Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage: The Declassified Stories of Cold War Reconnaissance Flights and the Men Who Flew Them by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel (review)

In the annals of espionage wars, the category of aerial reconnaissance collection is strongly represented. But the literature is dominated by two kinds of works, those that deal with specific aerial incidents, such as the U-2 shootdown of 1960, and those that cover the histories of particular aircraft types. A few overview histories of the aerial Cold War have appeared, largely compiled by researchers working from the outside using whatever sources they could gain access to. For a long time the inside story was lacking. The air reconnaissance program was and remained Top Secret, among the exotic categories of "special compartmented information." Few documents were kept and even fewer declassified. Pilots and crewmen downed in aerial incidents mostly never lived to tell their stories. This began to change after the end of the Cold War. In 1996 the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) declassified an official history of the U-2 program along with many images from its reconnaissance missions. In 2001 the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) sponsored a symposium at which pilots and airmen who flew some of those Cold War missions told their stories and reflected on their experiences.

The CIA history and the two-volume proceedings of the NRO conference advanced the story but illuminated only pieces of the puzzle. The light through the doorway energized authors such as Curtis Peebles and Wolfgang Samuel. The latter had the advantage of actually being an Air Force pilot involved in overhead reconnaissance. Samuel brings to his book Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage the fascination of a ten-year-old looking up into the sky at the stream of Allied bombers pummeling his country, and later the river of victuals planes of the "sky bridge" to Berlin during the blockade of 1948–1949. In addition, he has a practical knowledge of the machines and instruments, a sense of what was important in the secret programs to develop the aircraft and engines that powered the spy planes, and personal acquaintance with some of the characters. Childhood fascination mushroomed for Samuel and led him, after immigration, to the U.S. Air Force and the beginning of this story. Samuel attended the NRO symposium and came away with an additional slate of interviews to conduct.

This background builds a context for Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage. When first opened, it seems like an oral history collection but actually is more. Samuel uses his knowledge of the evolution of the aerospace technology to create a chronological framework for stages of the aerial Cold War. Then, with extensive quotation of the participants in many of the reconnaissance missions, he adds the fliers' stories, interspersing them with commentaries on the command and management of the programs, arrangements for specific collection missions, the atmospherics of the bases used for various missions, the targets of their spying, and details on aircraft development. Rather than a narrative that flits from incident to incident, shoot-down to shootdown, the reader gets one that is more about flights completed, targets surveyed, information brought home, the daily minutiae of operations and crews.

One problem with many accounts of aerial espionage is the loose relationship between flights and results. Samuel does not offer a solution. Unless his interviewees themselves mention discoveries made on their missions, the information is not there. Silent Warriors includes a few photographs of Soviet bases and facilities, but the bulk of its illustrations (the book is well illustrated) are of U.S. fliers, their airfields, and especially their airplanes. Readers of military history will find the detail intriguing; but non-specialist readers may think it tedious.

Another drawback is the periodization. Although the author purports to be covering the entire Cold War, the main content follows the National Reconnaissance Office offerings at its symposium, cutting off with the early 1960s. The book provides extensive coverage of the Korean...