Bogey at 3 O'Clock Level
by
Richard “Zot” Barazzotto
In the July
issue of Videmus Omnia, was
a picture of the massive Soviet TU-128
The stories in the July 2001
55SRWA newsletter brought back a flood
of memories. Names and faces, missions and places, all came running through
my mind as I read. Then in the back I saw a very familiar picture. It was a
close-up of a Soviet TU-128 Fiddler, a picture of which that I have hanging
on my wall with the rest of my flying momentos. Here is the rest of the
story: That picture was taken on the last flight of a deployment of Combat
Sent (A/C# 849) which took place during June 1972. It was an interesting
month that saw us twice return to
The first time it happened
we had just hit the tanker and were topped off on gas. The command post
air-filed our flight plan and we headed south - without car keys, wallets,
or our loved ones knowing we were coming home. Fortunately, we all knew how
to break into our own homes, and after that, we always disregarded the
regulations and carried our keys and wallets.
Our whole deployment was
filled with problems, and we even had a theme song - Jerry Reid's "When Your
Hot, Your Hot, and When Your Not, Your Not." We also used the "I have some
good news and some bad news" greeting with regularity. On one flight we were
having a problem of losing oxygen. As the copilot it was my job to monitor
that and I had all hands turn off their oxygen regulators as we tried to
find the cause. It was a stuck regulator and the off/on trick fixed it, but
everyone knew that we had a reduced supply of LOX. About two hours north of
Eielson, the navigation system gave up the ghost with the usual bang and a
cloud of smoke that came up from under the cockpit floor.
I turned on the emergency
intercom (which overrides what everyone is listening to) and announced,
"Crew - this is the copilot. The good news is that we have plenty of oxygen
left. The bad news is that we are going to have to use it because we have a
fire." Given that two hours northof Eielson is not a place where many would
go for a vacation (even in June), that got the crew's attention. They were
out of their sleeping bags, fully dressed and wide-awake in record time.
Fortunately, the fire was only a puff of smoke, and the return to base and
the landing were uneventful. The nav system quit several other times, once
during an engine start. We shut down, announced to the tower that we had a
fire on board and abandoned the plane. By the time the message got to the
command post, it had been
garbled to say that the
plane was in a hanger and on fire. Needless to say, the base commander was
really interested in what was going on. Fortunately, this, too, was only a
puff of smoke and no real damage was sustained by the plane or the crew.
Because we were scheduled to
fly only a few times a week, we had time to sightsee, and for those of us
who had never been to
We had a great trip, saw
lots of wildlife and relaxed, blissfully unaware of people jumping through
hoops trying to figure out how they were going to get the only RC-135U
qualified copilot in the state of Alaska back in time to make the flight.
They looked at all kinds of options from sending a private plane to using
the base rescue helicopters. Finally, someone made a rational decision and
just told SAC to change the schedule.
Given all the problems that
we were having, SAC HQ was starting to take notice of us. Besides the
maintenance problems, the mission had yet to be accomplished. After each
mission a crow would disappear as he took the mission tapes back to the
lower-States for analysis. He would reappear in a few days and another crow
would disappear after the next flight.
On the day in question I
took two cameras with me, the standard issue Pentax with a 200mm lens and my
personal Minolta, also with a 200mm lens but with color film. Someone had
installed the focusing glass backward so the Pentax didn't focus correctly.
For that reason I planned to focus on infinity and then switch cameras if
the opportunity should avail itself to take a picture. Little did I know how
soon that opportunity would happen. We were in the operational area doing
our thing when I happened to look out my right window. There, flying perfect
formation on our wing tip, was a TU-128 Fiddler.
In total shock I told the aircraft commander and he slapped my arm and said,
"Take a picture!" Duh!! What a great idea! So I grabbed the Pentax and
snapped a shot, then switched to the Minolta and took some more. As soon as
I grabbed the first camera, the Fiddler pilot decided that he should be gone
and rolled right. That is when I snapped the picture (of the aircraft).
As we were debriefing at
Eielson, an excited intel guy brought us the first proof. It was the first
time that anyone had taken a picture of a TU-128 and it showed with
remarkable clarity details that we didn't know – like the antenna arrays
(probably for a data link) and the outlines of the wing tanks.
Guess the four years I spent
at Rochester Institute of Technology getting a BS in Photographic Science,
and all the time playing with cameras actually was useful. The aircraft
commander was Bob Lyons, and I remember
Larry Staringer was one of the crows who
would disappear to take the tapes south.
After the picture news made
it to Offutt, they (StratReconCenter) decided that the last mission
wasn't going to happen (and) we prepared to head home. I wanted an
interesting souvenir so, I headed to the woods and dug up a birch tree. It
neatly filled the plane from one emergency exit hatch to the other. Because
of the permafrost, it didn't have a deep root ball. But, as it warmed up, it
did have a bunch of Alaska-sized mosquitoes, now looking for dinner in the
plane. A little bug spray took care of that problem and it arrived home
without further incident. The tree’s trip from the plane to
Fly Safe,
Zot Barazzotto,
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