly nine hours of flying in an ejection seat, a seat not built for personal comfort. On returning to Fairford, the crews slid down the aluminum access ladders from their cramped cockpits, feeling every bone in their bodies. Time for a good stretch, a hot shower, and a yard of ale at the bar. But maintenance logs and numerous chores had to be completed before the flyers could leave the smell of JP4 jet fuel behind them. Austin and his crew didn’t know that the feint they had just flown over Spitsbergen and the one earlier in March were major rehearsals for a mission Austin’s crew was slated to fly two days later, on May 8. They also did not know that three RB-45Cs, manned by British crews, had flown a night reconnaissance mission deep into the western Soviet Union only ten days earlier.
“In the early morning hours of May 8, Carl, Vance, and I had an ample breakfast at the club. We stopped by the in-flight kitchen on our way to the secure briefing area to pick up three box lunches and two thermos bottles filled with hot coffee. It was going to be just one more mission. We intended to pick up our charts and then go out to the aircraft for preflight, have a short cigarette break, and get ready to launch. As we entered the secure briefing facility, we were met by our wing commander, Colonel Joe Preston. ‘What does he want?’ I thought. The colonel turned to me and said, ‘Please follow me.’ ‘Yes, Sir,’ I replied. We followed Colonel Preston into a classified briefing room built for target study for bomber crews, providing security from sophisticated listening devices. Colonel Preston held the door for us as we entered the room, which was definitely out of the ordinary. He closed the door behind us and left. In the briefing room were two colonels from SAC headquarters. The colonels had no smiles on their faces and immediately got down to business. One of them, a navigator, handed Heavilin a strip map. We looked it over and saw where our flight was to take us—over the Kola Peninsula past Murmansk, southeast to Arkhangel’sk, then southwest before turning west across Finland and Sweden back to Fairford. We were stunned.
“ ‘Please sit down, gentlemen,’ said the second colonel. He wore pilot wings. Neither colonel wore a name tag on his blue Class-A uniform. ‘I will give you your mission brief, weather, and intelligence. You will photograph nine airfields as annotated on your maps.’ Later I learned that the purpose of the mission was to determine if the Soviets had deployed their new Bison bombers to any of these fields. ‘You will launch in a stream of six aircraft, just as you did on the 6th. Three aircraft will fly the Spitsbergen route. You and two others will proceed to your turning point one hundred miles north of Murmansk. You, Captain Austin, are number three. The other two will turn back at that point. You will proceed on your preplanned mission. The entire mission from taxi to exit from the hostile area will be flown in complete radio silence—no tower calls, no reporting back when reaching altitude, no radio contact with the tankers, no radio calls if anyone has to abort. Radio silence is essential to the success of this mission.’
“Then the pilot colonel reviewed the weather at the altitudes we were supposed to fly, the camera turn-on points noted on the strip maps, and he briefed us on expected opposition. ‘Only MiG-15s,’ he said. ‘They can’t reach you at forty thousand feet. No contrails are expected to form in the areas you will be passing over.’ That information was important to us if we didn’t want to streak across the sky looking like a Times Square ad. ‘You’ll be flying through a clear air mass. The weather couldn’t be better for this mission.’ The briefing over, Heavilin started to annotate his chart. ‘Don’t do that,’ directed the navigator colonel. ‘Everything you need to know is on those charts.’ The two SAC colonels measured their words carefully, only saying what needed saying. They answered no questions and offered no additional comments to us. On the way out, one of the colonels reemphasized the need for absolute security before and after we returned from our mission. We would not discuss any aspect of the mission outside a cleared area, we were given to understand, nor with anyone not having a need to know. No talk about the mission, period.
“Colonel Preston met us as we exited the building and drove us to our aircraft. An air crew was already there, just finishing preflight. From the looks of it, they were none too happy to have been asked to do our job. As they slid down the ladder from the crew compartment, the pilot said to me, ‘The aircraft is cocked’—a bomber term—and he, his copilot, and his navigator walked to their crew car without saying another word and drove off. We climbed into the aircraft and strapped into our seats. Every one of us was quiet, I recall, tending to our own thoughts.”
Major Heavilin noted that his map had been annotated with radar offset points, such as lakes and other natural and man-made features, that would show well on his radarscope. Austin was number six in line, last for takeoff. “I taxied after number five moved out. Number one lined up at the end of the runway, set his brakes, and ran up his engines. The other five aircraft sat in line on the taxiway, waiting to take their turn on the active. When number one received the green light from the tower, he released his brakes, and the aircraft slowly moved down the runway. The other RB-47s launched at two-minute intervals, buffeted by the violent jet wash from the preceding aircraft. When I took the active, a trail of black smoke from the exhaust of the other five pointed the way for me.”
Takeoff data computations were in front of Austin and Holt, strapped to their thighs. They were a team, no longer individuals. Prompts and responses were automatic. As the copilot, Holt called the checklist:
“Throttles.”
“Open. All instruments checked,” Austin responded. Austin slowly moved the six throttles to 100 percent. Oil pressure was within operating limits, he noted, glancing down the row of gauges on his instrument panel. Fuel flow was stabilized. He checked the EGT for all six engines at 100 percent. The EGTs were within limits.
“Steering ratio selector lever.”
“Takeoff and land.”
“Start, six lights out.” Austin released the brakes of the shuddering aircraft, which began its slow roll down the twelve thousand–foot concrete runway. Carl Holt quickly turned left and rig
ht and checked the engines. He saw black smoke coming from all six and reported to Austin, “Engines and wings checked.”
They continued their takeoff roll. When the aircraft reached seventy knots, Holt called out, “Seventy knots now.” Heavilin responded, “Hack.” Fourteen seconds later, their acceleration good, Heavilin called out “S-one, now.” Decision speed—their last chance to ground abort. Austin’s eyes were on his EGT gauges, compass, and airspeed indicator. Temperatures looked good. Speed looked good. They continued their takeoff roll. He held the aircraft down: it wanted to climb because of ground effect before it had sufficient airspeed to sustain flight—a novice trap that had cost lives. Austin could feel the plane grasping for its element. At the 7,500-foot marker, the 180,000-pound craft strained to rise, and Austin let it go. “Unstick,” he called. The nose rose slightly, and the aircraft began its long climb heavenward. Climb speed was looking good, Austin noted mentally.
“Landing gear,” Austin called, and Holt placed the gear lever in the up position. They were at 185 knots indicated and gaining speed.
“Flaps.” Holt put the flap lever in the up position and kept his hand on it, simultaneously watching the airspeed. They were at 210 knots at 20 percent flaps, and he continued flap retraction. The aircraft’s nose started to pitch down, but Hal had already cranked in nose-up trim and smoothed out the predictable perturbation.
“Climb speed,” Holt called.
“Climb power set.” Hal set it to 375 knots indicated. They continued with their checklist as they climbed straight ahead to thirty-four thousand feet. Their mission didn’t officially exist. They had filed no flight plan, which was nothing new to understanding British air traffic controllers. Holt continued to check that the HF radio was on, the APS-54 radar warning receiver was set to the nose/tail position, the chaff dispensers were on, and the IFF was on standby. He called, “Altimeters.”
“Set, Pilot.”
“Set, Nav.”
They reset their altimeters to 29.92 inches of mercury. When they passed over open water, Holt tested his guns. They fired. “I guess it’s a go,” Holt said over the intercom. Hal clicked his mike button twice on the control column in response. A little more than one hour into their flight, the navigator picked up the tankers on his radar at the briefed air-refueling orbit and gave Hal a heading and altitude. The tanker pilot saw Hal approaching from above and departed the orbit for his refueling track. At the two-mile point, Hal pulled back on the throttles to decrease his rate of closure. They were five hundred feet below the tanker and slowly eased in behind the KC-97 Stratocruiser, its four engines churning at maximum power in a slight descent. Hal looked up at the tanker looming ahead and above and moved into the observation position. He watched for light direction from the boom operator—two amber, one green, two red lights on the belly of the large KC-97. He saw the forward amber light come on, urging him to move in closer. He moved in slowly. The green light illuminated, and he held in the contact position. He could see the boom operator in the tanker flying his boom toward the open refueling receptacle on the nose of the RB-47, right in front of his face. The aircraft pitched in the wake of the turbulence generated by the KC-97.
“Contact,” Hal muttered into his oxygen mask. Normally, he would have said it out in the open. Not that day. The green light illuminated on the air refueling panel, and Austin and Holt knew they had a good contact. The tanker transferred fuel into the empty tanks of the receiver at the rate of four thousand pounds per minute until all of the RB-47’s internal fuel tanks were full, causing an automatic pressure disconnect. Hal dropped away from the tanker, saluted the boom operator, and initiated a climb to thirty-four thousand feet to rejoin his two companion aircraft. Three lone RB-47s, high above the cold Atlantic waters. Soon someone would pick them up on radar. Time passed slowly. The aircraft was on autopilot. Not much for any of them to do but listen to the static on the HF radio for a possible recall. No recall came. The three aircraft turned east toward the Barents Sea. Hal, Carl, and Vance got out their box lunches and ate their ham and turkey sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs, drank their cold milk, and put their apples aside to be eaten later, if there was time. They had coffee. They were at forty thousand feet.
“How much further to the turn?” Hall asked his navigator.
“Oh, four minutes and thirty seconds, I’d say,” Vance replied.
They put on their oxygen masks, tight. The cabin pressure was at fourteen thousand feet. Should they get hit and lose pressurization, anything loose would be flying into their faces, so they made sure everything was tied down, buttoned, zipped, or out of the way.
“On my command, turn to a heading of one-eight-zero.” Hal clicked his mike button in response to the navigator’s direction. “Turn now,” the navigator called out to Hal. The big aircraft turned surprisingly easily toward the Kola Peninsula, the Soviet Union. The other two RB-47s preceding them made their 180-degree turns to the left, away from the land, and headed home. “We coasted in over the Kola Peninsula at forty thousand feet at twelve noon Greenwich mean time,” said Hal Austin, looking at the floor. His voice was terse, his facial muscles tight. “We were about four thousand feet above our optimum altitude for our weight. Our first targets were two large airfields near Murmansk. The navigator turned on his radar cameras at the coast-in point and started the three K-17 large-area visual cameras in the bomb bay. The weather was clear as a bell. You could see forever. Perfect picture-taking weather.”
Carl Holt also remembered that moment well. He looked back from his position behind the pilot, and what he saw did not make his heart jump for joy. “It was a clear day as we coasted into the Soviet Union. Suddenly, we started to generate contrails like six white arrows pointing to our airplane. As we passed over our first target, I could see the fighters circling up to meet us, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before they reached our altitude.”
“About the time we finished photographing the second airfield near Murmansk,” Hal continued, “we were joined by a flight of three Soviet MiG-15s. I don’t know whether or not they were armed. I don’t believe they were. They kept their distance and stayed about half a mile off our wing. About twenty-five minutes later, another flight of six MiGs showed up. These too were MiG-15s, appeared to be unarmed, and kept their distance. I guess they confirmed we were the bad guys. A few minutes after their arrival, another two flights of three each arrived behind us with obvious intent to try to shoot us down. By this time we had photographed five of our assigned target airfields and were turning southwest near Arkhangel’sk toward our last four targets. We had been over Soviet territory for an hour. We had been briefed that the MiG-15 would not be able to do any damage to us at forty thousand feet with our airspeed at 440 knots. Well, you can imagine what we called those Intelligence weenies as the first Soviet MiG-17, not a MiG-15, made a firing pass at us from the left rear and we saw cannon tracer shells going above and below our aircraft. And the MiG was still moving out rather smartly as he passed under us in front. ‘Enough of this forty thousand feet stuff,’ I thought. I pushed the RB-47 over, descending a couple thousand feet and picking up about twenty knots indicated airspeed in the process.”
Carl Holt remembered, “When I saw the flashes of fire from the nose of the fighters, I knew it would not be a milk run. I had trouble getting the tail guns to fire, and since I was in a reverse seat position, I could not eject in case of a direct hit. Also, the radar firing screen would not work [because the MiGs stayed outside the RB-47’s radar envelope], so I felt a little like Wyatt Earp, looking out the back end of the canopy and firing at will. I did not hit any of the fighters, but it kept them out of a direct rear firing pass. They could only make passes from either side at a greater than forty-five-degree angle to stay outside the area covered by our guns.”
“The second MiG-17,” Hal Austin said, “made his firing pass, and I don’t care who knows, it was scary watching tracers go over and under our aircraft. This guy had almost come up our tailpip
es. Carl Holt turned around to operate our tail guns after the first MiG shot at us. It was typical for the two remotely controlled 20mm cannons not to fire. I told Holt he’d better kick them or something, because if our guns didn’t fire the next SOB would come directly up our tailpipes. Fortunately, when the third MiG started its pass, our guns burped for a couple of seconds. General LeMay did not believe in tracers for our guns, but the Soviet pilots must have seen something, because the third guy broke off his pass and the flight of six, and the next flight of six MiG-17s which joined us later stayed about thirty to forty degrees to the side, outside the effective envelope of our guns. Of course, the MiGs didn’t know that our guns wouldn’t fire again.
“The fourth MiG of the second group of MiG-17s finally made a lucky hit as I was in a turn, through the top of our left wing, about eight feet from the fuselage, through the retracted wing flap. The shell exploded into the fuselage in the area of the forward main fuel tank, right behind our crew compartment, knocking out our intercom. We felt a good whap as the shell exploded, and all three of us were a little bit anxious—scared is a better word—but we continued to do our mission as briefed, basically because of habit. I firmly believe that’s what good, tough, LeMay-type SAC training did for his combat crews. Later we also discovered the shell had hit our UHF radio. It would no longer channelize, meaning it was stuck on channel 13, our command-post frequency, which we had on the set at the time.”
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