Captain Joe Hearn was part of the crew of a B-29 that was shot down on April 12, 1951 as part of a massive 3 Wing formation aimed at destroying railway bridges across the Yalu river at Sinuiju and Antung. This was a dangerous daylight mission that was so disasterous for the Air Force that on the following days the planes were painted black on the bottom and scheduled for safer nighttime raids. The plane's serial number was 44-62252, a WWII era B-29 of the 371st Bomb Squadron, 307th Bomb Group out of Kadena, Okinawa. The plane was acting as the Electronics Countermeasure Aircraft for that particular bombing mission. Its job was to confuse enemy ground radar through the use of electronic jamming equipment combined with the dropping of aluminum foil strips called chaff. It was in the slot (last) position of the 2nd group (of 3 groups) which put it in the middle of the 3 groups. There was some space between each group. There were 3 fighter squadrons assigned to guard the B-29's but only two showed up, the "low cover" squadron failed to meet up for whatever reason leaving the planes open to attacks from below.
The B-29 had some engine trouble (from age) causing it to slow down, so rather than force it's own group to slow down it dropped from the last spot of the 2nd group back to become the LEAD plane of the next group (the 22nd Bomber Squadron). It was during this brief unfortunate window that a Russian piloted MIG15's attacked, and finding a lone B-29 all by itself between two groups, hammered it from the sky. Captain Hearn in the back of the plane had to bail out over North Korea and was captured along with six other crew members. The men in the front half of the plane stayed with the aircraft until it got far enough south then bailed out and were all brought to safe lines by South Koreans.

Note: Capt. Hearn was not a regular part of the crew. He was in charge of radar operations on the base and was getting in his monthly flying time.