January 13, 2026 • 9 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, during the height of the Cold War, a routine American B-50 bomber flight over the North Pole turned into a tense encounter with a Russian MiG jet. Richard Muniz shares the story of his friend’s fateful meeting in the skies, revealing the quiet dangers of Cold War aviation and the high-stakes cat-and-mouse games between the United States and the Soviet Union.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
This is our American Stories, and our next story comes
to us from our regular contributor, Richard Munez. Rich is
a listener on Who in Des Moines, and today he
shares with us a story told to him by a
veteran who flew on weather plains close to Russia over
the North Pole. Take it away, rich.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
When I first met James, she was already an old man,
and what he had done was he had signed up
with our internet service as the customer. Well, this is
back in the uh well, early nineties actually mid nineties,
somewhere run and there, and people of James caliber didn't
exactly take nicely to computer, so sometimes they did things
that they needed some help with. Well, he called, and
(00:54):
I realized that I needed to straw buy and help him. Well,
in this case, he was living in senior housing and
it wasn't that far from the college. I told him
I drop by after work, and he was living in
one of the senior sitiste's apartments. Nothing too too exciting,
you know, and his computer sitting there on a bought
from Kmart desk. Now, one of the things I noticed
right away when I walked in was his furnishings. One
(01:19):
of the walls was an air chart and it had
what looked like the northern coasts of the Soviet Union
on it, and here's penciled in and red as a course,
and it skirted the coast fairly inside international airspace. He
had a navigation slide roller there. He had some other
things there, and he had a photograph of what, at
first Glanss looked like a B twenty nine bomber. Equally
(01:44):
scored me away real quick on it. He said, no,
it's not at B twenty nine. You ever heard of
the B fifty, Of course I had. The B fifty
was an attempt by Boeing to keep the production line going. Now,
these were the same guys that built the B twenty nine.
Now they were always doing upgrades on the plane and
stuff like that. Well, what they did was they took
the B twenty nine, gave it a higher tail, service,
(02:04):
better metal, more powerful engines, that kind of stuff, and
they said it was a whole new bomber. Well, the
Air Force bought it y because they needed something to
be able to deliver the atom bomb to Russia if
they needed it too. Now it turned out to B fifty,
It would be the last of the fully piston powered
bombers the Air Force ever had. After that, they would
(02:24):
replace it with things like the B thirty six, the
B forty seven, and of course ultimately the B fifty two.
So now they had these airplanes setting around that were
basically new. They gave him other missions, maybe not as
a bomber, but certainly they could do reconstance work, and
they could do weather work. But James went on to
tell me, he said, I was a navigator on what
they call a WB fifty. Now the W stands for weather.
(02:48):
Now look at the Maples said, that's the Russian coast.
He said, yeah, it is, isn't it. What he's telling
me is that they used to fly the B fifty
up over the pole to collect weather data. He said
it was important for a couple of reasons. One, he said,
they had to go out there and know what the
weather is just in case something kicked off between the
(03:09):
United States and Russia. Said no, what the weather looked
like for our bombers going in. Now, some of the
work he did helped make things like the U two
flights possible. You know, look at one of the Defense's
gary powers did that. Of course, I was very very
familiar with Gary Powers in his disasterrous flight. Another thing
he told me was a sniffed the air looking for
evidence of atomic testing. If he saw an increase in fallout,
(03:30):
it was a pretty sure bet for the Russian said
tests and an atomic bomb someplace. He also said that
some of the beefitties were fit out to monitor radio transmissions,
railar transmissions. The idea was to go in there and
you'll be able to get what the frequencies were on
their radars and stuff like that. Anything particular about that way,
they had their chance defeeding it. Some had high resolution
cameras they looked for things, but his plane, they were
(03:52):
all about weather. Now, one thing he pointed out, he
said their job was extremely ticklish. I mean they're flying
right there, right there on those of international airspace off
a little bit, maybe a mile or so. Well, guess
what there in Russian airspace. At that point they became
legal prey for Russian fighters. And said the problem is
is that incidents had happened. Everybody in the military community
(04:17):
knew about it, and it's on both sides of the equation.
The Russians were doing the same thing to us. We
were intercepting down some of aircraft. They intercepted down some
of aircraft. Why because of navigational errors and stuff like that.
So too close in they prey for the fighters. Too
far out, they don't know what the weather looks like.
So he had to be on the ball on his course.
They had to fly right along the edge there. Now
(04:40):
he is pretty sure that Russians didn't like them being there.
After all, this is a bomber is flying right there
on the edge of their airspace, so they didn't actually
see him as a direct threat. They probably are pretty
sure as a weather plane, Like I said, since there
was a bomber, they had to make sure. And so
every once in a while did the accompany. He said,
(05:08):
they were flying over the Poles in the middle of
the day. He remembered the sky was amazingly clear. I
mean it was so clear, you know, it was astonishing,
not a single cloud anywhere. And they were flying along
at about twenty five thousand feet And of course the
beefifty was pressure rized, so he didn't have to wear
a masks and stuff. And if he looked out the
window of where he was sitting, he could look out, say,
(05:29):
this huge expansive ice. He can see lines crossing it,
you know, where they looked like roads, but they were
really where were pressure ridges where the ice was coming
together and buckling up and stuff like that. If he
looked at the other side, you see Russia. I mean,
he could see snow, he could see mountains, and in
places he could even see sunlight letting off of glass
from metal or something like that. So far, their flight
(05:51):
had been routine, nothing exciting, nothing right home about the
engines were going. They were doing their job, talking back
and forth, and he kept checking their position costs. He
said they had to make absolute certain they were inside
international our space. And then he remembers the pilot making
an announcement, we've got company. And he got up. He
(06:13):
looked at a small portal and off to one side,
maybe one hundred hundred fifty yards out, there was a
MiG nineteen and he said, he can see the red
star painted on it. Here's the pilot. He can see
the pilot. You know, pilots got his goggles on. He's
got an oxygen mask on. He's looking at the beef
fifty like, oh my god, what a big target. And
then somebody else said, we got another on the other side,
and he went went and looked out the other one.
(06:34):
Was sure enough, there's another make out there, and he said,
we flew that way for several minutes. He kept looking
out the fire off one wing, you look at the
other one and stuff, and he noticed the one on
one side was starting to get a little bit closer
to him. It was like he was trying to hurt
him into rushing their space. He reported that, but I said, yeah,
(06:55):
I've been watching him. Started the crowds just a little bit.
But the thing was you mean, of course, I mean,
the instinctive thing is to try to maintain your distance.
The problem is if they try to maintain their distance,
you know, hit her mind the Russian airspace. And at
that point, guess what this open season on him. And
(07:19):
finally the MiG stopped maybe twenty meters beyond their wings,
stuff like that, and it flew that way for several minutes,
and you know, he's sitting here. You know, this is
really good, kind of nervous for him because he knew
to be fifty set up a little of a slipstream,
and it would be very easily for the something something
the smallest to make to get sucked into it. If
(07:39):
that happened, there was a danger of an air collision
and both sides would lose. You know. He just knew
that it was scary and he had to do something
about it. And he's there nervous stuff like that, And
finally he did the only thing you could think of.
He held his middle finger out, put it up to
the window and held it towards the plane. He says,
(07:59):
he doubts very much to Russian ever saw it. I mean,
it's be honest about it. The Russians out there, bright sunlight.
He's sitting in US side a dark airplane, you know,
sunlight letting off off the metal, stuff like that. No
chance he ever saw it, but he said it sure
made him feel good. After that, they saw more MiGs.
Sometimes they maintained their just as sometimes they wouldn't. He
(08:19):
compared it this way. He said, you know, it was routine,
but at the same time, there was nothing routine about it.
He just kind of got used to it. He says,
look like a shark following a sell boat. As long
as no one does anything stupid, it's gonna be okay.
And yet, and that's James's story about the MiG.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And what a story that Richard Munez told about his
padel James. I can just see James in my own
mind flipping a Russian meg pilot the bird, whether he
saw it or not. What a beautiful image. And of
course we know what the Megs were trying to do, right,
crowd him into Russian airspace so they could take him down.
Of telling these stories, this one again comes from who
(09:03):
a listener there, Richard Muniz, Thanks so much for your contribution.
If you have stories about American heroes, men, women in
combat or noncombat positions, share them, send them to our
americanstories dot com. They are truly some of our favorites.
The story of James and his B fifty bomber and
a Russian MiG here on our American Stories
This is our American Stories, and our next story comes
to us from our regular contributor, Richard Munez. Rich is
a listener on Who in Des Moines, and today he
shares with us a story told to him by a
veteran who flew on weather plains close to Russia over
the North Pole. Take it away, rich.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
When I first met James, she was already an old man,
and what he had done was he had signed up
with our internet service as the customer. Well, this is
back in the uh well, early nineties actually mid nineties,
somewhere run and there, and people of James caliber didn't
exactly take nicely to computer, so sometimes they did things
that they needed some help with. Well, he called, and
(00:54):
I realized that I needed to straw buy and help him. Well,
in this case, he was living in senior housing and
it wasn't that far from the college. I told him
I drop by after work, and he was living in
one of the senior sitiste's apartments. Nothing too too exciting,
you know, and his computer sitting there on a bought
from Kmart desk. Now, one of the things I noticed
right away when I walked in was his furnishings. One
(01:19):
of the walls was an air chart and it had
what looked like the northern coasts of the Soviet Union
on it, and here's penciled in and red as a course,
and it skirted the coast fairly inside international airspace. He
had a navigation slide roller there. He had some other
things there, and he had a photograph of what, at
first Glanss looked like a B twenty nine bomber. Equally
(01:44):
scored me away real quick on it. He said, no,
it's not at B twenty nine. You ever heard of
the B fifty, Of course I had. The B fifty
was an attempt by Boeing to keep the production line going. Now,
these were the same guys that built the B twenty nine.
Now they were always doing upgrades on the plane and
stuff like that. Well, what they did was they took
the B twenty nine, gave it a higher tail, service,
(02:04):
better metal, more powerful engines, that kind of stuff, and
they said it was a whole new bomber. Well, the
Air Force bought it y because they needed something to
be able to deliver the atom bomb to Russia if
they needed it too. Now it turned out to B fifty,
It would be the last of the fully piston powered
bombers the Air Force ever had. After that, they would
(02:24):
replace it with things like the B thirty six, the
B forty seven, and of course ultimately the B fifty two.
So now they had these airplanes setting around that were
basically new. They gave him other missions, maybe not as
a bomber, but certainly they could do reconstance work, and
they could do weather work. But James went on to
tell me, he said, I was a navigator on what
they call a WB fifty. Now the W stands for weather.
(02:48):
Now look at the Maples said, that's the Russian coast.
He said, yeah, it is, isn't it. What he's telling
me is that they used to fly the B fifty
up over the pole to collect weather data. He said
it was important for a couple of reasons. One, he said,
they had to go out there and know what the
weather is just in case something kicked off between the
(03:09):
United States and Russia. Said no, what the weather looked
like for our bombers going in. Now, some of the
work he did helped make things like the U two
flights possible. You know, look at one of the Defense's
gary powers did that. Of course, I was very very
familiar with Gary Powers in his disasterrous flight. Another thing
he told me was a sniffed the air looking for
evidence of atomic testing. If he saw an increase in fallout,
(03:30):
it was a pretty sure bet for the Russian said
tests and an atomic bomb someplace. He also said that
some of the beefitties were fit out to monitor radio transmissions,
railar transmissions. The idea was to go in there and
you'll be able to get what the frequencies were on
their radars and stuff like that. Anything particular about that way,
they had their chance defeeding it. Some had high resolution
cameras they looked for things, but his plane, they were
(03:52):
all about weather. Now, one thing he pointed out, he
said their job was extremely ticklish. I mean they're flying
right there, right there on those of international airspace off
a little bit, maybe a mile or so. Well, guess
what there in Russian airspace. At that point they became
legal prey for Russian fighters. And said the problem is
is that incidents had happened. Everybody in the military community
(04:17):
knew about it, and it's on both sides of the equation.
The Russians were doing the same thing to us. We
were intercepting down some of aircraft. They intercepted down some
of aircraft. Why because of navigational errors and stuff like that.
So too close in they prey for the fighters. Too
far out, they don't know what the weather looks like.
So he had to be on the ball on his course.
They had to fly right along the edge there. Now
(04:40):
he is pretty sure that Russians didn't like them being there.
After all, this is a bomber is flying right there
on the edge of their airspace, so they didn't actually
see him as a direct threat. They probably are pretty
sure as a weather plane, Like I said, since there
was a bomber, they had to make sure. And so
every once in a while did the accompany. He said,
(05:08):
they were flying over the Poles in the middle of
the day. He remembered the sky was amazingly clear. I
mean it was so clear, you know, it was astonishing,
not a single cloud anywhere. And they were flying along
at about twenty five thousand feet And of course the
beefifty was pressure rized, so he didn't have to wear
a masks and stuff. And if he looked out the
window of where he was sitting, he could look out, say,
(05:29):
this huge expansive ice. He can see lines crossing it,
you know, where they looked like roads, but they were
really where were pressure ridges where the ice was coming
together and buckling up and stuff like that. If he
looked at the other side, you see Russia. I mean,
he could see snow, he could see mountains, and in
places he could even see sunlight letting off of glass
from metal or something like that. So far, their flight
(05:51):
had been routine, nothing exciting, nothing right home about the
engines were going. They were doing their job, talking back
and forth, and he kept checking their position costs. He
said they had to make absolute certain they were inside
international our space. And then he remembers the pilot making
an announcement, we've got company. And he got up. He
(06:13):
looked at a small portal and off to one side,
maybe one hundred hundred fifty yards out, there was a
MiG nineteen and he said, he can see the red
star painted on it. Here's the pilot. He can see
the pilot. You know, pilots got his goggles on. He's
got an oxygen mask on. He's looking at the beef
fifty like, oh my god, what a big target. And
then somebody else said, we got another on the other side,
and he went went and looked out the other one.
(06:34):
Was sure enough, there's another make out there, and he said,
we flew that way for several minutes. He kept looking
out the fire off one wing, you look at the
other one and stuff, and he noticed the one on
one side was starting to get a little bit closer
to him. It was like he was trying to hurt
him into rushing their space. He reported that, but I said, yeah,
(06:55):
I've been watching him. Started the crowds just a little bit.
But the thing was you mean, of course, I mean,
the instinctive thing is to try to maintain your distance.
The problem is if they try to maintain their distance,
you know, hit her mind the Russian airspace. And at
that point, guess what this open season on him. And
(07:19):
finally the MiG stopped maybe twenty meters beyond their wings,
stuff like that, and it flew that way for several minutes,
and you know, he's sitting here. You know, this is
really good, kind of nervous for him because he knew
to be fifty set up a little of a slipstream,
and it would be very easily for the something something
the smallest to make to get sucked into it. If
(07:39):
that happened, there was a danger of an air collision
and both sides would lose. You know. He just knew
that it was scary and he had to do something
about it. And he's there nervous stuff like that, And
finally he did the only thing you could think of.
He held his middle finger out, put it up to
the window and held it towards the plane. He says,
(07:59):
he doubts very much to Russian ever saw it. I mean,
it's be honest about it. The Russians out there, bright sunlight.
He's sitting in US side a dark airplane, you know,
sunlight letting off off the metal, stuff like that. No
chance he ever saw it, but he said it sure
made him feel good. After that, they saw more MiGs.
Sometimes they maintained their just as sometimes they wouldn't. He
(08:19):
compared it this way. He said, you know, it was routine,
but at the same time, there was nothing routine about it.
He just kind of got used to it. He says,
look like a shark following a sell boat. As long
as no one does anything stupid, it's gonna be okay.
And yet, and that's James's story about the MiG.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
And what a story that Richard Munez told about his
padel James. I can just see James in my own
mind flipping a Russian meg pilot the bird, whether he
saw it or not. What a beautiful image. And of
course we know what the Megs were trying to do, right,
crowd him into Russian airspace so they could take him down.
Of telling these stories, this one again comes from who
(09:03):
a listener there, Richard Muniz, Thanks so much for your contribution.
If you have stories about American heroes, men, women in
combat or noncombat positions, share them, send them to our
americanstories dot com. They are truly some of our favorites.
The story of James and his B fifty bomber and
a Russian MiG here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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