Item COLD WAR 27/74 - Transcript of interview with Colonel John B McKone, US Air Force, 1996

Typescript transcript of interview with Col John B McKone, Navigator, Boeing RB-47 Stratojet aircraft, 55 Strategic Reconnaissance Wing, 343 Sqn, Strategic Air Command (SAC), USAF, Forbes Air Force Base, Topeka, Kansas, USA, 1959-1960, relating to USAF electronic warfare missions to gather intelligence useful to the USA, 1959-1960; US operations from Alaska, USA, Japan and the UK to the periphery of the USSR to monitor radio transmissions and radar, 1959-1960; the encountering by US aircraft of Soviet fighters during electronic warfare missions, 1959-1960; McKone's opinion of the USSR, 1959-1960; McKone's description of a mission from RAF Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, to the Barents Sea, 1 Jul 1960; the shooting down of McKone's RB-47 aircraft over the Barents Sea and his rescue and capture by the Soviet authorities, along with US Capt Freeman Bruce Olmstead, 1 Jul 1960; the influence of the Gary Powers case on the USSR's decision to open fire on McKone's RB-47, Jul 1960; McKone's conviction that his aircraft was over international waters, at least sixty miles outside Soviet territory, at the time of the shooting down, 1 Jul 1960; the imprisonment and treatment of the captured US aircrew, 1960-1961; McKone and Olmstead's solitary confinement, Lubianka, Moscow, USSR, Jul 1960-Jan 1961; the interrogations of the captured US aircrew by the KGB (Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopastny, the Soviet Committee for State Security), 1960-1961; McKone's meeting with the Soviet interceptor pilot, Vassily Ambrosovich Poliakov, Moscow, Oct 1960; Soviet reconnaissance flights off the east coast of the USA, Alaska and around Cuba, [1960-1962]; speculation that the shooting down of McKone's aircraft was an attempt by the USSR to influence the US Presidential election, Nov 1960; the release and repatriation of McKone and Olmstead, Jan 1961; McKone's meeting with US President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Eugene Zuckert, US Secretary of the Air Force, 1961. 33pp