Captain John F. Lorraine

The 1964 T-39 shootdown incident occurred on 28 January 1964, when an unarmed United States Air Force T-39 Sabreliner on a training mission was shot down over Erfurt, East Germany by a Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19 fighter aircraft. The occupants of the aircraft were Lieutenant Colonel Gerald K. Hannaford, Captain Donald Grant Millard and Captain John F. Lorraine. All three died, becoming some of the few US confirmed direct casualties of the Cold War in Europe.BackgroundFollowing the cessation of hostilities at the end of World War II, a situation which came to be known as the Cold War developed between the United States, Canada, and Western European nations on one side, and the Soviet bloc on the other. Tensions between the United States and Soviet Union were most felt in the regions bordering the Iron Curtain, notably West Germany and East Germany, and during this time relations between the two superpowers were characterized by hostile attitudes, spying, and numerous incidents resulting in loss of life and equipment. One of the most famous of these is the shooting down of a Lockheed U-2 spy plane, piloted by Francis Gary Powers, over the Soviet Union in May 1960.