page_title: Martin/General Dynamics RB-57F Canberra
section_title: Strategic reconnaissance
hierarchical_section_title: Martin/General Dynamics RB-57F Canberra / Operational history / Strategic reconnaissance
caption_attribution_description: English: Martin General Dynamics WB-57F 63-13503. Photo taken when aircraft assigned to 6091st Reconnaissance Squadron, Yokota AB, Japan. Aircraft later transferred to NASA, Still in service as NASA 926
context_page_description: The Martin/General Dynamics RB-57F Canberra is a specialized strategic reconnaissance aircraft developed in the 1960s for the United States Air Force by General Dynamics from the Martin B-57 Canberra tactical bomber, which itself was a license-built version of the English Electric Canberra. It was operationally assigned to the Air Weather Service for weather reconnaissance involving high-altitude atmospheric sampling and radiation detection in support of nuclear test monitoring, but four of the 21 modified aircraft performed solely as strategic reconnaissance platforms in Japan and Germany.
  Three of the modified aircraft were destroyed with loss of their crews while performing operationally. The remainder were re-designated WB-57F in 1968. Four of the survivors were subsequently used by NASA for high-altitude atmospheric research. The others were retired from 1972 to 1974 and placed in storage.
  As of 2015, three WB-57Fs are the only B-57 aircraft model still flying, in service with NASA.
context_section_description: Military Air Transport Service (and its successor organization Military Airlift Command) was frequently used by the USAF for clandestine, special operations missions prior to the establishment of Air Force Special Operations Command in the 1980s. The RB-57F, with its extreme high-altitude ceiling was frequently used as a strategic reconnaissance platform. The four Rivet Slice aircraft (converted from RB-57D airframes) were equipped with covertly mounted cameras and assigned specifically to reconnaissance work in 1965, Rivet Slice 2 and 3 with the 6091st Reconnaissance Squadron at Yokota AB and Rivet Slice 1 and 4 with the 7407th Support Squadron at Rhein-Main AB.
  The RB-57F prototypes (63-13286 and 63-13287) developed under the Pee Wee III program were detached from the 58th WRS after operational testing and evaluation and sent to Pakistan to replace "Pee Wee 1" and "Pee Wee 2" in Little Cloud. The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 began while Pee Wee III aircraft No. 2 was out of the country and No. 1 was operated by 24 Squadron of the Pakistan Air Force.   Older accounts of the Little Cloud operation give the original reason for the RB-57F deployment to Pakistan as being the monitoring of Communist Chinese nuclear tests, which began in October 1964. The aircraft were said to have been flown by USAF crews during these operations, and one of the RB-57Fs was reported to have returned to its U.S. base before the outbreak of hostilities with India while the other remained.
  Because the PAF was outnumbered by its Indian counterpart, and with U.S. concurrence, the RB-57F was reportedly impressed into combat service with PAF No 24 Squadron to carry out daily reconnaissance sorties over Indian Air Force airfields at altitudes of up to 60,000 feet (18,000 m). The RB-57F was also said to have been locally modified by the PAF to carry a 4,000 pounds (1,800 kg) bombload, but never actually operated in a bombing role. On other occasions, the RB-57F was accompanied by a pair of PAF B-57B Canberra bombers (apparently the Rivet Flash configurations sold to Pakistan in 1959 as standard B-57s but modified in 1964 under a pre-agreement of sale to enable them to track Indian mobile radars) that were jamming Indian military radio transmissions.
  All three aircraft were involved in directing attacks on an Indian radar station at Amritsar, and during these operations, one of the PAF B-57Bs was shot down in error by Pakistani Anti-Aircraft Artillery. The account goes on to state that on 15 September 1965, RB-57F 63-13286 was straddled by two SA-2 SAMs as it commenced its descent towards Peshawar. Despite the plane's suffering major structural damage and sustaining over 170 holes, the pilot managed to nurse the aircraft back to Peshawar, where he made a successful forced landing. The aircraft was eventually repaired and returned to the USAF.
  However, in a newer history by a retired Big Safari commander published in 2014, some of the earlier account is refuted as erroneous. The Pee Wee III aircraft arrived in Pakistan in March 1964, well before the Chinese nuclear tests began, not for monitoring the tests since the aircraft were not yet equipped with the sampling equipment, camera, or sensors of the standard RB-57Fs, but to collect telemetry from Soviet missile test ranges, particularly Kapustin Yar. The aircraft were both flown and maintained by members of the Pakistan Air Force, not the U.S. Air Force, a condition mandated by the Pakistanis. The RB-57F prototypes, with the required capability of being a type that PAF airmen could fly, had been purpose-built with the telemetry mission as its goal, and the modification for carrying a two-ton payload in the bomb bay had been made by General Dynamics as part of its development, not by the PAF. From April to October 1965 the two RB-57s each underwent an annual three-month depot maintenance recycle at the General Dynamics plant in Fort Worth required by Big Safari rules, which was where Pee Wee III No. 2 was when the air war began on 1 September 1965.
  One member of the USAF crew sent by the Big Safari office
caption: WB-57F 63-13503 assigned to 6091st Reconnaissance Squadron, Yokota AB, Japan.
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