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Note: The following was a post on the Prop Wash Gang Yahoo Groups Forum on 01 February 2019 in response to the following article: Manifesto of an Agile Intelligence Community published at RealClearDefense.com.
My thanks to Soppy for bringing the agile Intelligence Community article to our attention and to our dear friend Joe Bissett for his truly outstanding, detailed description of how & to the extent that early USAFSS airborne reconnaissance factored into and grew up with our ever-increasingly agile US Intelligence Community.
During Joe’s jeep years, cutting his teach as an airborne analyst at Rhein-Main (1959-62) and Incirlik (1962-64), I was myself becoming acquainted with Soviet air operations, primarily Soviet Tactical AF and Soviet LRA Ops — at RAF Chicksands (1956-60), Bremerhaven (1960-61), Wakkanai (1962-63), AFSCC/SCP-1 (LRA Analysis Shop @ USAFSS HQ) (1963-66). Then, after Intermediate Russian, AZK course @ Goodfellow, and survival schools (1966-67), I arrived for my first airborne assignment @ Rhein-Main in March 1967.
BTW, Goodfellow was a B-25 crew training base until 1958. In 1957 when the AF announced that aircrew training would end at GAFB, Senator Lyndon Johnson insisted that the AF come up with another mission to keep GAFB on active status. And in 1958, 1st Lt Doyle E. Larson arrived at GAFB with a small cadre of USAFSS men in advance of the move of the USAFSS school from March AFB, CA, to GAFB. ALK ground intercept training commenced @ GAFB in 1959, and Lt Larson opened the first AZK airborne intercept course the following year. (The first USAFSS airborne intercept operators had no formal intercept operator training.)
From day one in Operations @ Chicksands in Nov ‘56, I was a traffic analyst (actually a translator of Russian Civ Air traffic — interesting work for a 19-yr old lad straight of the farm in NC — arriving directly from Army Language School (a 26-week basic Russian course that emphasized Soviet army terminology). The most important product that we derived from Civ Air was the movement of nuclear-testing associate aircraft that were reflected in civil air traffic control comms, and I translated a gazillion messages passed in plaintext civ air Morse traffic associated with civilian passenger’s suitcase — boring beyond belief but for a few years ell such messages had to be fully translated. The highlight during my civ air analysis career involved the flight plan for the first civilian (Aeroflot) TU-104 jet transport to appear in the Western World, transporting Premier Krushchev from Moskva to London. After getting off a mid-shift, one of our civ air analysts drove to London and photographed the TU-104 sitting on the ramp at Gatwick Airport.
My next assignment in Bremerhaven as a voice intercept operator (HF tac voice involving Soviet TAF activity in EGER and Soviet LRA) was somewhat more interesting, and I was hand-picked to be a bomber analyst on my next assignment (Wakkanai) because of my experience at Bremerhaven. In turn, my experience with bomber analysis @ Wakkanai predestined me to be assigned to AFSCC/SCP-1 (the LRA analysis branch in San Antonio. Until the mid 1960s, the USAFSS analysis arm (i.e., AFSCC) had primary responsibility for 3rd echelon analysis and reporting of all Soviet air force operations, and I became a key part of a special analysis team (4 Russian linguists) within SCP-1, with a charter to investigate special unresolved analysis issues involving the LRA.
Our team leader was TSgt Henry P. Stacewicz, who Joe Bissett, Jerry Ellis, and a few other Rhein-Main USAFSS flyers may remember from the late 1960s-early 1970s, when Stace was in a HUMINT squadron @ RheinMain. Having completed the US Army’s Russian Liaison Agent and Interpreters School, Oberammergau, Germany, in 1951, Stace had been among the first handful of USAFSS Russian linguists in Europe, and he had flown aboard the first USAFSS ACRP mission in Europe (aboard prototype ACRP RB-29A 44-62290) in 1953. (The first known USAFSS Russian linguist was Air Force Capt William P. Fife, a former Army WW II paratrooper, who completed the first Russian language course at the Army Language School/Monterey, CA, in 1948 — Capt Fife flew a few exploratory missions as a Russian intercept operator aboard RB-29s from Kadena in the early 1950s.)
In 1965, Stacewicz and I, with two first term airmen, had access to a copy of all the intercepted LRA traffic from all US and foreign sources, including copies of the traffic from the late 1950s forward from Rhein-Main, Incirlik, and Yokota. Our two young airmen did a lot of the grunt work (compiling statistics, basic callsign analysis, etc.), and Stace & I attempted to determine what kind of training the LRA crews were doing, how successful they were, etc. We interviewed B-52 crew members assigned on Kelly AFB to assess the tactics and techniques that USAF SAC crews employed and matched results against what we were observing in LRA traffic. This comparison aided immensely in helping us understand what we were observing in the LRA traffic.
My 3-year tour in SCP-1 served me well in preparing for my assignment in the 6916th at Rhein-Main, where in 1969 during his second tour at Rhein-Main, I linked up with my best friend Horace F. “Joe” Bissett, Gary Hizer, and THT (in 1970) when CMSgt-selectee, Thomas H. Tennant, returned to Rhein-Main as our new NCOIC. I can personally vouch for Joe’s assessment of THT’s modus operandi and his competence. Working for Chief T was indeed a pleasure after an extended get-acquainted period. For the first year that I worked for Tom (he as our Ops NCOIC and I as NCOIC of the Sham Shop), he came in each morning to read out read file and (perhaps subconsciously) to verify most every thing I had done during the previous day or so — as Joe indicated you needed to “prove analytic results factually." This process continued for roughly a year, after which he apparently decided that I could be trusted to do my job without his close monitoring. From that point until Tom passed away on 5 March 2016, Tom & I became steadfast friends and confidants. We shared a bonding relationship unmatched with anyone else with whom I served in the Air Force, and it almost seemed preordained in 2015 when the 97th IS/CC put out feelers asking for recommendations for a deserving individual to be honored with his or her name being enshrined on the 97th IS Ops Building.
I considered it a great honor to write the recommendation that resulted the TENNANT HALL annotation being unveiled on the 97th Ops Building during a special ceremony on 30 June 2017.
RIP Chief, it has been almost 3 years since your passing & we miss you dearly.
And thank you, Joe, for lighting the flame that brought out my recollections of our mutual friend and Silent Warrior Brother, THT.
Larry Tart