High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The rescue of Bat 21 Bravo, the call sign for Iceal "Gene" Hambleton, from behind enemy lines was the "largest, longest, and most complex search-and-rescue" operation during the entire Vietnam War. On April 2, 1972, the third day of the Easter Offensive, Hambleton was a navigator aboard one of two United States Air Force EB-66 aircraft escorting a cell of three B-52s. Bat 21 was configured to gather signals intelligence including identifying the enemy anti-aircraft radar installations to enable jamming. Bat 21 was destroyed by a SA-2 surface-to-air missile and Hambleton was the only survivor, parachuting behind enemy lines into a battlefield filled with thousands of North Vietnamese Army soldiers.