On top of the world
Lampasas High School graduate honored for CIA Arctic mission
By DAVID LOWE Staff Writer

COURTESY PHOTO Before joining Operation Coldfeet, Randolph Scott worked for four years as a United States Forest Service smoke jumper, a firefighter who jumps from an airplane to battle a forest fire. Scott jumped in 47 Forest Service missions and in 50 CIA manuevers.

Randolph Scott's adventures after high school began with fire, but he encountered ice, too.

The CIA recently presented the Lampasas High School graduate -- a former smoke jumper and B-17 crewman -- and other Operation Coldfeet participants with Agency Seal Medals at the CIA's McLean, Va. headquarters. Some details of the 1962 Arctic intelligence mission now have been declassified.

Scott, who worked a B-17 nose trigger during Operation Coldfeet, joined 10 other team members in the U.S. Navy's effort to recover strategic information from an abandoned Soviet research station near the North Pole. The CIA, which cooperated with the Navy in Operation Coldfeet, recruited Scott after he spent one year as a United States Forest Service lookout and four years as a smoke jumper -- a firefighter who jumps from an airplane to combat a blaze.

COURTESY PHOTO Lampasas High School graduate Randolph "Toby" Scott, second from left, received an Agency Seal Medal at a recent ceremony at CIA headquarters in McLean, Va., for his role in Operation Coldfeet, a 1962 intelligence mission near the North Pole. Joining Scott at the ceremony were, from left, his girlfriend Nancy Peak Brady; Scott's nephew Rhett Scott; and Ms. Peak Brady's daughters, Cheryl Brady Schneider and Gail Brady Moncla.

The search for the Soviet drift station N8 began May 27, 1962, when CIA contract pilots Connie Siegrist and Douglas Price, along with Pan American Airways polar navigator William Jordan -- who had been hired by CIA proprietary Intermountain Aviation -- departed from Point Barrow, Alaska.

The team returned to Point Barrow after 13 fruitless hours in the air and did not locate the station until the next day. After pickup coordinator John D. Wall selected a drop point, investigators James Smith -- an Air Force major -- and U.S. Navy Reserve Lt. Leonard LeSchack exited the aircraft. The B-17 then dropped supplies to the men and departed.

Dense fog prevented retrieval of the investigators on May 31 and June 1. Scott and other Operation Coldfeet members finally picked up their fellow participants on June 2.

Since Feb. 1, 1962, Scott had helped test Connecticut inventor Robert Fulton Jr.'s Skyhook system, which Fulton completed in 1958. The aerial retrieval system, designed to pick up cargo or people in hostile territory and areas inaccessible to helicopters, featured a harness attached to a 500-foot braided nylon line.

Once the harness was connected to the cargo or person being retrieved, a helium-inflated dirigible raised the line into the air.

The pickup aircraft, with two steel horns on its nose forming a forked shape, aimed at an orange mylar marker about 425 feet up the line. The aircraft caught the nylon line, the trigger operator secured it to the airplane, and the pickup crew hooked the line to a winch and reeled it in to bring the human cargo on board the airplane.

When testing the system, crew members originally planned to pull each man in from the belly of the aircraft, Scott said. After nearly crashing when they practiced with a dummy, though, the team decided to bring Smith and LeSchack inside via the B-17's tail.

When they retrieved the investigators, the crew struggled through 30-knot winds and fog that reduced the cloud-to-ground ceiling to just 500 feet. Because of complications with magnetic equipment near the North Pole, Jordan used sun lines to navigate.

"There weren't many people who knew how to do that," Scott said.

Crew members had to fly over the Soviet station several times to complete the pickup. The aircraft retrieved intelligence film first and returned about an hour later to pick up LeSchack, who had finished jump school just before Operation Coldfeet began.

When the B-17 caught his line, the aircraft dragged the young investigator about 100 yards before raising LeSchack into the air, Scott said.

Finally, the team retrieved Smith, a veteran paratrooper the team members called "Mr. Cool" for his poise under stress.

Each pickup required less than six-and-a-half minutes, the best times achieved to that point in actual operations with the Skyhook. Tests with dummies in better weather conditions had yielded times less than two minutes, Scott said.

Although he figured the team was out of Soviet gun range, Scott did worry throughout the operation about mechanical problems. Manuevers around the N8 station took crew members as much as six hours from Point Barrow. If one of the B-17's four engines failed, Scott doubted the plane's three remaining engines could survive the strain the trip would place on them.

"If you only had three engines and anything happened, you'd be in big trouble," he said.

The crew returned safely to Point Barrow, though, yielding intelligence "of great value," Operation Coldfeet commander Capt. John Cadwalader said. Equipment and documents taken from the station revealed that the Soviets had developed an advanced system of silent operation. The USSR also outpaced the United States in polar meteorology and oceanography research, according to an article by historian William Leary, who has written about Operation Coldfeet.

"One of the best things about it was it was several years before [the Soviets] found out we had been there," Scott said.

Scott jumped on 47 firefighting missions with the Forest Service, completed 50 jumps with the CIA and jumped 17 times when training special forces in Vietnam.

"They shot at us once in awhile," the Lampasas High School graduate said of North Vietnamese troops.

The day after graduating from high school in 1956, Scott loaded into a 1947 Chevy and traveled to Idaho with classmates Duwain Snell, C.W. Hetherly and Cecil Brooks.

"We'd have to stop about every 100 miles and put a quart of oil in it," Scott said of his car.

With just $70, he enrolled in fire school. He learned to read a fire finder and spent his summer on a lookout tower spotting fires.

"I only saw two people that summer: a sheep herder and the packer that brought me in and took me out," Scott said.

One of just 21 smoke jumpers accepted out of a class of 400, Scott believes the jumping experience of LHS graduates Johnny Lewis and Darrell Eubanks -- nicknamed "Yogi" -- helped him gain the Forest Service job.

Eubanks held the obstacle course record for several years at the smoke jumper training course, Scott recalled.

Training included calisthenics, two-mile runs with logging boots, building fences and logging with chainsaws and cross saws.

When they ventured from the forest, the Lampasas graduates found opportunities for rugged entertainment. At a carnival in McCall, Idaho, Scott's friend Dewayne Davis won prize money as the only successful competitor in a black bear wrestling match.

Now a part-time resident of Burnet, Scott stayed active after finishing his Forest Service and CIA work. Following employment as a logger, he worked for six years in Vietnam with tugboat and barge contractor Alaska Barge and Transport Co.

He travels regularly to his second home 60 miles east of Missoula, Mont., on the Blackfoot River. There, grizzly bears seem to outnumber humans, and horseback riders can travel for a hundred miles without crossing a fence.

He no longer scours the Arctic Circle, but Randolph Scott keeps exploring.