I Always Wanted to Fly: America's Cold War Airmen

Part 3: Strategic Reconnaissance

Part 3 Strategic Reconnaissance Had the American public known about the ongoing ‘‘secret air war’’ between the two super-powers they would have been even more in despair than many already were about the state of the world. Ben R. Rich, Skunk Works The second MiG-17 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 tailpipes. Carl Holt had 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 don’t fire the next SOB would come directly up our tailpipes. Hal Austin, RB-47E pilot Strategic aerial reconnaissance during the Cold War years, including the overflight of Soviet territory, was a necessary act of desperation and reflected an inability to obtain information by other means. The information gained from such operations was vital to American policy 145 Strategic Reconnaissance makers and to the defense community at large. Without this information , often obtained at great risk to the air crews, it was impossible to develop the proper force size and mix of weapons to contain the Soviet military juggernaut or, if need be, to confront it and prevail. Reconnaissance flights were largely conducted by long-range aircraft of the Strategic Air Command, a command known for its secrecy and high level of security. Every planner and crew member involved in reconnaissance operations was sworn to secrecy. The battle for information along the periphery and at times over the Soviet Union and the Chinese communist mainland was mostly unknown to the American public. Losses were accepted as a part of doing business. By 1948 America’s senior military leaders no longer had any doubt that the Soviet Union represented a major threat to the United States. The Berlin blockade had clearly demonstrated Soviet intentions in that part of the world. To make matters worse, in September 1949 a U.S. reconnaissance plane flying off the Kamchatka Peninsula picked up signs of radioactivity. The Soviets had exploded an atomic device. The United States and its allies clearly would soon find themselves threatened by atomic-bomb-carrying Soviet aircraft. In Asia, developments were even more ominous. Chinese communist forces were on the verge of completing their conquest of mainland China, and a belligerent North Korea was petitioning Stalin to let it conquer the south. Although the United States viewed these developments with concern and had helped to establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in an effort to contain Soviet pressures in Europe, military strength had not grown commensurate with the threat. The air force was organizing the Strategic Air Command under the driving leadership of General Curtis E. LeMay, but even he had to make do with aging B-29 bombers. The air force of the future was evolving. At a time of military weakness and political uncertainty, the United States particularly needed accurate, verifiable information about the Soviet Union. While a foreigner could easily travel in the United States and purchase any number of publications regarding U.S. military forces 146 Strategic Reconnaissance and their location, strength, readiness, organization, and equipment, no equivalent access was available in the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union remained a closed society. The only practical option, other than human intelligence with its many shortcomings, was aerial reconnaissance . From the early 1950s to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the United States and the United Kingdom implemented a cooperative effort to reconnoiter the periphery of the Soviet Union with aircraft equipped with various types of sensors. On special occasions, aircraft, with authority from the U.S. president or the British prime minister, overflew the Soviet Union and its satellite nations to gather critical information. Was there a bomber gap between the United States and the Soviet Union? The answer could be found only by the men who risked their lives and flew over the Soviet Union to obtain that information . As the years passed and Soviet fighter and surface-to-air-missile technology advanced, overflights of Soviet territory required aircraft to fly ever higher. In 1960 a U-2 photo-reconnaissance aircraft operated by the Central Intelligence Agency was shot down near the Russian city of Sverdlovsk. With that shootdown it became...