Just the other day, four Swedish Air Force officers received Air Medals from the U.S. Air Force for a Cold War mission that had remained classified until just last year. On what might have been just any other day in 1987, they had helped escort a stricken SR-71 Blackbird spy plane through Sweden’s airspace and on its way to safety, potentially shielding it from any marauding Soviet aircraft. Swedish Air Force Colonel Lars-Eric Blad, Major Roger Moller, Major Krister Sjoberg, and Lieutenant Bo Ignell got their medals during a ceremony at the U.S. Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden on Nov. 28, 2018. The U.S. military as a whole awards Air Medals for singular acts of heroism or other particular meritorious achievements during a flight. Retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonels Duane Noll and Tom Veltri, the pilots aboard the SR-71 during the Cold War incident, were also present.

The Swedish aviators also received a painting depicting the event. The Swedish Armed Forces, or Forsvarsmakten, released a picture, seen at the top of this story, of the SR-71 that Ingell had taken at the time. “We will never know what would or could have happened, but because of you, there was no international incident. The U.S. Air Force did not lose an irreplaceable aircraft, and two crew members’ lives were saved,” Noll said during the medal presentation ceremony. “Thank you for being highly skilled and dedicated patriotic fellow aviators.”

USAF From left to right, Swedish Air Force Colonel Lars-Erik Blad, Major Roger Moller, Major Krister Sjober and Retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Tom Veltri during the medal ceremony at the US Embassy in Stockholm.

On June 29, 1987, Noll and Veltri took off from RAF Mildenhall in the United Kingdom for missions in the Barents Sea and Baltic Sea, flying at high altitude and using a slanted flight path to gather imagery inside the Soviet Union from international airspace. This would allow the plane to grab imagery of various important sites, including Soviet military facilities in the Kola Peninsula and around the Baltic Sea. During the “Baltic Express” portion of the mission, one of the SR-71’s engines suffered a catastrophic failure. It was not the first time one of the Air Force's Blackbirds had experienced engine trouble while flying in the region. The plane dropped more than 24,000 feet in a matter of minutes and ended up in Swedish airspace as it turned away from the Soviet Union, according to the Forsvarsmakten. The engine failure wasn’t the only issue the pilots were worried about, though.

NASA An SR-71 Blackbird.