Retired U.S. Air Force Col. LaVerne Griffin, EAA 96399, who served in the Korean and Vietnam wars and was a pilot for top-secret RF-86 Sabre Haymaker reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union, will present at the EAA Aviation Museum on Thursday, August 16, as part of the Aviation Adventure Speaker Series.
LaVerne, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, native, enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces in August of 1946 and began pilot training in 1947, flying Stearmans, AT-6s, and P-51s before receiving his first assignment with the 12th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron, flying RF-80s (the reconnaissance version of the Lockheed F-80) and beginning a lengthy career flying reconnaissance for the U.S. Air Force.
“Right out of flying school that’s what I was assigned to, and I loved it,” LaVerne. “The work was great. I liked it better than the fighters because we were always flying all over California and the United States taking pictures, and the fighter guys would just go to the gunning range and back, but we got to go all over”
After a brief stint flying C-47s in Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, LaVerne got back into jets by flying the F-84, RF-80s, and RF-86s. In April of 1953, LaVerne officially entered the Korean War fray, flying 25 total reconnaissance missions in the RF-80 during the war. On the final day of the Korean War, July 27, 1953, LaVerne made a high-altitude, top-secret reconnaissance flight over Manchuria in an unarmed RF-86, traveling from Seoul, South Korea, to Harbin in northern China. It was the deepest overflight of Manchuria ever recorded in a single-engine jet.
After the Korean War, LaVerne briefly flew McDonnell F2H Banshees for the Marines before being recalled to the Air Force to fly in the modified F-86s (with painted-on gun ports) that would be used in the Haymaker missions over the Soviet Union.
“Those airplanes had a bulge on the side for the cameras because we had two 40-inch, focal-length cameras,” LaVerne said. “And the magazine’s about that big, so in order to mount them vertically, they had to put a little bulge on the side of the airplane.”
Stationed in Nagoya, Japan, LaVerne flew his first Haymaker mission over Vladivostok in the Soviet Union on March 22, 1954, leading a flight of six airplanes, two of which were spares and eventually diverted back. Flying at altitudes of more than 40,000 feet, two of the airplanes started to produce contrails and aborted the mission to avoid detection, but LaVerne and his wingman were able to get the photos they needed.
“We get the pictures, and the reason for this mission was [former President Dwight] Eisenhower was very concerned that the Russians had these TU-4 bombers that could carry a nuclear bomb and could bomb the United States, even if it was a one-way mission,” LaVerne said. “He’d proposed this open skies arrangements to [Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev that we would fly over their area, they could fly over ours, and Khrushchev said, ‘Nyet’ (no). So Eisenhower, we learned later, said, ‘We’re going to do this anyhow because we need this information,’ so that’s how it got laid on for us to do this mission under Eisenhower’s direct orders.”
After his first Haymaker mission, LaVerne received the Distinguished Flying Cross and his photos helped determine that the Soviet Union wasn’t capable of delivering a nuclear bomb to the U.S. at the time, easing tensions between the two countries.
“They developed the pictures, and they find out that they are not capable of carrying nuclear bombs,” LaVerne said. “I don’t know how these photo interpreters do their work, but they never let me see the pictures that I even took…. The next morning, [Gen.] Otto P. Weyland … calls us into his office. We’re in our flying suits. He said, ‘Boys, that was a good job,’ and he came out and he pinned a DFC right on our flying suits, and he said, ‘I’ll take care of the paperwork later.’”
LaVerne flew two more Haymaker missions over the USSR, including one in which he spotted a MiG-17 below him, before rotating back to the United States. He then flew the RF-84F for a few years as the commander of the 20th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron and became an air force advisor to the Air National Guard in Meridian, Mississippi. He was selected by the Air Force to attend Penn State to earn an aerospace engineering degree, doing so in 1963, before heading to Udorn, Thailand, in 1968 to command the 14th Tactical Reconnaissance Squadron during the Vietnam War, flying 152 missions in the RF-4C. LaVerne ended his Air Force career at Alconbury, England, where he was commander of the 10th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, which was comprised of three squadrons of RF-4C aircraft, and retired from active duty in May of 1974.