1960 RB-47 shootdown incident

RB-47 shootdown incident of 1960
Part of the Cold War
Type	Aircraft shot down
Location	Barents Sea, near Kola Peninsula
Objective	Intercept American RB-47H spy aircraft
Date	1 July 1960
Executed by	Soviet Air Defense Forces
Casualties	4 Americans killed

On 1 July 1960, a United States RB-47H reconnaissance plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defence Forces while performing signals intelligence in the Barents Sea, near the Kola Peninsula, off the Arctic coast of the Soviet Union. Four of the six crew members died.^[1] The shootdown occurred exactly two months after the far better known U-2 shootdown involving Francis Gary Powers, and added to the tensions created by that incident.

The plane was part of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing and took off from RAF Brize Norton airbase in the UK. It was shot down by Soviet pilot Vasily Polyakov in a MiG-19. The US position was that the plane was in international waters, and this was later corroborated by information provided by spy Oleg Penkovsky.^[2]

Three of the crewmen (reconnaissance officers Capt. Oscar Goforth, Capt. Dean Phillips, and Capt. Eugene Posa) were missing in action, and the remains of one other (aircraft commander Maj. Willard Palm) were recovered.^[3]^[4] The two survivors, navigator Captain John R. McKone and co-pilot Captain Freeman "Bruce" Olmstead, were picked up by Soviet fishing trawlers and held in Lubyanka prison in Moscow until immediately after the inauguration of newly-elected US president Kennedy, when they were released by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev as a goodwill gesture.^[5]^[6]

McKone and Olmstead appeared on the cover of the 3 February 1961 issue of Time magazine.^[7] In his news conference on 21 April 1961, President Kennedy was asked if the dropping of charges against an accused Soviet spy was in exchange for the release of the RB-47 aviators. The president denied this.^[8]

As a result of their involvement in the incident, Olmstead and McKone received POW medals in 1996 and Silver Star medals in 2004, as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross.^[3]^[4]

References

^ "Accident Boeing RB-47H Stratojet 53-4281, 01 Jul 1960". aviation-safety.net. Retrieved 15 September 2019.
^ Penkovskiy, Oleg (1965). The Penkovskiy Papers. New York: Doubleday & Co. p. 369.
^ ^a ^b "John McKone - Recipient - Military Times Hall Of Valor". valor.militarytimes.com. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
^ ^a ^b "Freeman Olmstead - Recipient - Military Times Hall Of Valor". valor.militarytimes.com. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
^ "RB-47H Shot Down." nationalmuseum.af.mil, Retrieved: 15 September 2019.
^ "RB-47H Shot Down" (archived older version, with more detail) nationalmuseum.af.mil, Retrieved: 15 September 2019.
^ "The TIME Magazine Vault". time.com. Retrieved 27 September 2019.
^ "President Kennedy's News Conference No. 10, 04/21/1961". YouTube. 21 April 1961. Retrieved 15 September 2019.

White, William Lindsay (1962). The Little Toy Dog: The story of the two RB-47 flyers, Captain John R. McKone and Captain Freeman B. Olmstead. E.P. Dutton & Co. LCCN 62007801. OL 25622095M.

External links

RB-47 Shootdown Information

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