Looking Down the Corridors

by Kevin Wright

  10 R. Cargill Hall and C.D. Laurie (2003b), Early Cold War Overflights 1950–1956: Symposium Proceedings, Vol. 2: Appendixes (Washington DC: Office of the Historian, National Reconnaissance Office), Doc 22–1, p. 444.

  11 J. Crampton (1997), ‘RB-45 Operations’, Air Intelligence Symposium, RAF Historical Society, Bracknell Paper No. 7, p. 124.

  12 H. Wynn (1997), RAF Nuclear Deterrent Forces (London: HMSO), p. 112.

  13 The National Archive, AIR 19/1126: PM/52/149, Anthony Eden to PM, 28 November 1952.

  14 The first major loss of life resulted from the shooting down of a US Navy PB4Y-2 reconnaissance aircraft over the Baltic Sea on 8 April 1950 in which ten men were killed.

  15 A. Goodpastor, ‘Cold War Overflights: A View from the Whitehouse’, in Cargill Hall and Laurie (2003a), pp. 40–1.

  16 Brugioni (2010), pp. 118–19, p. 153.

  17 Ibid., p. 133.

  18 M.R. Beschloss (1986), Mayday: Eisenhower, Khrushchev and the U-2 Affair (London: Faber & Faber), p. 133.

  19 Brugioni (2010), p. 149.

  20 Beschloss (1986), p. 150.

  21 Ibid.

  22 Ibid., p. 151.

  23 Ibid., p. 5.

  24 See Chapter 4.

  25 Beschloss (1986), p. 116.

  26 R. Aldrich (2011), GCHQ (London: Harper Press), p. 203.

  27 Brugioni (2010), pp. 170–1.

  28 A fifth, Squadron Leader Christopher Walker, had been killed during training in the USA in July 1958. G.W. Pedlow and D.E. Welzenbach (1992), The Central Intelligence Agency and Overhead Reconnaissance, 1954–1974 (Washington DC: History Staff, CIA), p. 155.

  29 Ibid., Appendix D, pp. 337–8.

  30 Ibid., p. 164.

  31 Ibid., p. 167.

  32 Ibid., Appendix D, pp. 337–8.

  33 Ibid., p. 175.

  34 www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/aerial_intelligence/Summer_1960.pdf.

  35 R.K. Rhodarmer, ‘Recollections of an Overflight “Legman”’, in Cargill Hall and Laurie (2003a), p. 20.

  36 Ibid., pp. 20–2.

  37 www.eisenhower.archives.gov/research/online_documents/aerial_intelligence/Summer_1960.pdf.

  38 Brugioni (2010), p. 359, and F.L. Smith, ‘Overflight Operations: Another View’, in Cargill Hall and Laurie (2003a), pp. 35–6.

  39 Pedlow and Welzenbach (1992), pp. 189–90.

  40 Rhodarmer, in Cargill Hall and Laurie (2003a), p. 29.

  41 W. Grimes (2014), The History of Big Safari (Bloomington, IN: Archway Publishing), pp. 1–3, 31.

  2

  GERMANY AND BERLIN DIVIDED: COCKPIT OF COLD WAR INTELLIGENCE GATHERING

  Soviet power … does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason and … highly sensitive to logic of force … If the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so.

  The Sources of Soviet Conduct (George Kennan, 1947)

  The division of Germany and Berlin in 1945 cast a shadow well beyond the end of the twentieth century. Until its end in 1990 it was profound, shaping much of Europe’s political, economic, military and social landscape for that era. It resulted from the early failure by the four wartime allies to adequately manage the huge complexities of a defeated Nazi Germany, coupled with the rapidly growing distrust and disputes between them.

  By mid 1943 it was clear that Germany was beginning to lose the war. The Allied Powers (Britain, Soviet Union and United States) began making tentative plans to deal with the defeated Axis powers of Germany and Japan. Even at this early stage the tripartite division of Germany was proposed with a similar treatment for Berlin.

  At Yalta in February 1945, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt made further major decisions on the structure of the post-war world to follow imminent Nazi defeat. The leaders knew that victory in Europe was practically assured, so discussions looked at arrangements for its future borders. France was to be given a role in Germany’s post-war governance, with its own occupation zone, created from territory already allocated to Britain and the USA. However, the conference discussions over Germany’s future were largely inconclusive.

  Following the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945, Allied leaders met at Potsdam between 17 July and 2 August 1945 to negotiate the detailed terms for ending the war and determining Europe’s post-war borders. However, by this time the political environment had already changed significantly. Following Roosevelt’s untimely death, the USA had a new president in Harry S. Truman. In Britain, the July General Election swept the Labour Party to power and Clement Attlee replaced wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Continuity rested with Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union.

  The decisions taken at the conferences laid the foundations for East–West relations for the next forty-five years. It soon became apparent that differences in the wartime Allies’ ideology and views of the post-war world were growing and good relationships were unlikely to survive long after Nazi defeat.

  Ultimately Yalta and Potsdam were largely inconclusive with respect to the central issue of what to do with post-war Germany. The question was certainly too complex to resolve quickly. It was also complicated by the actors’ vastly different conceptions, or more accurately, an insufficiently common conception, of what post-war Germany should look like. Within the individual Western governments there were highly contrasting views. US Treasury Secretary Morganthau had proposed a permanent dismemberment of Germany. This ‘year zero’ option, called for the removal of all significant industrial capability from the country. Others favoured some limited reconstruction to enable Germany to make new reparations. At the opposite end of the scale, many felt that the punishments inflicted by the Versailles Treaty on Weimar Germany after the First World War had been too severe. In particular the huge reparations had sown the seeds for the growth of Nazism, so a repetition of this was to be avoided at all costs.

  Stalin’s short-term concerns were much more pragmatic. He was determined to ensure that the remaining industrial capacity, at least in the Soviet Occupation Zone (SOZ), was rapidly dismantled and moved eastwards. This was seen as the ‘first instalment’ of future reparations to compensate the USSR for its massive wartime losses.

  There was a clash of political wills: the Soviets wanted a subservient German state that could never again become a major European threat, either economically or militarily. On the other side, the Western Allies wanted Germany to become an economically viable and politically independent entity in Europe, albeit without any international presence or armed forces. This would relieve them of the considerable economic and political burdens of governing their occupation zones. The Soviets’ initial aspiration was to persuade the Western Allies to leave Berlin and ultimately Germany. Stalin did not expect British and US forces to remain in Germany for long and believed they could be persuaded to leave by the judicious application of pressure. In the face of often opposing views, attitudes on both sides hardened and relations between the former wartime Allies deteriorated further.

  The Allied leaders agreed the status of a demilitarised and disarmed Germany under four Allied occupation zones. The zones had been determined largely by the Allied forces’ dispositions at the time of the German surrender, with some later adjustments. The reconstitution of a national German government was postponed indefinitely, and the Allied Control Commission (ACC) – composed of the four occupying powers – would govern the country in the interim.

  Each zone was governed by a Military Government, headed by a Military Governor, usually the senior military officer from the respective occupying state. Most complex of all was Berlin, former capital of the Reich, which was divided into four sectors that were to be governed in a similar fashion to the main occupation zones. This seemingly straightforward decision created a Western enclave deep inside the SOZ that became a running sore for the next forty-five years.

  Whilst political partition was created, in theory the German economy was to be managed
as a single unit. If the political problems were proving intractable, economic issues were of an even more profound nature. Financially bankrupt, the British and French could not afford to support their occupation zones for very long. The Soviets’ removal of industrial capacity from their occupation zone and East Berlin showed little sympathy for the German population under their control. The USA also quickly realised that maintaining its own occupation zone was prohibitively expensive – especially when it was continually being called upon to provide additional resources to support the other Allies’ zones. It rapidly became apparent to the Western Allies that the regeneration of the German economy was urgent and essential, even if only to stave off immediate economic disaster. To counter political stagnation and kick start economic renewal the British and American Zones became a single economic entity in 1948, known as the ‘Bizone’, that the French Zone later joined. The creation of the Deutschemark (DM) as the Western Zones’ currency was soon followed by the Marshall Plan for European economic recovery. Moscow viewed these actions as measures designed to marginalise its influence and control. They certainly hardened the growing divisions between the Western and Soviet occupation zones.

  The Soviets continued to maintain large armed forces and were known to be aggressively pursuing a nuclear weapons programme hidden away from prying eyes in the USSR’s huge continental interior. In the face of this, the British and Americans quickly discarded their early plans to rapidly demobilise their considerable wartime forces in Germany. Initially they had just wanted to leave sufficient there to maintain and administer their occupation zones. However, they soon found it necessary to return men and equipment into their occupation zones to meet the growing Soviet threat. Stalin was determined to ensure that the SOZ remained under direct control until there was a final settlement of the ‘German question’.

  Operating in Berlin

  Whilst high politics was moving towards formal partition, British, French, Russian and US military and German civilian personnel tried to make those arrangements that had been agreed work as best as they could. Inevitably their daily activities were affected by the high-level negotiations and decisions. Daily interactions were not always smooth. They were frequently full of inconsistencies, fed by a growing combination of distrust, fear, competing ideology, realpolitik and simple uncertainty. On the ground, relationships between the Western Allies and the Soviets were not the closely orchestrated, well co-ordinated competition that is often alluded to. They were more a continuous mixture of ‘make-and-mend’ contacts between the Western and Soviet administrations as they tried to cope with constantly changing priorities. They were based on a combination of formal rule-driven behaviour, locally evolved informal processes, the application of common sense and equally often the complete absence of any apparent rationale whatsoever. This was at its most obvious in Berlin.

  After the Potsdam Conference it was apparent that progress would be slow. The Soviets often took a very ‘legalistic’ approach to working with the Western Allies. They would generally stick very closely to the wording of any agreement, often interpreting it in ways that obstructed and frustrated wider Western objectives. A very early example of this was the Soviet foot dragging over allowing the Western Allies to occupy their agreed Berlin City Sectors, until forced to concede. It was a precursor of things to come. Equally they would sometimes try to stretch a point too far, or try to push the Allies well beyond the detailed wording of any agreement. In such situations, when challenged, they usually stepped back, but if unchallenged they quietly accepted the gain made.

  Creation of the Air Corridors and Berlin Central Zone (BCZ)

  The day-to-day practicalities of managing the Western Sectors of Berlin meant that organised access was vital. Between May and November 1945 air access to Berlin was a ‘free for all’ in the SOZ’s airspace. This unco-ordinated approach to air traffic management was potentially dangerous and certainly not conducive to good air safety. Air traffic into Berlin needed to be properly co-ordinated, controlled and regulated if incidents and accidents were to be avoided.

  In summer 1945, to ensure the safe passage of the British and US delegations to the Potsdam Conference, two ad hoc controlled air corridors were established over the SOZ. The Western Allies’ understanding was that these corridors were a temporary measure for the conference’s duration. However, afterwards the Soviets formally complained to the Western Allies that they were flying outside the ‘agreed corridor’ and this would not be tolerated, indicating that they had no intention of returning to the previous ‘free for all’ air access.1

  Detailed discussions followed to formalise Air Corridors over the SOZ that would provide the Western Allies with regulated air access to Berlin. During the discussions the Commander of the Soviet Forces in Germany, Marshal Zhukov, explained at least part of the Soviets’ rationale for formalising the Air Corridors. The British recorded his statement that corridors were necessary ‘to prevent your aircraft from observing Russian armies’.2 On 30 November 1945 the agreement establishing the three Air Corridors to the Western Zones was signed by the wartime Allies.3 The Soviets probably felt that the Air Corridor concession would cost them little – there were only a small number of air movements into Berlin at the time, carrying mail and a few passengers. It provided greater safety for their flights, constrained the movements of Western aircraft and reduced the possibilities of flights over sensitive Soviet installations. And when the Western forces withdrew from Berlin, as intended, the concession would become redundant.

  The three Corridors were each 20 statute miles wide and connected Berlin to Hamburg, Hannover and Frankfurt-am-Main respectively. The Corridors terminated in the 40-statute-mile diameter BCZ, also known as the ‘Chucker’ or ‘Chukka’. The centre point of the BCZ was a pillar in the cellar of the Allied Control Authority building on Kleistpark in Berlin. The reason for using statute miles, rather than the nautical miles normally used in aeronautical matters, is attributed to General Montgomery who, when asked what sort of miles were to be used, is said to have responded, ‘Proper miles of course.’

  Berlin Air Safety Centre (BASC)

  The Corridor agreement also established the BASC to co-ordinate air traffic in the Corridors going to and from West Berlin and within the BCZ. It was one of only two Four Power organisations that continued to operate in Berlin throughout the Cold War following the Soviet walk-out from the Berlin Kommandatura in 1948.

  The BASC operated for twenty-four hours a day all year round until its closure on 31 December 1990. Each of the Four Powers was represented by a Chief Controller, with a Deputy and General Duty Controller, all of whom were Air Force officers. The Soviets generally had both a controller and an interpreter on duty.4 The BASC did not speak directly to aircraft but worked closely with the Berlin Air Route Traffic Control Centre (BARTCC) based at the US Tempelhof Airbase. BARTCC was manned and operated by the Americans and provided the physical control of flights and air traffic facilities such as radar coverage and controllers. The simplest procedure required a flight plan to be filed with BASC two hours before departure. The flights origin in the Western Zone(s) and termination in Berlin, or vice versa, would be verified. After confirming the flight’s eligibility to use the Corridors and BCZ through meeting conditions such as nationality and aircraft type, the BASC produced a flight safety card agreed by all the national representatives. The flight would then be cleared to transit the Corridors and BCZ. Any traffic not meeting these requirements had their flight safety card stamped ‘Safety of flight not guaranteed’, usually by the Soviet representative. This did not prevent such flights proceeding but they did so at the operator’s risk and were still obliged to obey BARTCC instructions. Departure and arrival information was generally passed by telephone and teleprinter between the Berlin airfields, Berlin ATC, the ATCCs at Hannover and Frankfurt and the BASC. Besides air traffic co-ordination, the BASC’s responsibilities included the logging of protests of Corridor and BCZ infringements.

  The Cor
ridor agreement did not cover every detail of operations, so there were inevitably differences of interpretation between the Western Allies and the Soviets from the outset. Frequently ‘custom and practice’ came to fill the less clearly defined areas of the Corridor agreement. A new ‘restriction’ or ‘objection’ would sometimes be raised by the Soviets to some ‘excess’ they felt that Western aircraft were perpetrating. The new restriction would usually be rejected by one or more of the Western powers. They would then deliberately flaunt the newly applied restriction to test any Soviet reaction – more often than not there was none. But the Western powers often made some accommodation, such as tacit recognition, slightly modified behaviour, or reaching an informal compromise. This would see a general acquiescence in practical terms by the Western Allies – without formal recognition – when they felt that it did not affect their vital interests.

  An example was the Soviet assertion that the Corridors were only to be used for the resupply of Western garrisons in Berlin and therefore flights should be restricted to unarmed transport aircraft only. Their claim was rejected by the Allies. Following the Berlin Airlift, the Soviets again pressed their case and claimed that the Allies were not permitted to fly ‘combat aircraft’ in the Corridors, despite having done so previously. Again, this claim was rejected by the Allies. They then between themselves revisited the claim and, whilst still rejecting the Soviet position, it became ‘custom and practice’ that only unarmed transport and training aircraft used the Corridors and BCZ.

  Similarly the Soviets denied the right of Allied aircraft to operate either above 10,000ft or below 2,500ft. This was another attempt to turn an agreed procedure into a rigid rule. Eventually the Western Allies reluctantly, but not formally, accepted the Soviet height restrictions in the Corridors being between 3,500ft and 10,000ft and in the BCZ from 2,500ft to 10,000ft.5 In 1959 the US flew a C-130 into Berlin at 25,000ft to assert its access rights but the subsequent robust Soviet protest meant that it was never repeated.