IT WAS OVER QUICKLY. ON APRIL 15, 1969, A NORTH KOREAN MIG-21 SHOT DOWN AN UNARMED U.S. NAVY LOCKHEED EC-121M RECONNAISSANCE PLANE OVER INTERNATIONAL WATERS.
All 31on board—30 sailors and one Marine—perished, the largest single loss of American aircrew-men during the Cold War. Only two bodies were ever recovered.
President Richard M. Nixon considered and ultimately rejected a military response. Over time, understanding of what the mission entailed evolved with the gradual release of classified documents. What has never changed, however, was the tragic loss of American lives and the enormous toll it had on the crew’s families.
The shootdown occurred during the height of the Cold War, when tensions between the United States and North Korea were at a peak. The Korean War had ended 16 years earlier with 37,000 U.S. personnel killed in action and both countries signing an armistice, not a peace treaty.
After that 1953 armistice, violent incidents continued, such as the North trying to assassinate South Korean President Park Chung-hee in 1968.
In January 1968, North Korea seized the Navy intelligence ship USS Pueblo. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers concluded that diplomacy was the best way to resolve the situation, which ultimately led to the crew’s release in December. Some historians refer to the perilous 1966-69 period as the “Second Korean War.”
Both the Navy and the Air Force had active aerial surveillance and electronic intelligence gathering capabilities in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Electronic Countermeasures Squadron 1 (VQ-1) was established in June
