Cold War Overflights of Russia – the Peripheral Missions
My article the other day provided a pointer to information concerning US deep penetration overflights of the Soviet Union between 1950 and 1956 – before the U2 was flying. Needless to day, these weren’t the only overflights of Soviet territory conducted by US aircraft during the “Cold War”. Nor were they the only ones during which shots were exchanged.
Far more numerous were peripheral missions – those that flew along the Soviet Union’s land or maritime borders. I also found an article that gives a fairly good (if perhaps not fully comprehensive) rundown of this far more numerous type of Cold War Soviet overflight mission.
You can find that article here. It also seems to be of good quality, and I’d assess it as being reliable as well. Also highly recommended.
Category: Air Force, Historical, Military issues, We Remember
Hondo…Thank you for your research and the articles. They are very much appreciated and enjoyed. The things we as a nation accomplished in times considered, very low tech now, amazes me always.
The Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson AFB in Dayton has an RF-86F Haymaker that did some of the overflights – when I visited the museum, I made a beeline for that section of the museum, because while I’m not a big plane guy (except for jumping out of them), these overflights have always fascinated me.
Hondo, I took a bunch of pictures of it, as well as the signage – if you’re interested, I’m happy to send them to you. Just let me know…
My dad worked in Air Force intelligence from 1948 until he left in 1954. During the Korean War he was stationed in Japan.
He was never able to tell us anything about what he did back then, and he died in 1981 before any of this was declassified. But I believe he probably knew about this. I can only imagine the pressure he must have felt in keeping this secret, knowing that men had died in hostile actions. But the families could only be told they died in “accidents”.
I have to salute my dad for keeping the secrets for as long as he did. I also have to feel a pang of regret that he was never able to unburden himself of them.
Surprised the article didn’t mention the loss of a VQ-1 mission over the Sea of Japan on 15 April 1969. EC-121. Shot down by Koreans. RIP shipmates. We haven’t forgotten about you.
Navy spooks gave a lot during the Cold War. USS Liberty, USS Pueblo, lots of missions no one knows about.
Remember the Hainan Island incident? I flew on that plane many times. That’s all I’ll say.
Sucks being a secret squirrel sometimes. The stories I could tell!
The article was about Soviet overflights, MustangCryppie. That’s probably why it didn’t mention the downing of Deep Sea 129 by North Korea.
But we haven’t exactly forgotten that incident here, either.
Hondo, they address both overflight and peripheral recce.
And I’m sorry if I sounded like I was the only one who remembered Deep Sea. My point was that, as a squadron member, I of all people need and should remember my brothers.
Sorry, should have probably said “Soviet incidents” vice “Soviet overflights”. My apologies for the misleading language. The article I linked discusses only those incidents involving Soviet forces.
That’s probably why the Deep Sea 129 shootdown isn’t discussed. Indeed, some open source info I’ve read indicated the Soviets were as shocked as we were when that incident happened.
It’s proper for you to remember members of a former unit who were lost in action. My intent was to point out that we’d featured an article on that subject about 16 months ago. I didn’t see a comment from you on the earlier article, so I didn’t know if you’d seen it or not.
No offense intended, and I hope none was taken.
Hell, no offense at all!
Hainan. If I’m thinking of the right one, that happened early in 2001.
Kind of got knocked out of the top news by a little incident on 9/11 as I recall.
There’s a documentary called “Spies in the Sky” on the History Channel (I think I’ve seen it repeated on the military channel). It focuses mainly on the shootdown of an ELINT C130 over Soviet Armenia and how the RAF played a role in the overflight program as well.
Awhile back, I found this book while doing my own research into this subject. It covers not only the early stuff but goes on into the flight forced down by the Chinese.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Vigilance-Larry-Tart/dp/0804119112
Hope this helps.
That ELINT C-130 over Soviet Armenia was the incident I was referring to in my comment on the earlier discussion thread on this subject, but as you can see, my memory was faulty, and I got ALL of my facts wrong!
Wasn’t there a Congressional task force set up to determine what happened to any survivors shot down over Russia? I’d say very few (if any) survived.