Bradford Runyon Interview, 5 May 2000
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| BR: | No. Well, you were mentioning about security. One time one of our gunners accidentally stepped on the red line in front of a nuclear loaded B-52 and just by stepping on the line, not even going across it, you know, he was escorted at gun point well, back to interrogation and so forth, but anyway he got frost bite and all he did was go to step on a line. | |
| INT: | Oh yeah. | |
| BR: | Yeah that's serious. Yes. | |
| INT: | Okay, so let's talk about your sighting. Let's get back to talking about that. So you'd been up 10 hours— | |
| BR: | Yes. | |
| INT: | —coming back into Minot at that time? | |
| BR: | Right. I really can't remember whether we had just been in the area or whether we had come back from a bomb run someplace or whatever, but yeah, we had been out for 10 hours and well, we came in—I was at 20,000 feet and being the co-pilot I handled the radios, so I requested permission to make a penetration to land and so when I did this, why the controllers came back and said that they would like me to check on something if I wouldn't mind. I said, "Well, I've been flying for 10 hours, but if it's important I'll go check on it,' and they said, "Well, we think it's important," so I said, "Alright, give me a vector," and so they pointed me in a certain direction and we started flying out there and I got to thinking, pilot, what am I looking for? So I called and I said, "What is it that I'm looking for?" And they said, "Well, you'll know it if you find it.' That sort of got our curiosity up. So anyway a few minutes later my navigator said, "Pilot," he said, "we have something coming towards us," he says, "And it's coming fast," and then the radar navigator said, it's coming so fast that it can't avoid us and we were all ready to—ready for impact and so anyway, his voice really came up real high and you know, we thought we were going to be hit. And of course he's filming his radar scope at this time and so uh, you know, after, well, the next day they checked his film and with the clocks and everything around the scope they determined the object was coming at roughly 3,000 miles per hour and then it just stopped dead off the right wing or off the tail, being in the right seat. | |
| INT: | From what direction did it approach? | |
| BR: | I'm not positive, but I remember looking back to my— | |
| INT: | You didn't see it out of your windshield? |
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