Soviet Warning On Aerial Trespass

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30389, 13 March 1964, Page 13

Soviet Warning On Aerial Trespass

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, March 12. All North Atlantic Treaty Organisation planes flying over Soviet security areas “will be destroyed with the use of all the necessary means of defence” if they fail to carry out orders to land, Tass said today.

A Soviet Note handed to the United States Charge d’Affaires in Moscow said Soviet armed forces had received renewed instructions “to prevent any violation of the Soviet borders and the borders of allies of the U.S.S.R. by foreign military planes.”’ The note said this action was taken “in view of the provocative behaviour of the American military authorities and the continuing constant flights along the borders of Russia and other Socialist countries of American Air Force aeroplanes with nuclear weapons on board. . . .” The Note charged that an American R 866 reconnaissance bomber had violated the air space of East Germany on Tuesday and been brought down north-east of the town of Gardelegen. “The violating aeroplane was intercepted by a fighter aeroplane from the group of Soviet troops, stationed in the German Democratic Republic,” it said. The Note said investigation of the crash site had shown that the American plane carried “special reconnaissance equipment” and had flown over East Germany “with the special purpose of military reconnaissance.” The aircraft, flying at more than 32.500 feet, had pene-

trated up to 70 kilometres (about 44 miles) into East German territory, the Note said. Gardelegen where the aircraft crashed is about 15 miles inside East Germany. Crew Alivo The Mayor of Stendal, near where the plane crashed, told United Press International by telephone last might that the three men in the crew are alive. “They have been taken away from here,” he said. A Reuter correspondent who visited the scene of the crash, said an eye-witness in the hamlet of Truestedt had told him that one of the Americans was caught up in a tree by his parachute and was wounded. Three United States military teams are on the way to the scene of the crash.