CHUCK MAULTSBY WAS 4,000 miles away from his fellow U-2 pilots flying the Cuban missions from McCoy Air Force Base in Florida, and he wished he could be in on the action. Instead he was in Alaska’s frozen tundra.
Maultsby’s work in Alaska began in July 1962. The Defense Atomic Support Agency needed a replacement pilot for its High Altitude Sampling Program over the Arctic, and he was sent to Eielson Air Force Base just south of Fairbanks. U-2 planes were the perfect aircraft for collecting radioactive particles from nuclear bomb tests, and the Alaska location was closest to the Soviet Union. The samples could yield information on Soviet atomic weapons. Because the radioactive particles from the USSR’s tests drifted over international airspace, the air force could gather samples and monitor the United States’ adversary without flying the spy planes over Soviet soil.
The U-2 pilots did their duty, choosing—or at least trying—to ignore the health risks from flying into the stratosphere where plutonium and uranium isotopes drifted after a Soviet nuclear test. It was just one more inherent hazard of their ultrasecret profession.
Specially equipped U-2s had an intake door in the nose of the plane that the pilot would open to trap samples in a filter. The lack of visual landmarks made flights in the Arctic especially dangerous—frozen earth blended with frozen ocean into, from the pilot’s perspective, a white wasteland. Complex celestial navigation was the rule in such conditions. Close proximity to magnetic North would throw a normal compass off kilter, and the aircraft’s gyrocompass was prone to error. More than one pilot had found himself a few degrees off course when he finally sighted an identifiable landmass.
Whenever the nuclear-sampling U-2s flew over inhospitable terrain, efforts were made to have a search-and-rescue (SAR) team as close as possible, should the pilot have to make an emergency landing. An air force Douglas DC4, carrying SAR paramedical personnel (nicknamed “Duck Butt”), would depart about three hours before the U-2, following the planned sampling flight path. The U-2, the faster of the two aircraft, would later pass the SAR plane. When the SAR aircraft reached Barter Island, at the northeastern tip of Alaska, it would orbit there until the spy plane returned. This method would at least put the DC4 in the general vicinity of the U-2 for a portion of its flight and potentially offer aid if the spy plane went down. However, with subzero temperatures, an injured U-2 pilot had only a brief window for rescue before he froze to death. And if the spy plane went down to the north of Barter Island, the chances of the rescue plane finding it were just about nil.
Although Maultsby flew eleven Arctic missions during the summer months, he never became fully acclimated to the almost twenty-four-hour sunshine and lack of visual landmarks. He was relieved when transferred back to Laughlin in September 1962, thankful to dodge the Arctic winters. Back in Texas, Chuck got to spend time with his three boys, including five-month-old Kevin. He was also happy to enjoy quiet time with Jeanne, who was proud that she could again fit into the favorite dress she had worn before getting pregnant. But the air force had other ideas for Maultsby beyond domestic bliss and sent him back to Eielson Air Force Base in late September for a second tour in Alaska.
The upcoming missions differed from the ones he had flown there in the summer in one major respect. The U-2 pilots would now fly all the way to the North Pole and back, some 3,000 miles. The radio beacon at Barter Island could assist them only during the first third of the trip. From that point northward, the pilot would rely solely on celestial navigation. Maultsby later said, “From there [Barter Island] to the North Pole was nothing but ice, stars and polar bears.”1 Nor were there any safe landing zones should an emergency arise.
Isolated in remote Alaska, Maultsby did not know much about the drama unfolding in Washington, DC, and Cuba.
“We heard that some of the U-2 drivers in our squadron were flying over Cuba to ascertain whether or not the Russians were off loading missiles onto Cuban soil,” he wrote years later. “If they were, things could get dicey in a hurry.”2
Maultsby’s assessment was a grand understatement.
On October 26, the day before his next mission, he went through preflight planning with his team and then tried to get some sleep. The noisy shuffle of airmen through the barracks in heavy snow boots made that impossible. Frustrated, he went down to the operations building and grabbed a cot. After a few hours, Maultsby awoke at 8 p.m. and ate a breakfast of steak and eggs. He was concerned that he’d only managed a few hours’ sleep with a long mission ahead.
At midnight on October 27 (4 a.m. in Washington, DC), Chuck began his first flight to the North Pole. He wasn’t flying over Cuba, but the mission was still dangerous. Only two other U-2 pilots had previously made the trip, and flying only by celestial navigation for approximately two-thirds of the 3,000-mile trip was anything but routine for even the most experienced pilot.
The flight progressed smoothly en route to Barter Island. The SAR crew, or “Duck Butt,” called Maultsby on a prebriefed frequency to say that they’d be arriving over Barter Island at about the same time.
“Good luck,” the Duck Butt crew told him. “We’ll keep a light on in the window for you.”3
As he continued to push on toward the Pole, Maultsby used a series of charts that showed exactly where certain stars should be in relation to his view from the cockpit. The flight was a strange mix of old and new: the pilots navigated like explorers from the time of Christopher Columbus but were searching for evidence of atomic bomb detonations rather than a new continent.
Celestial navigation was nothing new for Maultsby, but what would happen if he couldn’t clearly see the stars? He was about to find out.
An aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, suddenly appeared in the dark sky. Its shimmering streaks of color, primarily shades of green and pink, obscured the stars. These strange and vibrant lights are a result of solar activity whereby particles from the sun’s atmosphere reach Earth’s atmosphere, creating a phenomenon of shifting colors in the night sky.
Bands of color that danced in the frozen air now covered the formerly dark sky and tiny stars above Maultsby and his U-2. The display would be beautiful for anyone on the ground lucky enough to see it, but not for Maultsby. The pilot was trying to get a fix on a star with his sextant, but the aurora borealis made it difficult to discern one star from another. This was his first experience with the northern lights, and it could not have come at a worse time—or on a worse day.
He continued toward the Pole, hoping the aurora would fade out. It did not. In fact the glowing lights became more powerful. Maultsby didn’t consider turning back; instead, calculating that the lights would soon abate, the pilot held his heading and continued on, reaching what he thought was the North Pole at the predetermined time. There he executed his turn to put him on a course for home, trying to follow the same track as before.
Rather than feeling relieved that he had reached his objective and was on the return leg to the familiar tarmac of Eielson Air Force Base, Maultsby sensed uneasily that something was amiss. The northern lights were still obscuring his view, and he began to suspect he might be slightly off course. He put out a call to the Duck Butt rescue plane, hoping its crew could help nail down his position, but he got no answer. Maultsby was about as far away from mankind as one could be without a spaceship.
Further into the flight south, the shimmering northern lights finally faded, and Chuck could clearly see the stars. None of the alignments matched his chart. He now knew for certain that he had strayed off course but had no way of knowing in which direction.
He had no landmarks to guide him, and this was his first night flight; he couldn’t see a “single light from horizon to horizon.” He felt as if he had left planet Earth and entered an entirely different galaxy.
Maultsby estimated he was four hundred miles from Barter Island when he made radio contact with the rescue plane. That reassured him that he wasn’t too far off course. But a bit later, when he should have been directly over the island, he could not pick up the radio beacon’s signal. Someone from Eielson Air Force Base briefly called him over the single-side band radio but could not hear his return call. Next he radioed the Duck Butt rescue crew, who said they were orbiting the island and receiving the Barter Island radio beacon loud and clear. Concerned, the rescue plane announced it would start shooting flares every five minutes.
Maultsby never saw the flares, and for the first time in this long, grueling trip he felt a twinge of panic. He was either far to the east or far to the west of Barter Island. If he was far to the west, he knew he was in serious trouble—he could be flying close to or over the USSR, and the Soviets would surely be tracking him by radar. All sorts of dire thoughts must have raced through the pilot’s mind on that realization—first and foremost perhaps that if the Soviets were as on edge as the Americans, being so close to confrontation, they would use every means to blast his plane out of the sky. Survival would be a long shot, but he had managed it once before over Korea and maybe could do it again. But this wasn’t wartime Korea. This was the unforgiving Arctic, and even if he somehow managed to bail out, by the time the enemy located him, he’d be as frozen as a block of ice or digesting in the belly of a polar bear. And if, in a true long shot, he was taken prisoner, what good was that? He had spent more than two years as a POW of the Chinese, and no man should have to endure captivity more than once. His mind raced, and he had to fight down his fear. If he had strayed west, his options were bleak. Chuck Maultsby knew that he’d be captured or killed.