Location and time: Incirlik Air
Base, [OL-4] Turkey in the early 1960s....in the Holiday Inn [SAC's
crew quarters Quonset hut]...those that were there, remember, we
couldn't even acknowledge the existence of the EB-47TTs/RB-47H
models sitting on the ramp near our hangar, much less talk about the
missions. But being mysterious also meant you could pull people's
chains and leave lots of doubt in their minds, such as the fighter
jock below.
Participants: one Tell-Two crew member and one USAF
F-100 fighter jock, both full of beer.
Sitting on someone's bunk, the fighter-jock was
revealing his F-100 carried more "bomb power" than the B-47s we flew
carried, and that "he knew" what kind of missions the SAC guys flew
and that Russian MIGs came up to get them many times. [SAC guy
remains quiet]. Then the fighter jock makes an offer, that 'if any
of those MIGs start shooting at us[SAC Guys], just give them
[fighter jocks] a call and they'll come up and blast them out of the
sky.
The SAC guy casually starts to explain how we really
didn't need to worry about being shot down because we had an "RTF"
button that would solve the problem....he
continued with meaningless prattle, for about 30 seconds, when the
jock said 'hey, wait a minute...what's an RTF button?"
The SAC guy goes on asking the jock if he's seen the two
big pontoon "things" hanging on the side of the cockpits of the
EB-47TTs. The jock acknowledges that he has seen them. The SAC Guy
continues, "well, those are RTF antennae and if a fighter fires a
missile at us, we push the RTF button ..which means 'return to
fighter'...and the antnnae send out a signal that causes the
missiles to turn around and target the launching fighter.
Fighter jock's jaw drops to floor and eyes open wide as
he says....."really?"........No more explanations at that time left
the situation unchanged forever.
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