Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage: The Declassified Stories of Cold War Reconnaissance Flights and the Men Who Flew Them

by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, R. Cargill Hall (Foreword by)

Overview

The outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 took the American military by surprise. Rushing to respond, the US and its allies developed a selective overflight program to gather intelligence. Silent Warriors, Incredible Courage is a history of the Cold War overflights of the Soviet Union, its allies, and the People's Republic of China, based on extensive interviews with dozens of pilots who flew these dangerous missions.

In 1954 the number of flights expanded, and the highly classified SENSINT program was born. Soon, American RB-45C, RB-47E/H, RF-100s, and various versions of the RB-57 were in the air on an almost constant basis, providing the president and military leadership with hard facts about enemy capabilities and intentions. Eventually the SENSINT program was replaced by the high-flying U-2 spy plane. The U-2 overflights removed the mysteries of Soviet military power. These flights remained active until 1960 when a U-2 was shot down by Russian missiles, leading to the end of the program. Shortly thereafter planes were replaced by spy satellites.

The overflights were so highly classified that no one, planner or participant, was allowed to talk about them—and no one did, until the overflight program and its pictorial record was declassified in the 1990s. Through extensive research of existing literature on the overflights and interviews conducted by Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, this book reveals the story of the entire overflight program through the eyes of the pilots and crew who flew the planes. Samuel's account tells the stories of American heroes who risked their lives—and sometimes lost them—to protect their country.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496822819
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	02/19/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	312
Sales rank:	487,576
File size:	21 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Wolfgang W. E. Samuel, Colonel, US Air Force (Ret.), was born in Germany in 1935 and immigrated to the United States in 1951 at age sixteen with an eighth-grade education and no English-language skills. Upon graduation from the University of Colorado, he was commissioned 2nd Lieutenant in the US Air Force, then flew over one hundred strategic reconnaissance missions against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. His first book German Boy: A Refugee's Story garnered favorable reviews from the New York Times and numerous other outlets. He is author of eight books published by University Press of Mississippi.

Table of Contents

Terms and Abbreviations ix

Foreword xi

Preface and Acknowledgments xv

When Peace Came to America (1945) 3

The Peace That Wouldn't Take (1947) 17

More Secret than the Manhattan Project (1952) 25

To the Yalu River and Beyond (1950) 37

"Honey Bucket Honshos" of the 91st Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron (1952) 49

The 19th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron (1955) 59

The Incredible RF-86F Sabre Jet (1952-1955) 67

Remembering Major Rudolph "Rudy" Anderson (1953-1955) 83

The Last Hurrah of the "Wild Bunch" (1954-1955) 93

The Short-Lived RB-57A "Heart Throb" Program (1955-1956) 99

The RB-57A-1 Heart Throb: A Challenging Plane to Fly (1955-1956) 115

A P2V-7 Neptune Surviving the Czechoslovak Border (1956) 121

Franz Josef Land (1952) 125

Teamwork: P2V and RB-50E (1952) 133

Come the B/RB-47 Stratojet (1952) 139

Challenging the Russian Bear (1954) 147

Slick Chick RF-100 as (1955-1956) 165

Project Home Run: RB-47s over Siberia (1956) 177

Fate Is the Hunter: The Shootdown of RB-47H 53-4281 over the Barents Sea (1960) 193

The RB-57D That Killed the SENSINT Program (1956) 201

The Cuban Missile Crisis through the Eyes of a Raven (1962) 213

The Last Flight of RB-47H 53-4290 over the Sea of Japan (1965) 227

An Unintentional Overflight of East Germany (1964) 245

The Reasons Why (1948-1960) 263

The Price We Paid (1945-1993) 273

Notes 283

Bibliography 285

Index 287