Word: mckone
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...McKone: If the Air Force orders me to do such a mission again, I would not hesitate...
...Force secrecy curtain came the two RB-47 airmen who were released by the Russians shortly after John Kennedy's inauguration. In a prepared joint statement, followed by a question-and-answer session at Forbes Air Force Base, near Topeka,Kans., Captains Freeman B. Olmstead and John McKone (TIME cover, Feb. 3) told newsmen what happened to them after their RB-47 was shot down over the Barents Sea last July while flying a "ferret" mission to test Russian radar defenses. Their story of personal bravery under intense cold war pressures left unanswered the question...
Olmstead and McKone plopped into the "extremely cold and rough" Barents Sea, were kept afloat by their automatically inflated individual life rafts until they were picked up about six hours later by a Soviet fishing trawler. They never saw any of the other crew members.-Olmstead and McKone spent the next seven months in Russian prisons, most of the time in solitary confinement. Their cells were cramped and chilly. Strong lights burned steadily, 24 hours a day. Subsisting on "small but regular quantities of rice, macaroni products and boiled meat," they lost about 40 pounds apiece during their imprisonment. They...
Threats Rejected. For a while, the airmen were interrogated every day; then, after a few weeks, the interrogations slacked off. The Russians tried repeatedly to get Olmstead and McKone to sign "confessions" that they had been under orders to fly over Soviet territory, kept reminding them that they were being held on grave charges, punishable by death under Russian law, and hinted that their sentences might be lightened if they confessed. They refused (but they did sign some "legal documents," which they told the newsmen they were "not at liberty to discuss"). To keep his mind occupied, said Olmstead...
Tanned and rested after a vacation at Ramey Air Force Base in Puerto Rico, Olmstead and McKone said that they were ready for "any job the Air Force gives...