Looking Down the Corridors

by Kevin Wright

  In 1966, BRIXMIS personnel liaised with Soviet military personnel who were trying to access the wreckage of a Yak-28 Firebar aircraft that had crashed into the British part of the Havelsee Lake in Berlin. Officially this meant keeping the Soviets away from the crash site until it and the crew’s bodies could be recovered and returned by British forces.10 Unofficially, they were co-ordinating the underwater removal of parts, including its then state-of-the-art radar, which were quickly spirited away to the UK for scientific examination. BRIXMIS successfully managed to stop the incident from becoming anything more than a very tense stand-off and illustrates BRIXMIS’s liaison function in an exemplary fashion.

  BRIXMIS members were expected to use their initiative and daring to gather intelligence. One Tour came upon a stationary train carrying BMP-2 armoured infantry combat vehicles (AICVs). A ‘current priority intelligence requirement’ was to discover the main armaments’ calibre. A Tour member sneaked onto the train and pushed an apple into the weapon’s muzzle before the train moved off, or he was shot at by a Soviet sentry. In 1987 the British Army tactic of ‘acquisition’ came into play when a Tour ‘acquired’ a sample of Explosive Reactive Armour (ERA) – ‘it came off in me and Sir’ – removed from a stationary Soviet T-80 MBT when no one was close by. At the time the composition and operation of ERA was a very high priority technical intelligence target.

  The BCZ also gave BRIXMIS the opportunity to use the RAF Gatow-based Chipmunk aircraft for airborne observation and photography, covered in Chapter 6. There are several books about BRIXMIS and its operations that give comprehensive insights into their activities and modus operandi and they are highly recommended. They include works by Tony Geraghty, Steve Gibson and Major General Peter Williams.11

  SIGINT: British, French and US forces engaged in significant SIGINT collection activities in Germany and Berlin. They utilised a network of ground-based listening posts, overlooking GDR territory. British airborne SIGINT assets operated peripheral flights mainly from the UK, where the necessary infrastructure existed to process the information collected. The French airborne effort originally flew from Germany before switching to Metz-Frescaty in 1966 when France withdrew from NATO. They too maintained ground-based listening stations. The US effort was largest of all with a major network of monitoring facilities and air assets. Most US airborne SIGINT assets were located in Germany, but they were frequently detached for periods of temporary duty across continental Europe from 1946 until 1974. From then most operations were undertaken by UK-based aircraft.

  PHOTINT/IMINT: The existence of the Corridors and BCZ gave the Allies a unique situation that could be used to their advantage for the collection of PHOTINT/IMINT. The Corridors were internationally agreed and controlled airspace. Its rules allowed access to Berlin for some of the Western Allies’ military and civilian aircraft. Aircraft using the Corridors and BCZ belonged to units on the published ORBAT and generally carried unit markings, flown by uniformed crews in airspace they were perfectly entitled to use. Whilst the risks to manned overflights of Soviet territory grew, Corridors and BCZ flights could be executed at comparatively low physical and political risk.

  Being able to fly close along the IGB and through an important portion of East German airspace along the Corridors and around Berlin meant airborne intelligence gathering was an irresistible activity. All three Allies mounted their own airborne intelligence-gathering operations of varying scale and scope. The technical aspects of mounting equipment in a suitable aircraft and flying the missions could be difficult enough, but they were relatively straightforward when compared to the sensitive political risks attached to such activities elsewhere. To be at their most effective these flights required proper preparation, co-ordination and integration into the normal transport and training traffic going about its lawful occasions in the Corridors and BCZ.

  Thus the stage was set for the execution of some of the most audacious ICFs of the Cold War that provided almost daily surveillance of installations in the GDR.

  Notes

  1 The National Archive, PRO AIR 55/257, Draft reply from Montgomery to Zhukov, 20 September 1945.

  2 W.J. Boyne (2012), The Berlin for Lunch Bunch. Available at: http://www.airforcemag.com/MagazineArchive/Pages/2012/July%202012/0712berlin.aspx.

  3 The National Archive, PRO AIR 55/257, Allied Control Authority, Air Directorate, Committee of Aviation, Flight Rules for Aircraft Flights in Air Corridors in Germany and Berlin Control Zone, DAIR/P(45)71 Revised, 31 December 1945.

  4 The National Archive: PRO DEFE 71/128, BASC Operations and Communications, pp. 1–2. This file provides a comprehensive description of BASC/BARTCC procedures.

  5 In the 1946 agreement the BCZ is defined as ‘the air space between ground level and 10,000 ft’. The National Archive, PRO AIR 55/257, Allied Control Authority, Air Directorate, Committee of Aviation, Flight Rules for Aircraft Flights in Air Corridors in Germany and Berlin Control Zone, DAIR/P(45)71 Revised, 31 December 1945.

  6 R.G. Miller (1998), To Save a City: The Berlin Airlift 1948–49 (Washington DC: Bolling AFB). Available at: http://www.afhso.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-101001–053.pdf, p. 109.

  7 A. and J. Tusa (1988), The Berlin Blockade: Berlin in 1948 (London: Hodder & Stoughton), pp. 291–2.

  8 Ibid., p. 457.

  9 J. Smith (1998), The Cold War (London: Blackwell) (2nd edn), p. 43.

  10 The National Archive: FO 1042/226.

  11 Details of these can be found in the bibliography.

  3

  AMERICAN CORRIDOR AND OTHER RECONNAISSANCE FLIGHTS

  The US airborne intelligence collection effort in Europe was huge. Between 1945 and 1990, USAFE flew around 10,000 flights in the Berlin Corridors and BCZ – an average of a flight every one and a half days, which dwarfed British and French efforts. USAFE also conducted ‘non-corridor’ ‘peripheral flights’, from Federal Germany, as far afield as the Baltic Sea in the north, along the IGB and Czech-German border and south to the Adriatic, the Mediterranean and Black and Caspian seas. It also managed early penetration overflights over Eastern Europe before the arrival of the U-2. This extensive programme was conducted in conjunction with the discreet, passive and active support of other governments, including Denmark, West Germany, Greece, Norway, Sweden, Turkey and others.

  European operations not only involved USAFE, but also other USAF commands, the US Navy, US Army and CIA. Most programmes were highly compartmentalised; a considerable number were very short-term and often overlapped with each other. They frequently used the same, or very similar aircraft, operating from the same bases, using crews and missions often mounted against the same ‘targets’. These many operations were often interrelated and significantly impinged on Corridor and BCZ flights. The majority of the missions were launched from Wiesbaden and Rhein-Main (Frankfurt-am-Main International Airport) Air Bases. The Americans’ efforts to disguise many of these operations made them even more impenetrable to outside observers – as they were meant to be.

  US Units and Their Genealogy

  On 1 November 1948, the 7499th Support Squadron (7499 SS) was formed at Fürstenfeldbruck Air Base (AB), near Munich, from the 45th Reconnaissance Squadron (45 RS) and elements of the 10th Photo Charting Squadron (10 PCS) and 10th Reconnaissance Group (10 RG). The squadron’s inventory included A-26 Invaders, RB-17s, C-47 Skytrains and C-54 Skymasters configured for photographic, COMINT and ELINT reconnaissance roles. In August 1950 the squadron moved to Wiesbaden AB, bringing it closer to the centre of the USAFE organisation, and to the Berlin Corridors. In 1955, the 7499th Support Group (7499 SG) was formed from the 7499 SS at Wiesbaden AB with the 7405th, 7406th and 7407th Support Squadrons as subordinate units, each having its own distinctive role. The Group’s operational remit has aptly been described as ‘a cloak that drew tight over many matters’. Its operational area of interest stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Caspian and Black seas as well as Berlin Corridor and BCZ activity. The Group disbanded in March 1972, the 7406 SS having
deactivated in June 1974 and the 7407 SS in 1959. The remaining squadron, 7405 SS, moved to Rhein-Main AB (Frankfurt) on 1 January 1975 and was renamed the 7405 Operations Squadron (7405 OS), remaining there until it disbanded on 23 January 1991.

  Before flying operations ended in 1990 there were several changes of unit designation that attempted to align US ‘Special Forces’ in Europe operations with the 7405 OS flights and the work of the newly created Electronic Security Command (ESC). The 7580th Operations Squadron (7580 OS) was activated on 28 February 1983 and was responsible for providing specialist mission crews and ‘maintenance personnel with the specialist skills’ to look after its dedicated C-130Es reconnaissance equipment. The 7405 OS and 7580 OS were subordinate to the 7575th Operations Group (7575 OG) at Rhein-Main AB, formed on 1 July 1977. The Group also included the 7th Special Operation Squadron (7 SOS) based at Rhein-Main AB for a time, but it left the group in March 1983. The 7575 OG disbanded on 31 March 1991 following the deactivation in January 1991 of 7405 OS and 7580 OS.

  The US Air Force Security Service (USAFSS)

  Following its formation in 1947, the USAFSS, and later ESC, operated from many European locations for the duration of the Cold War. In Germany (and Berlin) it had a number of listening posts that monitored Soviet and East German radio transmissions and communication activities. It also provided ‘back-end crew’ (operators, linguists, analysts) for the peripheral COMINT collection missions flown by the 7406 SS 1956–74.1 When the 7405 OS received a COMINT mission for its C-130Es in 1976, ESC’s 6911 Electronic Security Squadron (6911 ESS) provided the specialised COMINT support needed. After 1982 that support was provided by Det 1, 6910 Electronic Security Wing (ESW), first from Hahn AB and then from Wiesbaden, until the 7405 OS ended collection missions in September 1990.

  Early Post-Second World War Operations

  In 1945, the Allies started a joint US–UK imagery collection programme over their respective occupation zones in Germany to update mapping, to help assess the needs of economic reconstruction and as a contingency against possible future military hostilities. Aware that post-war relations with the Soviets were going to be difficult, both were concerned that they lacked the necessary detailed targeting information about Europe that might be required in the event of a future global conflict.

  In November 1945, the US 45 RS based at Fürth AB, near Nürnberg began to use its P-51D Mustangs and F-6Ks (the photographic reconnaissance version of the P-51 Mustang) to collect photographs over Germany. Details of these sorties are sparse, but by summer 1946 the squadron’s ‘Flight X’ had flown a small number of camera-equipped A-26 Invaders on occasional covert Corridor reconnaissance missions. Former USAF major Roger Rhodarmer, then a captain, and an experienced A-26 pilot, was sent to Germany to join 10 RG for photographic reconnaissance duties, of which he had no experience. Once there he was shown a modified A-26 that had a carefully concealed, forward-facing oblique K-18 camera with a 24in lens installed in the nose for Corridor flights. Most of the two units’ photographic reconnaissance tasks were not Corridor related, but involved flying between eighty and ninety hours a month on Project Birdseye, to photograph industrial and infrastructure ‘targets’ all over Europe at low level. The project was terminated in late 1946.2 In March 1947, 45 RS moved to Fürstenfeldbruck AB. It was not just the A-26s that flew such missions. In June 1946 a handful of camera-equipped RB-17s of 10 PCS based at Fürth AB started flying Project Casey Jones flights. This was a series of photo-survey sorties to update maps covering significant areas all over Europe.

  In 1947, Detachment ‘A’ of 10 PCS took on an ELINT collection role, following serious incidents in the Austrian–Yugoslav border areas. On 9 August 1946 a USAAF C-47 Skytrain had departed Tulln Airfield in Austria bound for Rome, via Venice, on a routine scheduled courier flight. It encountered adverse weather and unwittingly strayed into Yugoslav airspace where it was intercepted and shot down by Yugoslavian Yak-3 fighters. Fortunately all on board survived the subsequent crash-landing and were eventually released after being briefly interned. This sparked a series of sharp diplomatic exchanges between the US and Yugoslavian governments. Ten days later another C-47 was brought down in the same area by Yugoslav fighters. This time there were no survivors.

  At HQ USAFE in Wiesbaden the question was – how could the Yugoslavs intercept the C-47s so effectively, especially in bad weather? The belief was that they possessed some form of radar fighter control capability, but hard evidence was lacking. To find the answer, two RB-17s were quickly fitted with intercept receivers and direction-finding antennae to equip them as ‘ferret’ or ELINT aircraft. On the first flight, along the Austrian–Yugoslav border, close to where the C-47s had been intercepted, transmissions from a familiar Second World War vintage German ‘Würzburg’ radar were detected, emanating from the site of a former German wartime radar school.3 The mission’s success encouraged USAFE to undertake further ‘ferret’ flights close to Soviet-occupied territory.

  The Cold War

  During the 1948–49 Berlin Airlift, the RB-17s would occasionally fly as part of a normal C-54 airlift ‘block’ along the Berlin Corridors. They only flew at night and never landed at Tempelhof because this would have compromised their true identity and mission. To avoid landing in Berlin, they would declare an ‘emergency’ that, under the strictly enforced airlift operating procedures, necessitated an immediate return to the Western Zones. Whilst the flights were attributed with detecting new radars, they did not discover any new equipment types.4 A US Air Force report on the airlift indirectly identifies how the ELINT B-17s were covertly inserted into the airlift traffic flow under the guise of meteorological reconnaissance flights normally flown by the 7169th Weather Reconnaissance Squadron (7169 WRS). The squadron used ‘weather’ B-17s and flew from Wiesbaden AB too. Inserting an ELINT RB-17 into the night traffic flows, instead of a weather reconnaissance B-17, would not have been difficult. The report explains how the meteorological B-17 flights were intended to work:

  More difficult was keeping track of the fast-changing weather conditions along the Corridors and relaying that data back to the originating bases. General Smith began the process on 9 July by arranging for a B-17 from Wiesbaden to fly the Frankfurt to Berlin Corridor above the cargo aircraft to watch for thunderstorms and to provide immediate reports on bad weather. The first of these flights took place late that evening. In early August, Tunner’s operations section concluded that two aircraft in every block should report the weather back to airlift headquarters, thus avoiding unnecessary use of radio facilities in the Corridor.5

  Like Germany, occupied Austria was divided into British, French, Soviet and US zones, governed by the Allied Commission for Austria in an analogous way to arrangements for Berlin. Vienna was surrounded by the Soviet Zone and the air corridors gave Western Allies access to the city in the same way as the Corridors did for Berlin. They remained in place until May 1955. US aircraft, particularly RB-26s, prowled along the Austrian corridors monitoring Soviet installations and emissions until the end of the Austrian occupation. Donald Gardner, a ‘Raven’ with the 7405 SS between 1955 and 1959, described how the RB-26s flew down the corridor with ‘a black box’, a receiver where ‘you just turn on the thing and record everything you get, up and back: air traffic control, or fire control, and stuff like that’.6

  The number and range of airborne intelligence operations based in Germany grew continuously after the airlift. Frequent organisational and equipment changes were necessary to accommodate the plethora of relatively short-term, sometimes unique, projects that took place. Many were important in their own right, as part of the wider intelligence collection effort, but some overlapped with what were fast becoming more ‘routine’ Corridor and BCZ missions. These latter flights had overall approval from the JCS, later the Secretary of Defence and the White House, with day-to-day authorisation and execution being carried out in Germany. Aircraft generally flew twice daily, mostly on weekdays, but this was subject to the vagaries of eq
uipment and weather that can hinder successful reconnaissance operations.

  7405th Support Squadron (7405 SS)

  Operating from Wiesbaden AB, the squadron’s main responsibility was SIGINT and photographic reconnaissance flights in the Corridors and BCZ, but it also flew some peripheral missions along the Baltic coastline, the IGB and the FRG-Czechoslovak border. The unit was always very busy and frequently in a state of flux. New items of equipment were constantly being installed in the various aircraft types, operated in non-standard and often unique configurations. There were also temporary attachments of personnel and equipment for ‘special’ or short-term operations. These operations were mostly conducted in great secrecy, which means that finding the exact introduction and withdrawal dates for a particular aircraft and its associated projects and operations is difficult.

  The squadron was initially divided into three flights:

  ‘A’ Flight: Flew predominantly peripheral ELINT missions using two ELINT equipped C-54D’s between about 1955 and 1963 on Project Pretty Girl.

  ‘B’ Flight: Concentrated on photographic reconnaissance using four RB-26 Invaders, until they left service in 1958, and three C-47s until 1960. In addition, ‘B Flight’ also had a single C-54D (43–17248) Project Hot Pepper that arrived in 1950 and left in 1958.

  ‘C’ Flight: Responsible for military and diplomatic courier flights throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East and operated three C-118 (DC-6) aircraft on these duties until September 1965.

  Finally there was the mysterious, but officially unconfirmed ‘D’ Flight. According to some sources this was rumoured to be a front for CIA-sponsored operations. Chris Pocock suggests that ‘D’ Flight aircraft were crewed by Polish exiles for CIA operations behind the Iron Curtain. It appears to have been disbanded in 1959 when there was a big reduction in the CIA’s covert air operations.7 In 1961, ‘D’ flight was recreated for the photo-equipped C-97Gs operation until 1965, when it became ‘C’ flight.