The setting
In the 1960s, two one of a kind spy planes lived on Shemya, a tiny two mile by four mile island at the far end of the Aleutian chain, closer to Russia than to anywhere American. The island was so remote and miserable that crews just called it "The Rock." Their job was to sit on alert and race out over the Bering Sea whenever the Soviets test launched an ICBM toward the Kamchatka Peninsula, filming and recording the missile's reentry.
The two aircraft
Rivet Ball (a converted KC 135, tail number 59 1491) was the first of her kind, packed with every camera and tracking sensor available, unarmed and defenseless, and beloved by her crew. Rivet Amber (62 4137) was her partner, carrying the most powerful airborne phased array radar ever built at the time, so expensive it was the priciest single aircraft in the Air Force. Both planes ranked in the Air Force's top tier of national priority projects, just below the sixteen most important programs in the country.
The men who flew them were EWOs called "Ravens." A tight knit team (Team 2, "Ratto's Raiders") rotated between Shemya and Eielson AFB near Fairbanks, living, working, and partying together, complete with an in house card game called Zots and a wild reputation for pranks (including once taping shark teeth to Rivet Ball's nose before a general's inspection).
The high point
In October and December 1968, Rivet Ball's crew captured the first ever photos of a Soviet multi warhead ICBM test, a major intelligence coup that ended up in Newsweek and helped shape early US missile defense thinking. It should have earned them a Distinguished Flying Cross, but because the mission was secret, they got a lesser Air Medal instead.
1969, the tragic year
Everything changed fast. On January 13, 1969, Rivet Ball hydroplaned off the runway on a night landing in icy slush and went over a cliff at the end of the strip. The crew walked away, but the plane was wrecked beyond repair and later burned and buried. A Soviet reconnaissance jet even buzzed the wreckage hours later, a strange coda to the crash.
Then, on June 5, 1969, Rivet Amber took off from Shemya for what should have been a routine flight to Eielson. About forty minutes in, the crew radioed that they were feeling vibration, then went to oxygen, then went silent after a final radio key click. All 19 men aboard vanished over the Bering Sea. A massive two week search found absolutely nothing, no wreckage, no bodies, no answers. The most credible theory, from people who actually flew and maintained these planes, is a catastrophic tail failure from metal fatigue, not a Soviet shootdown as some rumors claimed.
The aftermath
Both planes were replaced by the new Cobra Ball program. A building at Eielson was renamed Amber Hall in memory of the lost crew. Decades later, the author (King Hawes, a former Raven on Rivet Ball) built this entire website after being contacted in 1999 by the daughter of one of the men lost on Rivet Amber, who was searching for any information about her father. That request is what turned his personal memories into a public memorial.
