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...strategic military capabilities well to prevent the possibility of a surprise attack on the U.S. or its Western allies. Unlike the overflights of denied territory that U.S. aircraft conducted in later years, PARPRO sorties were entirely legal as they were not intended to penetrate Soviet or other potential belligerents' airspace. Whereas the overflights required Presidential approval, U.S. military theater commanders approved the more common PARPRO missions.
In 1960, the shoot-down of Francis Gary Powers led the Eisenhower Administration to suspend the practice of penetrating Soviet or other potential belligerents' airspace. But PARPRO missions continued as they had since the 1940s. Regardless of intent, however, many PARPRO aircraft were attacked: some were downed; others, like the RB-47 in the following account, survived. Most PARPRO routes were used repeatedly and were known in the Strategic Air Command (SAC) as "library routes," a practice that tacitly communicated to potential belligerents that the mission was not of hostile intent. (1)
On April 28, 1965, the RB-47 crew designated "E-96" of the 343rd Strategic Squadron, 55th SRW, serving on temporary duty at Yokota Air Base (AB), Japan, was conducting a typical PARPRO mission over the Sea of Japan. The RB-47H, called the "Silver King" aircraft, was a modified B-47 bomber. The Silver King modification included an integrated capsule to the aircraft bomb bay that provided crew stations for the three Electronic Warfare Officers (EWO), affectionately known as "Ravens" or "Crows." Electronic receivers and direction finding equipment and associated antennae were added, along with signal analysis and recording equipment to receive, locate, and analyze the emissions of potential adversaries' early warning and surface-to-air-missile and anti-aircraft-artillery acquisition and tracking radars. (2)
The six-man crew on that day, led by aircraft commander Lt. Col. Hobart D. "Matt" Mattison, had departed from Yokota on a scheduled 7-1/2-hour sortie. After takeoff and prior to entering what was known as the "Sensitive Area," the copilot, Lt. Henry E. "Hank" Dubuy, Jr., switched the RB-47's two rearward-firing 20-millimeter guns from the standby position and fired a few bursts to ensure they were operational. Satisfied, he placed them back into the standby position. The "Sensitive Area" was normally defined as that point along the route where the aircraft could be initially located and tracked by potentially hostile radar systems. About six hours into the flight, Mattison's crew began a leg that took them north-northwest toward Wonsan Harbor, North Korea. Their aircraft was then about 80 miles off the coast, clearly in international airspace, and had just started to turn back toward Yokota. Suddenly, the crew received a high-frequency radio transmission from an American monitoring station somewhere in Japan or South Korea that warned of "bogies"--unidentified aircraft--in the area. At about the same time, Capt. Robert C. "Red" Winters, one of the three EWOs and designated as "Raven-l" on the crew, detected an airborne intercept radar signal that he guessed was coming from behind the RB-47. Although some accounts were unclear on this point, the copilot-gunner, Hank Dubuy, recalled that he observed a flight of two fighters in addition to a flight of two other aircraft at a higher altitude and farther away. Upon receiving the radar warning, he looked over his right shoulder, observed the two approaching fighters, and reported, "Bogies...
NOTE: All illustrations and photos
have been removed from this article.
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