On 1 July 1960, a United States RB-47H

reconnaissance plane In military operations, reconnaissance or scouting is the exploration of an area by military forces to obtain information about enemy forces, terrain, and other activities. Examples of reconnaissance include patrolling by troops (skirmishers, ...

was shot down by the

Soviet Air Defence Forces The Soviet Air Defence Forces (russian: войска ПВО, ''voyska protivovozdushnoy oborony'', ''voyska PVO'', ''V-PVO'', lit. ''Anti-Air Defence Troops''; and formerly ''protivovozdushnaya oborona strany'', ''PVO strany'', lit. ''Anti-Air De ...

while performing

signals intelligence Signals intelligence (SIGINT) is intelligence-gathering by interception of '' signals'', whether communications between people (communications intelligence—abbreviated to COMINT) or from electronic signals not directly used in communication ...

in the

Barents Sea The Barents Sea ( , also ; no, Barentshavet, ; russian: Баренцево море, Barentsevo More) is a marginal sea of the Arctic Ocean, located off the northern coasts of Norway and Russia and divided between Norwegian and Russian terr ...

, near the

Kola Peninsula The Kola Peninsula (russian: Кольский полуостров, Kolsky poluostrov; sjd, Куэлнэгк нёа̄ррк) is a peninsula in the extreme northwest of Russia, and one of the largest peninsulas of Europe. Constituting the bulk ...

, off the Arctic coast of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

. Four of the six crew members died. The shootdown occurred exactly two months after the far better known U-2 shootdown involving

Francis Gary Powers Francis Gary Powers (August 17, 1929 – August 1, 1977) was an American pilot whose Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Lockheed U-2 spy plane was shot down while flying a reconnaissance mission in Soviet Union airspace, causing the 1960 U-2 in ...

, and added to the tensions created by that incident. The plane was part of the

55th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing The 55th Wing is a United States Air Force unit assigned to Air Combat Command. The wing is primarily stationed at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, but maintains one of its groups and associated squadrons at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Ar ...

and took off from

RAF Brize Norton Royal Air Force Brize Norton or RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, about west north-west of London, is the largest station of the Royal Air Force. It is close to the village of Brize Norton, and the towns of Carterton and Witney. The statio ...

airbase in the UK. It was shot down by Soviet pilot Vasily Polyakov in a

MiG-19 The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19 (russian: Микоян и Гуревич МиГ-19; NATO reporting name: Farmer) is a Soviet second generation, single-seat, twinjet fighter aircraft, the world's first mass-produced supersonic aircraft. It was the ...

. The US position was that the plane was in international waters, and this was later corroborated by information provided by spy Oleg Penkovsky. Three of the crewmen (reconnaissance officers Capt. Oscar Goforth, Capt. Dean Phillips, and Capt. Eugene Posa) were missing in action, and the remains of one other (aircraft commander Maj. Willard Palm) were recovered. The two survivors, navigator Captain John R. McKone and co-pilot Captain Freeman "Bruce" Olmstead, were picked up by Soviet fishing trawlers and held in

Lubyanka prison The Lubyanka ( rus, Лубянка, p=lʊˈbʲankə) is the popular name for the building which contains the headquarters of the FSB, and its affiliated prison, on Lubyanka Square in the Meshchansky District of Moscow, Russia. It is a large Ne ...

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

until immediately after the inauguration of newly-elected US president Kennedy, when they were released by Soviet leader

Nikita Khrushchev Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...

as a goodwill gesture."RB-47H Shot Down" (archived older version, with more detail)
''nationalmuseum.af.mil'', Retrieved: 15 September 2019. McKone and Olmstead appeared on the cover of the 3 February 1961 issue of

Time magazine ''Time'' (stylized in all caps) is an American news magazine based in New York City. For nearly a century, it was published weekly, but starting in March 2020 it transitioned to every other week. It was first published in New York City on Ma ...

. In his news conference on 21 April 1961,

President Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), often referred to by his initials JFK and the nickname Jack, was an American politician who served as the 35th president of the United States from 1961 until assassination of Joh ...

was asked if the dropping of charges against an accused Soviet spy was in exchange for the release of the RB-47 aviators. The president denied this. As a result of their involvement in the incident, Olmstead and McKone received POW medals in 1996 and Silver Star medals in 2004, as well as the Distinguished Flying Cross.

References

External links

RB-47 Shootdown Information
{{DEFAULTSORT:RB-47 Shootdown Incident, 1960 1960 in international relations 1960 in military history 1960 in politics RB-47 shootdown incident 20th-century aircraft shootdown incidents Aviation accidents and incidents in the Soviet Union Aviation accidents and incidents in 1960 Cold War conflicts Combat incidents Espionage scandals and incidents Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower Soviet Union–United States relations July 1960 events in Europe Espionage in the Soviet Union Cold War military history of the Soviet Union

See also

References

External links