They’d send us to 20,000 feet, ideal for drawing surface-to-air-missile fire. The SAMs looked like flying white telephone poles with flames coming out the end. They were very powerful, but once you heard the tone in your headset that meant they’d locked on to you, you did have a chance to outmaneuver them–diving and making hard, corkscrew turns. More than a few pilots got nailed. I was lucky, but 30 years later I can still hear that tone.
