Looking Down the Corridors

by Kevin Wright

  If a Pembroke had ever been forced to land in the GDR, a prepared cover story was to be used. However, it was unlikely to last much longer than the time it took to recount. An Appendix to the 1962 ‘Operations Instruction’ illustrates this. Providing the aircraft lands intact, it starts with the admission that ‘the aircraft is used for aerial photography on legitimate occasions’. They instruct that the purpose of the flight was to ‘bring up to date the survey of Gatow airfield’, and that any exposed ‘operational’ film magazines are to be ‘fogged’ and exchanged with ‘cover’ ones by the crew. The cover magazines contained either unexposed film or footage of RAF Gatow.36 The crews were also told that they could set fire to the aircraft, but quite how this was to be done was not made clear. In National Archive material, ministerial and official exchanges often express the view that the possibility of losing a Pembroke due to engine problems was relatively insignificant because it was a twin-engined aircraft.37 However, the aircrews themselves often mention the Pembroke’s abysmal single-engined performance, especially when operating at close to maximum take-off weight as the ‘in fit’ aircraft did.

  The operation code name changed on numerous occasions. Sometimes changes appear to just have been routine to keep the Soviets guessing. On other occasions changes may have been in response to concern over possible security breaches. For example, until 19 April 1962 the operation was known as Fabian. A memo of that date suggests that the code word may have been compromised through possible discussion of operational details on an insecure line, so sometime before 13 June it was renamed Operation Tokay.38 Around the 25 May 1965, it was renamed Ladbrook after another mis-communication over the operations security classification.39 A JIC Report of October 1969 names the operation Remote.40

  A Unique View of UK Corridor Operations

  In the history of British Corridor operations, retired Air Vice-Marshal Mike Jackson is uniquely qualified to comment on them. He served as OC 60 Squadron between 1975 and 1977, commanded the Joint Air Reconnaissance Intelligence Centre (JARIC) in 1987 and was later the Director General Intelligence and Geographic Resources on the Defence Intelligence Staff. He joined the RAF in 1960 and by 1967 was a navigator, flying Beverly aircraft with 30 Squadron in Bahrain, supporting counter-insurgency operations in Dhofar and the Radfan. This was his first introduction to the world of intelligence-related work.

  Following completion of a staff course in 1974, Mike’s first contact with 60 Squadron was when he was posted to RAF Wildenrath in late June 1975 to become its next OC. Even at that stage he did not know that the unit flew Corridor reconnaissance missions and admitted to it initially being a bit of a disappointment:

  nobody knew what the squadron was doing. The role of 60 Squadron was really kept quiet, well-guarded, all the way through to the end of the Cold War and I find it quite extraordinary that on a busy station like RAF Wildenrath it remained such a secret. A number of things struck me when I arrived. I was virtually the youngest guy on the squadron [and there were] quite a lot of elderly navigators and a number of them came from Canberras. Without anything really sinking in, I just thought this was a rather strange squadron. It wasn’t until I got a handover from my predecessor, Ronnie Thomas, that I discovered what our primary role was. That took me back into old roles and I fitted into it pretty comfortably.

  For Hallmark operations the OC ensured the whole process worked smoothly. He had to be certain that these flights got the priority and resources needed within the squadron, without giving too much away. When it came to the details of mission planning, Mike was told of the date, time and main target areas but otherwise was not generally involved in the detailed mission planning. During his tenure as OC, Mike Jackson also flew occasional Corridor flights with crews to ensure he remained familiar with operations and procedures. On a crew’s return from a Corridor trip he often took part in the debrief – especially if there were notable sightings or an incident. There were generally around twelve aircrews assigned to the squadron at the time. About half the aircrew were assigned to Hallmark operations at any one time and sometimes referred to themselves as the ‘Black Hand Gang’.

  The ground crew component of the squadron was quite large, numbering around ninety personnel. These included significant numbers of specialist photographic and camera technicians engaged in Hallmark-related work. Mike said he was very proud of the many ground crews who were well trained in cross-servicing other countries’ aircraft types under the NATO Ample Gain arrangements. He recalls frequent aircraft visits from other NATO states – especially Norwegian and Danish F-104 Starfighters. If they turned up rather unexpectedly and an ‘in fit’ Pembroke was parked up outside the squadron, there would be a sudden discreet rush to get it back into a hangar before the visitors could see too much.

  The mid 1970s is often regarded by political observers of the Cold War as the ‘height’ of détente, when relations between the protagonists were generally at their most relaxed. However, Mike Jackson explained that the military held a rather different view. Leonid Brezhnev was just about at the zenith of his power; ‘the “Brezhnev Doctrine” was at its height’ and he had managed to accumulate all the key positions of the Soviet State. Not only was he CPSU General Secretary and president, he had appointed himself as Chairman of the Defence Council, was Marshal of the Soviet Union and in 1977 C-in-C of the Soviet Armed Forces, so consolidating his sole grip on power. Many in NATO were very concerned how Brezhnev might exercise this accumulated power, so looking for aggressive manifestations of that grip was a priority. In the end Mike’s tour as CO 60 Squadron passed without major incident.

  Subsequently moving on through a number of intelligence-related posts – including a tour as Defence Attaché in Poland – Mike Jackson became OC JARIC at RAF Brampton, the British centre of excellence for PI, from 1987. As he said: ‘I began to see some of the things that 60 was doing that I didn’t see when I was there and on occasions just how close to the edge they really went.’ ‘I began to appreciate the real benefit of what Hallmark was producing.’ He explained how the view on the value of Corridor operations began to change. There was hugely profound political change beginning to happen in the USSR and the rest of the Soviet bloc, even though its ultimate destination was then uncertain. Second, the imagery produced by the Pembrokes, although of good quality, was beginning to lose value. Even after the introduction of the ‘Baker’ camera (as used on the U-2) its imagery was qualitatively matched and surpassed by satellite material. Satellites had also become easier to re-task and the quality of their imagery, especially oblique, greatly improved. This combination of factors meant that the value of Corridor imagery was gradually declining – although the Pembroke’s replacement may have somewhat redressed the balance for a while.

  Latecomer: The Andover

  A Pembroke replacement had been talked about since the 1960s. They were old, wearing out and their load-carrying capacity was very limited. In the 1980s it was finally agreed that their replacement would be the Andover. It was larger, more modern and far more flexible in the amount and type of equipment it could carry. Two aircraft were selected for conversion, but only one (XS596) was completed. Unsurprisingly the programme took longer than planned because of difficulties integrating the new sensor package into the airframe. It was finally delivered to 60 Squadron in the summer of 1989 but required further modification work at RAF Wildenrath, including the installation of a false bulkhead and seats in the rear of the aircraft so that, when the rear loading doors were open, all that was visible was an aircraft in passenger configuration. Operational flights began in early 1990, after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Both Pembrokes and Andovers were flown on Hallmark missions during this overlap period, with some final Pembroke sorties being recorded into November 1989.

  The Andover’s camera fit was:

  • A KA-95B panoramic camera with a 12in lens.

  • An F.126 vertical camera with a 6in lens. This was used to produce small-scale (1: 20,000) photographs for installa
tion (area) prints, mission tracking and maybe survey images to help map production.

  • Two F.126 oblique, one left facing, one right facing. These F.126 bodies were fitted with reworked 48in lenses from F.96s.

  • An Agiflite hand-held camera fitted with a 12in lens for the use of crew members to photograph anything of interest.

  • A Sergeant III Thermal Imager. This was proposed but never used operationally because of security concerns about how to destroy the tapes in the event of an emergency. By the time a solution was found, the operation had ceased.

  Paul Hickley described the final months of flying:

  We had virtually ceased operations by August 1990. It was not that the operation was officially cancelled, just that the tasking requests dried up because the operation had become pointless in view of impending German reunification.

  Operation Hallmark was officially wound up on 30 September 1990. However, the last full flight had one final, unexpected twist. As the then OC 60 Squadron, Phil Chaney, described:

  Our final Hallmark flight was on 6 September 1990. Take-off was delayed because the Wildenrath armoury was on fire. Eventually we got off and flew to Berlin along the Corridor (which by now had become a formal civil airway). On our return we overflew the site of the armoury, which was now a roofless, smouldering shell, using our few remaining feet of film. Those last few feet of the final Hallmark film were declassified and released to the President of the Board of Inquiry into the fire. He was astounded to find such high-quality imagery was available to aid his investigation.

  Open Skies

  After German reunification and the demise of the Corridor mission, XS596 found a new role, as the UK’s Open Skies aircraft, operated by QinetiQ from Boscombe Down in Wiltshire. Its prior configuration for Corridor work meant it required little modification for use in Open Skies other than the removal of much of the previously installed camera equipment. All sorts of similarities, and ironies, reveal themselves in treaty operations. What was once ‘Top Secret’ in Corridor operations now became absolutely ‘transparent’ under Open Skies. The Open Skies proposal originated, albeit it in a different form, with President Eisenhower, although it had been quickly rejected by the Soviets at Geneva in 1955. That rejection was viewed by Eisenhower as one of the final triggers for approving deep-penetration U-2 overflights. From 1992 XS596 was involved in precisely the sort of photographic missions that had resulted in Gary Powers being shot down, but which are now permitted by the treaty.

  The Andover flew over 1,200 flying hours on more than seventy Open Skies-related flights until the UK abandoned the provision of its own aircraft in 2009.41 XS596 was scrapped at Boscombe Down in June 2013.

  British SIGINT Aircraft in the Corridors?

  Unlike the French and Americans, the British do not appear to have maintained any permanent airborne SIGINT capability for use in the Corridors. There are some anecdotal reports of individual or small groups of aircraft – generally of Varsity and Hastings vintage – that may have undertaken one-off, or short-term operations and passed through RAF Gatow. The explanation for this is probably quite simple: the UK and USA operated large SIGINT facilities at Teufelsberg on the edge of Gatow and within RAF Gatow itself. As we have seen, the USA undertook Corridor SIGINT flights and the USAFSS and NSA were also listening in throughout West Germany and elsewhere from their facilities. Most of the information collected would have been shared with the British under the UKUSA SIGINT agreement, so a permanent British airborne Corridor SIGINT capability would probably have been a largely unnecessary luxury. Maintaining even a modest airborne SIGINT capability in Germany would not have been cost-effective, especially considering that the supporting ground infrastructure for such operations was already available in Britain only a short flight away.

  British airborne SIGINT activities have always been euphemistically known as ‘Radio Proving Flights’ (RPFs). The RAF’s airborne SIGINT capabilities were limited, scarce and expensive. They were mostly flown by 51 Squadron Canberras, Comets and later Nimrod R1s, which were always very busy. The Canberras and Nimrods could not have been flown in the Corridors because they were not ‘training’ or ‘transport’ types. However, RPF flights were conducted along the IGB, Baltic coasts, Mediterranean and beyond for much of the Cold War and these would have provided Britain with a significant SIGINT take. Historical detail of many of these flights is still currently a ‘closed’ topic but a 1967 National Archive file provides some details of a series of flights launched over the Baltic from RAF Laarbruch under the code names Cabana, Lorry and Martinet. Each had different objectives, involving the use of single and multiple Canberra and Comet aircraft – detached from 51 Squadron. They involved flying within 30 to 50 miles of Soviet territory to test air defence reaction times and radars. Other flights were conducted directly from RAF Wyton in Huntingdonshire, including the code names Tumby and Hockey, usually monitoring Soviet SAM and anti-aircraft artillery radars along the IGB.42 On the monthly programmes there is also mention of regular IGB border flights:

  up to four sorties will be flown in the monthly series of border flights against targets in East Germany, which, as usual, will be the subject of a separate submission for approval by the Secretary of State Defence.43

  These missions were co-ordinated at the monthly US–UK meetings and were signed off by four senior personnel from an Air Commodore at DIS, through ACAS (Ops), VCAS and an Under Secretary at the political level. Individual flight authorisations were normally reviewed forty-eight hours before take-off.

  Conclusions

  Clearly British Corridor operations were much more limited than those of the USA. However, they were still of considerable importance. To the British they represented a first-hand intelligence gathering capability, under their own control, to discover Soviet and East German activities in and around the Corridors and Berlin. For the USA, British imagery represented an additional intelligence source. Possibly, for the British the greatest significance of Corridor flights was a political one. The UK gains a great deal from its intelligence agreements with the USA that gives it access to global, wide-ranging data and information it could not hope to generate by itself. The UK was, and is, very keen to maintain that relationship. Within government the question has often been raised over the years of what contribution can ‘we’ (the British) make to justify the USA continuing to share the large amounts of the intelligence it gathers with us? This anxiety appears to be a much greater British preoccupation than an American one. Corridor and BCZ flights were considered an important part of the British contribution to that relationship by ministers and senior officials within the FCO, MoD, and Cabinet Office. The efficacy with which the mission was accomplished in Germany by RAFG and BAOR, with very limited resources, provides a strong testimony to their technical skills and high levels of professionalism.

  Notes

  1 The National Archive: PRO AIR 2/1856: CMS.4123/62 21 August 1962.

  2 The British Corridor reconnaissance flights, known as Operation Hallmark for much of the period under discussion here; other operational code names were also used over the years, including Tokay, Fabian, Ladbrook, Plainsman, Remote and Venton.

  3 The National Archive: PRO AIR 14/3995 Air Ministry to Bomber Command: Air Survey Photography – British Zone of Germany, 26 August 1952.

  4 The National Archive: PRO C.50169/DDOPS(Photo), 26 and 29 August 1952.

  5 The National Archive: PRO C.50169, 10 August 1953.

  6 Memories of Walter Drew, SAC photographer at Buckeberg and Wildenrath 1953 to 1955

  7 http://www.rafwildenrath.de/staffeln-squadrons/2ataf-rafg-communications-sqn/.

  8 Aldrich (2011), pp. 140–2.

  9 Ibid., pp. 525–6.

  10 The National Archive: PRO AIR 2/18561 Reconnaissance Operations: RAF Germany 1962–1967 Folio 114A, 117A and 118A.

  11 Information about the SA-2 was regarded as so important that the USA dedicated a specialist aircraft (project CREEK FLEA) to gather data relating to
it around Berlin.

  12 The National Archive: PRO FO 371/160623, 30 May 1961, minute Sir Norman Brook to PM.

  13 Aldrich (2001), p. 541.

  14 Brugioni (2010), p. 338.

  15 W. Taylor (2003), Royal Air Force Germany since 1945 (Hinckley: Midland Publishing), p. 97.

  16 The National Archive: PRO FO 371/160623, minute to PM, 24 April 1962.

  17 The National Archive: PRO FO 371/160623, minute to PM, 24 April 1962.

  18 The National Archive: PRO FO 371/160623, minute to PM, 3 September 1961.

  19 The National Archive: PRO AIR 2/18561 minute Brook to PM, 22 August 1962.

  20 The National Archive: PRO CAB 191/2 ‘The Joint BAOR/RAF Germany Air Reconnaissance Requirement Covering East Germany’, JIC (Germany) (69)24 Final, 31 October 1969, para 27.

  21 Kevin Wright, personal communication, Ray Dadswell, 81 Squadron photographer.

  22 The National Archive: PRO AIR 2/18561 RAFG/TS.1247/OPS, 17 July 1962.

  23 Peter Jefferies, personal communication, Stewart Ross, 60 Sqdn, December 1973 to November 1976.

  24 The National Archive: PRO AIR 2/18561: 1 RAFG/TS.1247/OPS, 17 July 1962, p. 5.

  25 The National Archive: PRO AIR 2/18561: CMS.4123/62, 21 August 1962.

  26 The National Archive: PRO AIR 2/18561: RAFG/TB675/65/OPS, 29 February 1965.