Crashes That Reveal Aviation Secrets

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32076, 26 August 1969, Page 14

Crashes That Reveal Aviation Secrets

(By

ROBERT JACKSON)

A United States Air Force freighter, crammed with security guards, left a West German air base recently, with a cargo of three cardboard boxes containing electrical odds and ends which looked as though they had been pirated from someone’s television set.

In fact, once examined and analysed in the Pentagon’s flight laboratories, the gadgetry will give America some much-needed extra points in a curious and top-secret game which no-one can win; but neither’ East nor West can afford to lose.

The cardboard boxes contained fragments of navigational and interceptor gear salvaged from the Russianbuilt MiG-21 jet fighter which buried itself in a Bavarian mountainside, while its Czech Air Force pilot was attempting to defect to the West.

It is increasingly essential that both East and West keep close tabs on the other side’s aeronautical developments and the best way to do this is to get someone to steal an actual plane. “Half an hour sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft can tell a military scientist more than a month with blueprints,” an American defence expert recently remarked. Hard Task “It’s no secret that both East and West wiSl, financially, make it well worth any pilot’s while to defect —so long as he brings his plane with him.” Ever since the war, security services of both East and West have devoted much time and effort to ferreting out the secrets of the other side’s air power. For the Russian spy, obtaining information and pictures of new Western combat aircraft is not particularly difficult. In the majority of cases, all he needs to do is subscribe to half a dozen aviation magazines and compile his reports at leisure from what he reads in them. The task of the Western spy is a good deal harder; the Russians don’t make a habit of publishing photographs of new aircraft, and the poor quality of the ones that do leak out has given rise to the joke that the Russians have perfected a method of building “blurred” planes. “Black Boxes” It’s only when new aircraft enter service with the Soviet satellite countries that Western agents have any chance of assessing their capabilities. But finding out details of a new aircraft’s performance is only half the battle. Modern air combat depends on advanced electronics in the shape of attack and countermeasures systems, and it is absolutely vital to know what kind of “black boxes” a new aircraft carries.

Sometimes, careful study of photographs gives a vital clue —experts can associate various kinds of bulge and antennae on the exterior of a plane with certain type of equipment inside. But usually the only way the experts can really establish what is inside a new plane is to get hold of blueprints, or, better still, see the equipment itself. Again, for the Russians, this is not very difficult, thanks to the war in Vietnam.

The Americans have been flying 10 different types of modern combat aircraft over North Vietnam, and examples of all 10 have been shot down by the Viet Cong, who, under the terms of the SovietVietnamese arms agreement, immediately turn the wreckage of shot-down American planes over to the several thousand Russian experts at present in North Vietnam. Mock Combat For Western experts, their really big chances come when a Russian plane literally falls out of the sky at their feet —as in the case of the MiG-21 that crashed in Bavaria. The MiG-21 is one of Russia’s front-line combat aircraft, and it is also in service with 16 other air forces. Although it has been flying several years now, there is still plenty to be learned from it. When a Communist aircraft does come down in Western Europe, the country to which the aircraft belongs always asks for the return of both plane and pilot. Almost invariably, the aircraft is returned—but not before the experts have examined it down to the last screw and unlocked all its secrets. Sometimes, if the aircraft comes down in one piece, it is even test-flown in mock combat against other planes! This happened recently in the Middle East, when a defecting Iraqi pilot “delivered” a brand-new MiG-21-PF into Israeli hands, complete with air-to-air missiles. Huge Rewards Since the MiG-21 is the standard supersonic interceptor in service with the Egyptian Air Force, the Israelis were able to test the jet fighter to exhaustion and compile a list of its shortcomings.

Over the last 20 years, the Russians have built up a formidable force of strategic bombers—and it was almost entirely due to a “stolen” American aircraft that they were able to do it! Early in 1945, several huge B-29 Superfortress bombers had to make forced landings in Eastern Russia 'after raiding Japan.

The Russians kept the bombers and turned them over to one of their own designers, who took them apart. Less than two years later, an exact copy of the B-29, the Tupolev Tu-4, ap-

peared in Russian skies. It was the backbone of the Soviet bomber force for 10 years.

Today, nearly ail governments unashamedly give large sums of money to any pilot who “delivers” a combat aircraft belonging to a potential adversary. The practice started during the Korean War, when the Americans offered $90,000 to any North Korean pilot willing to present them with a Russian-built MiG-15. I Few Mistakes One Korean pilot obliged; the MiG was flown to the United States of America and put through its paces by American test pilots in mock dog-fights with its Korean War opponent, the Sabre. The tests revealed that the Sabre was markedly superior under 20,000 feet—and, in future, American Sabre

pilots in Korea endeavoured to lure North Korean MiG# below that level before joining combat. 4 The result: for every, Sabre lost, 14 MIGs were destroyed. Today, most communist pilots who fly their aircraft to the West do so intention, ally. With modern navlga ; tional equipment, the chances of a pilot straying off course and landing in the wrong country are pretty remote. But during the last war. it was a very different stary. On one occasion, a young Luftwaffe pilot landed Germany’s latest and most topsecret fighter, the FockeWulf 190, on an R.A.F. airfield in southern England ; after a raid on London. He had mistaken the Bristol Channel for the English ; Channel and thought he was in France. (Copywright Pro : vincial Press Features.)