Ratto's Raiders Lost a Boeing RC-135 in Midnight Crash
By Miriam Adler ·
Who survived the midnight descent into Shemya remains a gap in the record, which stays silent on the casualties and the violence of the impact.
A Boeing RC-135 sits in front of Hangar 2 on Shemya. It is painted with shark teeth on the nose, a bit of aggressive bravado added by Captain Bob Brown and Lieutenant Colonel King Hawes. They called the plane "Wanda Belle" and "Nancy Rae."
The FAS mirror for the "RIVET BALL" program presents these images as a nostalgic retrospective, a curated memory of a "great mission." To the men of "Team-2," known as Ratto's Raiders, the aircraft was a companion, a vessel for a shared experience that Hawes claims they "will never forget." But the Boeing RC-135, according to the public record, is not a companion. It is a massive reconnaissance platform designed for the "near real-time on-scene collection, analysis and dissemination" of intelligence at both theater and national levels.
"Ratto's Raiders"
There is a specific kind of intimacy that forms in the belly of a surveillance plane. When you spend your hours in a modified fuselage, monitoring signals from a distance, the aircraft becomes more than a tool; it becomes a home. The FAS mirror's reference to "equipment layout and crew positions" suggests a claustrophobic efficiency, a world where a few technicians and pilots are isolated from everything but the data they are tasked to harvest.
In this space, the state's desire for total visibility is translated into the daily labor of men like Bob Brown, nicknamed "Viper," and King Hawes, known as "King" or "Tinker." They wrapped the cold geometry of intelligence gathering in the language of camaraderie and aviation folklore. They didn't just operate a Boeing RC-135; they flew with "her." They gave the plane a woman's name and painted teeth on its skin, anthropomorphizing a weapon of the Cold War to make the nature of the work more palatable, perhaps, or more human.
This naming convention—Nancy Rae, Wanda Belle—serves as a psychological buffer. It transforms a mission of electronic eavesdropping into a personal relationship. When Hawes writes that those who flew with her were "fortunate," he is speaking from the perspective of the operator, not the observed. The "fortune" he describes is the bond of the elite, the shared secret of those who fly the edges of the world to watch those who do not know they are being watched.
Document imagery from irp.fas.org From the files: irp.fas.org
"Nancy Rae"
The record lists the model number for Nancy Rae as JKC-135A. To the casual observer, it is a large aircraft, but its purpose is singular. Based on the public record, the RC-135 family was built by Boeing and modified by various contractors—including General Dynamics and Lockheed—to produce high-level intelligence. It is a machine of interception.
The images in the FAS mirror show the aircraft departing Majors Field in Greenville, Texas, and operating out of Shemya, a remote outpost in the Aleutian Islands. Shemya is a place of wind and grey water, a geographic extremity that serves as a perfect perch for a surveillance bird. The presence of the Rivet Ball there underscores the reach of the American intelligence apparatus: the ability to project a listening ear into the furthest reaches of the Pacific.
There is a stark contrast between the warmth of the crew's recollections and the clinical nature of the RC-135's function. The aircraft was designed for "collection, analysis and dissemination." It was a conduit for data. Yet, in the files, we see the shark teeth. We see the nicknames. We see a desperate attempt to inject personality into a process that is, by definition, impersonal and intrusive.
Document imagery from irp.fas.org From the files: irp.fas.org
January 13, 1969
The memory of the "great mission" ends at 12:30 AM on January 13, 1969. The FAS mirror notes that the Rivet Ball crashed during an attempted landing at Shemya.
The record provides a photograph of the wreckage, but the narrative stops there. There is no detailed casualty list in this specific file, no medical reports on the survivors, and no explanation for why a seasoned crew failed to bring the aircraft safely to the runway in the middle of the night. The crash is presented as a footnote to a career of service, a sudden break in the continuity of the mission.
We are left with a gap where the human cost should be. The FAS mirror captures the pride of the pilots and the aesthetics of the aircraft, but it remains silent on the violence of the impact. It tells us that the aircraft was "great" and that the mission was "great," but it does not tell us who was on board during that midnight descent or what happened to them after the plane hit the ground. The record leaves the final moment of the Rivet Ball as an image of twisted metal and an unresolved question of survival.