COLONEL ROY M. STANLEY II, USAF(RET.)
Brave men in exceptional aircraft risked overflights of “denied territory” to bring back rolls of aerial imagery, but that was only half their task. The personnel of the 67th Recon Tech Squadron finished the work, flawlessly processing the film to preserve its content, and expertly analyzing every inch to extract intelligence on changes to known targets and to discover new threats. Then we had to get that information to strike units and decision-makers quickly and in a form they could use efficiently.
This book relies on newly declassified documents and accounts of more than forty people who were there to tell the history of those technicians and that process during critical days in a critical theater of operations.
Colonel Roy M. Stanley II served in the USAF Intelligence for 27 years, holding positions on the Air Staff, in Pacific Air Forces, the Strategic Air Command, and with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He had assignments in Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan, and worked in Air Defense Analysis, Combat Intelligence, as Chief of an Indications Center, and was an early innovator of computer assistance to photo intelligence. His deepest interest has always been aerial photographic interpretation and this is his fourth book on the subject. He remembers his two four-year tours with the 67th RTS as some of the best, most challenging, most exciting and most rewarding duty of his career. Colonel Stanley lives near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Is Everything Ready?
Hot Damn! This time we were really going “first class.” Eastman Kodak, IBM, the hottest plane in the air (the CIA’s A-12), full support from the NRO, and a relatively free hand to get the job done—it just doesn’t get any better than that!
Our Photo Interpreters had an excellent reputation so the 67th RTS PI operation was approved for “first phase exploitation” of Black Shield (BX) by the NRO. We knew the target area like the back of our collective hand and had built the finest PI Support system in the business. The computer operation was so unique there was no yardstick to measure what we were capable of delivering. The 67th RTS Photo Lab got the most detailed “going over.” If the Lab couldn’t “certify” for processing the Original Negative it wouldn’t matter how good our PIs and computer operation were.
On 18 August 1967 the 67th RTS was recertified as Overseas Processing and Interpretation Center-Asia (OPIC-A) and assigned responsibility for the Black Shield mission.
We were ready for what people inside and out of the 67th have come to believe was our greatest and most rewarding challenge, and for which we received an Air Force Outstanding Unit Award. Over the next ten months we worked 24 BX missions. We also exploited 259 Giant Scales, 39 Church Doors, 260 Giant Dragons, 60 Southeast Asia drones, 100 Commando Clinch Soviet peripheral missions and 12 missions of Commando Clasp, Food Fair and Commando Look covering coastal USSR, North Korea and Communist China. On top of all that we came up with innovations in reporting and automation that made us the leaders in the business.
What a time THAT was! All accomplished with an assigned strength of 19 officers and 174 enlisted personnel, an available work force on any given day closer to 155 people. No wonder the 67th averaged nearly 2,000 hours of overtime each month during this period.
It’s OUR Turn
By mid July 1967 the CIA had enough BX coverage to believe there were no surface-to-surface missiles in North Vietnam. The mission emphasis shifted to support of forces in Southeast Asia. This meant “first read” photo interpretation would transfer from NPIC to us. In early September a “special mission” aircraft arrived at Yokota delivering to us the “one of a kind” EK Blaketron Film Titler specially modified to print the alternating frame titling needed for the unique format of the Black Shield camera and film. We knew the next mission was ours.
Talk about excitement. Those in the know were wound tight as banjo strings. This was the biggest thing to happen to the 67th since those first CHINAT U-2 missions. Everyone in the 67th knew something BIG was about to hatch, and it HAD to go right. There was no other option.
“Everything’s Up To Date In Kansas City”
We did it! On 16 September 1967 OPIC-A worked our first Black Shield. It was a typical “two pass” run over North Vietnam. Black Shield 6722 was not only our first BX, it was also the fastest mission flown, hitting Mach 3.5.
We went smoothly through that first mission, then another and another. Not a millimeter of film was lost, and this bird brought back a LOT of film. The hardest possible situation was back-to-back missions of great length and high priority, and that was just what we had on BX, our second one coming in on 17 September. The 67th RTS handled the second mission workload in stride even as the first mission was wrapping up in both the lab and PI.
Both PI reports were superb and thorough, and we were so well prepared that two big missions so close together didn’t overwhelm either our interpreters or computer operation. The Intel world REALLY began to take note of our work. It soon became routine for us to receive messages from NPIC stating that we were doing such a thorough job of exploitation that the “big boys” in Washington could find nothing to add.
The 67th RTS was providing national and theater decision makers timely intelligence on areas otherwise denied regular surveillance. We concentrated on the status of “high threat” targets, lines-of-communication, and searches for new targets, proving that no one in the business could do it better. We were giving war-fighters and decision-makers timely information on Bomb Damage Assessment, target status, Orders of Battle, and new activity. It would have taken most of the Tac Recce assets in SEA to get that kind of coverage in one afternoon, and we would have probably lost several planes. Black Shield had all the collection advantages of the satellite, but with results available the next day rather than weeks later. All PACOM, PACAF or 7th AF had to do was tell us what they wanted to know and we added it to our priority read-out.
Soaring Morale
Back in “the world” GIs were being spat upon and there were anti-military/anti-war demonstrations, but we didn’t feel it. Following successful accomplishment of those first BX missions, we were “flying” higher than the Blackbird. We were working the BIG one, the “baddest” mission flying. No other military unit was doing anything close. I have no words to describe the elation felt by squadron personnel—it was something you had to experience to understand. We knew we had reached a new plateau of achievement that everyone else in the business would have to take note. Best of all, they did take note! Everyone who had a piece of this success went to subsequent conferences, TDYs or new assignments standing taller. To say you were assigned to the 67th RTS during those days was like going to your High School Reunion in an Armani suit and a Rolls Royce that really belonged to you. Most of us felt that the stress, the unrelenting attention to detail, the long hours, the weekends were all worth it! We were doing great, important things, and we all knew it.
