Between 1949 and 1960, according to a Joint Staff summary prepared in June 1992, 32 American airborne reconnaissance missions ended in international incidents, and 13 manned aircraft were lost (Joint Staff Action Processing Form, “Airborne Reconnaissance Incident History (1949-1960),” June 15, 1992). The figures were compiled for a Secretary of Defense tasking on Cold War prisoners of war and missing personnel. The National Security Agency released its copy of the package in September 2025, with parts still withheld at the Joint Staff’s request.
Flights along the Soviet, Chinese and Korean borders
Most of the aircraft in the 1992 package are Air Force RB-29s, RB-47s and RB-50s and Navy PB4Y-2, P2V and P4M patrol planes, flying electronic intelligence, photographic and other missions off the Soviet Union, China and North Korea. The mission summary in the package records the Soviet shootdown of a Navy Privateer over the Baltic on April 8, 1950, with its crew lost, and continues through the Air Force C-130 shot down over Soviet Armenia in September 1958 and the CIA U-2 piloted by Francis Gary Powers, downed near Sverdlovsk in May 1960 (Airborne Reconnaissance Mission Summary, 1949-1960, in the NSA release).
The summary also logs many encounters that ended without a loss. A Navy P4M was “fired on by PRC fighters” over the East China Sea in April 1953 with no damage. An RB-47 was fired on by Soviet fighters east of Gotland in November 1958, also with no damage. The document explains the volume by reference to how the flights were run. Before late 1960, it states, airborne reconnaissance “was managed primarily by the individual services who kept the Joint Chiefs of Staff informed of their individual activities.”
A continuation covering 1961 to 1973 credits the move toward centralized management in 1960 with “a significant decrease in reconnaissance-related incidents.” Incidents in that period numbered less than half those of the earlier one, the document says, with none after early 1973. It names three losses in the later period, the U-2 shot down over Cuba during the missile crisis in 1962, the USS Pueblo seized off Korea in 1968 and the EC-121 shot down over the Sea of Japan in 1969. The same chronology lists the June 1967 attack on the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean, described as “attacked by Israelis. Heavy loss of life and damage to ship” (Reconnaissance incident chronology, 1961-1973, in the NSA release).
The June 17, 1992 session
The covering memo in the release is dated June 17, 1992, and addressed to “NCR DEFENSE.” Its author’s name is withheld. The author reports attending a morning session chaired by “Maj Gen Ryan, JS” on a task levied by the Secretary of Defense, described as “a listing of missing U.S. personnel who may have been captured by the former Soviet Union, PRC or North Korea.” Downed reconnaissance aircraft were judged “the most likely candidates,” with a Vietnam-era addendum to follow. The completed task was due to the Secretary of Defense the following Monday (Memo, “Joint Staff Effort on Cold War POW/MIA Issue,” June 17, 1992).
The memo records three positions taken at the session. Ryan cautioned that the data “in some form or other – will be made public.” He stressed “that we owe the SecDef as honest a picture as we can present,” and he asked that CIA and NSA attend that afternoon. Separately, an “ADM Cramer” asked whether there was “anything to add to the list or any SIGINT” confirming that the Soviets held U.S. prisoners.
The memo continues. “[I]t was very appraent [sic] during this morning’s session,” the author wrote, “that the ‘official’ U.S. explanation for some of our losses and what really happened might be two different stories. Gen Ryan stressed that this group needs to know the truth.” The next lines are withheld under FOIA exemption (b)(1), marked “Per OSD-JS.”
The memo does not identify which losses the remark concerned.
Handwritten notes at the foot of the page read “Documents handed out at morning session attached” and “Timeframe is 1946-1989, ‘The Cold War.'”
The session took place the day after Russian President Boris Yeltsin, asked by reporters before his talks with President George H. W. Bush whether American prisoners remained alive in the former Soviet Union, answered “It is possible” (Public Papers of the Presidents, Exchange With Reporters, June 16, 1992). The Christian Science Monitor reported on June 17, 1992 that a Yeltsin letter to the Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs asserted the Soviet Union had taken 12 U.S. Air Force crewmen prisoner in the 1950s from nine downed spy flights. Bush and Yeltsin had agreed in January 1992 to establish the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (Report of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs, April 2001, p. 1).
Twenty-one incidents and 131 servicemen
A one-page summary in the package, “Cold War Aircraft Losses,” records information provided by the Air Force and Navy on 21 loss incidents from April 1950 to April 1969. It sorts them into six categories, four with all crewmen recovered, six “presented to the Russians-more information required,” three lost off the coast of China, five with few details, two with partial recovery of crew and one lost off the Korean coast. It gives the total as “131 unaccounted for servicemen.”
The summary excludes combat losses in Korea, training flights, known mechanical failures and aircraft “not lost in proximity to a Communist landmass.”
The attached table, which carries a fax header dated June 17, 1992, lists the incidents individually. It is reproduced below with the document’s own dates, figures and abbreviations. “SOJ” is the Sea of Japan, “cap” and “ret” mark crews captured and returned, “unrec” and “unres” mark crew unrecovered and cases unresolved. The table has 22 rows against the summary’s 21 incidents. Two RB-47 entries, dated April 18, 1955 and April 18, 1956, are each marked with an asterisk, and the second carries only ditto marks.
| Date (as listed) | Aircraft | Place | Number lost, status |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4/8/50 | Privateer | Baltic | 10, unres |
| 11/6/51 | PV-2 | SOJ | 8/10, unk |
| 11/19/51 | C-47 | Hungary | 4 cap, ret |
| 6/13/52 | B-29 | SOJ | 12, unk |
| 10/7/52 | B-29 | SOJ | 8, res/unres |
| 1/18/53 | P2V | Formosa | 6, unk |
| 7/29/53 | RB-50 | SOJ | 17/1 sur, 2 rec, unres |
| 4/7/54 | B-29 | SOJ | 1 unrec, unk |
| 9/4/54 | PV-2 | SOJ | 1 unrec, unk |
| *4/18/55 | RB-47 | Norpac | 6 unrec, unk |
| *4/18/56 | RB-47 | (ditto) | (ditto) |
| 8/22/56 | P4M | Formosa | 16 |
| 9/10/56 | RB-50 | SOJ | 16, unres |
| 12/23/57 | T-33 | Czech | 1 cap, ret |
| 6/27/58 | C-118 | Armenia | 9 cap, ret |
| 9/3/58 | C-130 | Armenia | 17/4 rel, 2 unk, 13 MIA |
| 5/1/60 | U-2 | USSR | 1, ret |
| 7/1/60 | RB-47 | Barents Sea | 6/1 ret, 2 rel/3 MIA |
| 9/17/65 | ? | PRC | Not given |
| 12/14/65 | RB-57 | Black Sea | ?, unk |
| 8/21/67 | Not given | Not given | Not given |
| 4/14/69 | C-121 | SOJ | 29, unres |
The table cites four sources by code, Air Force records dated November 9, 1961, October 28, 1991 and November 22, 1991, and a Navy record dated November 18, 1991. Not every row is a reconnaissance flight. The C-47 listed in Hungary in 1951 and the T-33 in Czechoslovakia in 1957 do not appear in the package’s reconnaissance mission summary.
The same losses in the Joint Commission’s 2001 count
The U.S.-Russia Joint Commission’s Cold War Working Group later narrowed its inquiry to ten losses involving the Soviet Union, with 89 crewmembers unaccounted for (Joint Commission report, April 2001, Cold War Working Group section, pp. 35-56). Several of its figures and dates differ from the 1992 table. The commission lists seven unaccounted for from the October 7, 1952 RB-29, against eight in 1992. The commission’s report accounts for Capt. John R. Dunham, whose remains were recovered from Yurii Island in September 1994 after a former Soviet border guard surrendered his Naval Academy ring. It lists 14 unaccounted for from the July 29, 1953 RB-50 and three from an RB-47 shot down on April 17, 1955 over the Bering Sea, where the 1992 table shows six. It dates the Armenia C-130 shootdown to September 2, 1958, the date also written by hand beside the entry in the 1992 mission summary.
The report states that remains of crewmembers from two of the losses had been repatriated and buried at Arlington National Cemetery. A 1993 excavation at the C-130 crash site near Sasnashen, Armenia, produced a group identification of the crew, buried at Arlington on September 2, 1998. From the July 1, 1960 RB-47, Capts. John McKone and Freeman B. Olmstead were held in the Soviet Union until January 1961, and the body of Capt. Willard G. Palm was returned that July (Joint Commission report, April 2001).
The commission described each of the ten losses as “an open case, an active file.”
The NSA release consists of the June 17, 1992 memo, the “Cold War Aircraft Losses” summary and table, the June 15, 1992 action form, and the mission chronologies for 1949-1960 and 1961-1973. It responds to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by John Greenewald Jr. of The Black Vault on February 8, 2018, and was approved for release on September 30, 2025 (NSA FOIA Case 103558). The Office of the Secretary of Defense-Joint Staff withheld portions as classified SECRET under exemption (b)(1), and personal information under (b)(6). Earlier DeClassified Now entries on the reconnaissance programs of the period include the U-2 and OXCART record and the CORONA satellite program.
Sources
- National Security Agency, FOIA Case 103558 release package (approved for release Sept. 30, 2025), including the memo “Joint Staff Effort on Cold War POW/MIA Issue” (June 17, 1992), “Cold War Aircraft Losses” with incident table, Joint Staff Action Processing Form “Airborne Reconnaissance Incident History (1949-1960)” (June 15, 1992) and reconnaissance incident chronologies, 1949-1960 and 1961-1973, via The Black Vault
- The Black Vault, “NSA FOIA Records Detail Pentagon’s 1992 Search for Answers on Missing Cold War Aircrews” (Oct. 9, 2026)
- Report of the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs (April 2001), Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency
- Public Papers of the Presidents: George H. W. Bush (1992, Book I), “Exchange With Reporters Prior to Discussions With President Boris Yeltsin of Russia” (June 16, 1992)
- Daniel Sneider, “Yeltsin’s MIA Statement Is News to Moscow,” The Christian Science Monitor (June 17, 1992)