Dark Eagles: A History of the Top Secret U.S. Aircraft

16, 1968, 1.

274

Wagner, Lightning Bugs and Other Reconnaissance Drones, 139, 140-45.

275

Ibid., 172, 190, 191.

276

'Hanoi Claims U.S. Drone,' New York Times, April 20, 1969, 61.

277

Wagner, Lightning Bugs and Other Reconnaissance Drones, 190, 191.

278

Ibid., 157-65.

279

Ibid., 166-71, 213.

280

Benjamin F. Schemmer, The Raid (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), 35, 36.

281

Ibid., 98-100, 173-80.

282

Earl H. Tilford Jr., Search and Rescue in Southeast Asia 1961–1975 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1980), 109-11; and Schemmer, The Raid, 200-10.

283

Wagner, Lightning Bugs and Other Reconnaissance Drones, 172, 208.

284

Ibid., 193, 194.

285

Ibid., 199. The 147SC/TV did have a major problem — a tendency to just fall out of the sky. The problem was traced to the fin-shaped antenna that transmitted the television signals to the DC-130. It was found that the fin caused the drone to become directionally unstable. Once it was replaced with a flush antenna, the problem disappeared.

286

Ibid., 198.

287

Ibid., 198–200. The 147 drones live on in China. In the 1970s, photos were published of a Chinese copy of reconnaissance drones very similar to the 147G/H high-altitude drones. The launch aircraft was a Tu-4 (a Soviet- built copy of the B-29) modified with turboprop engines.

288

Drone Operations in Vietnam,' Warplane, (Vol. 4, Issue 48, 1986), 946.