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BUFF MiG Killer
Cold War

B-52D Diamond Lil tail gunner explains how he scored the last confirmed kill by a tail gunner in wartime 

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“I fired at the bandit until it ballooned to 3 times in intensity then suddenly disappeared from my radar scope at approximately 1,200 yards, 6:30 low. I expended 800 rounds in 3 bursts,” Airman 1st Class Albert Moore, B-52D Diamond Lil tail gunner

The B-52 Stratofortress close to the north gate would have a great Christmas Eve tale to tell if the landmarks at the U.S. Air Force Academy could speak.

That day in 1972, the crew of the B-52D, tail number 55-083, took off from Utapao Royal Thai Naval Airfield, as explained in the article Records detail MiG kill by ‘Diamond Lil’ tail gunner. Their mission was to bomb the North Vietnamese railroad yards at Thai Nguyen as part of Operation Linebacker II, which took place Dec. 18–29, 1972.

However, unlike present-day bombing missions, Diamond Lil’s crew faced enemy airpower. A North Vietnamese MiG-21 raced to intercept the B-52, callsign Ruby 3, and her crew. The Buff’s tail gunner, Airman 1st Class Albert Moore, noticed the MiG’s approach.

“I observed a target in my radar scope 8:30 o’clock, low at 8 miles,” he wrote six days later in his statement of claim for enemy aircraft destroyed. “I immediately notified the crew, and the bogie started closing rapidly. It stabilized at 4,000 yards at 6:30 o’clock. I called the pilot for evasive action and the EWO (electronic warfare officer) for chaff and flares.

“When the target got to 2,000 yards, I notified the crew that I was firing. I fired at the bandit until it ballooned to 3 times in intensity, then suddenly disappeared from my radar scope at approximately 1,200 yards, 6:30 low. I expended 800 rounds in 3 bursts.”

Here's how B-52 tail gunners made of the BUFF a MiG killer

Tech. Sgt. Clarence Chute, another gunner, verified the kill in his report.

“I went visual and saw the bandit on fire and falling away,” wrote Sergeant Chute, who was a gunner in Ruby 2. “Several pieces of the aircraft exploded, and the fire-ball disappeared in the undercast at my 6:30 position.”

The kill of Airman Moore is the last confirmed kill by a tail gunner employing machine guns in wartime, and one of only two confirmed kills by a B-52D during the Vietnam War.

Following the MiG kill, Airman Moore said, “On the way home, I wasn’t sure whether I should be happy or sad. You know, there was a guy in that MIG. I’m sure he would have wanted to fly home too. But it was a case of him or my crew. I’m glad it turned out the way it did. Yes, I’d go again. Do I want another MIG? No, but given the same set of circumstances, yes, I’d go for another one.” Moore died in 2009 at age 55.

Linebacker II brought the North Vietnamese government back to the negotiating table after earlier talks had broken down. A month after the campaign, North Vietnam and the United States signed a ceasefire agreement.

Diamond Lil kept on flying even after the Vietnam War had ended. Overall, it logged more than 15,000 flight hours and participated in over 200 combat missions between its commissioning in 1957 and its decommissioning in 1983. It came to the Academy shortly after it was decommissioned.

Photo by U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Don Branum

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Jaguar Phantom 1170x585 1
Cold War

Ex RAF Jaguar pilot recounts being shot down by an RAF Phantom interceptor

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“Giving up on the medics, we decided it was time for the bar and he offered me a lift home. Only on the way back to Brüggen did I find out what had happened. The Phantom I had seen fly over the farmer’s field had shot me down!” Group Captain Steve Griggs, former RAF Jaguar pilot

The following article contains excerpts from Group Captain Steve Griggs’s story titled With Friends Like These which appears in Ian Hall’s book Jaguar Boys.

Bang! The aircraft was yawing violently to the right, and not responding to the controls; I heard the canopy shattering. I hear Paddy’s voice from the other aircraft yelling “Eject! Eject!” Thought process — he must know what is going on because I certainly don’t! Result — I eject.

There was a violent explosion, my head was driven down to the breastplate of my lifejacket, I had a vision of the floor of the cockpit dropping away, a snatch of a parachute opening, wrenching pain in my right hand (fool, let go of the seat handle!), then a moment of blissful quiet before the ground below began approaching rapidly. Now, what did the physical training instructors tell us about parachute rolls on landing? Can’t remember in time and — thump, I land completely out of control in a field — and it hurts. Look up and think, momentarily, that I might be in heaven (I was a young, bachelor flight lieutenant at the time) as a blonde vision of loveliness dressed in tight-fitting jodhpurs ran over to me, followed her father (blast!).

“It must be your birthday,” Gerd Molleken (ex-cavalry officer) said. Still distracted by the vision of Germanic loveliness peering (fondly?) at me, I somewhat confusingly replied, “no, that’s not until September”, which seemed to perplex them both.

Former RAF Jaguar pilot tells the story of when he was shot down by a RAF Phantom interceptor

I was being helped to my feet and gathering my parachute and various bits together when alone Phantom flew overhead, very low down.

“Did you see what happened?” I asked the farmer.
He did not, and neither did I know what had happened, except that I thought that it was odd for the F-4 to be alone — they normally flew as pairs. Could I have had mid-air with his mate? They were questions for later since a bottle of brandy had now been produced and hospitality offered (not my daughter, unfortunately). Pausing only to make a quick phone call to Brüggen to relay the news (apparently disturbing the station commander during the annual formal inspection lunch) we attacked the bottle. Remember, this was in the years before compulsory ‘medicals’ following accidents; i.e. I would have compromised the blood test. Still, morale, welfare and not offending the farmer were much higher priorities in my mind at the time — as well as his daughter.

The farmer seemed quite unperturbed by the whole event. Little did I know that he was quite used to having aircraft crash into his fields. A Harrier had ended up there a few years earlier, and his cash register was already ringing up the latest invoice for compensation. Several glasses of brandy later (not sure if they went onto the bill), the sound of a chopper was heard, and a lift back to Brüggen given the courtesy of the German air force. I was rushed to the medical center for a quick check-up, to be met by Paddy and other members of 14 Squadron (I was in Staneval Weapons at Brüggen and was flying with 14 Squadron that day) with bottles of beer stuffed in their pockets. I was waved off for a rather wobbly ride to Wegberg Hospital for X-rays, etc; at that point, there was still no news of what had occurred. Even Paddy was in the dark; he had just happened to look back at me in time to see the aircraft explode and had had the presence of mind to immediately call for me to eject.

Former RAF Jaguar pilot tells the story of when he was shot down by a RAF Phantom interceptor

Wegberg Hospital was worse than useless. Having arrived in casualty covered in mud and with a cut chin, there was not a soul in sight, even though they had been told to expect me. Finally, I found someone who told me to go down the corridor and book in for an X-ray. That over, I sat around seemingly for ages waiting to see a doctor. I was getting bored and feeling in need of another beer, when, on cue, I walked Flight Lieutenant Brian Newby (I had been flying his ‘named’ aircraft Jaguar GR1 XX963). Giving up on the medics, we decided it was time for the bar, and he offered me a lift home. Only on the way back to Brüggen did I find out what had happened. The Phantom I had seen fly over the farmer’s field had shot me down!

So how did it happen? There I was minding my own business at 1,350ft, returning to Brüggen after a forward air controller training sortie as number two to Paddy Mullen, when the radar unit we were using warned of conflicting traffic ahead. The RWR lit up, which was not an unusual event in the corridor routing aircraft to and from the training areas to Brüggen and Wildenrath. Aircraft went out at 750ft and back at 1,350ft for deconfliction. The F-4s from Wildenrath often ‘painted’ aircraft to ensure their separation. What was unusual this time was that the CWI-band vector moved from front to rear. “Might not be a Phantom then,” I thought, “I could be picking up the Hawk surface-to-air missile site to the north – although that would be a fair distance away.” In the meantime, I saw a German F-104 pass down the starboard side — more of him later.

Hours before this the hooter had sounded at RAF Wildenrath (the Phantom FGR2 base) in the early hours of the morning for a station exercise. Aircraft and crews had been generated, and the aircraft loaded with live weapons in accordance with the normal policy for exercising quick-reaction forces in NATO. Once the required number of live-armed aircraft had been achieved, the aircraft was then de-armed prepared for training sorties loaded with acquisition rounds (inert missiles with real, heat-seeking heads). Crews were then to stand by to fly missions as directed by the SOC for training. For the purpose of such exercises, other RAF Germany aircraft were generally regarded as hostile targets, with fighter controllers scrambling the F-4s to intercept targets for training.

One crew, who shall remain nameless, was scrambled for such a mission in Phantom FGR2 XV422. They took off from RAF Wildenrath to mount a combat patrol under the control of the SOC. At approximately 1247 hrs, they were vectored onto a pair of Jaguars and told to engage the ‘hostile’ aircraft. Following standard procedures for a simulated attack, the Phantom closed on the Jaguars, and, when in an ideal position to complete what until that moment had been a typically routine engagement, the pilot pulled the missile release trigger. This should only have produced a witness mark on the radar film to record the intercept. Instead, as the pilot said later, the growl from the missile seeker transferred to his other ear (now indicating the missile on the other wing), and the first missile was launched.

Former RAF Jaguar pilot tells the story of when he was shot down by a RAF Phantom interceptor

Dumbfounded he watched, powerless to influence the outcome, (the Sidewinder being a fire-and-forget weapon) as the missile exhaust trail headed off towards my aircraft. He was not even on the same radio frequency as me, and we in turn had not been made aware that we were to be intercepted for training. The AIM-9G missile hit my aircraft, with my complete tail section behind the wing breaking away and the front part of the aircraft (with me still inside) entering a flat spin.

I cannot begin to imagine what was going through the poor guys’ minds on their way back to Wildenrath; it is a bit difficult to explain away returning to base after a training flight with one missile fewer than when you started out! Indeed on the way back, I understand that they had some difficulty in convincing agencies of the reality of the event. At least they had the reassuring knowledge they had seen me eject safely.

Since I was well, with only a slight cut to the chin and not even back pain (I will be able to play golf the next day — albeit with a sore head), I decided to celebrate my lucky escape in the traditional way by putting on a barrel of beer in the mess. Since I did not know the F-4 crew, I invited them to attend to show that there were no hard feelings. To their credit, they entered into the lion’s den and came along, apologizing. It was later that evening that the Brüggen station commander discovered they were in the bar with me, and pointed out that this would not look good for the subsequent board of inquiry — since we could be accused of collaborating. Indeed the ‘party’ was subsequently misreported in the press as us ‘celebrating’ the loss of one of Her Majesty’s aircraft, a fact I tried to correct by a letter to The Telegraph.

At any rate, we split from the mess, with members of 14 Squadron taking the F-4 crew away for beers at the married quarters, and me being royally entertained by the combined efforts of members of 17, 20, and 31 Squadrons elsewhere on the patch.

Former RAF Jaguar pilot tells the story of when he was shot down by a RAF Phantom interceptor

Obviously, the accident was the result of a monumental cock-up. The board of inquiry found the crew of the Phantom to be negligent, but were they solely to blame? Having read the accident report, and spoken to those involved, the crew seemed to me to be the last link in an unbroken chain that was destined to result in an accident.

The crew had been called out late and had missed the start of the exercise. They were briefed hurriedly and were the last to be allocated an aircraft, which was live-armed. A simulated bomb incident forced them to evacuate the aircraft shelter and they were allocated another, which was also still armed with live weapons. The navigator noted that this aircraft had no red tape over the master armament switch, which would have denoted that the aircraft was live-armed. Halfway through a pee-break (flying and NBC kit hindering a speedy execution of this maneuver), they were scrambled by the SOC, which was also on exercise. The accident train was underway.

The report of the board of inquiry revealed that all of the safeguards provided for in the command and station operating and engineering orders relating to the carriage of live missiles were either ineffective or had not been complied with. The circuit breaker for the firing circuit was found not to be an effective device, even though it had been pulled to render the system inactive. The SOC fighter controller had not made a ‘check switches safe’ call because he had not been informed that the aircraft was carrying live weapons. Indeed, the operations officer at RAF Wildenrath had not passed the information to the SOC because he was not aware of it himself.

Despite these factors and the absence of the vital tape on the master arm switch, the crew was deemed by the board of inquiry to be negligent and (eventually) faced a court-martial which resulted in their being found guilty of negligence. The severe reprimand was given by the court, which was the lightest punishment possible, suggested that the court acknowledged that the crew was not solely to blame. The organization behind them was seen to be at fault, and following a comprehensive review, numerous changes were made to procedures.

The accident may seem unbelievable but vividly illustrates how pressure on individuals, combined with poor organization and inadequate orders, can lead to mistakes being made.

Photo by Rob Schleiffert from Holland via Wikipedia, MSgt. Don Sutherland / U.S. Air Force, Pinterest, Crown Copyright and Todd Pormealeau via sepecat.info

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Tornado Tonopah
Cold War

That time an RAF Tornado made an emergency landing at Tonopah AFB, home of the top-secret F-117

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“The guys at Tonopah had a sense of humor after all, for the silhouette of an F-117 had been stenciled on each side of our tail fin,” Squadron Leader Wally Grout, former RAF Tornado navigator

The following article contains excerpts from Squadron Leader Wally Grout’s story titled Still Learning After All Those Years which appears in Ian Hall’s book Tornado Boys.

So there I was, just approaching my 40th birthday and all fired up to participate in my first Red Flag exercise in the States. After just four missions, my pilot and I were tasked as the lead crew for the package on 9 April 1990. I had spent my earlier years on the mighty Vulcan, having been posted from nav school as a navigator radar, and was lucky enough to be one of the first to cross over to the Tornado GR1 in January 1982. Red Flag was, at that time, a distant dream.

I was now on my second Tornado tour; I had 440 hours on type and, together with my pilot, was now to lead the planning and execution of a typically complex mission into the heart of Red Flag territory. I had come a long way.

Our mission was to penetrate the defenses and drop two inert 1,000 lb bombs into an airfield target using a loft maneuver. All Red Flag aircraft are fitted with telemetry pods and, much like Formula One racing cars, can transmit information back to the HQ so that supervisors and spectators can watch the progress of the ‘war’ on a big screen in real time.

We were airborne on time and proceeded to Caliente, our holding point for entry into the Red Flag area. Whilst orbiting, checking maps, timings, and aircraft systems we detected a fault; fuel was not feeding on the wings into the fuselage tanks. This problem was not insignificant and, although the checklist gave advice and possible solutions, the fault could lead to serious fuel imbalance and possible mission abort.

We were approximately three minutes from our push time; just sufficient to go through the initial actions from the checklist. But we had no time to see if the problem was cured.

That time a RAF Tornado made an emergency landing at F-117's top-secret Tonopah Air Force Base

We completed the pre-target checks, found the initial point, and performed the attack. Job did, bombs on target, time to recover. Once settled we did a routine op check. As we covered ‘fuel’ our heart rates increased. We had not cured the fuel transfer problem; both of us having been fully tied up with the mission, we’d not double-checked. It was now clear that we didn’t have enough usable fuel to get back to Nellis, even in a straight line.

The next few minutes seemed to last forever. From the map, Tonopah was our nearest diversion, and I gave my pilot the relevant track information. Simultaneously, we transmitted to Red Flag control that we were diverting with an emergency. In fact, with the telemetry pod ‘big brother’ probably knew already — but that call seemed to set the cat amongst the pigeons. Tonopah at that time was home to the USAF / Lockheed ‘skunk works’, a highly secret development site for the stealth bomber program. We all knew about the F-117 but, as yet, it hadn’t been officially cleared for public consumption.

You can now imagine the reaction over the radio. “Why do you need to go there? You cannot get there. What exactly is wrong with your aircraft? Why can’t you go to Indian Springs?” (a less sensitive diversion airfield). We even had our detachment commander quizzing us. All the time fuel was reducing and we were getting closer to Tonopah. Between us, we convinced all and sundry that our only alternative to Tonopah was an ejection over the desert. That shut them up, and we now got a period of relative quiet on the radio while we concentrated on getting our aircraft safely on the ground. We hadn’t really thought about what would happen after that.

After touching down we were instructed to clear the runway, stop, and shut down. We complied, made the seats safe, and raised the canopy.

What happened next is the stuff that makes Hollywood great. Several vehicles formed up in front of the aircraft, including one full of armed soldiers. Steps were brought and we climbed out. A USAF major greeted us; he confiscated the film cassettes from the HUD and the data recorder, told us that the aircraft would be looked after, and escorted us under armed guard to the operations center. Good job that I didn’t on this occasion have the 35mm camera I usually carried with me or they really would have thought we were spying! He guided us to a windowless room with blank walls and minimal furniture. We sat down, wondering what would happen next. We both felt reasonably relaxed, apart from the armed guards — after all, we had saved the aircraft and felt justified in our actions.

That time a RAF Tornado made an emergency landing at F-117's top-secret Tonopah Air Force Base

The major then explained our predicament. Landing at a top-secret establishment in the USA is not an everyday occurrence and we were now going to be questioned — or, as it later turned out, interrogated. Our interlocutor asked all the standard questions: name; rank; squadron; nationality; why we landed at Tonopah. And some more personal: marital status; family background; and educational qualifications. All the while, two large military personnel armed with carbines stood by the door.

Having finished with his questions the major left the room. After a few minutes, another male entered the room, dressed casually in civilian clothing. No introduction, no name given, just more questions. It was almost a repeat of those we had already answered. However, erring on the side of, ‘let’s not make waves’, we both answered them.

He left and we sat chatting about our situation while the guards remained in the doorway. It was now time for my bladder to complain; a post-flight comfort call was needed. I told the guards I needed the `john’. The response took me by surprise; a guard would have to escort me — I assume to prevent me from running amok. He duly stood a few races behind me as I took relief. I was escorted back to the room and we waited some more.

I then recall a further interrogator asking the same questions and getting the same responses. The major returned to tell us that our aircraft was now confiscated and that we would be flown back to Nellis in one of theirs. We would be told when we could have ours back, and we would be the only crew allowed to return to pick it up. He left us to puzzle why.

That time a RAF Tornado made an emergency landing at F-117's top-secret Tonopah Air Force Base

Soon we heard the sound of aircraft taxiing. We asked a guard if the F-117s were flying this afternoon, to which he shrugged. I said, “I suppose you have to wait until the surveillance satellites are clear before you fly the 117?” His response was standard USAF: “I do not know what you are talking about, sir.” Further questions elicited similar responses. We gave up. More aircraft noise from outside; more flying tonight? It was getting late in the afternoon.

Eventually our ‘friendly’ major returned with news that, for operational reasons, we would not be flying back to Nellis but it would be a road trip instead. We asked if the operational reason was the fact they were flying the F-117. He gave a non-committal smile.

More waiting, but then we were told that transport was available and asked to get our kit together. The next move stunned us both; we black cloth bags put over our heads. We were led out of the room and outside; we could hear the sound of jets but thought it better not to ask more questions. We were helped into the rear seats of a vehicle. As the doors closed, our guards in the front seats had a few words for us to digest. “Do not remove your blindfolds, we are live-armed.” “OK,” we said; the understatement of the year.

We drove in silence for what seemed an age. The bags had not been tied under our chins and I made a conscious effort to get a handle on the direction of travel by looking down and using the shadows; it was now getting close to sunset and I estimated that we had been traveling west for the majority of the time. When we finally stopped and the guards told us to remove our blindfolds, I turned around and could just see a tiny speck in the distance, which I assumed was an F-117 in the circuit. We were at the main gate and the aircraft must have been about fifteen miles away. What a main street to an airfield!

For our journey back to Nellis we were given brown paper ‘sacks’ of sandwiches, chocolate, and fruit juice — courtesy of the Tonopah fire department dinner lady. That was about the only friendly gesture we’d had all afternoon, and boy was the food welcome.

The welcome at Nellis was cool but not hostile. It came as rather a surprise to the RAF commander that we would be told when we could have our jet back. We hadn’t serviced the aircraft, but NATO air forces regularly exercised on each other aircraft so we assumed our ‘hosts’ had a capability. Furthermore, strange as it may seem, there was an RAF pilot on an exchange tour on the F-117 at the time. Indeed, digressing slightly, during the Iraq War an ex-Tornado pilot took an active part in operations, flying an F-117. But did we think we had got away with it?

The next day a telephone message told us to get over to the other side of Nellis field, where a USAF Beechcraft was waiting to take us to Tonopah. We were met by a very young USAF pilot; we boarded, made ourselves comfortable while the crew gave us a quick safety brief, and off we went. The pilot wanted to know why and how we had gone to Tonopah, and also asked if we needed anything doing to our aircraft.

As we approached the field the pilot informed us that we would have to be airborne in less than forty minutes after arrival. He couldn’t say why, but he let on that there would be jets out for flying. We were not allowed to see them but, as we broke into the circuit, he hinted that if we looked out of the starboard window we would get an extremely good view of two ‘invisible’ aircraft. Shame that I’d left my camera behind!

He dropped us close to our aircraft and, once again, armed guards watched us; our friendly major was on hand to see us off, repeating that we had forty minutes to get airborne. As we did an inspection we noticed that the guys at Tonopah had a sense of humor after all, for the silhouette of a stealth fighter had been stenciled on each side of our tail fin. And in the cockpit, tucked under the windscreen, was a police parking ticket for illegal parking on US military soil. We had with us a couple of squadron prints, one for operations and one for the fire department. As we gave these to our major he presented us with a print of the F-117, even though it didn’t officially exist. The last time I had the chance to look, the print was still on the walls of the crew room at Marham.

That’s not quite the end of the story. Having debriefed the engineers about our fuel problem, they did their investigation and found that the transfer valve was indeed not working. Hurrah, at least we got that bit right. However, in hindsight, that well-known exact science, we should have monitored the fuel flow more closely and, if necessary, aborted the mission. But you know how it is — leading the pack, adrenaline rush, must complete the task, and all those other excuses for not giving up. All very well in peacetime to press on — but what about real war?

Update: Mike Crutch, author of the book CVW: US Navy Carrier Air Wing Aircraft 1975-2015, brought to our attention that “a RAF Phantom FGR.2 (F-4M in the US speak) diverted there also during a RED FLAG, arriving back at Nellis with a day glo F-117 sticker and legend DON’T ASK. The diversion took place on Nov. 9, 1989, and the aircraft was Phantom FGR.2 serial XV476 (coded ‘S’ with No.56 Squadron, based at RAF Wattisham, UK but was part of a mix of airframes from UK and RAF Germany units as crews changed during RED FLAG). The zap was applied to the port engine intake.” Unfortunately, we couldn’t find any photo of this aircraft with the F-117 Zap.

That time a RAF Tornado made an emergency landing at F-117's top-secret Tonopah Air Force Base
RAF Tornado GR1 sports the ‘stealth’ zap of an F-117, having made a precautionary landing at the top-secret Tonopah Air Force Base

Photo by Crown Copyright via Ian Hall, U.S. Air Force, and Mike Freer – Touchdown-aviation via Wikipedia

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SR 71 Yom Kippur
Cold War

An SR-71 had an inflight emergency during a secret mission over the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur war

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“We had no viable emergency airfields, and I did not want to be a no-notice, no–flight plan, single-engine emergency arrival at David Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, especially since the Israeli government had not been informed in advance about the mission,” Jim Wilson, SR-71 pilot

The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird Mach 3 strategic reconnaissance aircraft was the fastest and highest-flying operational aircraft in the world for about 24 years throughout its career. It could survey 100,000 square miles of the Earth’s surface per hour from 80,000 feet. In the unlikely event that an enemy attempted to bring it down with a missile, the Blackbird just had to speed up and outrun it.

Notably, some SR-71 operational sorties had a higher priority than others. There were several means of ensuring they would be flown successfully. The lowest level of mission priority had a spare SR-71 ready and waiting in case the primary aircraft malfunctioned. The next priority level had a spare crew in the cockpit of a second SR-71 waiting for codewords that the primary aircraft had malfunctioned and that they were to launch ASAP. The highest level of priority had a spare SR-71 flying the same route directly behind the primary aircraft by about 30 minutes.

Once the primary aircraft was a “go,” the spare aircraft returned to base.

The development of the iconic SR-71 Blackbird: how the world's fastest plane was conceived

If a completely new mission was tasked and had a level of difficulty that required in-depth mission planning, it could possibly take the crews several days to get all the details worked out with the mission planners. These were generally high-priority missions that arose from a crisis somewhere in the world.

SR-71 pilot Jim Wilson gives the following account of one mission during the Yom Kippur War, which can be found in Col. Richard H. Graham’s book Flying the SR-71 Blackbird:

“On October 6, 1973, the armies of Egypt and Syria opened an offensive against Israel on two fronts, launching a coordinated series of air, armored, and artillery attacks across the Suez Canal into the Sinai and on the Golan Heights. The preemptive strike came as a result of a failure to resolve territorial disputes arising from the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.

“These disputes involved the return of the Sinai to Egypt and return of the Golan Heights to Syria. UN Resolution 242 and Egyptian president Sadat’s peace initiative failed to bring peace. Sadat wanted to sign an agreement with Israel, provided the Israelis returned all the occupied territories, but Israelis refused to withdraw to the pre-1967 armistice lines. Since no diplomatic progress was being made toward peace, Sadat was convinced that to change things and gain legitimacy at home, he must initiate a war with limited objectives.

“Along the Suez Canal, eighty thousand well-equipped members of the Egyptian army who had crossed the Suez on rapidly constructed pontoon bridges attacked fewer than five hundred Israeli defenders. In the Golan Heights, approximately 180 Israeli tanks faced an onslaught of 1,400 Syrian tanks. Initial Israeli military losses were significant, and assistance was requested from the United States.

“National reconnaissance satellites did not have the capability that needed to sufficiently assess the situation. The 9th SRW at Beale AFB, California, was alerted to prepare to fly SR-71 missions from Beale AFB over the area of conflict and recover at RAF Base Mildenhall, England, a mission within the design capability of the aircraft, although a long and logistically difficult mission never before accomplished in operational environment.

“Within the first few days of the conflict, the supporting Arab nations initiated an oil embargo, making oil a weapon of war and contributing to a decision by the British government to deny approval to use Mildenhall as a recovery base. Plan B was rapidly drawn up to fly SR-71 out of Griffiss AFB, New York, through the area of conflict, and recover back at Griffiss. These never-before-accomplished twelve thousand—mile missions would require five air-to-air refuelings, the deployment of sixteen KC-135Q supporting tankers with special JP-7 fuel to Spain, and a specialized maintenance intelligence and operational support planning staff to Griffiss. The 9th SRW was well prepared, and in utmost secrecy, the forces were mobilized and deployed. The first mission was successfully completed on October 13.

“I was a fairly young pilot in the squadron at the time, with only one operational tour and about 120 hours of SR-71 time under my belt. On October 20, I was assigned to fly a backup SR-71 from Beale to Griffiss in an alert posture, prepared to fly follow-on missions. We flew successful missions on October 25 and November 2, where I served as a backup pilot. My turn as primary came up on November 11. The excitement level was high, as I certainly wanted to be part of the Force and the wing’s success in completing the mission as tasked.

“Takeoff was at 2 a.m. on a brisk and clear autumn night with about fifteen inches of snow already on the ground. It was peacefully calm — until I lit each of the thirty-four-thousand-pound thrust afterburners. The first 450 mites had to be flown subsonic at 0.9 Mach since we had to clear the commercial aircraft flight tracks out of Boston and New York to Europe before we could safely conduct air refueling operations. Radio-silent electronic rendezvous with three tankers 250 miles out over the North Atlantic at 3 a.m. went well, as did the seventy-thousand-pound (10,600-gallon) fuel offload.

Remembering Gil Bertelson, the SR-71 driver that saw three sunrises on one particular Blackbird mission

“You don’t know the true meaning of dark until you’ve been in a situation like this. We likened it to refueling in an inkwell. After completing a few post-refueling checks, I lit the afterburners and started my acceleration to a leisurely Mach 3 cruise across the Atlantic. The airplane performed flawlessly, thanks to the extra-special effort by maintenance guys. About two thousand miles across the Atlantic on an easterly heading, I watched with excitement as the sun peeked over the horizon and came up right in my face in about a minute and a half—a nice vantage point for viewing this daily event.

“The second refueling was conducted in daylight, a couple of hundred miles north of the Azores. This was another seventy-thousand-pound offload, thirty-five thousand pounds from each of the two tankers, while the airborne spare tanker was not needed. I started my second acceleration and headed for the Strait of Gibraltar. Cruising through the center of the narrow strait at eighty thousand feet with clear weather one hundred miles on both sides provided quite a spectacular view.

“As we proceeded down the Mediterranean toward the Middle East, the weather grew gradually worse as forecasted. The third air refueling south of Crete, although in poor weather, went as scheduled. After packing in a full load of eighty thousand pounds of JP-7 fuel, I lit the afterburners and started the acceleration toward the target area.

“At 0.98 Mach, just prior to going supersonic, maximum fuel flow full afterburner, a red engine-oil-quantity-low light illuminated steady on my emergency warning annunciator panel. I stared at it in almost disbelief, while scanning engine instruments, oil pressure, rpm, exhaust gas temperature, and nozzle position for other indications of trouble. Although there were no confirming indications of problems, I couldn’t just ignore the situation and continue on into the target area with the possibility of an engine failure at supersonic speed over the Sinai. We had no viable emergency airfields, and I did not want to be a no-notice, no–flight plan, single-engine emergency arrival at David Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, especially since the Israeli government had not been informed in advance about the missions and they were in a battle for their own survival. I took the engines out of the afterburner to access the situation and think about the best course of action.

Read the story of the SR-71 crew that landed their Blackbird in zero visibility

“To my pleasant surprise, a few seconds after coming out of afterburner, the red emergency warning light went out. I was by now fairly well convinced that it was a false momentary indication, but it had cost me 2,500 pounds of critically needed fuel. My tankers were now eighty miles behind me heading further away. Getting rejoined to top off with fuel would present a new set of problems. I decided to light the burners and press on. Except for a five-second flash during acceleration, I never saw the light again.

“My flight track went down the Suez Canal past Cairo before making a left turn at Mach 3.15 to the north across the battle lines in the Sinai. I continued on a northerly course across the Dead Sea and over the center of the Golan Heights with the panoramic and point cameras providing imagery of hundreds of targets on both sides of the aircraft. Approaching the Lebanon border, I made a sweeping right turn over Syria and then back into the Sinai on a parallel flight path for maximum coverage. The airplane was running well, and I pushed it up a bit to Mach 3.2 before exiting the area near Port Said.

“Once out over the Mediterranean, I started a descent to twenty-five thousand feet for my fourth refueling. As fate would have it, not only I was low on fuel because of my previous oil warning problem, but also a thunderstorm had moved in over the scheduled air refueling contact point. My reconnaissance systems officer (RSO), using electronic azimuth and distance measure equipment, got me to within less than a mile behind my tanker, but the visibility was so poor that I couldn’t see the tanker. We continued twenty miles down the track in lousy weather with only one-half mile and one thousand feet separation before a small break in the clouds permitted hookup. When we made contact and started transferring fuel, I had less than fifteen minutes of fuel remaining and was seventy-five miles from the closest straight-in emergency landing runway on Crete. Needless to say, I was very thankful to tanker buddies, RSO, and good equipment for that rendezvous. It gives new meaning to finding a gas station when you really need one.

The story of the SR-71 Blackbird that slid on JP7 fuel residue while taxing into Kadena Hangar

“We completed a fifth seventy-thousand-pound air refueling near the Azores before the leisurely Mach 3 flight across the mid-Atlantic with a landing at Seymour Johnson AFB, North Carolina. We were met by 9th SRW download crews who had the photo and electronic intelligence equipment downloaded and on a dedicated AF courier flight to Washington, D.C., and the National Photographic Interpretation Center in twenty minutes. The flight covered 12,181 miles in ten hours, forty-nine minutes, and included six hours, forty-one minutes of supersonic time, and five air refuelings. After landing, I remember wondering what Charles Lindbergh would have thought about the advancement of aviation technology in less than fifty years. The 9th SRW was tasked to fly nine missions of this type and completed them all successfully.”

Photo by Lockheed Martin, NASA and U.S. Air Force

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Lightning landing
Cold War

The Lightning interceptor that suffered a reheat fire at supersonic speed but landed safely

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“I scramble down it to see what the fuss is all about. Moving to the rear of the Lightning, the cause of everyone’s concern becomes apparent; highly inflammable hydraulic fluid is pouring from the vicinity of the hole in the fuselage and running down inside over the hot jet pipe. I suddenly realize that, now that my part in the drama is over, my hands are beginning to shake.” Sqn Ldr Clive Rowley, former RAF Lightning Driver

The following article titled The ‘Hole in the Wall’ and written by Sqn Ldr Clive Rowley MBE RAF Ret’d appeared in Issue 5 – English Electric Lightning of Aviation Classic.

On my lounge wall at home is a strange-looking object, which could, at first glance, be taken for a piece of modern sculpture of dubious artistic merit. On closer inspection, a brass plaque explains the jagged hole in the center of the metal panel: ‘THE HOLE, Reheat Fire damage to Lightning F2A XN789 on 11th May 1976’. This strange wall decoration has a special place in my heart and my home, as it reminds me of a day when I was very lucky to keep up my record of having the same number of landings as take-offs and that all pilots need luck as well as skill. This is the story.

It is 11 May 1976 – I’m taxying out towards the runway in Lightning F2A, XN789, tail letter J (the personal aircraft of Sqn Ldr John Spencer, 19 Squadron’s OC B Flight), and taxying rather fast as we always do. No ‘fast walking pace’ for us, as taught at the flying training schools, we don’t have the fuel to waste taxying slowly. Even in the F2A with its large ventral tank and 10,300lb of fuel, we still suffer from the Lightning’s well-known shortage of ‘go juice’. I’m burning only slightly less fuel per minute on the ground than in the cruise at 36,000ft and I’d rather be burning it up there. I’ve been flying Lightnings with 19 Squadron at RAF Gütersloh in Germany for just over two years. I have over 500 hours flying on type, although I’m still only 25 years old and still considered a junior pilot on my squadron.

Pre-take-off checks

As I taxy out, I complete the pre-take-off checks from memory. These are now second nature. Trim: Set for take-off. Airbrakes: In and locked. Anti-ice/rain dispersal: Off. Autopilot: Set up. Fuel: Transfer switches on, ventral tank feeding. Flaps: Up and indicating up. Instruments and electrical system indications: Checked. Pitot heater: On. Warning panels: All warnings out. Battery master switch: Checked on. Oxygen: Check contents, pressure, and flow. Hood: Close the cockpit canopy fully and double-check that the handle is fully down with the electric switch in the handle fully recessed, check that the shoot bolts that lock the canopy down are in the locked position and that the canopy seal is inflated. (In the past there have been several incidents with the canopy being sucked off just as the aircraft reaches lift-off speed on the take-off roll due to the pilot not having locked the canopy fully; this is now virtually a ‘hanging offense’ so extra care is taken over it). Seat harness, leg restraint lines, and dinghy line: Connected. Hydraulics: Check controls for full free movement, warnings out, pressures good.

Finally, ejection seat safety pins are all stowed. The seat is now live and ready to fire when the handle is pulled. It’s a slightly strange thing to be sitting on an explosive seat, but it’s something that you get used to and are happy to accept as this could be your lifesaver if and when staying with the aircraft no longer has any merit!

The incredible story of the Lightning interceptor that suffered a reheat fire at supersonic speed. And landed safely.
Lightning F2A XN-789

I call on the radio for permission for our formation of two Lightnings to take off; adding “canopies locked” as without that confirmation the air traffic controller will not let us go. Having received clearance, I taxi onto the runway, line up pointing down the center of the left-hand half, and bring the aircraft to a halt, the nose dipping as the nose-wheel leg compresses when I apply the brakes. My wingman for this sortie, Flt. Lt. Phil Owen, the 19 Squadron Qualified Flying Instructor, lines his aircraft up alongside me on the right-hand half of the runway. He looks across at me and gives me a ‘thumbs up’.

I give him the ‘wind up’ signal, rotating my gloved index finger. I parallel the two throttles and then advance them both smoothly forward to wind the two mighty Rolls-Royce Avon jet engines behind me up to 92 percent RPM. This is the most power that the brakes can hold, any more and the wheels will start to slide even with the brakes fully on. I can hear an increased roar behind me to accompany the engine indications on the gauges. A quick check around the cockpit shows that all is well and I look across at Phil. He gives me another ‘thumbs up’ – he’s ready. I tap the front of my flying helmet on the ‘forehead’ twice and then give a pronounced nod of my head to indicate brakes release.

Take-off

We both release the brakes simultaneously, the acceleration is immediate and, as we start to roll down the runway in formation, we move the throttles forward to maximum ‘cold’ (unheated) power, and check that the engine indications are normal. I nod again and we both push the throttles through the ‘gate’ to select reheat. A double ‘thump’ from behind me and a kick in the back tell me both reheats have lit and I glance in to check the indications – jet pipe nozzle positions and jet pipe temperature. I bring the power back a bit from full reheat to give my Number Two something to play with. On my right, Phil is doing all that I am doing and trying to stay in formation with me; others will be watching and reputations are at stake! All this has taken mere seconds but we are already accelerating through 150 knots so I start to raise the nose-wheel and at 180 knots pull back on the control column to lift-off from the runway.

As soon as I’m safely airborne, its brakes on to stop the wheels rotating (there is a lot of energy in wheels doing 190mph) and select undercarriage up even though we’re only feet above the ground. The aircraft is accelerating rapidly and because the nose-wheel retracts forwards into the airflow, it will stick down if the speed reaches 250 knots before it is locked up. As a single aircraft, there is the option, albeit an untidy one, of pitching the aircraft into a steeper climb to keep the speed down while the undercarriage locks up, but this isn’t something you can do during a formation take-off, with a wingman trying to keep station. Rapid and apparently quite ‘punchy’ undercarriage retractions immediately after liftoff are therefore the ‘norm’ for Lightning pilots.

Once the undercarriage is locked up, I nod my head again and we both cancel the reheats and continue to accelerate fairly rapidly in ‘cold’ power to the climbing speed of 450 knots. I roll gently into a right turn onto the northerly climb-out heading and, as I roll out of the turn, I wave Phil away and he breaks out in a ‘punchy’ manner to position his aircraft in tactical ‘battle’ formation about a mile to my right and line-abreast with me. The speed is now at 450 knots and we’re climbing rapidly through 2000ft with an 18 degrees nose-up attitude. This is a fairly steep climb, but if I were climbing at full power, in reheat, as we sometimes do, I would need a 30-degree nose-up attitude and close attention to the speed to prevent the aircraft from going supersonic in the climb!

We switch to the departure frequency on the radio and continue the climb, transitioning to a climbing speed of M0.9 as we pass 16,000ft. About 31⁄2 minutes after take-off (not that I’m counting) and 28 miles from the airfield, we level off at 36,000ft, cruising at M0.9 now talking with the German Ground Control Intercept (GCI) controller, who will organize and provide control for the supersonic intercepts we are going to practice.

Going supersonic

We split up under his control with Phil going off to the north to act as the target for the first intercept (he will run in at 40,000ft and at M1.1) and I am held at the southern end of the supersonic corridor. When the controller has organized sufficient range between us, we both turn in onto reciprocal headings as directed by him; our tracks will have about 10 miles lateral separation between them.

The incredible story of the Lightning interceptor that suffered a reheat fire at supersonic speed. And landed safely.

To the north, I know Phil will be engaging reheat on his engines to climb and accelerate to the target parameters, then he’ll throttle back to minimum reheat to hold the speed; the F2A will not quite hold supersonic flight in ‘cold’ (unheated) power so cannot actually ‘supercruise’ like the earlier marks of Lightning could. In my aircraft, I engage the reheats and accelerate through the transonic regime. There is a second or two of the very light buffet, the so-called ‘cobblestone’ effect at about M0.97, which could easily be mistaken for some clear air turbulence. The Machmeter winds up through M1.0 – the only indication that I am supersonic – there is no noise, no vibration, no fuss; this is what the Lightning is designed to do.

At M1.04, the altimeter height suddenly winds up by 1800ft, and indications on the other pressure instruments also jump as the pressure errors disappear when the shock wave moves back past the static vents. I’ve been supersonic on very many occasions now and there is really no thrill to it anymore. At six miles high you are not even aware, visually, that you are accelerating towards 1000mph and beyond. That said, I’m quite proud of my ‘Ten Ton Club’ membership although, now every Concorde passenger qualifies, it’s somewhat less exclusive!

Accelerating through M1.25 at 38,000ft with both engines in full reheat, I notice a slight pulsing in the power and, looking in at the engine instruments, I see that the Top Temperature Control on the No.2 (top) engine is intermittently trimming back the RPM. I throttle back to an intermediate reheat setting and, as I do so, the No.2 reheat self-cancels. I re-select reheat on the No.2 and it lights normally, we are accelerating again, perhaps it was just a ‘glitch’.

Thirty seconds later, I get an audio alarm which immediately draws my eyes to the warning panel. The Reheat Fire 2 warning is illuminated! This is just like being in the simulator except I’m not; this is for real and it isn’t good. A reheat fire warning might be spurious, but if it is real, the outcome may involve earning a Martin-Baker tie and landing by parachute rather than as planned. Many Lightnings have been lost over the years to fires.

Emergency drills

I immediately and rapidly carry out the reheat fire drill, instinctive actions drummed into me during the regular simulator training I’ve received. I throttle the No.2 engine back to idle, operate the catch on the throttle, and bring the throttle fully rearwards, closing the high-pressure fuel cock for that engine and shutting it down. I also turn off the low-pressure fuel cock and the fuel pumps and select the air-to-air refuel switch to refuel to stop fuel transferring through pipes that may be damaged.

There is no fire extinguisher for the reheat zones of the Lightning so that’s all that can be done for now. I declare a ‘Mayday’ on the GCI frequency, hoping I sound a lot calmer than I feel, and about 10 seconds later the warning light goes out. Perhaps it was a false alarm, or perhaps the fire is so bad it’s burned through the firewire! I really don’t fancy ejecting at supersonic speed and at such a high altitude, so I now start working hard to slow down and go down, in case of ejection becomes necessary.

That time a lone RAF Lightning intercepted a horde of 80 Soviet strategic bombers

The ideal ejection parameters we are told are 10,000ft and 250 knots, although, personally, I’ve always felt that 10,000ft is a long way to come down in a parachute, the harness of which may be pinching certain sensitive parts of one’s anatomy. I am now heading towards the pre-meditated ejection area, the Dummersee Lake, and its surrounding marshland, about 30 miles north of Gütersloh. If I have to eject, the aircraft will hopefully cause no harm to anything or anyone on the ground in this unpopulated area.

Meanwhile, Phil Owen in the target aircraft has got GCI to vector him onto me very slickly and he joins into close formation to give my aircraft a visual inspection. From the port side, he can see nothing amiss, perhaps it was just a spurious warning. He moves to the starboard side and finds something. “Oh yes, you’ve definitely had a fire!” he says on the radio, sounding really quite enthusiastic about his discovery. I’m glad he is pleased!

He describes what he can see; a large jagged hole about a foot in diameter on the top of the rear fuselage beneath the base of the fin. Even more worrying, he also reports what he says looks like smoke or fluid venting from the hole, and he asks me to check that I have completed the drill and turned off the fuel to the No.2 engine. I double-check and confirm that I have.

The reheat fire drill requires the pilot to hold off for a minimum of five minutes before commencing recovery. This requirement is as a result of experience gained with reheat fires earlier in the Lightning’s life and is intended to give confidence in the integrity of the tailplane control rods at the rear of the aircraft, which could easily be damaged by a fire and which might then fail, leading to loss of pitch control. By the time that I have – waited five minutes from the initial fire warning, my usable fuel (in the left wing) is getting quite low. I do not want to transfer fuel from the other tanks as I don’t know whether the fuel transfer pipes have been damaged. So I request permission to commence my recovery with the Gütersloh Air Traffic Controller we are now talking to.

His immediate response is, “From your Squadron Commander you are to remain in the ejection area for another two minutes”. I point out that my fuel is now low, I have already completed the five-minute hold-off and I’d really like to recover now. After a brief pause, during which my future is presumably being discussed on the ground, I am allowed to commence recovery. I complete a slow speed handling check on the way back to Gütersloh, slowing down to 175 knots in the landing configuration with undercarriage down, flaps down, and airbrakes out, to ascertain that I still have control at the approach speed.

‘Mayday’ recovery

I land from a straight-in visual approach, my ‘Mayday’ status ensuring I have priority over all other traffic. I fly a relatively shallow approach, a glide path angle of about 21⁄2 degrees converting to two degrees for the last part just before landing, coming down at 175 knots with that high nose-up attitude the Lightning’s 60-degree swept wings demand on the approach. Phil stays with me all the way home flying a loose formation position, keeping out of my way but keeping an eye on me, which is quite comforting; he overshoots on my right as I am about to land.

The incredible story of the Lightning interceptor that suffered a reheat fire at supersonic speed. And landed safely.

The landing is quite normal, albeit on one engine, which is no big deal in the Lightning as there is plenty of power from just one engine even without reheat. I touchdown at about 160 knots, with a slight check back on the control column to arrest the rate of descent, and then, as the nose wheel comes down onto the runway, I close the throttle to idle and reach for the brake chute handle. As it is the No.1 engine that is still running and that provides the hydraulic power to open the brake parachute doors, the chute works normally, and stopping is no drama at all. I have 600lb of usable fuel remaining, not a lot, as I pull off the runway at the far end and shut down, immediately being surrounded by fire trucks, tractors, and assorted senior officers.

Thinking that the panic is now over, I carefully confirm that everything is switched off and made safe in the cockpit. While doing this, I suddenly notice the ‘Boss’, Wg Cdr Bob Barcilon (OC 19 Squadron), frantically signaling from the ground beside the cockpit for me to get out. The firemen have positioned one of their ladders against the cockpit so, without further delay, I scramble down it to see what the fuss is all about. Moving to the rear of the aircraft, the cause of everyone’s concern becomes apparent; highly inflammable hydraulic fluid is pouring from the vicinity of the hole in the fuselage and running down inside over the hot jet pipe. The firemen are poised with hoses ready lest it all catches fire and quite bizarrely, not to say bravely, the OC Engineering Wing (a Wing Commander) is standing on the top of an ‘A’ frame ladder in his shirt sleeves with his hand in the hole, attempting to stem the flow of hydraulic fluid with what looks like a large handkerchief! I suddenly realize that, now that my part in the drama is over, my hands are beginning to shake.

The sequel

At the end of what had been a rather exciting day and once I had completed all the various paperwork that an incident of this nature generates, I went to the Officers’ Mess bar and was enjoying a well-deserved beer or two. The squadron’s Junior Engineering Officer came looking for me to explain what had happened.

For some reason, the No.2 (top) engine had lost about 25 percent of each of the four exhaust cone support fairing shrouds at the rear of the engine, and two pieces of the fairing, one quite large, had lodged in the reheat burner ring. It seemed that these lodged pieces of metal had sufficiently disturbed the reheat flame distribution to cause excessive heating and failure of the jet pipe skin. Once that had happened, burning through the aluminum alloy structure and fuselage skin was inevitable. Effectively the No.2 reheat had burned out through the side of the aircraft.

Considerable damage had been caused to the rear fuselage on the starboard side and the rudder-powered flying control unit had been damaged by the heat and was leaking fluid from the No.1 control system. In Lightning, the flying controls were entirely hydraulically powered with no manual backup. If both hydraulic systems failed, the controls went solid.

With the No.2 engine shut down and with it, the No.2 hydraulic system, the flying controls were being supported only by the No.1 system. This was losing fluid at such a rate that had I stayed airborne for much longer, I would have had a complete flying controls failure and been forced to eject, possibly at a late stage on the approach. The engineers actually calculated that I probably had only two minutes left before the controls would have failed completely. I had been very lucky indeed!

When I went back to my room later that evening there was a piece of Lightning propped against my door, a panel with a jagged hole in the middle, obviously beyond repair and looking like it had been damaged by ‘flak’. Stuck to it was a note from OC Eng Wing that simply said, “A Souvenir?!”

That time a lone RAF Lightning intercepted a horde of 80 Soviet strategic bombers

Photo by Royal Air Force, MilborneOne, Arpingstone, and Mike Freer – Touchdown-aviation and frankskarl via Wikipedia

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B 52H Crew
Cold War

Pilot-instructor from a former B-52 recalls training incidents

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“We could have been throwing up dust clouds behind us, we were so low. One wrong move and we’d have been splattered over miles of cactus,” Jay Lacklen, former B-52 Instructor Pilot

Jay Lacklen is a former B-52 pilot with 12,500 flying hours and the author of some books including, Flying the Line: An Air Force Pilot’s Journey and Flying the Line: An Air Force Pilot’s Journey Volume Two: Military Airlift Command.

Training Incidents

I had six student crews during my two years at Castle. All successfully completed the course, and there were no more hair-raising emergencies, but there were a few incidents. Two were caused by the damn fog that covers the San Joaquin Valley in the winter. I spent more than one day sitting against the wall at Base Ops with a dozen other bomber and tanker crews, waiting for the fog to lift.

The first incident came in the winter of 1978, in the middle of the course for the student crew. We had exited a low-level route in Utah shortly after midnight, and I contacted Castle on a phone patch with the Hill AFB command post to check the weather. They told me it was zero-zero (ceiling and visibility), and I couldn’t get back that night. I requested a divert base, and they came up with Minot, ND. Oh, great, I thought, Minot in the middle of the winter; just my luck.

A Minot landing would be no picnic I discovered when I called to request their weather. While Castle was fogged in, Minot had a blizzard. So we got to anticipate a landing at 0400 in the morning, after having been up for perhaps twenty hours and in the air for ten, in a blinding snowstorm. I got in the copilot’s seat and let the student pilot fly the approach. The ILS precision approach started well but soon got dicey. The pilot started getting behind due to the crosswind, and I had to take it from him halfway down the approach. This is one of those freak occurrences you need the experience to handle. I had it in this aircraft; he didn’t.

The landing required ten degrees of crosswind gear, a peculiarity of the Buff necessary because it cannot be flown wing low to fight the crosswind. Recall my lesson from Elvis in the T-41 on crosswind; now imagine the horrendously long wing of the B-52. The wing-low method is not an option. The Boeing engineers, therefore, made the landing gear rotatable. The two main landing gear trucks are normally aligned with the centerline. For a crosswind landing, the trucks rotate left or right to compensate for the wind. This means as you approach touchdown, you might be looking down the runway centerline out the side window. Your mind must convince your brain that you must touch down, looking sideways, or all hell will break loose, the plane will dive toward the downwind wing, and you’ll be headed off the runway toward the upwind wing.

The blowing snow proved very thick and seemed more so due to our speed. It would have been thick just standing on the ground, but flying through it at 120 knots made it a super-blizzard. I broke out near minimums and landed with the ten degrees of crosswind. I didn’t curse the sky gods for this one, as I had that first check ride into Nha Trang. I could handle this after years of experience, whereas the Nha Trang approach hit me before I half knew what I was doing in airplanes.

The second incident was more political than dangerous. Again, returning to Castle in the middle of the night, the fog had beat us to the runway. I saw this peculiar situation several times in thirty years of flying. The ground fog sits on the runway, about fifty feet thick. If you fly over the runway at a thousand feet, you can see the runway clearly looking down, but if you approach from a low angle, such as from a visual approach, the runway disappears as you start to flare for landing. Suddenly, you can’t see anything, as if landing on a cloud. This condition would cause a crash landing for a C-5 in Muscogee, OK, years later on an ORI and could have done the same to me. But rather than chance blindly feeling the runway, I again diverted to Mather, and this time I would not be on fire. As we climbed out from the missed approach, I called the Castle command post and told them I got down to fifty feet and went around due to fog.

The next day, after traveling back from Mather, I reported to the squadron commander’s office after an official call to get my ass into the squadron to explain my mission from the day before. I had no idea what the problem was The divert was warranted, and nothing untoward had happened. However, it seems a tanker toad pilot, a Lt. Col., had been on command post-frequency and railed to the ops commander that this bomber IP—me—had busted the two-hundred-foot minimums down to fifty feet before going around. This presumes I was in the clouds down to fifty feet, which was not the case. I had been totally visual down to fifty feet and then lost visibility in the fog. What a jerk that tanker guy had been! Anyway, that explanation got me off the hook, and I never did find out who the prick was.

Former B-52 Instructor Pilot remembers Training Incidents

The final crew incident happened on a bomb run at the La Junta bomb site when the student pilot got down to fifty feet above the ground on the radar altimeter at three hundred knots as we approached the target. We could have been throwing up dust clouds behind us, but we were so low. One wrong move, and we’d have been splattered over miles of cactus. Trapped in the jump seat with no access to throttles or yokes, I could do nothing but tersely order the pilot to start climbing or be in fear for his life, as I was of mine.

Photo by Senior Airman J.T. Armstrong / U.S. Air Force

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B 52 on takeoff with bombs
Cold War

Former B-52 pilot shares near-death experiences

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“The B-52 suddenly snapped nose down ten degrees, a horrendous and panic-inducing loss of control that promised to kill us all in about ten seconds as the moonlit pine forest below us filled the windscreen and rushed toward us,” Jay Lacklen, former B-52 pilot

Jay Lacklen is a former B-52 pilot with 12,500 flying hours and the author of two books, Flying the Line: An Air Force Pilot’s Journey and Flying the Line: An Air Force Pilot’s Journey Volume Two: Military Airlift Command. He’s working on the last book of the trilogy.

Near-Death Experiences

Around the time my two pilot training IPs died in aircraft crashes, I nearly did, too—twice.

The first episode took place on a routine takeoff from Loring […]. As we rolled down the runway, we barely made our acceleration check, a certain speed that must be reached by a certain elapsed time, or the takeoff must be aborted in order to stop in the remaining runway.

This alarmed me because we usually beat the time easily. After eating tip eight thousand feet of the eleven-thousand-foot runway, we remained thirty knots below rotation speed and were barely accelerating. Something was terribly wrong. I had pulled several of the throttles back slightly to match the prescribed takeoff power setting, but I now shoved all of them to the firewall. At least they’d know we gave it everything we had if we didn’t make it.

I looked down the remaining runway at the pine forest off the end, where it seemed we were about to meet a fiery and apocalyptic end. At this point, my mind began going haywire. Viewing the remaining three thousand feet of runway, I thought, in rising panic, that I could easily stop my car in this distance and perhaps I should try to abort on the runway. Fortunately, I also recalled an imperative John, my Castle IP had impressed on me: “When in doubt, continue the takeoff.” John’s advice saved us because if I had as much as touched the brakes, we’d have died horribly in that pine forest.

As the end of the runway approached, I experienced my life flashing before my eyes — in an odd form. I pictured my family members and Boonie Bill’s dogs for some crazy reason and marveled, almost serenely, that I now knew where I would die—right off the end of this runway. At the last possible second, I pulled the yoke back hard into my stomach, not knowing if the plane had enough airspeed to respond. It did. We blew all the dust off the overrun and limped into the air barely above the treetops. I briefly considered ordering the crew to bail out since I still didn’t know what was wrong or if we could gain airspeed and stay airborne […]. But I realized the navigators, with downward ejection seats, did not have enough altitude for a successful escape. No, we would all make it or not, unless we approached a stall. At that point, I’d have to try to save the four of us upstairs, at least, and order the bailout.

Former BUFF driver shares Near-Death Experiences he had as B-52 pilot

When we turned onto the seventeen-mile arc as per the departure procedure, we were only 2,500 feet above the terrain. We should have been at ten thousand. The copilot’s eyes were wide as saucers when I dared to look at him. We had both thoughts we were dead. I aborted the mission, burned down my fuel to the maximum for landing, and put it on the deck with a demand for maintenance to meet us at the parking spot.

Upon later inspection, it turned out maintenance had mistakenly trimmed the four outboard engines to produce about 5% less than their full power. We might have caught this, but we normally concentrated on the two center-engine instruments that showed proper settings. The reduced outboard engine thrust was just sufficient to make our acceleration check but not enough to make our rotation speed before the end of the runway. Fortunately, the engines provided just enough power to save our skins.

That night, I visited the pizza restaurant not quite a mile off the end of the runway and just off the extended centerline. I sat down at the bat in my flight suit, but before I could speak, the owner exclaimed loudly to me that some idiot pilot almost tore the roof off the place that morning. I told him, yes, I know, and I knew exactly who that idiot was.

The second episode happened on a night low level over South Carolina. Things started on a shaky note. As the crew bus pulled up to the aircraft, I noticed the Deputy Commander for Maintenance (DCM) standing in front of the plane. This meant he would probably try to talk me into taking some maintenance problems they couldn’t fix. Sure enough, that is what he did.

He explained the plane had experienced runaway nose-up trim, where pitch controls ran to the upper limit, un-commanded, resulting in a sharp aircraft pitch-up while low level on its previous mission. He said they had replaced every part they could think of, but they never discovered what the problem had been, a classic C&D (could not duplicate) write-up. At any rate, would I take the plane? I thought a pitch-up would not be catastrophic, even low level. Besides, they had probably fixed the problem, since they could not duplicate it. Sure, I said, we’ll take it.

The B-52 has a large, striped trim wheel by the aircraft commander’s right knee to make it obvious when the wheel is turning and the trim control device is running. The wheel often rotates steadily during configuration changes, such as putting down the flaps or landing gear. Having been warned that the trim flight controls might incorrectly run to the full nose-up position, causing the plane to suddenly climb steeply, as it had before, I watched that wheel for unanticipated motion throughout the thirty minutes of the low-level run and on the first simulated bomb run. Nothing unusual happened. I mentally declared the problem solved, relieved to be done with it. I gave the copilot the plane for a climbing turn to the racetrack pattern used to set up for a second bomb run.

As the aircraft climbed from five hundred to eight hundred feet above the ground, I later vaguely recalled the trim wheel moving steadily. This was not unusual since we were slowing and climbing, and that would require a trim change. I did not notice that the trim was running in the wrong direction, nose down, instead of the proper nose up. As the copilot leveled off at eight hundred feet, and I was busy reviewing my low-level chart, the aircraft suddenly snapped nose down ten degrees, a horrendous and panic-inducing loss of control that promised to kill us all in about ten seconds as the moonlit pine forest below us filled the windscreen and rushed toward us.

Reflexively, I grabbed the yoke and pulled, but nothing happened. It felt as if someone had poured concrete on it; it would not budge. That is because the copilot had already pulled the yoke to the full nose-up position and it could not move any farther. The low-level autopilot mode, which approximates power steering in a car, had tried to compensate for runaway nose-down trim. When it could no longer cope with the severe out-of-trim condition, it abruptly disconnected, allowing the out out-of-trim condition to take effect and allowing the nose to drop precipitously. The horizontal stabilizer on the tail, having trimmed the full nose down, could not be overcome by the relatively less effective elevator controls that the copilot had already pulled to the full-up position […].

From the deck below, the navigators fairly screamed in the interphone, demanding to know what was wrong. They needed four hundred feet above the ground and level flight to get one swing in their parachute before they would hit the ground. We were now diving into the ground and closing on four hundred feet. By my command or not, they would have to eject shortly to save themselves. I tried to get my index finger to the interphone toggle on the yoke but could not manage it because I was pulling so hard on the immovable yoke. Even if I had been able to transmit, I couldn’t have told them anything, because I didn’t know what was wrong. Not knowing the copilot had already pulled the yoke to the full-up position, I tried to grasp why the yoke would not move. Within a few seconds, I’d have to give the bailout command.

Fortunately, the copilot recognized that the trim was probably the problem since he was flying the aircraft when it ran away. He immediately began running his trim button nose up against the runaway nose-down command from the trim system. Slowly, he managed to overcome the erroneous command and raise the trim to a slight nose-up position. As the aircraft nose rose above the horizon, I disconnected the automatic trim system for the remainder of the flight. From then on, I would trim manually with the trim wheel by my knee. Fool me once, shame on you.

Having saved our bacon, the co-pilot now hit the panic button and started shouting, “Mayday, mayday, mayday!” on the air traffic control frequency. I tried to stop him because I knew, a few seconds later, I realized what had happened and knew we were OK once I killed the trim system.

Unfortunately, every aircraft and air traffic controller for a hundred miles started asking us about our situation. I couldn’t just say, “Oh, never remind,” so I explained we had suffered a runaway trim situation low level but we had now disconnected the system and seemed to be OK. Several aircraft continued to query us, apparently indignant that we had invoked the mayday distress code if we didn’t need help. I explained that the call was justified but that we had regained control, so no aid would be required. This would be the only “mayday” call I heard in thirty-three years of flying, and my aircraft made it.

BUFF driver explains how it was flying the B-52 on a low level training sortie

I called Loring on HF radio and told the command post that the aircraft stood us on our nose, low level, but we seemed to have it under control and were aborting the mission and RTB-ing (returning to base). The DCM got to meet us that morning for our landing at 0400 to apologize for the aircraft he gave us. I’m sure he had the wing commander’s footprint on his ass.

Photo by U.S. Air Force

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B 52 low level training
Cold War

The B-52 bomber that crashed into Hunt’s Mesa during a low-level training sortie

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“As the plane leveled off, Hunt’s Mesa suddenly appeared above the aircraft on the crew’s radar scopes that displayed the plane’s position well below the mesa rim. The pilot firewalled the engines and started a steep climb to clear the ridge, but the effort proved too late,” Jay Lacklen, former B-52 pilot

Jay Lacklen is a former B-52 pilot with 12,500 flying hours and the author of two books, Flying the Line: An Air Force Pilot’s Journey and Flying the Line: An Air Force Pilot’s Journey Volume Two: Military Airlift Command. He’s working on the last book of the trilogy.

Death Spiral

The B-52 bomber, call sign Swoon 52, swept over the dark desert landscape in a descent into the Holbrook low-level route that runs through Monument Valley, Arizona. The visibility on this October night in 1984 was acceptable, but with light snow falling that made judging distances and terrain elevations more difficult on the plane’s infrared radar scopes.

The plane dropped steeply down to the valley floor to simulate the primary mission to penetrate the Soviet Union and drop nuclear weapons on Russian military targets. Their newly assigned wing operations commander, Col. Bill Ivy, observed the crew and mission from the pilot jump seat. While he wore a parachute, he alone among the crew did not have a ballistic ejection seat should a bailout become necessary, a factor that would doom him.

In the final part of the aircraft’s descent, the infrared scopes ineffectively painted only ground returns due to the steep angle at which it approached the terrain. Undetected, the broad, flat rock formation of Hunt’s Mesa lurked a short distance away.

As the plane approached the ridge, Col. Ivy could not have anticipated that he would very shortly realize he was about to die and would have about eight seconds to contemplate his fate.

The crew had concentrated on flying down to their prescribed route altitude of five hundred feet above the ground but had done so in the valley leading to the rock formation. As the plane leveled off, Hunt’s Mesa suddenly appeared above the aircraft on the crew’s radar scopes displaying the plane’s position well below the mesa rim. The pilot firewalled the engines and started a steep climb to clear the ridge, but the effort proved too late. The other crew positions on the aircraft might have had an inkling of danger from the sudden application of full power, but more likely they knew nothing until the right wing tip caught the mesa rim.

I have not had access to the accident investigation report, so I must guess at the final seconds of Swoon 52.

Had an observer been standing on the Hunt’s Mesa ridgeline, there would have been little warning that disaster was on the way. The B-52 would have approached at three hundred mph below the level of the mesa. The sound of aircraft engines would arrive only slightly before the aircraft from the snowy darkness below. With only a faint whine as the plane neared, the roar of eight engines would have risen rapidly as the plane climbed desperately to clear the ridge.

Suddenly, the plane would have appeared, engines screaming, in a slight right bank with its right-wing angling down. As it crossed the ridge, the right wing tip and outboard engine pod that held engines #7 and #8 would strike the mesa, tearing them from the wing. This would throw the plane into a right corkscrewing death spiral that would end 3,600 feet away and about eight seconds later, where it would strike the top of the rock formation, cartwheel across the mesa, explode, and cascade fiery debris into a ravine on the far side of the mesa. A salvage team sent later to recover usable plane parts from the area reported no usable parts remaining, so violently had the aircraft been torn apart in the crash.

Many times in the years since, I have mentally ridden that eight-second aircraft death spiral with Bill Ivy, my fellow Castle B-52 instructor. I heard the accident report early the next morning on TV, which caused me to leap from my couch in Delaware in disbelief.

Immediately after the initial impact concussion tore off the right wing tip and two outboard engines, the aircraft would have accelerated its right turn, since the left-wing would now be producing far more lift than the shortened right-wing and would have four engines at power instead of the two remaining on the right-wing. Because the plane had been on a fairly steep upward trajectory, it would have continued to rise briefly as the spiral began. I estimate the left wing struck the mesa on its second revolution and began the catastrophic cartwheel disintegration.

The pilot would have instinctively applied full left-turn controls with the wing spoilers in an attempt to counter the hard right rotation that had begun. The aircraft would have continued to roll toward ninety degrees of the bank despite the pilot’s efforts and, within about two seconds, he would have mentally acknowledged the hopelessness of his task and commenced the ejection sequence.

A reported copilot account said immediately after ridge impact, he first looked at the fireball on the right wing and then turned to see the pilot’s ejection seat traveling up the rails and out of the plane in seeming slow motion. Before ejecting, the copilot reported Col. Ivy had begun a mad scramble to get out of the aircraft.

All six crewmembers with ejection seats escaped the aircraft, and five survived. The gunner bled to death on the mesa, as his leg was severed during ejection. Ivy went down with the aircraft.

The navigators should not have survived since they required four hundred feet of ground clearance and level flight to have one swing in their parachute before hitting the ground. However, it appears everyone ejected as the plane neared or passed ninety degrees right bank, allowing the nav team a successful trajectory from the aircraft. The radar navigator received severe facial burns from the aircraft’s initial impact fireball and explosion, so closely before the impact did he eject.

Ivy had no time to pull himself out of a pilot’s overhead hatch opening, considering the instability of a spiraling aircraft, whose centrifugal force would have pressed him against the left wall of the crew compartment and the tornado-force winds beyond the hatch.

If the aircraft had been stable and at altitude, he could have clambered down the ladder to the lower compartment and leaped from a navigator’s hatch more easily than transiting an upper hatch, but there was no time and no altitude.

I imagine Ivy saw vividly what was coming and finally closed his eyes to accept death in serenity.

Former BUFF driver tells the story of the B-52 flyby he performed to salute his mother

The sweet chariot swung low to carry Bill home.

Photo by U.S. Air Force

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SR 71s
Cold War

Retired members of the SR-71 Blackbird crew share their most interesting memories

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“You haven’t been lost till you’ve been lost at Mach 3 because for every minute that you don’t know where you are, you’re 35 miles further away from where you think you’re supposed to be!,” Frank Stampf, former SR-71 Blackbird RSO

The following stories appear in John Altson’s book The Black Line.

Four Concurrent Emergencies on Landing

Blackbird pilot Lieutenant Colonel Bredette (BC) Thomas welcomed an assignment that would not require refueling because SR-71 air refueling was challenging and dangerous. A 45-minute flight over North Korea followed by a short trip back to Okinawa should have been simple. He had been an SR-71 pilot for nearly a year when he began his first tour in Okinawa.

In the seas close to the Okinawa base, Russian and Chinese trawlers kept watch over all US flights. It was determined that the flight would take place under radio silence and with a higher-than-normal load of 65,000 pounds of fuel due to the nature of this specific mission.

Former SR-71 Blackbird crew members share their most interesting stories

After experiencing a series of uncontrollable “unstarts” due to an engine inlet issue, BC was forced to abort the mission. He returned to Okinawa after only 20 minutes, carrying 15,000 pounds of fuel. BC’s issues were only getting started. The crew in charge of maintaining the hangar did not have time to wipe up the fuel slick on the floor since he returned to Okinawa considerably sooner than anticipated.

An SR-71 always lands with an eleven-degree nose-high attitude, lowers its nose for a soft landing, and then opens its drag parachute. Nevertheless, on this specific landing, the plane’s nose dropped, it began to veer left and right, and the right generator was destroyed. The fact that BC arrived much earlier than expected made things even harder, as the personnel ran out of time to remove the “arresting cable” off the runway. BC attempted to slow down but was unsuccessful; he blew out two of the right tires and crossed over the arresting cable.

It was customary to enter the hangar while the engines were still running and then turn them off. He entered the hangar at three miles per hour and was unable to stop the aircraft due to the oil slick. He tried the brakes, but was unsuccessful. BC was given two seconds to control the aircraft and make the decision regarding whether or not to turn off the engines. The aircraft came to a safe stop after he made a sharp right turn.

Colonel Frank Stampf’s most interesting story

The most intriguing story told by Colonel Frank Stampf, SR-71 RSO (Reconnaissance Systems Officer), involved a flight from Okinawa. The first-night operational mission that Frank and his pilot Gil Bertelson were scheduled to fly over the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) was a “bow-tie” (double loop) mission over the Korean peninsula that was planned to make several passes over the DMZ. They had just finished their obligatory ten to twelve months of crew training.

They were traveling at Mach 3 on the east side of the peninsula during a pitch-black, moonless night. Gil pointed to what looked like thousands of lights below and steered the aircraft into a 33-degree bank to the right. Given that the Korean peninsula is typically completely dark, this was extremely unusual. Although the lights were completely mysterious and disconcerting to a rookie crew flying dangerously close to some hostile zone, the navigation systems seemed to be functioning properly.

After successfully completing the mission, landing the aircraft, and receiving a debriefing from the intelligence officers, they learned that what they had actually seen was a large number of tiny Korean fishing vessels—thousands of sampans with their lanterns lit, giving the impression of a sprawling city—which was NOT what they were supposed to have seen at that particular time.

You haven’t been lost until you’ve been lost at Mach 3, as Frank was known to his SR-71 squadron mates for saying. He also developed the following corollary to the quotation: “…because for every minute that you don’t know where you are, you’re 35 miles further away from where you think you’re supposed to be!”

The Black Line is available to order here.

Photo by Lockheed Martin and U.S. Air Force

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BC Jay at Bodo
Cold War

Belmont 86 is the SR-71 that made an emergency landing in Norway after spying over Murmansk

by Till Daisd
written by Till Daisd

“My call sign was ‘Belmont 86’ and my transmissions to approach control were something like this: ‘Bodø Approach, Belmont 86, six-zero miles west, declaring an in-flight emergency, request straight-in approach to land on runway zero seven.’ ‘Belmont 86, say aircraft type, nature of emergency, souls-on-board, and fuel remaining.’ ‘Bodø Approach, Belmont 86, US Air Force Tactical, engine problem, 2 souls, zero plus four-five fuel-on-board.’ ‘Belmont 86, say again aircraft type.’ ‘Bodø Approach, Belmont 86, US Air Force Tactical.’ ‘Belmont 86, I do not understand your aircraft type,’” Bredette (BC) Thomas, SR-71 pilot

In the following post, Lieutenant Colonel Bredette (BC) Thomas tells the story of the infamous SR-71 Emergency Landing in Norway. The Blackbird was crewed by BC Thomas himself and Lieutenant Colonel Jay Reid (Reconnaissance Systems Officer or RSO).

This story originally appeared on Tyler Rogoway’s website Foxtrotalpha.Jalopnik.com and then in John Altson’s book The Black Line.

That Time an SR-71 Made an Emergency Landing in Norway

On August 13, 1981, Jay Reid and I made the first SR-71 landing in Continental Europe. It was virtually unannounced – and not particularly welcomed.

The Mission

Before establishing a continuous SR-71 presence in Europe in 1982 (at RAF Mildenhall, England), the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, the responsible headquarters for all SR-71 operational flights, was sometimes tasked to fly a particularly important higher-headquarters mission from Beale AFB in California to the Soviet Union and back.

The purpose was to photograph (with either film or radar) and collect electronic data in and around the Soviet Naval facility at Murmansk, located on the Kola Peninsula in the Barents Sea above the Arctic Circle, in the extreme northwest portion of the Soviet Union, north of Norway and east of Finland.

We required information about their air-defense electronic warfare capabilities and specifically, their antiaircraft surface-to-air (SAM) missile systems. Murmansk was a strategic nuclear submarine base and maintenance facility, and since knowing the disposition of all nuclear threats was vital for the security of the United States, Murmansk was one of our most significant reconnaissance objectives.

My Reconnaissance Systems Officer (RSO), Jay Reid, and I were assigned this mission scheduled for Wednesday, August 12, 1981, in SR-71 aircraft #964.

We reported for the flight at 7:00 p.m., checked the weather and last-minute changes to the mission requirements, updated the intelligence briefing, met with the mobile crew and SR-71 crew chief, ate a meal of steak and eggs, donned our space suits, conducted an aircraft preflight, and were ready for a 9:47 p.m. takeoff.

The flight profile called for a 45,000-pound takeoff fuel load; a rendezvous with two tankers over Idaho to fill our tanks; acceleration to Mach 3+ (2,000 mph) while cruise-climbing to 80,000 feet; descending to 26,000 feet to meet more tankers over Goose Bay, Labrador; crossing the Atlantic Ocean just south of Greenland and Iceland at Mach 3 to a third refueling over the North Sea, northeast of Scotland.

The next acceleration was to Mach 3.25 to penetrate the Soviet air defense region around Murmansk. Passing west of Norway, then north of Finland, we headed toward the Soviet coast by flying inbound from a point in the Barents Sea and approaching the landmass at Murmansk directly at 90 degrees head-on.

There is no doubt that our presence was heralded to Soviet personnel on the ground by the sweet (and rather loud) sound of freedom: the distinctive double-sonic boom of the 2,200-mile-per-hour SR-71.

That knowledge would always give us a certain inward sense of pride; not in ourselves altogether, but pride in the aircraft, the engineers and designers who built her, the maintenance people who made her safe to fly, and the faithful tanker crews who were always there when we needed fuel. All of these support personnel were vital for any successful mission.

The Soviet Union claimed their sovereign territory extended 100 nautical miles from their landmass. The international norm is 12 miles. Heading inbound, we turned so that we flew within 12.5 miles of the Soviet coast in a 30-degree right-banked turn while obtaining radar imagery (or photographs) and recording Soviet electronic countermeasures.

This somewhat provocative technique was trolling: we stimulated the Soviet defenses, causing their radios and radar to bristle with electronic information, thus impelling them to reveal telltale electromagnetic signatures indicating the type of equipment, modes of operation, and limits. There were sometimes other American assets offshore, but within radio range, which also collected electronic transmissions.

The story of Belmont 86, the SR-71 that made an emergency landing in Norway after spying over Murmansk
B. C. Thomas and Jay Reid

After departing the “take area,” the plan was to refuel again over the North Sea, accelerate to Mach 3, refuel for a fifth time over Goose Bay, then fly Mach 3 thereafter to Beale AFB. We planned to land at 8:15 am on August 13 after 10.5 hours of very intense flying.

We were operating a long distance from home base, the mission was deemed vital, and no crew member ever wanted to abort a flight. Any mission deviation could lead easily to an international incident, would be scrutinized by the highest National Command Authority, and possibly result in our names appearing in every major newspaper in the world.

We certainly felt this responsibility but had the utmost faith in our preparation, training, and the talent and dedication of all our support branches.

The Emergency

After transiting Murmansk and while hooked up with the tankers during the fourth refueling, I saw a flicker of the Master Warning light.

Jay Reid announced the light at the same time that I saw it in my peripheral vision. I disconnected from the tanker’s boom and maneuvered back to the pre-contact position. Our indication was the illumination of the left-engine oil supply low-quantity red warning light. From our training and experience with the aircraft emergency checklists, we knew immediately that this required that we “land as soon as possible.”

Join this SR-71 Blackbird driver for a top secret recoinnassance mission over North Korea
A Boeing KC-135Q Stratotanker refueling an SR-71

The mandate to land immediately was borne out of the long experience with malfunctions: the type that would crash the airplane if another single system failed.

The natural tendency for military aircrews is to complete the mission if humanly possible. To counter this inclination, the Wing Commander had designated certain emergencies sufficiently critical to require immediate landing. This was one of those emergencies.

Our mission planning and alternate airfield study had prepared us to know quickly where to fly if an emergency required immediate landing. Some military intelligence might limit our choice of a suitable landing field, depending on the political situation, and of course, the weather was always a major consideration.

Jay and I quickly agreed that recovery at the joint civilian/military airbase at Bodø (pronounced: “Buddha”), located on the Norwegian coast a few miles above the Arctic Circle, was best. We were about 60 miles away.

The Arrival

We wasted no time notifying the tanker crews of our decision to land. They set up a holding pattern in international airspace to assist in refueling, or to be our radio­-relay if necessary. Their standing orders were to await our call to release them, presumably after our safe landing.

The story of Belmont 86, the SR-71 that made an emergency landing in Norway after spying over Murmansk

While Jay was transmitting our mandatory abort reports via high-frequency, long-range radio, I contacted Norwegian Approach Control. Our orders were not to broadcast that we were flying an SR-71, but rather give the general type as “U.S. Air Force Tactical,” which really meant nothing to a controller concerned about arranging for emergency equipment and notifying proper authorities of our emergency condition.

My call sign was “Belmont 86” and my transmissions to approach control were something like this:

“Bodø Approach, Belmont 86, six-zero miles west, declaring an in-flight emergency, request straight-in approach to land on runway zero seven.”

“Belmont 86, say aircraft type, nature of the emergency, souls-on-board, and fuel remaining.”

“Bodø Approach, Belmont 86, US Air Force Tactical, an engine problem, 2 souls, zero plus four-five fuel-on-board.”

“Belmont 86, say again aircraft type.”

“Bodø Approach, Belmont 86, US Air Force Tactical.”

“Belmont 86, I do not understand your aircraft type.”

“This is Belmont 86, we will land in approximately 10 minutes and I will deploy 3 drag parachutes: 2 small and one 40-foot chute. I will jettison all three on the runway. I don’t have time now to talk.”

We were cleared to land with nothing more said. We touched down at Bodø on August 13 at 1:12 p.m. Norwegian time after a total flight of 6.4 hours.

When we were on a short-final approach, tower controllers had no problem identifying our aircraft type, and immediately sent out notifications which, we learned later, included the local press.

What could we expect? What kind of reception would the Norwegians give us and would the airplane be secure, especially considering that we had on-board highly classified images and electronic recordings from Murmansk?

The Reception

I asked for and was given taxi directions to the Norwegian military ramp where I could see some friendly-looking F-104s, the front-line NATO fighter aircraft. After I shut down the engines and we opened our canopies, the first person to greet us was a Norwegian military pilot who said: “Welcome, do you know Bill Groninger?”

Bill Groninger was a fellow SR-71 pilot who was a USAF instructor pilot before he was chosen for the SR-71 program. The Norwegian pilot was his student. We learned that many Norwegian fighter pilots received their initial training in the USA. We definitely were among friends!

We were quickly introduced to General Olav Aamoth, the Wing Commander at Bodø. He asked for any special requirements and I requested full-time guards be placed on the aircraft with only myself and Jay Reid authorized to admit personnel to the plane. He agreed and assured us that the aircraft would be guarded continuously. I then asked for a secure phone to call the Command Post at Beale AFB.

The story of Belmont 86, the SR-71 that made an emergency landing in Norway after spying over Murmansk
Belmont 86 with nacelles covered for weather protection

General Aamoth drove us to an underground labyrinth of tunnels carved into the side of a mountain, containing maintenance shops and aircraft. He directed me to a telephone within his Command Center.

I called the 9SRW Commander, and told him the time of the abort and that operations were normal up to the emergency, thus relaying that we had the reconnaissance data on board. This information was needed to arrange for the proper retrieval of the mission materials.

We briefly discussed the nature of the emergency, and I assured him that the aircraft was safe. He said that we were to stay there until the aircraft was repaired, which would probably take three days. The 9SRW had already started a recall for the support personnel necessary for the recovery of the SR-71.

General Aamoth seemed unusually concerned, as he insisted that a Norwegian officer physically be present with us until we left. He introduced us to an F-104 pilot, 1 Lt Roar Strand, who would help us with anything we might require. He was a very pleasant guy, and I kind of felt sorry for him because I was sure he had better things to do than to “mind” us for 3-4 days.

Roar Strand was very accommodating. After all the immediate activities associated with bedding down the aircraft were accomplished, he took Jay and me to his apartment, where we met his beautiful girlfriend, then to a restaurant in downtown Bodø where we spent a pleasant evening.

Roar accompanied us to the transient quarters to sleep in the same room with Jay and me. Early the next morning, he went with us to a military dining hall for breakfast. It was there that I got my first real surprise of the trip: the only food presented was about four types of fish soup, all of which, to this unaccustomed American, smelled terrible, especially so early in the morning. I asked if any cold cereal was available and thankfully, there was. Corn flakes. Espresso coffee completed the fare.

General Aamoth joined us and with him was the American Air attache to Norway who had just flown in from Oslo specifically to see us. I knew then that this visit was attracting more attention than any of us needed or wanted. He asked about the emergency, the condition of the airplane, and wanted to know if anything unusual or unpleasant had happened to us.

I assured him that we were fine and that recoveries such as this one were well planned, and the maintenance team would probably be here that day or the next. We did not anticipate any logistical problems as this type of activity was performed often, usually without help from other local organizations, and the Norwegians were taking extra care to assure that we were not contacted or hindered.

Recovery Operations

The rest of the day was devoted to making preparations for the maintenance recovery team from Beale AFB. General Aamoth, to my surprise, stated specifically that he did not want any talk or outward expression of anything clandestine (not that we would anyway.)

More than once, he made the explicit statement that when we landed, he considered us to be a NATO-allied aircraft in distress and that military courtesy and professional consideration meant that we were to be afforded the support necessary to see us on our way and that he did not want any mention of reconnaissance activity or publicity.

The story of Belmont 86, the SR-71 that made an emergency landing in Norway after spying over Murmansk
Thomas and Reid perform preflight checks

It was way too late for the admonition concerning publicity, however.

Virtually every newspaper in Norway had news of a “Spy Plane” landing at Bodø splashed across its front page. Newspapers in the USA also had the story. The reports generally said that it was the highest-flying and fastest airplane in the world, and opined on what type of “spying” we were doing.

Jay and I did not like the publicity but were relieved that no newspapers published our pictures or names. None of us flying reconnaissance missions wanted to be publicly identified while we were engaged in these activities.

Our missions were highly classified, and no good could ever come from talking to reporters about anything associated with our reconnaissance flights.

The next day, August 15, a KC-135Q from Beale AFB arrived carrying our special fuel for the SR-71; the deployment commander, Lt Col Randy Hertzog, who was also the Commander of the 1st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron (1SRS); and the maintenance crew plus civilian technical representatives from Lockheed.

The recovery plan written by the 9SRW stated that in foreign stations, the recovery team would all wear civilian clothes so as not to disclose who was military. This did not sit well with General Aamoth! He told me to tell Col. Hertzog to have all military personnel wear military uniforms.

I did not know why he would issue such an order, but I complied. The military team dutifully returned to the KC-135 and changed into uniforms.

Over the next two days, the maintenance team ran into several problems repairing the aircraft. We had parts flown in from various sources. A spare “engine start cart,” a machine containing 2 Buick Wildcat engines in tandem and specifically designed to mechanically rotate the SR-71 engines for starting, was flown in by C-130. On the third day, our aircraft was repaired and made ready for takeoff.

Since preparing the SR-71 for a supersonic (Mach 3) flight would have taken more equipment and time, we elected to fly the subsonic directly to RAF Mildenhall, England, from which the SR-71 had conducted operations previously. We would fly in formation with the KC-135Q, which had landed at Bodø for our support 2 days earlier.

Departure

The maintenance crew performed outstandingly and we were ready to depart on Sunday, August 16. Preflight preparations for Jay and me were smooth, except our first engine-start attempt failed. The start cart could not, observing normal rpm and torque limits, achieve the required aircraft engine speed for a safe start.

On the second attempt, the crew chief, Clarence “Skip” Hosler, valiantly ignored the cart rpm/torque limits and informed me on inter-phone that this would be the last attempt. He later told me that the connecting rod glowed red-hot just before the aircraft engine reached the start rpm.

We took off at 1:42 p.m. It was the roughest takeoff I ever made in an SR-71. The runway was smooth to sight, but owing to the very long, slender, and flexible fore-body of the SR-71 (where the nose wheel is located) and the distance from the nose wheels to the main landing gear (42 feet), the slight undulating wavelike runway set up a vertical motion in the cockpit which amplified as we accelerated for takeoff.

The story of Belmont 86, the SR-71 that made an emergency landing in Norway after spying over Murmansk
SR-71 Blackbird taxis out of chocks

It was getting so bad by the time we achieved rotation speed (180 knots) that I was very concerned that something might break before liftoff (210 knots). The acceleration of the SR-71 was quick and I was able to raise the nose before the up-and-down oscillation became traumatic. With the gear up, everything returned to normal. We rendezvoused with our tanker for a planned refueling to augment our takeoff fuel, and landed at 2:53 p.m. local time in England, for a flight of 2.2 hours.

With a million members of the Polish Solidarity movement having gone on strike on 7 August, and mounting tension between Communist state officials and the rest of the Polish population, Strategic Air Command (SAC) directed that upon arrival, we would set up a deployment base at RAF Mildenhall and conduct several additional operational missions before returning home.

Jerry Glasser and Mac Hornbaker were sent from Beale AFB to meet us when we arrived from Norway and they flew an operational mission a few days later. We were ordered to stay at RAF Mildenhall until relieved, so Jay and I also flew another operational mission after Jerry and Mac. When Rich Young and Ed Bethart arrived as our replacements, we departed for Beale AFB on September 2.

What started out for us as a 10.5-hour, round-robin mission, California to the Soviet Union and back, turned into a 21-day marathon of SR-71 missions, involving 6 SR-71 aircrew members, a host of maintenance and support personnel, and a true adventure for us all.

Along the way, we made some very special friends.

Afterward

After I retired from the US Air Force and our SR-71 reconnaissance activities were no longer classified, I contacted General Aamoth. He also retired from the military after being Chief of Staff for the Norwegian Air Force from 1985 through 1991.

I asked him about his reluctance to have our military personnel wear civilian clothes and why he admonished us not to do or say anything that would identify our mission as being reconnaissance. He told me a very interesting story.

On May 1, 1960, General Aamoth was a fighter pilot (then a Lieutenant) in the Norwegian Air Force stationed at Bodø. That was the day that Francis Gary Powers was shot down flying a CIA U-2 aircraft over the Soviet Union. Although Powers had taken off from Pakistan, his intended landing base was Bodø, the same Norwegian base where I landed.

Furthermore, the then-commander of Bodø knew about the U-2 and that it was to land at his home base; however, neither the Norwegian Prime Minister nor the Chief of the Norwegian Air Force knew anything about it. To make matters much worse, the Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, threatened to “nuke Bodø” for “cooperating” with the United States in the “U-2 Affair.” After an investigation, the Military Commander was summarily fired.

General Aamoth saw a very stark parallel to that story when we landed. He told me that he was sitting in his office when we were on the final approach. The airfield tower controller telephoned and told him to look out his window to see what aircraft was landing at his field asking to be parked on his military airport apron.

I now understand General Aamoth’s concern!

As of 2016, Roar Strand is still an active pilot, flying worldwide for Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). He has homes in Norway and France and is married to Maryann, the girlfriend I met at his apartment in 1981. They are the proud parents of 3 and are also grandparents.

The story of Belmont 86, the SR-71 that made an emergency landing in Norway after spying over Murmansk
SR-71 #964 at Mildenhall, UK

As for SR-71 aircraft #964, a veritable workhorse for the SR-71 program, it is displayed at the Strategic Air and Space Museum (formerly the SAC Museum) near Omaha, Nebraska.

John Morgan (RSO) and I had an SR-71 emergency on April 5, 1984, in aircraft #974, and landed again at Bodø. General Aamoth was there to meet me a second time. He was then a Major General and Commander of Tactical Air Forces North. I told him that I really didn’t mean to do it a second time! There was minimum publicity and we departed within 2 days. By then, we were operating out of RAF Mildenhall and the logistical support was much closer and quicker than in 1981.

The SR-71 (#974) in which I landed at Bodø the second time was the first SR-71 to fly combat missions in the Vietnam War. It was also the last Blackbird to crash. While flying at Mach 3 over the Philippine Sea on April 21, 1989, her left engine seized causing shrapnel to explode into critical hydraulic lines and subsequently rendering the flight controls completely inoperative. The crew, Dan House (pilot), and Blair Bozek (RSO) ejected safely and were recovered by Filipino fishermen.

By May 10, 1989, US Navy and Air Force personnel had recovered the wreckage from 200 feet below the ocean surface and returned her to Okinawa for disposal.

The Black Line is available to order here.

Photo by U.S. Air Force, www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/bodo.html and Eric Simonsen via www.wvi.com/~sr71webmaster/bodo.html

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