Cold warriors have their stories too; this one is especially poignant...Edward R. Murrow of CBS radio had prepared a segment of his popular "Hear It Now" series telling the story of a simulated long-range bomber mission featuring a Convair B-36 and its crew, culminating in a bomb run over the Eglin Field practice range in Florida...All went well, and Murrow got the story he wanted, but at the exact time it aired on April 27, 1951, the same B-36 and crew were on another practice mission over Oklahoma...

Included was practice for a flight of P-51 fighters as they took turns diving at the giant, while the bomber's gunners simulated defensive gunnery with their gun cameras...One P-51 pilot miscalculated his attack, and sawed through the fuselage of the B-36, and both aircraft fell from the sky...I can only imagine the horror experienced by the crewmembers as they helplessly fell to their deaths, and what went through the survivors' minds as they floated down to the ground in their parachutes after exiting the broken-off tail section, and being forced to watch the remainder of their team plummet to their fate...

Here is their story......Ben