Reported by Bill Kelly, STATEWIDE Correspondent

[Jana McGuire, Statewide Host] A handful of pilots and even fewer generals and political leaders kept the secret for over 40 years. Orders issued from Strategic Air Command headquarters began a series of super secret spy plane missions over the Soviet Union. Only now have the documents been declassified, and only now are the people involved talking about it. Bill Kelly is here with the story. Bill?

[Bill Kelly, Statewide Correspondent] Jana, perhaps we shouldn't be surprised that in the early 1950's American spy planes were sent over Russian air space. You might be surprised to learn that American and Soviet pilots actually exchanged gunfire during these missions. Both President Truman and President Eisenhower decided to ignore international law while flying over foreign air space because they were so concerned about the growing threat of the Russian nuclear power. It's a fascinating and highly classified story that's only been made public by Air Force historians this spring, and for the first time, we can tell you the story here. {music}

This is the terror that once again casts its eerie shadow over the face of the earth. The hydrogen bomb, the bomb that Khrushchev announces will once again undergo tests by the Russians.
It was the 1950's and nothing was quite so scary as the Red Scare. Once again the iron fist of the Soviet Union has crushed the hopes of peace loving people. We had the bomb and they had it, too. The question was fundamental and frightening and at the time devilishly hard to answer. Did they have the ability to deliver it, and were they prepared to do so? The Soviets said they would resume testing and hinted at a new even more horrible weapon. In the early 1950's, the scarcity of facts about the Soviet Union's nuclear forces, the bombers and the bombs, was frustrating to President Eisenhower and President Truman before him. Powerful and horrible new weapons at the nation's disposal were to keep the enemies at bay. The President needed the facts to plan for how and possibly when they should be used. There was genuine alarm here, and that's when they said okay, we got to find out if they're massing bombers.

Cargill Hall is a civilian historian with the United States Air Force. Using documents and interviews, Hall has charted how two presidents, the Air Force, and the Strategic Air Command went about finding out about Russian fire power in the early years of the Cold War. Documents he obtained, only declassified in the past few months, reveal the orders for overflights of the Soviet Union were given directly by the President, and everyone involved was fully aware the United States was violating international law at the time.
[Cargill Hall, civilian historian:] These are men that had lived through Pearl Harbor and to have another nation attack you with atomic weapons and destroy your country would be unthinkable. It couldn't happen.

This was the greater good over international law at that point.

[Hall:] That's correct. The Department of Defense and the C.I.A. wanted the type of intelligence that only an overflight could provide, photographs of Russian bombers if, in fact, they were there at all.

What kind of information were they lacking?

[Hall:] Everything. They were desperate for information. You couldn't get into the Soviet Union. To tell you how desperate they were, they were using German aerial photography from World War II to try to find where things were. Now, this is ten years later almost.

And overflights could have provided up-to-date information?

[Hall:] Everything. That's totally reliable.

General Curtis LeMay, the no-nonsense commander of the Strategic Air Command, got the word in July of 1952. In a memo sent to only seven people in the military, SAC was ordered to rapidly refit two B-47 bombers for a spy mission. The order to fly hadn't even been approved, but the generals wanted to be ready. General LeMay chose Lieutenant Colonel Donald Hillman for the mission.

[Lieutenant Colonel Donald Hillman:] I was excited. It was very exciting to be able to -- I felt it was quite a privilege to be selected and be able to go on a mission like this.

And very hazardous.

[Hillman:] I've been in lots of hazard in World War II.

Hillman was summoned to Omaha to be personally briefed by General LeMay.

[Hillman:] He briefed us very briefly on the mission, and we were told to go back down and prepare and not tell a soul.

Before Hillman could fly, approval had to come from the White House. President Truman was lobbied by his generals. This previously classified memo from the Secretary of Defense to the Joint Chiefs of Staff summarizes the meeting with the President. A cautious Truman agreed to only one of the two flyovers recommended by his military men. Three days later the Air Force sent out instructions for the mission in another classified order. The document adds in the event of a crash or forced landing in unfriendly territory, the aircraft will be destroyed to the greatest extent practicable.

[Hillman:] Well, the concern was that we were flying airplanes that had the latest technology in that type of aircraft, and they didn't want this falling into Soviet hands.

Using a camera much like this one now displayed in the Strategic Air Command Museum, the crew would photograph five Soviet bases in Siberia. Hillman and two other men flew out of Eielson Air Force Base outside of Fairbanks, Alaska. It was as close as the United States could get to the Soviet Union. The B-47 Bomber turned spy plane headed out over the Bering Straits accompanied by an airborne refueling team.

[Hillman:] Alone and among strangers.

Worried at all?

[Hillman:] We were anxious to have a successful mission, to bring home the photographic materials. Other than that no, because we had planned the mission in a manner that we thought would avoid their defenses, and it worked out that way.

They photographed a base near Stanovaya. There was a second base near Ambarchik. It was then that Colonel Hillman's pilot detected Russian MiGs approaching on radar.

[Hillman:] They weren't going to get to us. We were coming out so fast and so high at that point because we had burned off most of our fuel that we were confident that they couldn't get to us.

There were no more MiGs the rest of the flight. The Alaska coastline and a safe landing signaled the mission's end. There would be more flights. Almost two years later another SAC crew, this one lead by Colonel Hal Austin, got the word that they would fly a spy mission across Russia's European border.
[Colonel Hal Austin:] My job in those days was to salute smartly and do what I'm told.

You knew this was an extraordinary thing to be asked to do?

[Austin] Had to be. Had to be.

The flight log kept by Colonel Austin at the time makes no mention that he was secretly flying into hostile territory. They flew out of a royal Air Force base in England flying around Scandinavia to enter the Soviet Union from the north. It was high noon, broad daylight when they crossed the border. Perfect weather made for perfect pictures of air fields near Murmansk. Air Force Intelligence briefed the crew. Soviet MiGs would not be a problem if they kept their aircraft at over 40,000 feet. Intelligence was wrong.

[Austin] When the first fighters came up and I saw tracers going over and under the airplane on a pass and I knew those were armed. He's coming this way, you understand, so it came in and exploded into the forward fuselage.

Could you feel the impact?

[Austin] Well, yeah, I felt the impact. Not having any idea -- it felt like -- I'd been hit by birds before and it didn't feel any different than being hit by a bird.

American Air Force flyers were in a dog fight with Soviet forces.

[Austin] When those happened, I said -- Carl turned around to operate the remote -- the tail guns, of course, 20 millimeter canon, and they were very unreliable guns but at least we got them to work once.

You were only able to fire back once?

[Austin] Typical guns. They just were not very reliable. Austin, his crew, and a limping B-47 flew back to Fairford Air Force Base in England. They could tell no one how their plane sustained that damage.

[Austin] So the crew chief, the first guy up the ladder when we got parked and he said, what kind of a bird did you hit? And I says, well, Chief, it was not a bird.

After both flights, technicians rushed the film to an analysis center in Washington, D.C. Photo analysts searched for signs that the Soviet Union had or were preparing the capability of flying atomic bombs over long distances. The photographs themselves have never been declassified, and they may have been destroyed. There is some hints that the information was very valuable. In a briefing paper for the new Secretary of Air Force in 1953, Intelligence staff called the first flights: the most significant demonstration of our reconnaissance capability. They had obtained valuable radar data and confirmation of other intelligence on suspected installations.

[Austin] We asked General LeMay, by the way, when he came back -- this was about four months later as I recall -- to give us the D.F.C.'s. We said, well, what about the film, is there any chance we can see it? He said, no, it's too classified for you to see it, but he says, I can assure you it was -- every target was well covered.

And what of the bomber gap with the Russians that so frightened American military and political leaders, the fear expressed aloud that the Soviets had far more air power available than we did to deliver nuclear weapons across borders.

[Austin] You had intelligence groups who would say, my God, we've got a bomber gap, we've got to crank out more B-52s and so forth and so on. Eisenhower now is in the position to say we can size our military establishment to meet a known threat and not one that's imagined and that saved the taxpayer big money, big money.

The bomber gap never really existed?

[Austin] No, it did not.

40 years later the pilots are finally telling their previously classified stories. Hal Austin still has pieces of the B-47 shattered by the shells fired by Russian MiGs, a few hunks of Soviet shrapnel left in the belly of his bomber.

[Austin] The explosion came in because the burned area on this end of the hole, that's where the shrapnel went through.

What do you think you contributed?

[Austin] Oh, national security. It's what a career Air Force officer's mission is is national security.

Hopefully made it a little safer world?

[Austin] Hopefully, yes.

The B-47s, the bombers turned spy planes, were retired years ago. And in these days when even military maneuvers seem to appear minutes later on C.N.N., it seems one of the most remarkable aspects of this story is its secrecy. It's been 40 years since American flyers were caught up in a dog fight with Soviet forces over Russian territory, and everyone's kept that secret...until today. For Statewide, I'm Bill Kelly. {music}