<text id=00he1503><title>Ravens Over the Barents Sea</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Ravens Over the Barents Sea</hdr><body>
<p>The Boeing RB-47E of the 55th Strategic Reconnaissance Squadron, Strategic Air Command, cruised high above the Barents Sea. Its usual three-man flight crew was augmented by three 'Ravens'—electronic warfare specialists—in a capsule fitted in the B-47's bomb bay. The plane was on a ferret flight, probing the borders of Russian territory and monitoring the electronic transmissions from radars and communication systems.
</p>
<p>Major Willard G. Palm's crew had left Brize Norton air base in England on a flight planned to parallel the coastline of the Kola peninsula, reported as the home base of Russian heavy bomber units. It was to turn northeast well off the pointed bill of Kanin peninsula, and turn northwest upon approaching Novaya Zemlya to return to base. The same area undoubtedly had been profiled earlier, and Palm's flight may have been the unlucky one that the Russians decided to use as an example.
</p>
<p>At about 50 miles (80 km) offshore, a pair of MiG-15s formed on the sweptwing Boeing, held for a minute, and then broke off to attack. Cannon fire flamed the B-47's left wing, and Palm ordered the bail-out. Co-pilot Captain Bruce Olmstead and navigator Captain John McKone ejected, got good chutes, landed in the sea, inflated their life rafts and were picked up later by a Russian trawler. Palm stayed with the airplane and apparently ditched; his body was recovered and returned by the Russians. The three Ravens' bodies were not found. Olmstead and McKone were released by the Russians on 25 January 1961, and returned home.
