Hognose Silent Warrior

Book excerpt: The Silent Warriors of the U.S. Air Force Security Service, the "back-enders" on SAC's Hognose RC-135 reconnaissance planes, had quietly been in all the USAF air campaigns of the Vietnam War. Little is known about the critical role that a few thousand of these unheralded flyboys played in America's air war against communist aggression in Southeast Asia during that era. They were merely one of the many integral pieces of the great puzzle that history knows as Vietnam. They performed their top secret role in a most spectacular fashion by intercepting enemy communications about troop and materiel movements on the ground, surface-to-air launches and anti-aircraft targeting, and MiG fighter pilot communications. The author was one among many of those American kids of the 60's who were selected to join the privileged ranks of the air force's elite. This is yet another untold story about Vietnam, one you may not have heard about before. It is America's involvement as seen through a much different lens, a story about those who fought this war using intellect as their only weapon. From the early 1960's until the war was officially declared over after the fall of Saigon in 1975, there was a period of great advancement in America's intelligence gathering efforts. It was an unprecedented endeavor to monitor, collect and process real-time data and information utilized for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. America's skills were honed beyond expectations during this era, in particular the airborne intercept mission programs that expanded beyond utilizing older prop planes to newer jet models, like the RB-47, later the U-2 and SR-71 super spy planes, and in particular the Boeing 717 model configured as the RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft that could be manned with up to thirty-five crew members. Mostly enlisted personnel, these Silent Warriors, as they came to be called, were the creme-de-le-creme of the USAF. They were schooled in linguist