Posted on 03/15/2003 5:36:24 AM PST by struwwelpeter
Aircraft 61-2664 was built in 1961 at Boeing's sprawling Seattle works in Washington state. A variant of the commerical 707 airliner, the aircraft was first fitted out to perform the tasks of weather reconnaissance for Military Airlift Command. She performed these tasks for almost a decade.
In 1972, 61-2664 was refitted to serve as a strategic reconnaissance platform. Dozens of other C-135s had been converted to the comically long-nosed RC-135 over the decades, but 61-2664 was to join an especially elite fraternity - Cobra Ball. RC-135 S-models at the time were stationed at Eielson AFB, Alaska. Their mission: await satellite confirmation of missile launches from Soviet test ranges in Kazakhstan, then dash from a staging base in the Aleutians and fly close to the impact area on the Kamchatka Penninsula. As close as Soviet air defenses would allow.
On a normal mission eighteen crewmembers manned the "Ball." The flight deck held two pilots and two navigators. The co-pilot was an experienced C-135 pilot, in the right-hand seat to learn the idiosyncrasies of these heavy, off-balance reconnaissance platforms. The double navigation crew was to prevent errors, since mistakes in position could be lethal in the areas where they would fly.
Nine electronic warfare and reconnaissance systems officers - called "Ravens" - sat facing the starboard (right) side of the aircraft, manning a bank of consoles running along that side. In front of the Ravens were racks of cathode-ray tubes and radio tuners, analyzing radar signals intercepted by dozens of lumps and bumps protruding from the skin of the aircraft. Also on the starboard side, between the flight deck and Raven postions, were large windows fitted with special optical equipment. These were for observing and recording Soviet missiles as they re-entered the atmosphere, and analysis of the missiles' spectra provided insights into the construction of the Soviet weapons. To reduce interference from glare, the starboard side wing was painted black.
At the Raven's immediate right sat the enlisted crew, their positions running almost back into the tail. A Morse operator, several linguists, and a cryptographic specialist monitored the radio frequencies of the Soviet air defenses, attentive to any activities which could endanger the mission - and their own lives. Though most missions were almost routine, during the four-decade history of the Cold War dozens of aircraft and crews were lost while taking part in the "Peacetime Aerial Reconnaissance Program."
In the very rear off the aircraft, by the galley and head, sat a busy in-flight maintenance crewmember. During missions he hurried from position to position in order to keep the "Ball's" sophisticated and sometimes crotchety electronics on-line.
For almost a decade, 664 logged tens of thousands of flying hours in the "sensitive" area of the Kamchatka missile test range. After thousands of secret missions, she brought her crews home safely. Yet, though Cobra Ball's radios and radars may have given her the advantage over SAMs and interceptors, the unforgiving weather of the far north could not be outsmarted.
Cobra Ball's forward base, tiny Shemya, was the closest US installation to the Kamchatka penninsula. A tiny volcanic island at the far end of the Aleutians, Shemya was home to some of the worst weather in the world. Here the cold waters of the Barents Sea meet the warm Japan current. Fog with sixty knot winds - a meteorological impossibility - were commonplace on "the Black Pearl of the Aleutians."
On March 15th, 1981, 664 departed Eielson AFB, Alaska, with twenty-four souls on board. The crew had spent a sleepless night on alert, waiting for weather at Shemya to clear. Ironically, their quarters were Amber Hall - named for a reconnaissance aircraft which had disappeared without a trace over the Bering Sea twelve years earlier.
A KC-135 tanker aircraft proceded the "Ball" by three hours, landing in good weather. By the time the Ball started her descent, however, the weather was going bad quickly, and Shemya was now below minimums with fog, blowing snow, and sleet. Strong crosswinds also complicated the situation.
Shemya tower cleared the aircraft to land in marginal conditions. Wracked by turbulence, she descended through the pitch-black murk, seeking a tiny rock among the heaving seas. Over the interphone, the crew heard someone on the flight deck shout that they were too low and off to the left of the runway. Too late to take it around, the pilot started a shallow right turn, but the big reconnaissance plane was just too heavy. The black starboard wing struck the ground at over two hundred miles per hour, her number three and four engines exploding on impact. The big jet careened down the runway, mortally wounded. Overweight with tons of electronic equipment never invisioned by the draftsmen at Boeing, 664's aft fuselage broke off, strewing "back enders" over the snow-covered landing strip, miraculously sparing all but six from the ensuing explosion and fire.
Shortly after the tragedy, a monument was placed on Shemya as a memorial to the aircraft and its crew, and another C-135 was converted to the Cobra Ball configuration. As Cobra Ball missions shifted to missile treaty verification and to cover the emerging Chinese and Korean ballistic missile threats, a fourth aircraft was reconfigured to RC-135S. The mission was to continue.
Shemya, however, faded from significance. In 1994 a presidential directive ordered the island and its facilities to be given to native tribes in the region. Thirty-one years of Cobra Ball operations from "the rock", missions vital to the free world's security, were noted with but a few column inches in a the back pages of the New York Times.
Before Shemya's handover to the Aleuts, 664's marker was transported to Offutt Air Force Base, and rededicated on March 15th, 1996, the fifteenth anniversary of the crash. It resides in the main hallway of the 97th Intelligence Squadron in a special place of honor.
Anniversary bump
Thanks for the link. I'd wondered for a long time about the story behind "Amber Hall."
Rumors had it that Boeing wouldn't recertify the airframe after the gnomes in Greenville hacked it up. Of course, they still refuse to acknowledge the U-model (going on 30 years now).
Dead thread alert.
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