FYI
November 07, 2005
Serving through secrecy
Rivet Joint crews deserve praise for their quiet
labors
By Robert F. Dorr
The airmen who fly America's RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance airplanes reflect a diverse mix of ranks, skills and personalities. They have one thing in common. They don't make headlines.
The four-engined, long-range RC-135, which looks unremarkable and rarely draws notice, does its work in secrecy. Its crews conduct themselves largely in private. They may be at the forefront of gathering intelligence for an operation in Iraq, or they may be checking out today's developments in China's air defense network - but they don't seek publicity and rarely receive recognition.
It's out of the ordinary to see an RC-135 at an air show. When one appeared at an October open house at Little Rock Air Force Base, Ark., a local reporter took note.
"People could even glimpse the shadowy world of a RC-135 electronic reconnaissance aircraft," wrote John N. Felsher of The Lonoke Democrat.
They probably didn't glimpse very much, though.
According to the Air Force Almanac, published by the Air Force Association, the Air Force has 21 RC- 135s, of which 16 are on hand for duty at any given time. That statistic doesn't reveal the constant motion in the lives of reconnaissance crews.
They can count on being deployed anywhere at any time. They live the life of the "crew dog" - crossing time zones, eating at midnight, sleeping in daylight. Often, they're in closer proximity to our adversaries than anyone else.
RC-135 crews, nearly all serving with the 55th Wing at Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., include pilots, navigators, intelligence experts, airborne systems engineers, radar intercept technicians, linguists and many other specialists.
But you only hear about them when something happens, or after it happens.
North Korean fighters intercepted an RC-135 over the Sea of Japan on March 1, 2003. Pilot Lt. Col. Randal P. "Randy" Gurchin looked out at a pair of missile-carrying MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters that appeared ready to shoot him down. The MiG flight leader rocked his wings, the international signal demanding surrender. "They were trying to capture and hold as hostage our 17 aircrew members, as well as our RC-135 aircraft," Gurchin recalled Oct. 21. "We were 160 miles off their coast over international waters and we were unarmed."
That day, Gurchin had a fresh memory of a 2001 incident when Chinese fighters crashed into a U.S. Navy EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane, and the damaged plane was forced to land on China's Hainan Island. Gurchin's aircraft is part of a legacy of quiet missions. Operating under exotic program names like Burning Candy and Cobra Ball RC-135s, photographed installations, performed telemetry tracking of Soviet missiles and monitored hostile communications.
An insider in Washington told me the intelligence material, or the "product," gleaned from RC-135 missions is "indispensable" and "a windfall for American policy-makers."
The country has paid a price for its reconnaissance gathering. Nineteen crew members died Sept. 2, 1958, when Soviet fighters shot down a C-130 Hercules reconnaissance craft over Armenia. In another incident, 31 crew members lost their lives on April 15, 1969, when North Korean MiGs downed a Navy EC-121 Super Constellation over the Sea of Japan.
Although no RC-135s have been shot down, several have been lost in mishaps. One RC-135E in the Rivet Amber program was monitoring a Soviet ballistic missile test when it broke up because of a massive structural failure over the Bering Sea on June 5, 1969. No trace of the aircraft or its 19 crew members has been found.
The plane in the 2003 North Korea incident was an RC-135S (serial no. 61-2663), operating in the Cobra Ball program to monitor a North Korean ballistic missile launch. The crew in back was doing important, intelligence-related work when pilot Gurchin executed what the Air Force later termed "a historic whiteknuckle maneuver." The RC-135 eluded the MiGs.
Gurchin feels his crew members should have received recognition for their performance during the encounter.
He is right. RC-135 crews are performing heroically today. They don't sing their own praises, but they deserve ours.
The writer, an Air Force veteran, lives in Oakton, Va. He is the author of books on military topics, including "Chopper," a history of helicopter pilots. His e-mail address is robert.f.dorr @cox.net.
| |
||
| | Navigation | Mail Room | ||