'
A couple of Soviet sailors were on the bridge of
The second American interpreter, Lieutenant Commander George Bird, tried to speak louder. 'Attention, attention please,' he yelled several times. 'What is the name of your ship? Where are you going?'
Still no reply.
The captain of the
The Americans on board the
It was a relief to know that World War III had not broken out. Even so, there would be no fraternizing with the Americans.
The submarine commanders returned to Murmansk at the end of December to a frigid reception from their superiors. No allowances were made for the technical shortcomings of the Soviet vessels or the superiority of U.S. naval forces. As usual, the failure of the mission was blamed on the men who had risked their lives to implement it rather than the admirals and apparatchiks who made a mess of the planning. The deputy minister of defense, Marshal Andrei Grechko, refused to listen to the skippers when they tried to describe the difficulties they had encountered. At one point, he became so angry that he removed his glasses and smashed them against the conference table. They promptly broke into small fragments.
Grechko seemed unable to understand that a submarine had to come to the surface in order to recharge its batteries. 'The only thing he understood was that we violated the secrecy requirements, were discovered by the Americans, and that for some time we stayed in close contact with them,' recalled Aleksei Dubivko, the commander of
'It's a disgrace,' the marshal fumed. 'You have shamed Russia.'
The moment had arrived that Chuck Maultsby had been dreading ever since his safe return to Alaska. General Power wanted to see him. The SAC commander had a reputation for being a harsh taskmaster, intolerant of the slightest mistake. His associates believed he derived a perverse pleasure from stripping subordinates down in public. A top deputy would later recall that Power 'enjoyed ridiculing people and heckling people, and he was an expert at it. He delighted in getting a group in his office for a briefing and then making an ass out of the briefing officer.' If a wing commander was summoned to brief the general about an accident, 'nine times out of ten he was going to go home fired.'
The circumstances of Maultsby's debriefing could scarcely have been less propitious. He had almost fainted at Kotzebue Airfield when told that six Soviet MiGs had attempted to shoot him down. 'Shit, oh dear!' was his first reaction. 'I'm glad I didn't know it at the time…Whew!' He then 'stumbled over to a chair and took the weight off, fearing my legs were about to give out.' A special C-47 military transport plane was dispatched to Kotzebue to take him back to Eielson Air Force Base, while his unit commander recovered the U-2. From Eielson, another plane, a KC-135, flew him to SAC headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska. He was the only passenger aboard.
An Air Force colonel escorted him to Power's underground command post beneath Building 500. It was a hive of activity. People were 'running from place to place as if their lives depended on it.' The colonel took him to a briefing room next to the command post, and announced that CINCSAC would be with him shortly. At the head of the briefing table was an aeronautical chart plotting Maultsby's route to the North Pole. A sheet of paper was taped over the portion of the chart that illustrated his overflight of the Soviet Union.
General Power finally entered the room, followed by 'eight other generals who looked as if they hadn't been out of their uniforms for days.' It had been a nerve-wracking twenty-four hours for Power and his colleagues. One U-2 pilot had got lost over the Soviet Union; another had been shot down over Cuba; all high-altitude air-sampling flights had been canceled until further notice; SAC had reached a level of mobilization never before achieved in its sixteen-year history. Maultsby stood to attention nervously while the generals took their seats around the conference table. General Power sat directly across the table from him. Unlike some of the other generals, he wore a clean uniform and was cleanshaven, but looked 'extremely tired.'
'Captain Maultsby, how about briefing us on your flight yesterday?' said Power, after everyone was seated.
Maultsby stood next to the navigation chart, describing the air-sampling mission and indicating his planned route to the North Pole. He mentioned the effects of the aurora borealis and the difficulty he had taking fixes.
'Captain Maultsby, do you know where you went after leaving the Pole?' CINCSAC finally interrupted.
'Yes, sir,' replied Maultsby, as the other generals 'squirmed in their seats,' looking as if they were 'sitting on tacks.'
'Show us please.'
Maultsby lifted the paper from the classified portion of the map, and showed the generals his flight route with a pointer. He had seen a similar map at the military radar station in Kotzebue soon after his return, so he knew where he had been. But he had no idea how the Air Force had been able to track his flight, and could not understand why he had not been 'given a steer' before blundering over Soviet territory.
'Gentlemen, do you have any more questions?' asked Power, after Maultsby finished.
Nobody had any questions.
The general smiled.
'Too bad you weren't configured with a system to gather electromagnetic radiation. The Russians probably had every radar and ICBM site on maximum alert.'
Power ordered Maultsby not to discuss his overflight with anyone. It was not the first time that a SAC plane had gone badly off track in the vicinity of Chukotka. In August, a B-52 bomber fully loaded with nuclear weapons got lost as it was returning to Alaska from Greenland. The B-52 was heading directly toward the Soviet Union and was within three hundred miles of the Chukot Peninsula when ground control finally ordered it to switch course. It appears to have been following a similar track to that followed by Maultsby. According to the official SAC history, the incident 'demonstrated the seriousness of celestial computation errors in the polar region.' Since it was twilight, the navigator had been unable to take accurate readings from the stars ? just as Maultsby was confused by the aurora borealis.
The generals left the briefing room in order of rank. The last to leave was a one-star. On his way out of the briefing room, the brigadier general turned to Maultsby in amazement.
'You are a lucky little devil. I've seen General Power chew up and spit out people for doing a helluva lot less.'
Miguel Orozco and Pedro Vera had recovered their catamaran from the mangrove swamp of Malas Aguas on the northwestern coast of Cuba. They had been trying to contact the CIA mother ship that was meant to bring them back to Florida for several hours, without success. The stomach pains that had plagued Miguel for the past three days were causing him agony. The two men would make further attempts to make contact with their CIA rescuers by radio on October 29 and 30. Their increasingly frantic messages went unanswered.
