by Kevin Wright
The Four Power conference at Geneva in July 1955 addressed a wide range of political issues, including the future of Germany, the prospects for a surprise attack and arms control matters. It was there that Eisenhower launched his ‘Open Skies’ initiative on 21 July. This sought agreement for each side to conduct mutual overflights, to collect imagery of military installations and activities. Had the proposal been accepted it would have significantly reduced the US photographic intelligence deficit of the USSR. Whilst the locations of most major US military installations were already well known to the Soviets, the reverse was definitely not true. The proposal was quickly rejected by the Soviets, well aware that it would have represented a major asymmetric ‘information loss’ for them. Nikita Khrushchev’s son, Sergei, years later wrote that his father very much feared that US overflights would quickly reveal Soviet weaknesses and perhaps have encouraged the USA to mount a pre-emptive attack whilst the ‘balance of forces’ was still in their favour.17 The Soviet rejection of Open Skies removed the last internal hurdle to Eisenhower’s authorisation of operational U-2 flights.
The U-2’s radical design meant it could operate at such high altitudes that it initially flew well above Soviet air defences. Eisenhower was briefed that the poor performance of Soviet air defence radars might even mean that the U-2s would not be detected at all. After a flurry of flights in July 1956, one of which flew over Moscow itself, the programme was put on hold after the receipt of a Soviet protest note. The note misidentified the type of aircraft used, but it described the flights’ routes with sufficient accuracy to demonstrate that the U-2s were not only being detected, but also successfully tracked by Soviet air defences. This revelation saw a significant decline in Eisenhower’s early enthusiasm for the project and it seems he was prepared to halt further U-2 overflights even at that early stage.18
However, these few U-2 flights successfully ended the ‘bomber gap’ myth within SAC and the Administration. Bomber base photographs showed clearly that there were not masses of Bison bombers poised to strike at the Continental United States. The Administration’s concern about the sensitivity of U-2 derived information was such that it was not prepared to share the revelations even with congressional leaders, so the public political debate raged on. The flights yielded far greater quantities of photography than the combined efforts of the British and US overflights had cumulatively produced until that time. However, the better-quality imagery from operations such as the Berlin Corridor flights was used to compare and positively identify some of Soviet hardware seen on U-2 photography.19
Although still wary of deep-penetration flights, Eisenhower authorised a few further U-2 overflights of the USSR. They were conducted mainly from Peshawar in Pakistan, between June and October 1957, to cover a wide range of targets in the Soviet Far East. But major U-2 operations over the USSR had already peaked. Whilst peripheral flights continued, attempts at positive political engagement with the USSR made continued U-2 overflights a counterproductive activity, given how closely the Soviets were tracking them. Richard Bissell explained the president’s reluctance to authorise further overflights was for ‘fear of being shot down and simply fear of provocation’.20 Staff Secretary Goodpastor has stated that ‘it always distressed Eisenhower that he was doing this, and it was only out of necessity – an ugly necessity’.21
After a Soviet Far East overflight out of Japan, on 1 March 1958, the strength of Soviet protests persuaded Eisenhower to put a brake on further missions. Increasing tensions over Berlin provided another justification for keeping the U-2s away from the Soviet bloc. Eisenhower warned that further overflights might provide a superficial justification for Khrushchev to move on Berlin, though other Administration members doubted it.22 But numerous other flights continued over Eastern Europe, China, Indonesia, Indo-China and Middle East. There were no further U-2 missions over the Soviet Union for more than a year until the president reluctantly authorised two more individual flights in July and November 1959 because Soviet ICBM testing had recommenced and fears of the ‘missile gap’ continued to gather weight in US military and congressional circles. The CIA’s Richard Bissell credited the U-2 missions with providing ‘ninety percent of our hard intelligence information about the Soviet Union’ in 1959, illustrating the paucity of available sources at the time.23
Britain and the Black Aircraft
In January 1956, just prior to the start of U-2 operations, the USA had sought British agreement to base U-2 aircraft at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, which was occupied by the USAF. The US intention was to mount an initial series of overflights from the base. But just prior to the commencement of their operations, there was a major, though unrelated, intelligence incident that politically embarrassed the government and significantly changed the political controls applied to all future British intelligence operations.
MI6 had mounted a botched operation to collect intelligence on the new propeller design of the Soviet Sverdlov-class cruiser Ordjoninkidze. It was moored in Portsmouth harbour, having brought the Soviet leaders, Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin, to Britain for a ten-day official visit. On 19 April 1956, Commander Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb, RNVR, dived on the vessel and disappeared although it was fourteen months before his body was finally recovered. Much of the subsequent political scandal was played out in the British national press. The Head of SIS, John Sinclair, was sacked and replaced by the Head of MI5, Dick White, and the PM (Anthony Eden) ordered a review of UK intelligence operations.24 Eden contacted President Eisenhower and requested a postponement of the proposed U-2 operations from Lakenheath, saying ‘this is not the time to be making overflights from here’.25 The USA consequently rapidly transferred operations to Wiesbaden and Giebelstadt in West Germany, from where the early U-2 flights over Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union were conducted.
The Suez debacle of 1956 saw Harold Macmillan become PM in January 1957. He, too, had been shaken by the successive espionage revelations that rocked the British establishment. He much preferred intelligence issues to be kept out of the public gaze and so took a significant interest in them. Like Eden and Eisenhower, Macmillan was keen to ensure that the intelligence operations did not undermine ongoing diplomatic discussions with the post-Stalin Soviet leadership. The conduct of intelligence operations needed to be much more sensitive to the daily political priorities. Political risk calculation was now a major driver in the conduct of intelligence operations by Britain and the USA.26 However, for both Eisenhower and Macmillan events almost seemed to conspire to wreck their desire to keep intelligence issues in the shadows. Revelations about Soviet agents within the British establishment and the shooting down of US reconnaissance aircraft soon shone far too much light on intelligence topics for the comfort of those involved.
After Suez, Anglo-American relations quickly returned to normal and Britain regularly began to receive U-2 imagery. Information and copy images were briefed to an RAF Air Commodore (and his assistant) based in Washington DC, then brought to Britain to be shown to the PM, key military staff, government ministers and officials.27 Following the precedent set by Operation Jiu-Jitsu, the USA became interested in British participation in the U-2 programme. This would be a risk reduction measure for the USA and provide another political decision-making centre for granting flight authority. British interest gathered pace during 1957. After seeing examples of the imagery, Macmillan agreed that four RAF pilots would be trained to fly the U-2, after which they deployed to Adana (now Incirlik Air Base) in Turkey during November 1958.28 In December 1958 a final exchange of letters confirmed the operational arrangements in which Macmillan reserved the right to be the final approving authority for all flights using RAF pilots. He then quickly exercised it by preventing British pilots undertaking overflights of the USSR, concerned as he was about the growing tensions over Berlin and his own planned visit to the Soviet Union in early 1959. The political fallout from any overflight incident involving an RAF-piloted U-2 would have been extremely embarrassing to the Brit
ish government and undoubtedly lead to renewed accusations of ‘political ineptitude’ in the media. Instead, the RAF crews were employed on overflights of Middle Eastern targets.29
In late 1959, Macmillan relented and authorised an RAF-piloted U-2 mission over the USSR. On 6 December 1959, Squadron Leader Robert (Robby) Robinson undertook Operation High Wire (Mission 8005) from Peshawar in Pakistan to Adana in Turkey routing via Kuybyshev, Engels airfield and Kapustin Yar missile test range.30 The mission’s photography was excellent but did not provide further ICBM intelligence as these were tested at the Tyuratam missile range (Baikonur). On 5 February 1960, Squadron Leader John McArthur left Peshawar to conduct Operation Knife Edge (Mission 8009) that routed via Tyuratam again, followed by the Kazan Aircraft Plant and then turned south to photograph a stretch of the Soviet rail network before landing at Adana. No missile sites were detected but a new bomber, NATO code name ‘Backfin’, was imaged at Kazan.31
Time Running Out: The Final U-2 Flights over the USSR
According to the National Security Agency (NSA) history of the U-2, two of the final three successful overflights of Soviet territory were undertaken from Peshawar by RAF pilots, with the final successful flight launched on 9 April 1960 flown by a US pilot. The objectives of these final flights were largely to gather imagery to inform the raging ‘missile gap’ debate. They covered targets including Dzhezhkazgan, Kapustin Yar, Kazan, Kybyshev, Kyzylespe, Lake Balkash, Semipalatinsk and Tyuratam.32
Eisenhower authorised a further deep-penetration flight for April 1960. The flight (Mission 4154), also known as Grand Slam, was to route from Peshawar to Bodø in Norway, overflying mainly nuclear-related sites. The flight suffered a series of postponements because of a combination of poor political co-ordination, adverse weather and equipment problems. The president insisted that the final date for the flight would be 1 May 1960 – partly because of the forthcoming Paris summit scheduled for 14 May. On 1 May, after a late take-off from Peshawar, it climbed to its 68,000ft penetration height. Soviet air defence radars picked it up before it crossed the Soviet–Afghan border. After photographing the Tyuratam Missile Test range, the U-2 set course for Chelyabinsk near Sverdlovsk. At just over 70,000ft it appears to have been struck by an SA-2 Guideline surface-to-air missile (SAM), although this has been disputed. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, managed to bail out, but was soon captured and later put on show trial in Moscow. The aircraft, despite having fallen from such a high altitude, remained largely intact and was later publicly displayed in Moscow. The cockpit and other wreckage of this U-2 are still in the Central Armed Forces Museum in Moscow. To put the U-2 missions over the Soviet Union into perspective, there were only twenty-four flights from 4 July 1956 until 1 May 1960.33
Immediately all peripheral missions, overflights and some Berlin Corridor missions were suspended. Sometime after this very public loss, Britain and the USA cautiously recommenced peripheral reconnaissance activities. On 1 July 1960 a USAF RB-47H, launched from RAF Brize Norton, was brought down by a Soviet MiG-19 fighter in international airspace off the Kola Peninsula with the loss of four crew, the rest being interned by the Soviets. This incident did nothing to defuse already tense relations between the superpowers and the political repercussions over the loss of these aircraft rumbled on into the 1960 Kennedy/Nixon presidential election campaign.
The shooting down of the two aircraft was seminal in the conduct, control and co-ordination of British and US ICFs. A heavily redacted, undated, summer 1960 Memorandum on all forms of aerial reconnaissance from the Eisenhower Archive details the levels of aerial activity. It also outlines the co-ordination of ICFs between the US military services and the British, largely achieved by agreeing flight timetables to eliminate possible confliction.34 Prior to this there had been occasions when peripheral flights had taken place at the same time and in similar locations as penetrative overflights and these clearly needed to be de-conflicted.35 In the early days many flight authorisations were handled in very short chains from the Pentagon and State Department to the White House, with ‘go’ messages being transmitted by key ‘staff officers’ (legmen) to senior commanders using personal codes. This may have been a satisfactory procedure when there were small numbers of flights, but as the numbers increased, they required stronger co-ordination.36 The USAF’s ‘Special Activities Group’ in the Pentagon was established to monitor all activities and to rapidly collect the details of any incident to ensure its timely reporting.37 Even this system was too fragmented so Eisenhower decided to co-ordinate all of these activities in one place. This gave birth to the Joint Reconnaissance Center (JRC), under the JCS, that became responsible for the monitoring of all reconnaissance operations. It was in place just before Eisenhower left office in 1961.38 At that time the JRC was co-ordinating around 500 flights per month graded as ‘critical’, ‘sensitive’, ‘unique’ or ‘routine’. It maintained a monthly ‘activities book’ of planned flights from which to brief the JCS and the CIA.39 These sensitive flights would recieve political approval from a small committee known by various names including: ‘Special Group’, ‘303 Commitee’ and ‘40 Commitee’, consisting of top defence department, intelligence agency and administration representatives. The most sensitive missions, including overflights, usually required Presidential assent. Later in 1961 JRC progrannes were coordinated with other intelligence gathering efforts within the newly created National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).40
Big Safari
A key driving force that enabled the huge growth of intelligence collection operations were the rapid advances in technology. Whilst White House policy established the parameters of operations the technology had to be blended into suitable aircraft (and later satellites). For the US Air Force much of this was undertaken by Big Safari, which began in the shadows of the early Cold War and continues to this day. Beginning in 1952, this USAF Program Office grew rapidly and enabled the Air Force to develop and acquire specialist reconnaissance equipment. Individual programmes would generally pair a project with a selected contractor to develop, install and test the required equipment as efficiently as possible. Little fuss, little bureaucracy and as much secrecy as necessary were key features of Big Safari projects. Even today the Office continues to support significant numbers of projects at any one time.
The USAF has used a bewildering and confusing number of project and operation names connected with reconnaissance. In the early years most were comprised of two words with some using female names. Examples are: Wanda Belle, Nancy Rae, Pie Face, Sun Valley and Witch Doctor. Under Big Safari the naming system became more formalised, with the first word identifying the project’s originating Command. So ‘Rivet’ belonged to Air Force Logistics Command, ‘Senior’ to HQ USAF, ‘Creek’ to HQ USAFE and ‘Comfy’ to the USAF Security Service (USAFSS). Renaming projects to suit the operational organisation of the day caused further confusion. For example, the ELINT C-130A/B programmes Sun Valley I and II, later became Rivet Victor, but there were many inconsistencies that all added to the camouflage.41 Big Safari project aircraft were constant participants in European overflight, peripheral and Corridor operations throughout the Cold War.
The British connection with the US ICF programme did not end with the early U-2 flights. During the rest of the Cold War, the successors to the original U-2 (TR-1, U-2R and U-2S) were based in Britain variously at RAFs Alconbury, Mildenhall and Fairford, from where they launched missions covering an area from the Barents Sea to southern Europe and the Balkans. From the early 1970s, RAF Mildenhall hosted Detachment 4 of the 9th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing that flew the SR-71 Blackbird and U-2R Dragon Lady. There was also the RAF Akrotiri-based U-2 flying Olive Harvest missions that monitored the ceasefire positions surrounding Israel following the 1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars and flew more secretive peripheral missions. Even today RAF Mildenhall continues to host RC-135 Rivet Joint aircraft from the 55th Strategic Wing to fly SIGINT ICFs in USAFE’s area of interest and beyond.
Through their wo
rldwide network of Cold War air bases, the USA and Britain could mount ICFs that covered the majority of the USSR’s periphery and some of its Far Eastern interior. This was the stage on which the Cold War airborne intelligence battle was to be played out. Fear of conflict was at its highest in Europe, but it was across partitioned Germany, with its unique occupation status, that the likely protagonists faced each other across a common border in huge numbers. Considered a probable ignition point for any future general war, Germany provided the respective intelligence communities with a unique window on the others’ military forces and activities. These opportunities were quickly seized upon by both East and West to generate valuable streams of intelligence.
Notes
1 R. Aldrich (1998), ‘British Intelligence and the Anglo American “Special Relationship” during the Cold War’, Review of International Studies, Vol. 24, No. 3, p. 331.
2 Aldrich (2001), The Hidden Hand: Britain, America and Cold War Secret Intelligence (London: John Murray Books), p. 213.
3 Ibid., p. 207.
4 Ibid., pp. 206–17.
5 D.A. Brugioni (2010), Eyes in the Sky: Eisenhower, the CIA and Cold War Aerial Espionage (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press), pp. 50–2.
6 Aldrich (2001), p. 210.
7 Ibid., pp. 394–5.
8 P. Rodgers (2001), ‘Photographic Reconnaissance Operations’, RAF Historical Society Journal, No. 23, pp. 69–70.
9 R. Cargill Hall and C.D. Laurie (2003a), Early Cold War Overflights 1950–1956: Symposium Proceedings, Vol. 1: Memoirs (Washington DC: Office of the Historian, National Reconnaissance Office), pp. 2–3.
