The MiG and the B-50 Bomber

On this episode of Our American Stories, at the height of the Cold War a Russian MiG and an American weather plane meet over the North Pole. Richard Muniz tells the rest of the story.

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Episode Transcript

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 planes close to Russia over
the North Pole. Take it away, Rich. When I first

(00:32):
met James, he was already an old man, and what
he had done was he had signed up with our
internet service as the customer wils back in the well
early nineties actually mid nineties somewhere around in 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,

(00:53):
he called, and I realized that I needed to stop
by 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 dropped by after work,
and he was living in one of the senior systems apartments.
Nothing too too exciding, you know, as computers sitting there
on a bot from Kmart desk. Now, one of the
things I noticed right away when I walked in was

(01:16):
his furnishings. One 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 barely
inside international airspace. He had a navigational slide roller there.
He had some other things there, and he had a

(01:37):
photograph of what, at first glass looked like a B
twenty nine bomber. He scored me away real quick on
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 Bowing to keep
the production line going. Now, these were the same guys
that built a B twenty nine. Now they were always

(01:58):
doing upgrades on the plan and stuff like that. Well,
what they did was they took the B twenty nine,
gave it a higher tail service, better metal, more powerful engines,
that kind of stuff, and they said it was a
whole new bomber. Well, the Air Force bought it, why
because they needed something to be able to deliver the
to the atom bomb to Russia if they needed it too.
Now it turned out the B fifty would be the

(02:20):
last of the fully piston powered bombers the Air Force
ever had. After that, they would replace it with things
like the B thirty six to 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 emissions, maybe not as a bomber, but
certainly they could do reconnaistance work, and they could do
weather work well. James went on to tell them. He said,

(02:41):
I was a navigator on what they call a WB fifty.
Now the W stands for weather. I look at the Maples,
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 other data.
He said it was important for a couple of reasons. One,

(03:03):
he said, they had to go out there and know
what the weather is just in case something kicked off
between the 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
YouTube flights possible. You know. Look, I wanted to get
the Fransis Gary Powers did. Of course, I was very
very familiar with Gary Powers. In his disastrous flight. Another

(03:24):
thing he told me was they sniffed the air looking
for evidence of atomic testing. If he saw an increase
in fallout, it was pretty sure bet that the Russians
at tests in the atomic bomb someplace. He also said
that some of the beefitties are fitted out to monitor
radio transmissions. Radio 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

(03:45):
about that way, they had their chance of defeating it.
Some had high resolution cameras they look for things, but
his plane, they were 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
US of international airspace off a little bit, maybe a
mile or so. We'll guess what the down Russian airspace.

(04:06):
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 knew about it. Unders on
both sides of the equation. The Russians were doing the
same thing to us. We're intercepting down some of an aircraft.
They intercepting down some of our aircraft. Why because of
navigational errors and stuff like that. So too close in

(04:30):
their 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 he's pretty sure
the Russians didn't like them being there. After all, this
is a bomber is flying right there on the edge
of their airspace. Said they didn't actually see him as
a direct threat. They probably appre sure as a weather plane.

(04:53):
Like I said, stances a bomber. They had to make sure,
and so every once in a while they'd be a company.
He said. They were flying over the Poles in the
middle of the day and he remembered the sky was
amazingly clear. I mean it was so clear it was,

(05:14):
you know, it was astonishing, not a single cloud anywhere.
And they're flying along at about twenty five thousand feet
and of course the B fifty was pressure rized, so
they didn't have to wear the masks and stuff. And
if he looked out the window of where he was sitting,
he could look at this huge expansive ice. He could
see the lions crossing it, you know where they looked
like roads, but they were really where were pressure ridges

(05:36):
where the ice was coming together and buckling up and
stuff like that. 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
glinting off of glass from middle or something like that.
So far, their flight had been routine, nothing excited, nothing
right home about the engines were going. They were doing
their job, talking back and forth, he kept checking their position,

(05:59):
costs league. He said they had to make absolute certain
error inside international space. And then he remembers the pilot
making an announcement, we've got company. And he got up.
He looked at a small portal, and off to one side,
maybe one hundred hundred fifty yards out, there was a
mag nineteen, and he said he could see the red

(06:20):
star painted on it. Here's the pilot. You can see
the pilot. You know, pilots got his goggles on, he's
got an oxygen mask on. Here're looking at the B
Fifty're like, oh my god, what a big target. And
then somebody else said, we got another on the other side.
And he went and looked out the other one or
sure enough, there's another make out there, and he said,
we flew that way for several minutes. He kept looking

(06:42):
out the fire off on one wing and 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's like he was trying to
hurt him into rushing the airspace. He reported that, Pot said, yeah,
I've been watching him. He started to crowd just a
little bit. But the thing was you maintain of course,
I mean instinctive thing is to try to maintain your distance.

(07:05):
The problem is if they try to maintain their distance,
you know, hit her and mind of the Russian airspace
and at that point, guess what, it's open season on him.
And finally the max stopped maybe twentys beyond their wings,
stuff like that, and it flew that way for several minutes,

(07:27):
and you know he's sitting him. You know, it's really
this is a really good kind of nervous for him,
because he knew the B fifties set up a little
of a slip stream and it would be very easily
for the something something the smallest to make to get
sucked into it. If 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 that,

(07:49):
and finally he did the only thing he could think of.
He held his middle finger out, put it up to
the window and held it towards the plane. He says,
he doubts very much the Russian ever saw it. I mean,
it's be honest about the Russians out there right sunlight,
he's sitting inside a dark airplane, you know, sunlight letting
off off the metal, stuff like that. No chance he

(08:09):
ever saw it. We said, as sure made him feel good.
After that, we saw more mix. Sometimes they maintained their distance,
sometimes they wouldn't. He 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 a bit like
a shark following a sell boat. As long as no

(08:31):
one does anything stupid, it's gonna be okay in the end.
And that's James. The story about the MiG and what
a story that Richard Munez told about his panel, James.
I can just see James in my own mind flipping
a Russian MiG pilot the bird, whether he saw it

(08:52):
or not. What a beautiful image. And of course we
know what the MiGs were trying to do, right, crowd
him into Russian airspace so they could take him down.
We love telling these stories. This one again comes from
who 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

(09:14):
to our American stories dot com. They are truly some
of our favorites. The story of James and his B
fifty bomber and a Russian mag here on our American
Stories