Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War [1st ed.] 9783030516024, 9783030516031

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SECURITY, CONFLICT AND COOPERATION IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD

Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War peter svik

Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World

Series Editors Effie G. H. Pedaliu LSE Ideas London, UK John W. Young University of Nottingham Nottingham, UK

The Palgrave Macmillan series, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World aims to make a significant contribution to academic and policy debates on cooperation, conflict and security since 1900. It evolved from the series Global Conflict and Security edited by Professor Saki Ruth Dockrill. The current series welcomes proposals that offer innovative historical perspectives, based on archival evidence and promoting an empirical understanding of economic and political cooperation, conflict and security, peace-making, diplomacy, humanitarian intervention, nationbuilding, intelligence, terrorism, the influence of ideology and religion on international relations, as well as the work of international organisations and non-governmental organisations.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14489

Peter Svik

Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War

Peter Svik University of Vienna Institute of East European History Vienna, Austria

Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World ISBN 978-3-030-51602-4 ISBN 978-3-030-51603-1 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: RichardBakerUSA/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This book would not be possible without the kind help which I have, over years, received from Kiran Klaus Patel, Wolfram Kaiser, Olaf Mertelsmann, Robert van der Linden, Helmuth Trischler and Wolfgang Mueller. I am also indebted to the Estonian Science Foundation, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, Gerda Henkel Foundation, Deutsches Museum and FWF-Austrian Science Fund for providing me with longterm financing necessary for carrying out this book project.1 I am also grateful to my mother-in-law who had aided me with some translations from the Russian. My special thanks go to Alan Dobson for his first-hand comments and suggestions as well as language editing. The book also greatly profited from critical feedback I received from series editors, Effie Pedaliu and John Young, and anonymous peer-reviewers. At Palgrave, I would like to thank Molly Beck, Maeve Sinnott, Joseph Johnson and Azarudeen Ahamed Sheriff for taking care of this book and kind assistance with all technicalities. At the same time, I feel necessary to absolve all persons mentioned above from any responsibility for the content and eventual mistakes which, despite all efforts on my part, critical reader may eventually find in this work.

1 This research was carried out with the financial support of the ERMOS programme

(co-funded by Marie Curie Actions) within the project ERMOS98 and was also supported by the Lise Meitner programme of the Austrian Science Fund FWF under the number M 2189.

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Contents

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1

Introduction

2

Chicago Regime and Early (Dis)Connectedness

13

3

Building an Empire of the Red Air

43

4

Raising the Stakes

71

5

Trading Bananas for Permafrost

95

6

In the Shadows of Backwardness

119

7

Relations Cool Down and KAL 007 Incident

147

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Bloc Aviation Under Late Socialism

181

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Conclusion

205

Bibliography

221

Index

233

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

‘The giant first came droning over at midday, high up in the heat haze – a swept-wing monster, obviously extremely powerful, although by no means noisy,’ a reporter for the British aviation weekly Flight wrote in August 1959, introducing the ‘mighty Tu-114 Rossiya.’ … Some minutes later it snarled its ponderous way up to the control tower and stopped, looming over the buildings and dwarfing everything about it. Conventional airline stairs which were brought up and fully elevated got nowhere near the passenger doors. A narrow 10ft ladder, let down by the crew from the forward door, just made contact; and down this stairway from heaven, after a time, came thirty or forty Russians, including Mrs. Tupolev.

Writing from the 1959 Paris air show, the journalist regarded the demonstration of the new Soviet long-range liner as a ‘crowning event’ of the whole fair.1 On the other side of the Atlantic, Robert Hotz, an editor at the magazine Aviation Week, was equally astonished. Summing up his impressions on aviation aspects of a recent visit to the US by the Soviet First Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev, he wrote that ‘certainly nobody who saw the now familiar Tu-114… hurtle down the 9,000 ft. 1 ‘Tu-114 Rossiya’, Flight, 21 August 1959, 43.

© The Author(s) 2020 P. Svik, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1_1

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runway at Andrews A[ir]F[orce]B[ase], grossing 367,000 lb. including Mr. Khrushchev, and saw it come unstuck at 8,700 ft. will ever forget the sight.’2 Albeit rather troubled by the necessity to exit the plane in an ‘undignifying’ way and one far away from normal protocol by an on-board emergency ladder, which connected with the standard stairs in mid-air, a bulky ‘Mr K’ enjoyed the triumph. Unlike during the 1955 Geneva Summit when his plane ‘looked like an insect next to the planes that delivered Dwight Eisenhower, Anthony Eden, and Edgar Faure,’ four years later he flew to America non-stop, aboard the largest passenger plane of the day.3 But this was not all. In a frivolous and opulent style reminiscent of the Tsars, ‘Aeroflot operated two Tu-114 giant turboprop transports…, an Il-18 with an executive-type interior and shuttled four Tu-104 twin-engine jets back and forth between Vnukovo and Andrews AFB as courier planes swishing Soviet state papers to Mr. Khrushchev and his entourage and returning with mail, movies and still pictures of the American tour for Soviet audiences. As a result, Moscow television audiences saw Mr. Khrushchev’s arrival in Washington just two days after the event.’ In a final blow to the Western sense of technological superiority, two days before Khrushchev and his court came to Washington, the Lunik II capsule was the first man-made object to hit the Moon: a technological masterpiece. The Soviet press agency TASS reported, this was just ‘a precursor of more sophisticated devices which in the years to come will achieve “soft” lunar landings, go into orbit around the Moon and explore several other bodies within the solar system.’4 It was a perfect promotional storm and demonstration of power. In today’s globalised world of ‘open skies’ and mass air travel carried out by ‘super-jumbos’ like the Boeing B-747 or Airbus A-380, much of the ‘power allure’ which planes used to have in the past has now vanished. In

2 ‘Aeroflot Visits U.S.’, Aviation Week, 5 October 1959, 21. 3 Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (Boston

and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1970), 376 and Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 83 and 328–31. 4 Cf. ‘The Russians Hit the Moon’, Flight, 18 September 1959, 240; ‘Lessons of Lunik’ and ‘Soviets Hit Moon, Data Flow Improves’, Aviation Week, 21 September 1959, 21 and 28–30 respectively. See also ‘U.S. Gears Space Plan to Cut Soviet Gap’, Aviation Week, 28 September 1959, 29.

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the end, in an environment of ever-increasing oil prices and ever stricter environmental regulations because of the global warming, more mundane matters govern these days rather than aviation challenges. To borrow a famous headline of Bill Clinton’s 1992 US presidential campaign now ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’ However, while the connection between ‘the prestige, the fascination [with aeroplanes] and the “national interest”’ might have weakened, it was at the heart of why ‘international civil aviation [became] a serious problem in international relations.’5 As against this, it is a significant omission that Cold War historians have paid only a limited amount of attention to East–West relations in the civil aviation sector. In fact, in the ever-growing number of books and articles, there are only a few works which broach the topic. Thus, from the Western perspective, Jeffrey A. Engel analysed the sale of aircraft and aviation equipment to the Soviet Union and China within the context of Anglo-American infights for aviation supremacy; Jenifer van Vleck dealt with the US civil aviation aid to Ariana Afghan Airlines from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s and with US civil aviation diplomacy throughout the twentieth century and James L. Gormly has focused in two studies on US civil aviation policies towards the Soviet bloc.6 From the opposite, Eastern perspective, Stefan Albrecht described the development of Czechoslovak civil aviation policies within the Soviet bloc context from the mid-1940s to late 1960s; Philip Muehlenbeck furnished details on Czechoslovak civil aviation assistance to African countries in the 1960s and Phil Tiemeyer contributed with a study on how Josip Broz Tito’s regime attempted to position the country’s national carrier Jugoslovenski Aerotransport (JAT Yugoslav Air

5 Andreas F. Lowenfeld, ‘A New Takeoff for International Air Transport’, Foreign Affairs 54, no. 10 (1975): 36. 6 James L. Gormly, ‘Opening and Closing Doors: US Postwar Aviation Policy: 1943– 1963’, Journal of Transatlantic Studies 13, no. 3 (2015): 251–62; Id., ‘The Counter Iron Curtain: Crafting an American-Soviet Bloc Civil Aviation Policy: 1942–1960’, Diplomatic History 31, no. 2 (2013): 248–79; Jenifer Van Vleck, Empire of the Air: Aviation and the American Ascendancy (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2013); Id., ‘An Airline at the Crossroads of the World: Ariana Afghan Airlines, Modernization, and the Global Cold War’, History and Technology 25, no. 1 (2009): 3–24 and Jeff A. Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2007).

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Transport) at the crossroads between the West, East and South.7 Finally, from an international perspective, David Mackenzie addressed the issue of East–West relations within the context of the International Civil Aviation Organization.8 None of the published studies has, however, studied civil aviation affairs from a larger East–West perspective, nor have the authors approached their respective research from a consequently transnational or global viewpoint. This monograph takes a different line. Utilising both Western and Eastern sources, it details how East-West rivalry utterly shaped and transformed civil aviation during the Cold War. From the birth of the global route structure, through the development of engines to the design of aircraft, it was primarily Cold War security concerns as well as prestige and economic considerations that stimulated these processes. This in turn enabled a rapid spread of globalisation in the 1990s but, as this book details, it was East-West technological competition that laid down the foundations which were essential for this. In its research design and methodology, the monograph draws on three sources of inspiration. The first is Cold War historiography which nowadays seems to be at the crossroads and is characterised by a number of rather disparate approaches. As the Italian historian Federico Romero has put it, ‘historians are… expanding, dissecting, and complicating the very notion of a Cold War into a kaleidoscopic multiplication of prospects, contextualisations, methodological approaches, and meanings.’ Yet, despite all the centrifugal tendencies and indeterminacy, two paradigmatic approaches seem dominant. One current of historians still leans towards the traditional paradigm and understands the Cold War as a 7 Phil Tiemeyer, ‘Launching a Nonaligned Airline: JAT Yugoslav Airways Between East, West, and South, 1947–1962’, Diplomatic History 41, no. 1 (2017): 78–103; Philip Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 126–56; Stefan Albrecht, ‘Luftverkehr als Zukunftsbranche in der Tschechoslowakischen Sozialistischen Republik’, Prager wirtschafts- und sozialhistorische Mitteilungen/Prague Economic and Social History Papers 12 (2010): 15–29; Id., ‘Luftfahrt zwischen ICAO- und Sowjetstandards’, in Gerold Ambrosius, Christian Henrich-Franke, Cornelius Neutsch, and Guido Thiemeyer (eds.), Standardisierung und Integration europäischer Verkehrsinfranstruktur in historischer Perspektive (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009), 183–96 and Id., ‘Internationale Luftverkehrspolitik in der Zeit des Kalten Krieges von 1944 bis 1965: Das Beispiel Tschechoslowakei’, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1 (2007), 93–109. 8 David MacKenzie, ICAO: A History of the International Civil Aviation Organization (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2010).

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‘highly specific bipolar conflict’ which was based either on ‘security rivalry or pivoted on the projection of ideological and socio-economic models.’9 In this vein, the distinguished Cold War historian Odd Arne Westad called in his 2000 Bernath Memorial Lecture for a new international history of the Cold War and proposed three interpretation patterns, which he later fully elaborated in his seminal book The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. According to Westad, the Cold War was a clash of two hegemonic universalist ideologies (democratic capitalism v. communism) and was dominated by the US–USSR struggle for technological superiority and supremacy over the so-called Third World.10 In recent years, however, a brand new research stream has emerged which ‘decentre from a primarily Euro-Atlantic focus to the complex heterogeneity of the Global South, and from a close frame on the superpower decision-makers to the agency of a variety of actors in Latin America, Asia or Africa.’ Also, the very subject matter is changing and historians have chosen to ‘enlarge the field from the customary subjects of diplomacy, security and ideology onto a bracing assortment of trans-national and domestic, cultural and social, human right and media, economic and intellectual history approaches.’ In consequence, the ontological consensus is vanishing and the traditional bipolar view is being ‘superseded by a complex fabric of disparate interactions (local, national, transnational and global) with multiple actors operating in many intersecting fields, and assorted interpretative paradigms often mixed together.’11 Scaling down from a global to a European Cold War arena, this group of historians sees the supposed bipolarity as over-simplifying and the superpower angle over-accentuating ‘the extent to which the superpowers shaped the course of world events.’ Also, East–West relations were not exclusively based on confrontation and mutual distrust, but ‘beneath the bipolar structure, multileveled interaction was taking place between different types of actors, between people, institutions and states. 9 Federico Romero, ‘Cold War Historiography at the Crossroads’, Cold War History

14, no. 4 (2014): 686–7. 10 Odd Arne Westad, ‘The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms’, Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (2000): 551–65 and Id., The Global Cold War: Thirds World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 11 Romero, ‘Cold War Historiography’, 686–7.

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These lower-level actors below the great powers’ arena engaged in mutually beneficial cooperation, which quite often ran counter to the ambitions of the bloc leaders.’12 The second stream of historical research on which this book builds is that of the historians of technology who focus on the evolution of techno-based societies and address the role technology, expert networks and international organisations played in the globalisation and integration of Europe. According to these scholars, technologies and technological networks created and continue to create the structures of interconnectedness and interdependence that go ‘beyond nations and states,’ thus fundamentally accelerating the processes of globalisation and Europeanisation.13 Nonetheless, these inspiring inquiries make only brief and occasional excursions to the developments on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain. Furthermore, the works that deal with technology flows across the curtain, or those that pinpoint the (eventual) agency technology may have had for the Cold War’s outcome from a transnational perspective are rare and exceptional.14 This monograph attempts to remedy these shortcomings in scholarship. In a multi-faceted analysis, it strives to synthesise the abovementioned approaches into a single, internally coherent framework which keeps a delicate equilibrium between the description of events from a macro and micro perspective. By mapping and reconstructing the crossCurtain contacts and interlinkages in the civil aviation sector, this work reaffirms the importance of these transnational links, but it attempts to establish more precisely their proper relevance and place in influencing decision-making at higher levels of the power pyramid in both Western and Eastern countries. In this respect, as an essentially hightech industry which was considered by the general public and all relevant decision-makers at the time as an important instrument of both ‘hard’ 12 Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy, ‘Introduction: The Cold War from a New Perspective’, in Sari Autio-Sarasmo and Katalin Miklóssy (eds.), Reassessing Cold War Europe (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 1–2. 13 Johan Schot and Philip Scranton, ‘Making Europe: An Introduction to the Series’, in Per Högselius, Arne Kaijser, and Erik van der Vleuten (eds.), Europe’s Infrastructure Transition: Economy, War, Nature (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), xiii, but see also the other volumes in this series. 14 Cf. Elidor Mëhilli, ‘Technology and the Cold War’, in Artemy M. Kalinovski and Craig Daigle (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of the Cold War (London and New York: Routledge, 2014), 292–3.

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and ‘soft’ power, civil aviation presents a particularly rewarding case study for it clearly delineates the proper extent and limits of mutual East–West cooperation in an extremely sensitive area. Such approach reflects on the concept of three currents of time flow which Fernand Braudel put forward in his seminal work La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II and which provides third theoretical infusion for this inquiry. The book thus distinguishes three time horizons—longue durée, moyenne durée and courte durée or histoire événementielle—associated with three mutually overlapping but yet analytically separate layers of historical processes.15 The first of these is the supra-systemic level where indeed, as this text argues, the most profound change occurred. Unlike in the times of Philip II of Spain, the developments in aviation sector during the latter half of twentieth century—embodied in arrival of the wide-bodied planes powered with high-bypass turbofan engines and opening of the great circle routes—fundamentally transformed the world we live in by ultimately conquering geographical space. While it took months if not years for sailing ships to reach their destinations across the globe, today’s jets do the same within hours at a scale unprecedented in the history of humankind. Thus, as the historians Per Högselius, Arne Kaijser and Erik van der Vleuten argued recently, the growth and increasing complexity of technological infrastructures during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to ‘a fundamental conversion from a nature-based to network based geography.’ Or, in other words, from a pre-modern era of Philip II to the current post-modern societies.16 Yet, in aviation transport, this profound change did not come by itself but was brought and fuelled by East-West rivalry during the Cold War. At this systemic level, four interconnected structural areas can be distinguished. This included: (a) production of aircraft and spillover between the military and civilian designs: except for fuselage, all civilian planes were and even now continue to be, to significant extent, equipped with avionics and engines which were initially developed for military in order to

15 Cf. Fernand Braudel, La Méditerranée et le monde méditerranéen à l’époque de Philippe II (Paris: Armand Colin, 1949). 16 Cf. Högselius, Kaijser, and van der Vleuten, Europe’s Infrastructure Transition, 350.

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achieve strategic nuclear and airlift superiority while the commercial airlines appropriated these technologies at a fraction of original development costs; (b) politico-military and economic strategic thinking: because of the above, unlike in many other areas, the course of civil aviation policies remained relatively stable over time with emphasis on political and military aspects prevailing in the US, economic factors in Western Europe and the Soviet and bloc country policies presenting a mix of all these motivations; (c) resource base: due to continuous military spending at extreme rates during 1970s and in early 1980s as well as incapacity to produce high-grade aviation fuels in sufficient quantities at home and raising oil costs abroad, by mid-1980s the civil aviation in bloc countries appeared in deep stagnation from which it had no materiel potential to recover even if the communist regimes would not fall in 1989/90; (d) cross-Curtain invigorations: while initially denying access to its territory to all non-Soviet carriers and developing its own avionics and ground-based hardware, within 15 years from mid-1950s until early 1970s, the economic and prestigious aspects of flying Soviet planes across the Iron Curtain to the West and the emerging Global South instigated a cross-bloc infrastructural approximation which left the most visible mark in opening of an international route across Siberia, thus fundamentally altering the transportation patterns in Eurasia. These structural areas also provide basic orientation points how to navigate and understand the thick and detailed description from a courte durée perspective in chapters which follows. Nonetheless, because of the primacy of geostrategic, military, intelligence and economic factors as pointed to above, the policymaking in the aviation sector followed the galloping pace in East–West as well as East–South and West–South political relations to only limited extent. Rather, it reflected the deeper undercurrent of Cold War policies which went beyond the surface of dayto-day diplomacy and decision-making. In order to situate the subject matter in general context, however, the text occasionally refers to this wider framework, particularly at instances when policymaking in civil aviation arena intersected or was influenced by actual political events.

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The text progresses in eight chapters which are set diachronically and map developments from the mid-1940s until the late 1980s with occasional detours to the interwar years and World War II. The first chapter—the Chicago Regime and Early (Dis)Connectedness—covers the period between 1944 and the early 1950s and is split into two sub-sections. The focus of the first is on the 1944 Chicago conference and the development of a post-World War II civil aviation regime as well as on Anglo-American skirmishes over the sales of advanced aviation technology to the Soviet Union and the ensuing emergence of the Coordinating Committee for the Multilateral Export Control, usually referred to as simply the CoCom. This was set up by the US and its allies to monitor and control strategic exports to the Soviet bloc. The second sub-section traces the failed attempts of Czechoslovakia to establish its airline company as one of the world’s leading aviation businesses after the end of World War II. Despite the fact that the firm’s initial position seemed to be promising—Czechoslovakia was a party to the 1944 Chicago Convention and the International Air Services Agreement—its bold plans never materialised. This was because the airline was unable to acquire any four-engine planes from American producers, which were the sole manufacturers of such aircraft at the time, and because Paris, London and Washington agreed to halt all west-bound traffic by Czechoslovak Airlines (CSA) in September 1951 in retaliation for the ten-year imprisonment of a Prague-based American journalist William N. Oatis. The second chapter—Building an Empire of the Red Air—focuses on developments from the mid-1950 until the late 1960s. Its first part maps the full resumption of East-West air traffic in Europe during the second half of the 1950s. The emphasis here is on trilateral Franco-AngloAmerican aviation diplomacy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union prior and during the 1955 Geneva Summit as well as on negotiations of individual European countries for re-establishing air services with Czechoslovakia and the opening of services between them and the Soviet Union. The second part of this chapter describes the expansion of Czechoslovak Airlines and Aeroflot into the developing countries of Asia and Africa and provides further details on aviation assistance which the bloc countries provided to Egypt, Ghana, Guinea and Mali. It also mentions the difficulties which these countries had in operating Soviet equipment.

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The third chapter—Raising the Stakes—is again split in two parts. The first of these traces the evolution of American aerial containment policy. In response to bloc activities in the countries of the emerging Global South, by 1957, this policy widened from its focus on Europe and effectively became a global one. Nonetheless, its practical challenges and growing dissenting voices within the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations caused that policy of aerial containment to be abandoned in the early 1960s. It was replaced by a somewhat more pragmatic approach of fostering aviation relations in exchange for Soviet concessions in other areas. This change in approach is well documented in the second part, which focuses on the convoluted history of attempts to establish air services between the US and the USSR. Although the first efforts in this regard date back to the latter half of 1930s, a US–USSR aviation agreement was still not consummated in 1961, because of turbulent political developments. It was not until 1966 that it was finalised and the first flight on a Moscow–New York route took place two years later in 1968. The fourth chapter—Trading the Bananas for Permafrost—addresses the opening of a trans-Siberian route for Western carriers in exchange for transatlantic rights for Aeroflot. Providing the shortest connection between Europe and the Far East, Southeast Asia and Australia, respectively, the eventuality of opening Siberia to international air travel was first discussed in the mid-1950s. Several European countries as well as Japan were interested, but the Soviets refused to discuss the issue at hand arguing that there was no air route across Siberia which could meet existing international standards. After these initial overtures, the main current in East–West aviation relations shifted to Cuba following Fidel Castro’s turn to the Eastern bloc in the latter half 1959. Using NATO and exerting significant pressure on countries in West Africa and Latin America, Washington strove to prevent any flights to Havana by Czechoslovak Airlines and Aeroflot and the two issues became interlocked. An unyielding stalemate unfolded with a solution only emerging with the gradual erosion of the NATO common front at the turn of 1966/7. Even then there were further delays because of incompatibility in Western and Soviet electronic equipment. In the end, the international Siberian route was only opened in March 1970. The fifth chapter—In the Shadows of Backwardness—zooms in on the period from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. The chapter focuses on the failed development of the Ilyushin IL-86 airliner. In response to the emergence of ‘airbus’ class passenger planes in the West, this medium-range

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wide-bodied jet transport was developed from the late 1960s in order to accommodate increasing demand for air travel in the USSR. In the mid1970s, however, the project seemed to be doomed because of the lack of advanced, Soviet-built high-bypass turbofan engines. The Soviet authorities therefore considered either importing wide-bodied airliners from the US or equipping prototypes with Rolls-Royce or General Electric power plants. However, none of these materialised and the aircraft was, in the end, coupled with the old-fashioned, Kuznetsov NK-8 low-bypass turbofans and only four aircraft were ever sold outside of the Soviet Union. Such an outcome was partly attributable to its technological inferiority and CoCcom restrictions on the sale of state-of-the-art equipment to the Soviet bloc countries. The sixth chapter—Relations Cool Down and KAL 007 Incident— targets on the decade between 1973 and 1983. The first part of the chapter focuses on a dramatic worsening of bilateral US–USSR aviation relations. This was caused by Aeroflot heavily outcarrying Pan American World Airlines by employing unfair business practices on the routes between Moscow and New York and Washington, respectively. This forced the American carrier in 1978 to interrupt its services to Moscow while the Soviet carrier remained the sole provider of direct connections between the USSR and US. Nonetheless, Aeroflot flights as well as those by other bloc airlines were highly problematic with a long record of deliberate route violations and similar incidents. In response to this as well as to the generally worsening political climate after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and proclamation of martial law in Poland in December 1981, President Reagan forbade Aeroflot and the LOT Polish Airline from flying to the US. But the East–West relations reached their lowest ebb only after 1 September 1983, when a Soviet interceptor downed a Korean airline flight from New York to Seoul causing 269 fatalities. The analysis of this incident as well as reactions to it in the West and Global South forms the second section of this chapter. The seventh chapter—Bloc Aviation under Late Socialism—focuses on developments within the Soviet orbit in the late 1970s and 1980s. These were characterised by a lack of aviation fuel supply because of the underdeveloped petrochemical sector and dramatically increased emphasis on production of military materiel. Such a combination, by the mid-1980s, resulted in a deep crisis as the Soviet aircraft producers were unable to develop and produce airplanes to match their Western rivals in all key technical specifications. The gradual opening of communist regimes

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after Gorbachev announced the reformist Perestroika and Glasnost policies enabled the bloc aviation companies to reorient themselves towards Western aircraft producers with the Polish and Hungarian carriers opting for the Boeing aircraft while Czechoslovak Airlines and East German INTERFLUG acquired airplanes from Airbus. Finally, the conclusion summarises the book’s key findings while offering an explanation of why the Soviet bloc failed in the transition from the ‘propeller era’ to the ‘turbofan era.’ Turbofan engines were developed as a product of British and American military requirements to increase the propulsion efficiency of existing turbojet engines. In this regard, because of the success of turboprop propulsion in the form Tu-95 long-range strategic bomber, by the early 1960s, a ‘turbofan gap’ emerged which the Soviet aviation industry was not able to close during the following decades. Particularly important in this regard were CoCom sanctions, which prevented Moscow from acquiring modern, high-bypass turbofan power plants from the West. Consequently, bloc aviation remained stranded without the new technology it needed. It was dealt a deadly blow with the increasing price of oil, which exposed the shortcomings of its petrochemical sector.

CHAPTER 2

Chicago Regime and Early (Dis)Connectedness

Take-Off Already before World War II ended, it had become evident that airpower was changing the very essence of the globe. While aircraft were indeed efficient and reliable methods of carrying both people and cargo, they could additionally carry bombs and missiles. Thus, they had the potential to bring death to millions from afar. Not only this, but countries and whole continents that had hitherto enjoyed a form of ‘splendid isolation,’ by virtue of seemingly endless water masses that separated them from potential adversaries, now became easily accessible not only for travel and commerce but also to enemy attack. ‘There are no distant places any longer’ because ‘the world is small and the world is one,’ thus a Republican Party’s nominee for the American 1940 presidential campaign, Wendell L. Willkie, elicited an oncoming actuality in an exposé for the installation Airways to Peace: An Exhibition of Geography for the Future, which took place at New York’s Museum of Modern Art during summer and fall of 1943 and later toured across the US.1 1 Cf. ‘Museum of Modern Art to Open Large Summer Exhibition, Airways to Peace’, The Museum of Modern Art, June 14, 1949 and ‘Airways to Peace: An Exhibition of Geography for the Future’, The Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art 11, no. 1 (1943): 3. But see also Willkie’s best-selling account of his round-the-world-journey during August and September of 1942, Wendell L. Willkie, One World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1943).

© The Author(s) 2020 P. Svik, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1_2

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In spite of being all too aware of aviation’s potential value militarily, Willkie and many others hoped that in the coming Air Age2 the air travel would promote international understanding, cooperation among nations, and global spread of democracy.3 Such was also the belief of US officialdom. On 11 September 1944, with a desire to end ‘the inter-war predatory bilateral system,’ in which state-owned or sponsored enterprises ‘were heavily subsidized for prestige, status, commercial and security reasons,’4 the US government called upon the representatives of fifty-five Allied nations to attend a conference on the development of international air transport for the post-war years. ‘The approaching defeat of Germany, and the consequent liberation of great parts of Europe and Africa from military interruption of traffic,’ the invitation emphasised, ‘sets up the urgent need for establishing an international civil air service pattern…, so that the restorative processes of prompt communication may be available to assist in returning great areas to processes of peace.’5 Out of the nations invited, only Saudi Arabia declined and the Soviets withdrew their delegation at the last moment, which is an issue whose reasons and consequences are addressed below. The conference thus opened on 1 November with 185 representatives of fifty-three nations in attendance. The US president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who personally favoured as free and liberal a regime for post-war civil aviation as possible, sent a message of welcome and in his closing remarks observed that the delegates ‘begin to write a new chapter in the fundamental law of the air [and] are engaged in a great attempt to build enduring institutions of 2 Cf. Walter W. Ristow, ‘Air Age Geography: A Critical Appraisal and Bibliography’, Journal of Geography 43, no. 9 (1944): 334. For further details on the concept of Air Age geography, see e.g. Timothy Barney, Mapping the Cold War: Cartography and the Framing of America’s International Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 25–60 and William Rankin, After the Map: Cartography, Navigation, and the Transformation of Territory in the Twentieth Century (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2016), 69–89. 3 Cf. Barney and Rankin, supra as well as Jeniffer Van Vleck, Empire of the Air, 89–130 and Id., ‘“The Logic of the Air”: Aviation and the Globalism of the “American Century”’, New Global Studies 1, no. 1 (2007): Article 2. 4 This apt characterisation of the interwar époque comes from an eminent historian of aviation Alan Dobson, cf. Alan Dobson, A History of International Civil Aviation: From Its Origins Through Transformative Evolution (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 32 and title of Chapter 2. 5 Proceedings of the International Civil Aviation Conference at Chicago, 1948, vol. I, Invitation of the United Stated of America to the Conference, 11 September 1944, 11.

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peace.’ The president then made an appeal that the minds of delegates should not be shaken by ‘petty considerations or weakened by groundless fears,’ rather they should ‘work together so that the air may be used by humanity, to serve humanity.’6 However, while reaching a relatively early consensus on purely technical issues such as air navigation aids, air traffic control or airworthiness of aircraft, and on establishing an international organisation for promulgating and overseeing the worldwide implementation of common norms, the toughest fight was, in fact, fought along political and economic lines. It centred on the so-called five freedoms or privileges of the air which included: (i) the privilege of innocent overflight; (ii) the privilege of technical stop for refuelling and repairs; (iii–iv) the privileges to carry passengers, mail and cargo from country A to country B and vice versa; and (v) the privilege to pick up additional passengers, mail and cargo in country B while on the route from country A to country C.7 Despite Roosevelt’s pledge, the representatives present at the conference soon divided into three groups as regards the adoption of the five freedoms formula. At one end, there was a group of progressive nations, led by the US, which advocated a ‘freedom of the air’ approach, universal adoption of all five above-mentioned privileges and free competition on the open market. On the other were the delegations, whose speaker was Britain, which defended the ‘sovereignty over the air’ principle and protection of respective national airlines by capacity quotas, rate and other limitations as well as strong international authority to control the industry. Finally, most delegations oscillated between these two poles following various middle paths. What all nations shared, however, was a desire ‘to provide their own international civil aviation with as many guarantees as possible for its development.’8

6 Ibid., Message from the President of the United States, 1 November 1944, 43. 7 For a detailed account of negotiations, see Alan Dobson, FDR and Civil Aviation:

Flying Strong, Flying Free (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 189–215; Id., Peaceful Air Warfare: The United States, Britain and the Politics of International Aviation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 151–72 and David MacKenzie, ICAO: A History of the International Civil Aviation Organization (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 47. 8 Henri A. Wassenbergh, Post-War International Civil Aviation Policy and the Law of the Air (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1957), 11.

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After one month of heated debates during which neither the Americans nor the British were willing to give an inch, the conference was facing an impasse. On 1 December, in order to overcome the deadlock, the Dutch delegation tabled a proposal worked out by the French in late November. This divided the above-mentioned privileges into two groups—the first two formed the so-called transit rights, the latter three the so-called traffic or commercial rights—and envisaged the adoption of a separate transit agreement which would leave the negotiations over the traffic rights for bilateral talks between the concerned parties.9 Because of high expectations on the part of public and strong political pressures for positive outcomes from the conference, both Washington and London agreed to this compromise solution and the delegates promulgated two agreements: International Air Services Transit Agreement which provided the overflight and technical stop rights only and International Air Transport Agreement which granted all five freedoms to the signatories.10 Of the two, the latter was least successful as it was only signed by a small number of countries, including the USA, but Washington decided to withdraw from the agreement in July 1946 as it lacked support.11 Facing a strong opposition against fully fledged multilateralism on which the US delegation stood at Chicago, American aviation policy, already by the close of the war, had shifted towards the method of bilateral air service

9 Proceedings of the International Civil Aviation Conference, 1948, vol. II, French Draft of Amendments to Documents 433 and 435, undated, 1340–2; Dobson, Peaceful Air Warfare, 170 and MacKenzie, ICAO, 47. 10 In addition to these agreements, the conference also approved the general Convention on International Civil Aviation, more commonly called the Chicago convention. Although becoming a cornerstone of post-World War II civil aviation regime, the convention did not specifically relate to the operation of scheduled air services. For its impact on further development of aviation law, see, e.g., I. H. Ph. Diederiks-Vershoor, An Introduction to Air Law (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1997), 9–56. The respective texts of all three documents can be found, for example, in Proceedings of the International Civil Aviation Conference, 1948, vol. I, 147–83. 11 Cf. Foreign Relations of the United States (hereafter FRUS), 1946, vol. I, The Acting Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic Officers, 1 August 1946, 1484, but see also an earlier note by Llyod Welch Pogue, the CAB chairman, on the unfeasibility of the agreement: FRUS, 1945, vol. II, The Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board (Pogue) to the Secretary of State, 16 July 1945, 1461–3.

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agreements.12 An early apogee was reached in this policy with an UK–US aviation treaty concluded on 11 February 1946. This agreement cut the Gordian knot with the Americans accepting an independent regulatory authority to set prices,13 and the British now conceded that instead of some form of governmental mechanism, the airlines themselves should fix capacity, i.e. which type of aircraft to be used, and flight frequencies. The impact of the so-called Bermuda agreement was profound and it served as a pattern to be repeated in most bilateral air treaties until the late 1970s, when the US deregulated its domestic airline system and then sought more liberal international air service agreements.14 A crisscross of bi- and multilateralism, the Chicago–Bermuda regime tamed the main excesses of its ‘predatory’ predecessor, but still made the strongest aviation nations the main gate-keepers of the system. Disposing with the largest markets and most advanced technologies that all other countries desired to acquire and possess, they were effectively able to control the system’s ‘choke points’ either by declining landing and operating permits or denying access to the latest equipment. The most eager in this respect was the US—by far the mightiest aviation nation in the post-World War II era. While the US market was already the largest in the 1930s—the five biggest American airlines for example carried each year approximately twice as much air traffic as their European counterparts—the war broadened the ‘transatlantic’ gap even more.15 12 Cf. P. P. C. Haanappel, ‘Bilateral Air Transport Agreements—1913–1980’, Maryland Journal of International Law 5, no. 2 (1980): 246–7 and Wassenbergh, Post-War International Civil Aviation Policy, 17–8. This change in approach, in fact, reflected the division of opinions within the administration: while President Roosevelt and Adolf A. Berle, the assistant Secretary of State and chairman of the American delegation at Chicago conference, favored multilateralism, the Secretary of State Edward Stettinius and Welch Pogue desired to secure the positions for American aviation via bilateral negotiations in which the US were likely to have an upper hand over almost any partner on the opposite side of the table. The latter stance more or less coincided with the views of Pan Am’s founder and president, Juan Trippe, who indeed was Stettinius’ brother-in-law. For more details on this, see Dobson’s FDR and Civil Aviation, 135–87 and Peaceful Air Warfare, 125–72. 13 Despite the US dislike of cartel-like organizations, The International Air Transport

Association (IATA), a worldwide trade association for airlines set up in April 1945, was chosen for this purpose. 14 Cf. e.g. Dobson’s, A History of International Civil Aviation, 65–9 and Peaceful Air Warfare, 246–85. 15 Cf. ‘America Takes the Lead in World Air Transport’, Aviation, 1 March 1933, 84– 5; ‘World Air Transport: America’s Steadily Lengthening Lead in Commercial Aviation’,

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Unlike most of the airlines in Europe which shut down their operations or amalgamated with respective national air forces during the war, the companies on the other side of Atlantic were able to retain some civilian traffic on mid- and long-haul routes. In addition, they benefited from flying for the US Air Transport Command on military business or from training army pilots.16 Equally, if not even more importantly, the US aircraft manufacturers, at the same time, acquired an effective monopoly on production of large transport planes, which were the basis for producing large passenger planes. With the aviation industries of all other belligerent nations shifting completely towards the production of bombers and fighters early into the war, the American manufacturers remained, to all intents and purposes, the sole producers of transport aircraft in the world.17 Moreover, because of abrupt technical development instigated by immediate demands from the military for faster, long-range planes with more payload capacity, the result was that the main post-war types of civil air passenger planes, the four-engine Douglas DC-6 and Lockheed Constellation, travelled twice as fast as the most widely used planes of the pre-war era, the two-engine Douglas DC-3 and tri-motored Junkers Ju-52. The newer designs could also carry three to four times more passengers on each flight for significantly longer distances: DC-6’s and Constellation’s maximum ranges topped out at 7400 and 8700 km, respectively, compared to just 1000 km for the Ju-52 and 1600 km for the DC-3.18 Reaping the fruits of civil-military R&D cross-fertilisation during the war, the de facto US production monopoly in the West remained unchallenged until the mid-1950s when the second

Aviation, 1 March 1934, 86–7; ‘On Air Transport’, The Aeroplane, 4 May 1938, 527–30 and ADM, Box LR 00418, Einige Zahlen aus dem internationalen Luftverkehr, 1 August 1935. 16 Cf. ‘Army Requisitions Half of Airline Planes, Remainder Stands by for Emergency Routes’, Aviation, 1 June 1942, 221; ‘Army Sets Up New Airline Priority System, Public Still Rides If Space Is Available’ and ‘Army Cuts Airlines Routes and Schedules, Sets Up Priorities on All U.S. Services’, Aviation, 1 July 1942, 261–2 and 276 respectively as well as ‘Welt-Verkehrsluftfahrt 1947 (Ein Lagebericht)’, Europa-Archiv, April 1947, 520–1. 17 Cf. Dobson, Peaceful Air Warfare, 129 and Jeff A. Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet: The Anglo-American Fight for Aviation Supremacy (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2007), 29–39. 18 Cf. ADM, Box LR 00418, Einflüsse der Luftfahrtentwicklung während des zweiten Weltkrieges auf den Luftverkehr, May 1950 and Weltluftverkehr, undated, but likely from 1950.

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generation of British made Comet and French build Caravelle jetliners were introduced. The predominance of American airplanes even transcended the gradually emerging East-West divide. Not only did Aeroflot service its routes mainly with Lisunov Li-2, a licence-produced version of the DC-3, but the Soviets also tried to acquire newer four-engine transports either by replicating American designs or by purchasing finished airliners from the US. Throughout 1946, the Tupolev design bureau developed and tested a prototype transport aircraft, designated Tupolev Tu-70, derived from the Tu-4 strategic bomber. The bomber itself was a copy of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress. The Soviets had reverse-engineered the Tu-4 from American planes that made emergency landings in the USSR while raiding Japan. Curiously enough, the Tu-70 prototype was made from the sections of wings, undercarriage and tail-plane of one of the Tu-4s which were joined to a pressurised passenger cabin designed by the Tupolev team. The prototype was outfitted with a significant amount of American avionics, too. While some authors claim that it also came with the B-29’s engines, others argue that the Soviet-built Shvetsov ASh-73 radial engines were used instead. Whichever it was, engine malfunction caused a crash landing during the fourth trial flight in November 1946.19 At the same time, Moscow sounded out the State Department about the possibility of purchasing some 50–100 Constellations directly from the Lockheed. The Soviets were also vitally interested in delivery of five dozen ignition harnesses for Wright 3350 Duplex-Cyclone engines—the Superfortress bombers and Super-Constellation airliners came with the same engines—and, in addition, they desired to acquire a dozen Pratt &Whitney R-1830 14-cylinders motors as well. While neither diplomats nor military saw any ‘overriding objections on the grounds of military security’ to the potential sales, the opening of the Soviet airspace for American carriers was made a quid pro quo for any such deal on the

19 Shvetsov ASh-73 presented a development of Shvetsov M-25 engines which, in fact, were license-built versions of American Wright R-1820-F3 radial engine produced by Curtis-Wright Corporation. For differences in literature concerning the engines, see Paul Duffy and Andrei Kandalov, Tupolev: The Man and His Aircraft (Shrewsbury: Airlife Publishing, 1996), 99–101 and Yefim Gordon and Vladimir Rigmant, OKB Tupolev: A History of the Design Bureau and Its Aircraft (Hinckley: Midland, 2004), 105–7 respectively.

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recommendation of the US Army Joint Chief of Staff. Consequently, the Soviets lost interest and never brought the issue up again.20 Despite the crash landing and no materiel deliveries from the US, the work on the Tu-70 prototype continued throughout 1947 and it eventually passed state trials in December of that year. However, as Aeroflot showed no interest in the plane, the Tu-70 never entered serial production. The reason was the lack of long concrete runways across the much of the Soviet Union and those existing were better served by smaller planes like the aforementioned Li-2 or Ilyushin Il-12, with a maximum capacity of 32 seats in an unpressurised cabin and a mediocre range of about 1500 km. Over the next few years, the situation did not improve dramatically and, in consequence, Aeroflot only introduced its first fourengine turboprop aircraft—Ilyushin Il-18 and Tupolev Tu-114—in the late 1950s.21 However, why did the Soviet leadership sanction the development of Tu-70 prototype and why was it interested in acquiring Lockheed Constellations, when it had to be aware that most of the airports in the country were not suited for take-off and landing for long-range airliners? In fact, the reasons for such a decision were more complex than one might imagine. While initially agreeing to take part in the Chicago aviation conference on 19 October 1944, the Soviets made an abrupt volte-face and recalled their consent within a mere week. On 26 October, the Soviet ambassador to the United States, Andrei Gromyko, provided the State Department with a note stating that the Praesidium of the Supreme Soviet did not regard participation desirable ‘on the grounds of the attendance of Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal’ as these countries ‘adopted during the course of many years a hostile position’ towards the USSR. As the plane with the Soviet representatives had already reached the United States and was awaiting further instructions on the ground in Minneapolis, the 20 Cf. NARA, RG 59, CDF, Box 6673, Memorandum on Sale of Surplus Aeronautical Equipment to the USSR, 31. October 1946; Memorandum for the Air Coordinating Committee from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 30. December 1946 and DoS to Embassy Moscow, 8 January 1947. 21 Cf. ADM, Box LR 00498, Flugzeugpark der Aeroflot, 1 August 1956. See also ‘Tu114 Rossiya’, Flight, 21 August 1959, 43–5 and ‘Inside the Il-18’, Flight, 1 July 1960, 13–7. For general overview of the Soviet airplane technology, refer, e.g., to Bill Gunston, Aircraft of the Soviet Union: The Encyclopaedia of Soviet Aircraft Since 1917 (London: Ospreay, 1983) and the above quoted book by Gordon and Rigmant.

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Department of State hastily proposed that Moscow allow its officials to remain in the US and liaise with other delegations at Chicago informally. Kremlin rebuffed this idea, arguing that this could invoke a false impression that the Soviets were participating in the conference ‘in some kind of disguised and cowardly form.’22 Immediately this stirred up debate as to the real causes behind the Kremlin’s decision among American and British diplomats. None believed the explanation furnished was the real one. According to Sir Archibald Clark Kerr, the British Ambassador in Moscow, the Soviets stayed out because ‘they did not wish to become involved in what promised to be a serious disagreement’ between the Americans and the British.23 Sir Orme Sargent, the Deputy Undersecretary at the Foreign Office, considered the decision rather as a demonstration of power by which the Soviets wanted to show that ‘Russia today [was now] strong enough… not to tolerate the kind of [pariah] treatment that she was given in the years immediately following the revolution and which some countries still accorded her.’ Finally, Adolf A. Berle who chaired the conference and headed the American delegation at Chicago conference thought that the Soviets ‘did not want to move out in civil aviation anyway because they were not yet prepared to play a decisive role in it.’24 Berle might not have been entirely sure about the real cause of this surprising U-turn, but he and his colleagues were well aware in which direction Soviet aviation policy was developing. In early August, during the preliminary Soviet-American talks for the conference, the Soviet delegation left the Americans with a memorandum whose three guiding

22 FRUS, 1944, vol. II, The Soviet Ambassador (Gromyko) to the Secretary of State, 26 October 1944, 571; The Acting Secretary of State to the Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan), 26 October 1944, 571–2; The Acting Secretary of State to the Chargé in the Soviet Union (Kennan), 27 October 1944, 573–4 and The Soviet Ambassador (Gromyko) to the Acting Secretary of State, 26 October 1944, 579–80. For this and what follows see also James Gormly, ‘The Counter Iron Curtain’, 256–9. 23 Stettinius to Berle, 8 November, 1944 as quoted in David MacKenzie, ICAO, 25. In essence, this message provided Berle with a gist of an earlier note telegraphed from the American embassy in London to Washington on November 3. Cf. FRUS, 1944, vol. II, The Chargé in the United Kingdom (Gallman) to the Secretary of State, 3 November 1944, 583. 24 Cf. FRUS, 1944, vol. II, The Chargé in the United Kingdom (Gallman) to the Secretary of State, 31 October 1944, 582 and MacKenzie, ICAO, 25.

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principles Berle described as follows. Moscow desired a ‘closed and selfconducted commercial system’ under which ‘all operation of air routes in Soviet territory [should] be carried on by Soviet planes.’ The Soviets proposed—Berle went on—that ‘international aviation across Russian territory shall be conducted by having airlines of other countries stop at agreed points, at which Soviet planes and fliers would pick up the traffic. The traffic would then be carried into or across Soviet territory; and the Soviet airline would then meet the airlines of other countries at a point or points on the other side of Soviet territory. International agreements would consist of arrangements to coordinate the arrival of American and other planes at the fixed points and the pick-up there of the traffic by the Soviet lines.’ In fact, however, the exchange points would not necessarily be located in Soviet territory as the Soviets proposed Cairo in Egypt as a pick-up point for the line from Washington or New York to Moscow. Alternatively, the Soviet memorandum proposed to form a joint airline venture which would exploit the route on a parity basis.25 Neither the Americans nor the British were enamoured of the Soviet proposals, and in fact Moscow’s ideas passed without much attention being paid to them in either Washington or London. Partially this was because the diplomats of both countries agreed that ‘the transit of Soviet territory was not essential in establishing major world routes.’ Therefore, ‘it would still be possible for other countries to engage in international air transport on a large-scale’ even if Moscow opted to stay out.26 Nonetheless, this did not mean that the Kremlin discarded its ideas. Not only did the Soviets intrude into the civil aviation of its soon-to-become satellites and controlled the ‘joint’ aviation companies in Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria,27 but they also tabled similar offers to Austrians and Italians. Throughout 1946, moreover, the news reached Western media and diplomatic circles periodically that the Soviets were interested in opening

25 FRUS, 1944, vol. II, Memorandum by the Assistant Secretary of State (Gromyko), 2 August 1944, 516–8 and Memorandum from the Soviet Delegation, 1 August 1944, 518–9. 26 FRUS, 1944, vol. II, Memorandum of Conversation, by the Assistant Chief of the Aviation Division (Walstrom), 3 August 1944, 522. 27 Maszovlet (Hungarian-Soviet Civil Air Transport Company) and TARS (RomanianSoviet Air Transport) were founded in 1946, TABSO (Bulgarian-Soviet Transport Aviation Corporation) one year later.

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routes from Moscow to London, Vienna and Rome and were also negotiating with the Scandinavian countries about eventual aviation agreements to place occasional flights to Helsinki and Stockholm on a more formal footing.28 Should those proposals have come to fruition, planes like the Tu90 would certainly have been valuable assets. However, there was one major factor obstructing such developments as the case of brief SovietItalian negotiations aptly demonstrates. The initial proposal from Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov to the Italian Prime Minister, Alcide De Gasperi, came during a conversation at the 1946 Paris Peace Conference. After publicly accusing the Italian government of ‘submitting to Anglo-American domination in field of international civil aviation,’ Molotov proposed to De Gasperi that they should initiate a route between Moscow and Rome to counterbalance the aviation agreements that Rome had concluded with Howard Hughes’ Trans World Airlines and the British Overseas Airways Corporation. The route was to be via Bucharest, Belgrade and Tirana in Albania and operated by a joint Soviet-Italian airline.29 Despite the somewhat rude undertone of the initial proposal, the Italian government looked at establishment of the route with favour. However, it instantly refused the idea of a common business venture. Instead, Rome demanded complete reciprocity, meaning that an Italian airline should be allowed to fly to Moscow as soon as the armistice terms were eased and Italians permitted to fly on international routes. Regarding this, Washington signalled to Rome and London its immediate willingness to lift the restriction on external Italian services even before the Italian Peace Treaty had been signed if this could help in extracting reciprocal rights from Moscow. For their part, the Soviets were willing to allow the Italians to fly up to Bucharest in pool with Romanian-Soviet Air Transport (TARS), but no further and certainly not into Soviet territory. Consequently, the negotiations stalled and then at the turn of 1946/47 the

28 Cf. e.g. NARA, RG 59, CDF, Box 6673, Press Announcement of Agreement to Establish Moscow–London Service, 17. April 1946; Embassy London to DoS, 3 December 1946 and Soviet Interest in the Establishment of a Soviet-Austrian Airline, 20 January 1947. 29 Cf. Ibid., Telegram from Rome to DoS, 17 October 1946.

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Soviets shelved the idea completely, and decided to use Prague as their main gateway to the West.30 This fact did not escape the attention of the American Administration. In July 1948, a highly influential National Security Council (NSC) 15/1 Directive on ‘U.S. Civil Aviation Policy towards the USSR and its Satellites’ pinpointed that the Soviet bloc, by means of bilateral agreements which Czechoslovakia concluded with a number of Western countries, gained ‘access to practically every country to which Moscow desires air access,’ while the Kremlin, on the other hand, had limited ‘the western countries to air access to Prague [located] at the extreme western end of the Soviet area of domination.’31 Before we shift our attention in this direction, however, and describe in more detail the factors, which contributed towards the evolution of the Czechoslovak capital into an East-West aviation crossroad in the early Cold War era, it is important to discuss another important piece of the overall jigsaw, namely the regulatory framework for trans-Curtain technology transfers and flows. Up until the summer of 1947, according to the NSC 15/1 Directive, the US followed a liberal export policy under which their ‘markets for aircraft, components, aids to navigation, etc. were open to the USSR and the satellite countries.’ In fact, however, Washington’s sales policy throughout this period was far less laissez-faire than the report suggests. Thus, when the Americans learned in the early fall of 1946 that the British were about to sell several outdated Spitfire fighters from their surplus reserves to Czechoslovakia, the Secretary of State, James Byrnes, strongly tried to dissuade the Foreign Secretary, Ernest Bevin, from consummating the deal. ‘In view of his strong opposition of the sale of [this] relatively out of date equipment’—Bevin warned his Prime Minister Clement Attlee—Byrnes ‘is likely to react very strongly when he hears that we are selling jet engines to the Soviet Union.’32 And he was correct except for one thing. Because London was able to conceal the deal over twenty top-ofthe-line Nene and Derwent turbojets manufactured by Rolls-Royce up until June 1947, it was down to George C. Marshall, who took Byrnes’

30 See Ibid., Embassy Rome to DoS, 26 August 1946; 5 December 1946 and 8 January 1947 respectively as well as DoS to Embassy Rome, 2 December 1946. 31 FRUS, 1948, vol. IV, Report by the National Security Council, 12 July 1948, 451–6. 32 Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 72–3.

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position in January, to deal with the consequences. When the news surfaced that the British had sold ten Nene and ten Derwent engines to the Soviets the previous year and were negotiating another deal with Moscow comprised of an additional twenty-five engines and, allegedly, three Vampire bombers and three Meteor fighters as well, the political and military elites in Washington were nothing but outraged. While the military doubted whether ‘perfidious Albion’ could be trusted any longer as London shamefully placed business over security, diplomats spoke of far-reaching results and long-term consequences. The message was nonetheless clear and straightforward: either the British immediately stop furnishing troublesome countries like Argentina and future potential enemies like the Soviet Union and China with the latest aviation technology or they should look for another benefactor. To couple Washington’s zero export policy with London’s trading zeal could seem difficult, but this was not the case in the end. After the Soviets raised the stakes and asked for completed planes, even the Labour Prime Minister Clement Attlee finally realised the obvious: Moscow was not interested in trading avionics for timber and wheat which cash-strapped Britain badly needed, but wanted to acquire top-of-the-line technology that would otherwise take years for Soviet engineers to develop. In order to keep his country’s reputation undamaged, Attlee again sanctioned the sale of engines but on condition that the deal over completed planes be reciprocated with an adequate receipt of Soviet technology in return. In other words, the British would sell their best technology only if the Soviets would do the same. While this obviously was not the way the Kremlin was willing to proceed, Rolls-Royce swiftly delivered the engines (increasing the total amount of those exported to fifty-five) and, after that, the British agreed to consult with the Americans on any aviation sales in the future.33 Somewhat later, under the aegis of the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Control (CoCom) set up in November 1949, Western countries agreed to place all aviation technologies under export embargo considering them an important asset of extremely high relevance not only for civilian but also military operators. However, as no formal mechanisms were put in place to enforce the strict application of the CoCom regulations, each country followed its own rules. These changed over time 33 Cf. Ibid., 74–89. See also Frank Cain, Economic Statecraft During the Cold War (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 16–8.

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as governments passed by and periods of East-West confrontation and détente unfolded.34 Nonetheless, as Chapter 6 illuminates in more detail, the ‘deadly legacy’ of the Nene-Derwent deal remained long-lasting.35 However, how did it exactly happen that Prague became the crossroads for East-West aviation after the end of World War II?

Dreams Thwarted Emerging from the debris of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, the independent Czechoslovak Republic was officially proclaimed on 28 October 1918. Within a few years, the development of aviation, both military and civil, became of serious importance for the administration of the newly founded state. And the fervour with which the Czechoslovak officials pursued the idea of making Prague a ‘junction’ and ‘clearinghouse’ for East-West and North-South traffic in Europe and further to the Middle and Far East impressed even observers from abroad. Czechoslovakia ‘is taking up the development of aviation very seriously,’ reported Flight magazine on 8 December 1921 from the Second International Aero Exhibition held at Prague in late October that year. Convened and organised by the non-state Czechoslovak aviation club, the fair took place under the patronage of Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, the President of the 34 Cf. Office of Technology Assessment, Technology and East-West Trade (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979), 153–70 and Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and National Academy of Engineering, Finding Common Ground: U.S. Export Controls in a Changed Global Environment (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 1991), 22–47. For more details on CoCom see e.g. James K. Libbey, ‘CoCom, Comecon, and the Economic Cold War’, Russian History 37, no. 2 (2010): 133–52; Ian Jackson, The Economic Cold War: America, Britain and East-West Trade, 1948–63 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001) and volume by Cain supra. 35 To much surprise in London and Washington, the Soviets were not only able to reverse-engineer but also produce the copies of Nene and Derwent power plants, Klimov VK-1 and Klimov RD-500, respectively, in large numbers. Fitted with the Klimov VK1, the Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15 fighters dominated the sky during the early Korean War outclassing anything the RAF and US Air Force could deploy against them except for a few American F-86 Sabre fighters—by September 1951 the ratio was more than five hundred MiG-15s against only ninety F-86s. ‘In 2.5 years from the receipt of the Nene engine a high performance fighter, powered by this engine, was being produced in quantity,’ a report by the British Air Ministry bitterly stated in 1952 whereas Whitehall officials at the time of sale expected that it would take the Soviets at least half of decade to accomplish this. A ‘jet-gap’ was closed and the Western technological lead shattered. Cf. Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 117–24; quote on p. 118.

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Republic, and ‘there was no lack of assistance and encouragement from the Czech[oslovak] government,’ too. ‘In fact,’ the correspondent went on ‘the official aerial policy [was] very largely responsible for the progress aviation has made during the past few years in this new Republic.’ A year later in October 1922, the magazine even noticed that the Czechoslovak efforts in the field of commercial aviation were second only in Europe to the British and the French.36 Despite all the enthusiasm with which the officials approached the development of civil aviation in the country, Prague was not connected internationally by any home-grown airline for most of the 1920s. Instead, the state generously subsidised the Compagnie franco-roumaine de navigation aérienne for carrying cross-border traffic to and from Prague. The Franco-Romanian enterprise, which in 1925 renamed itself Compagnie international de navigation aérienne (CIDNA), began to provide both postal and passenger services between Paris, Strasbourg, Prague and Warsaw in late March 1921. During the first seven months of operations, the company conveyed some 660 travellers on the route and approximately 20,000 kilograms of mail and cargo while using the French-built Potez IX biplane. After another year of preparations, in October 1922, the airline introduced its hallmark Orient Arrow, Flèche d’Orient, route from Paris to Istanbul via Strasbourg, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade and Bucharest.37 In this context, it is interesting to note that the Czechoslovak government continued funding Praguebound traffic on this line after September 1933 when the CIDNA amalgamated with several other French airlines into Air France even ˇ though the Ceskoslovenské státní aerolinie (Czechoslovak State Airlines), introduced their own connection between Prague and Bucharest.38 The Czechoslovak State Airlines was formed from the air force transportation corps in July 1923. Fully owned and financed by the state, the

36 Cf. ‘An Aerial Clapham Junction’, Flight, 16 September 1920, 992; ‘The Second Czech International Aero Exhibition’, Flight, 8 December 1921, 815 and ‘Airisms from the Four Winds’, Flight, 26 October 1922, 631. 37 Cf. ‘Civil Aviation and Air Services’, Flight, 21 October 1920, 1104; ‘Paris-Prague’, Flight, 24 March, 1921, 209; ‘Henry Potez’, Flight, 22 December 1921, 842; ‘ParisConstantinople Line Initiated’, Flight, 5 January 1922, 388 and Aircraft Year Book (New York: Aeronautical Chamber of Commerce of America, 1926), 158–9. 38 ADM, Box LR 00416, Tschechoslowakei: Subventionen für 1934, 7 March 1935 and Josef Pluhaˇr, Naše moˇre [Our Sea] (Prague: n. publ., 1936), 5–6.

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company began its operations six months later, on 29 October 1923, with inaugural airmail flights between Prague and Bratislava. However, for the rest of the 1920s, the airline focused primarily on securing regular39 passenger and cargo flights on the key intrastate axis Prague-BrnoBratislava-Kosice-Uzhhorod40 and provided no international connections whatsoever. This picture changed in 1930 with the introduction of the carrier’s first trans-border service from Bratislava to Zagreb. After three years, the airlines extended the ‘Adriatic Express’ to Sušak41 and from 1934 its planes departed directly from Prague.42 The second international route of the company was the above-mentioned connection between Prague and Bucharest via Brno, Kosice, Uzhhorod and Cluj-Napoca which became fully operational in May 1934. Sensing a niche in a promising market, the Škoda industrial conglomˇ erate established, in January 1927, its own airline, named Ceskoslovenská letecká spoleˇcnost (Czechoslovak Air Transport Company). In the same month, the company was commissioned to provide, in cooperation with the German Deutsche Luft Hansa and Austrian Österreichische Luftverkehrs, services on the newly established Vienna–Prague–Dresden– Berlin route. And while an inaugural flight by Luft Hansa took place 39 Due to the several factors (limited navigational capacities both aboard and on the ground, lower cruise altitudes and open pilot’s cockpits of contemporary aircraft), the services operated only between early/mid-March and late October/early November according to the actual weather conditions. 40 The original route between Prague and Bratislava was gradually extended as soon as the airports in other cities became available: at Kosice in 1924, at Brno in 1926 and, ˇ finally, in Uzhhorod in 1929. Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 8, Výroˇcní zpráva Ceskoslovenských státních aerolinií za rok 1937 [Yearly Report of the Czechoslovak State Airlines for 1937] and Pluhaˇr, Naše moˇre, 18. 41 Sušak is an Eastern suburb of Rijeka, Croatia. Under the terms of the 1924 Treaty of Rome, the city—historically also known as Fiume and, at the time, ethnically mostly Italian—fell to the Kingdom of Italy while Sušak and surrounding agricultural area— ethnically predominantly Croatian—became part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. The highly important seaport located at Sušak was placed under the joint Italian-Yugoslav control. 42 During the summer of 1936 the Czechoslovak State Airlines attempted to extend the Adriatic line right up to Dubrovnik. Launched on 13 June, the additional segment Sušak-Split-Dubrovnik was suspended after one and half months of service because of the repeated failures of engines on the British manufactured Saro Cloud flying boat. While the airlines were not able to secure any standby aircraft of the type, the Yugoslav authorities did not renew the permit for Sušak-Split-Dubrovnik route for 1937. Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 8, Yearly report of the Czechoslovak state airlines for 1937 and Pluhaˇr, Naše moˇre, 23.

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on 2 March 1927, the Czechoslovak Air Transport Company required an extra year to launch its own services on the line. The reason for this was delayed delivery of the BH-25 biplane airliner from Avia its partner aircraft factory. After obtaining the requested airplanes, the airline swiftly opened its second connection from Prague to Rotterdam in May 1928.43 Operated in conjunction with the Royal Dutch Airlines, Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij (KLM), the route was in 1931 extended to Amsterdam and after another five years to London and Budapest.44 On 1 June 1931, the carrier opened its third route to Basel over Munich and Zurich with connecting flights to the south of France by Swissair. The necessity of changing the planes at Basel ended in 1936 when the company renamed the service a ‘Riviera Air Express’ and diverted the route directly to Marseilles.45 After obtaining more advanced passenger transports such as the Avia build Fokker F.VIIb and F.IXD or the Italian Savoia-Marchetti SM.73 and British Airspeed Envoy airplanes in the mid-1930s, the Czechoslovak State Airlines embarked on strengthening its position in the European air transport network and began to expand more intensively on international routes, too. This expansion reached its peak during the politically tense summer of 1938 when the company operated flights from Prague to Moscow via Cluj-Napoca, Ias, i, Kiev and Bryansk; to Brussels; to Paris

43 Pluhaˇr, Naše moˇre, 24. 44 The so-called Blue Danube Air Express from London to Budapest via Rotterdam,

Prague and Vienna was launched in April 1936. At the time, the line was appreciated as one of the finest examples of the so-called combined air services: ‘the Czechoslovakian and Royal Dutch companies run this line on such complete co-operation that their flying stock of Douglas machines is practically identical unless you look at the registration letter on the fuselage.’ Cf. ‘The Week at Croydon’, Flight, 5 May 1938, 441. The Czechoslovak Air Transport Company acquired five DC-2s and four DC-3s in order to replace the obsolete Avia BH25 airplanes and quickly ageing Fokker F.VIIa/F.VIIb transports between 1936 and 1938. The last DC-3 was delivered in March 1939 shortly before the company’s fleet ˇ was absorbed by the Deutsche Luft Hansa (see below). Cf. Václav Nˇemeˇcek, Ceskoslovenská letadla (1918–1945) [Czechoslovak Airplanes (1918–1945)] (Prague: Naše vojsko, 1983), 16 and 150–2. 45 The line remained routed via Munich and Zurich with additional stopover at Geneva. Cf. e.g. ‘Czechoslovak Air Services’, Flight, 5 December 1930, 1420 and Pluhaˇr, Naše moˇre, 34–5.

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via Strasbourg; to Venice and Rome via Bratislava, Klagenfurt and Trieste and, finally, from Bratislava to Budapest.46 Both the Czechoslovak State Airlines and the Air Transport Company were, with minor interruptions, able to continue operations on almost all routes (the former only cancelled connections to Budapest and Rome) even after the Munich Agreement was concluded in September. However, with the unfolding annexations of Czechoslovak territories by Germany and Hungary, the fate of civil aviation in the country was doomed. In April 1939, a month after Czechoslovakia fell apart into the German occupied Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia and the pro-Nazi Slovak state, the operations and fleets of both Czechoslovak State Airlines and Czechoslovak Air Transport Company were taken over by the Deutsche Luft Hansa. A rather tragic end to this era was marked in June 1942 when Evžen Syrovátka, the long-term head of the civil aviation section at the Ministry of Public Works, and František Stoˇces, the director of the Czechoslovak State Airlines since 1927, became victims of the Nazi purges after Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination.47 At the peak of Nazi domination over Europe in the summer and autumn of 1942, the prospects for Czechoslovak civil aviation seemed extremely dim. However, as the tide of war turned in favour of Allies, dormant ambitions stirred up again. As Karel Janoušek, the Inspector of the Czechoslovak Air Force and the Air-Vice Marshal of the British Royal Air Forces, told the Flight reporter in August 1944, following the end of hostilities, the goal was for the Czechoslovak civil aviation to aid the state mission in bridging the West

46 ADM, Box LR 00416, Une compagnie d’Etat et une compagnie privée se partage le trafic aérien Tchécoslovaque, 30 September 1937 and SOA, CSA, Box 8, Výroˇcní zpráva ˇ Ceskoslovenských státních aerolinií za rok 1938 [Yearly Report of the Czechoslovak State Airlines for 1938]. 47 Syrovátka and Stoˇces were shot during the 35-day long slaughter of Czech military,

administrative, scientific and cultural elites at the Kobylisy firing range. They were among some four dozens of pilots, technicians and managers who aided the development of Czechoslovak civil aviation in the interwar years and fell as members of domestic or foreign anti-Nazi resistance during the war. There is a memorial to these people near the Czech Civil Aviation Authority building at the old Prague airport.

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and the East.48 In essence, Janoušek went on, this consisted of the need to establish the national airline company following the cessation of hostilities. Once a sustained effort had been made to ‘construct modern airports suitable for the landing of the heaviest transoceanic aircraft,’ the Air-Vice Marshal deemed essential to ‘conclude such agreements with American and European companies’ that would enable Czechoslovakia ‘not only to be linked up with the transatlantic airlines, but also to operate part of the transcontinental air transport system.’49 Buoyed up by this euphoric vision, Janoušek met with Adolf Berle early into the Chicago conference. During the conversation on 4 November 1944, the head of the Czechoslovak delegation requested his opposite number for American help to restore the civil aviation in the country once the war was over. In particular, as the Secretary of State noted in his diary, Janoušek expressed ‘his strenuous desire to have an American line fly[ing] into Prague’ and asked for delivery of eighteen Douglas DC-3 aircraft.50 Eventually, US assistance in rebuilding the Czechoslovak civil aviation after V-Day proved essential. Not only did Pan American World Airways (Pan Am) launch a twice-weekly service between New York and Vienna via London, Brussels and Prague in mid-June 1946,51 but the US Air Transport Command also furnished the Ruzynˇe airport with the most up-to-date communication and navigation equipment and refuelling trucks. These were needed to secure the safe transport of American military planes to and from Prague as well as to monitor and direct general air traffic over Czechoslovakia. Constructed at the turn of 1945/46 and initially operated by American military personnel, the facilities were in April 1947 sold on favourable terms to the Czechoslovak state while

48 Relevance of this concept for Czechoslovak foreign policy within the larger context of international relations between 1945 and 1948 is discussed in detail in Peter Svik, ‘Czechoslovak Factor in Western Alliance Building, 1945–1948’, Journal of Cold War Studies 18, no. 1 (2016): 133–60. 49 Cf. ‘European Air Transport: Czechoslovakia’s Views and Ambitions’, Flight, August 3, 1944, 129–30. 50 Quote from Berle’s diary is taken from MacKenzie, ICAO, 31 and 439. 51 Cf. AMZV, GS-A, Box 82, Zahájení letu Praha-New York [Opening of Prague–New

York Route], 12 July 1946. See also ‘New York–London–Vienna’, Flight, 20 June 1946, 626.

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Prague, in return, agreed to maintain and operate the devices in accordance with the ICAO standards and regulations and to provide the services to all carriers on a non-discriminatory basis.52 In addition, the Czechoslovak Airlines (CSA), a new state-owned enterprise established in September 1945, acquired some 40 Douglas C-47 transports, a military version of the DC-3 aircraft, from US surplus equipment in Germany.53 After the first planes were refurbished for civilian use in the spring of 1946, the airlines set off for their bridgebuilding mission and connected Prague with, to the west, Amsterdam, Brussels, London, Paris and Zurich; with, to the north, Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm; and with, to the east, Warsaw, Bucharest and Belgrade. To the south, however, was where the most growth was to be found over the next two years: the Prague–Belgrade route extended, and consequently routes were established between Prague and Budapest, and to Athens via Rome. The route from Prague to Athens, via Rome, was also utilised as the company’s gateway to the Near East. Aircraft refuelled in Athens, and then proceeded on to Istanbul and Ankara, Beirut, Lydda54 and consequently Nicosia, finally ending in Cairo.55 As the CSA and foreign carriers flew on a majority of these routes in accord with the bi-lateral interstate agreements, in turn providing high

52 The US Army initiated currier and limited passenger transport between Prague and Paris via Frankfurt in September 1945. Cf. AMZV, GS-A, Box 82, Zahájení letecké dopravy americkými vojenskými letouny na trati Praha-Frankfurt-Parˇríž [Opening of Air Transportation on Prague–Frankfurt–Paris Route by American Military Transports], 25 ˇ September 1945 and Uzavˇrení vojenské letecké dohody mezi CSR—USA [Conclusion of the Military Aviation Agreement Between Czechoslovakia and the United States], 17 December 1945. But see also FRUS, 1945, vol. IV, Agreement between the United States and Czechoslovakia regarding Air Transport Command Facilities in Czechoslovakia, undated, 557 as well as U.S. Department of State, Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America, 1776–1949, vol. 6, Air Communication Facilities at Prague-Ruzynˇe Airfield, 8 April 1947, 1317–9. 53 Of these, 30 were used in active service and the rest 10 served as source of spare

parts. Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 1, Zápis o schuzi ˚ ˇreditelského sboru ze dne 18. dubna 1946 [Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting on 18 April 1946], 18 April 1946 and ˇ Zpráva o technickém vybavení Ceskoslovenských aerolinií a pˇrehled o plánovaném vývoji [Report on Technical Equipment of the Czechoslovak Airlines and Overview of Planned Acquisitions], 8 June 1948. 54 The city is now known as Lod and is home to Israel’s main international airport, Ben Gurion airport, which is located in its vicinity. 55 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 20, Pˇrehled tratí [Overview of Routes], 1923–1948.

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amounts of services, Prague became a ‘hub’ for East-West travel. In the years following the end of the World War II, Ruzynˇe airport eventually served as an entry point for travellers from across Western Europe, as well as the North America and the Near East, seeking access to Eastern Europe (and vice versa).56 To this also heavily contributed that Aeroflot, in line with the Kremlin’s aforementioned policy of not allowing foreign airlines passage over Soviet territory, chose to use the Czechoslovak capital as its primary outlet for the transportation of human and material cargo to and from the USSR. This positive development notwithstanding, the leaders of the Czechoslovak civil air industry remained unsatisfied. Analysis by the Ministry of Trade stated that the company needed to provide long-haul flights to further afield (New York, Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Mumbai), if the CSA was to avoid becoming ‘an obsolete and irrelevant local airline in the very near future.’57 The route between New York and Prague was the one whose establishment was the most sought for. Since 1946, an American monopoly (by way of Pan Am) had existed albeit, in terms of US–Czechoslovak air transport agreement, carriers of both countries were permitted to fly between the two cities. The Czechoslovaks sought to join the Americans for two reasons. Firstly, an analysis of statistical data showed that from July 1946 and May 1947 Pan Am had 1535 passengers on its flights from Prague to New York: 45 per cent of these passengers were Czechoslovaks, 35 per cent were from English-speaking countries, and the remainder were from states such as Austria, Hungary or Poland. With air tickets being extortionately expensive at the time, even surpassing ocean liner fares, it was hoped that US dollars could be conserved by making it compulsory for Czechoslovak officials to fly with CSA for their business trips. Secondly, as

56 Even the airliners of bloc countries, including Czechoslovakia, were not allowed into the Soviet airspace until the mid-1950s. Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 12, Dohoda mezi ˇ vládou SSSR a vládou republiky Ceskoslovenské o zˇrízení leteckých cest [Agreement on Air Routes Between the Government of the USSR and the Government of Czechoslovakia], 11 June 1947. See also Gormly, ‘The Counter Iron Curtain’, 260 and below in this chapter. 57 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 1, Ministerstvo vnitˇrního obchodu: Pˇredbˇežný návrh na sˇrízení cˇ eskoslovenské linky Praha-New York [Comments by the Ministry of Domestic Transport: Preliminary Proposal for Setting Up a Prague–New York Route], 26 June 1947 and AMZV, GS-A, Box 82, Zpráva o zkušebním letu do Bombaye [Report on Trial Flight to Mumbai], 4 March 1948. See also SOA, CSA, Box 1, folder Zámoˇrská doprava 1948 [Transatlantic Transportation 1948], which contains several documents on establishing route to Latin America.

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the number of transatlantic flights had not reached interwar levels, high growth potential was envisaged. This was something that the CSA aimed to exploit, through the attraction of visiting foreigners, as well as US citizens of Czech or Slovak descent, to Czechoslovak tourist destinations (such as spa cities); this, in turn, would produce an invaluable source of US dollars that could fill gaps in the state budget.58 However, the state of the CSA’s fleet, from a technical perspective, was preventing the realisation of their expansionist plan. This was mainly due to the bulk of the fleet being comprised of 30 twin-engine, propellerdriven Lend-Leased Douglas DC-3 aircraft. These aircraft could compete with four-engine planes (the Lockheed Constellation or Douglas DC-4 and DC-6) on intra-European flights, but on Near Eastern services they had to refuel in Athens; meaning they simply were not competitive enough on the longer haul flights. Consequently, the acquisition of four-engine planes had been attempted since the end of World War II. Approaches were made in Washington for five military versions of the DC-4, the Douglas C-54 Skymaster, to be purchased from US Army surpluses via the Lend-Lease programme upon a $2 million credit form the US Export-Import Bank. However, this request was rejected by the Americans, not for military or security reasons, but because that there were in actuality no C54s available for sale. A few surplus aircraft were to be sold to priority applicants such as US army veterans. Consequently, the Exim Bank was instructed to take no action as far as the credit application was concerned.59 Also, when General Vilém Stanovský, the director of the aviation department at the Ministry of Transport discussed on 20 October 1947, the possible deal with Laurence A. Steinhardt, the American ambassador to Prague, he received a very reserved answer, however. During a conversation Steinhardt stated that ‘the situation in America turned to disfavour 58 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 1, folder Zámoˇrská doprava 1947 [Transatlantic Transportation 1947], various documents. 59 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 1, Zápis o schuzi ˚ ˇreditelského sboru ze dne 18. dubna 1946 [Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting on 18 April 1946], 18 April 1946; Porada ˇreditelského sboru ze dne 20. cˇ ervence 1946 [Minutes of the Board of Directors Meeting on 20 July 1946], 20 July 1946 and Projev p. posl. Kobylky – vyjádˇrení [A Reply to Interpellation by Mr. Kobylka, MP], 12 December 1947. See also NARA, RG 59, RRC, Box 1, Office Memorandum by John O. Bell, 23 July 1946 and FRUS, 1946, vol. VI, The Acting Secretary of State to the Secretary of State, in Paris, 21 September 1946, 224.

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for Czechoslovakia recently’ because the Czechoslovak government had stalled negotiations over financial compensation for sequestered American property and the US were permanently attacked in the communist press despite lending Czechoslovakia some $220 million in loans and material relief since the end of war. Under these circumstances, Washington was not willing to provide any credit for purchasing the planes through the Exim Bank and the only other option left, Steinhardt added, was to negotiate with Lockheed directly. Should any deal be concluded, the manufacturer would have to approach the respective US authorities to obtain an export clearance.60 After this cold shower, no further progress on the issue at hand had been achieved by February 1948 when the communist coup d’état took place.61 In late April, the new regime decided to change its aircraft supplier and approached appropriate authorities in Moscow.62 However, this step produced no results because the Soviets had no four-engine planes to offer as demonstrated above. So, the only option left was to attempt to acquire the American planes via broker companies in third party countries. The Czechoslovak aviation authorities approved this strategy in October 1948 and approached firms in Great Britain, the Netherlands, Belgium and Argentina to facilitate a possible deal. At this time, preference shifted back to the DC-4s due to the lower cost compared to the Constellation and DC-6 airplanes. Also, while the Czechoslovaks were well aware that the Americans would likely refuse the CSA’s application for an operating permit to the US, the DC-4s had enough range to service the Near East lines without having to refuel en route.63 60 AMZV, GS-A, Box 82, Záznam o sdˇelení, ktoré uˇcinil p. velvyslanec Stein-

hardt pˇrednostovi leteckého odboru generálu Stanovskému [Record of Statement Which Ambassador Steinhardt Made to General Stanovský], 20 October 1947. 61 Cf. AMZV, GS-A, Box 82, Nákup letadel [Purchase of Aircraft], 12 November 1947. See also Gormly, ‘The Counter Iron Curtain’, 265. 62 Cf. AMZV, GS-A, Box 82, Zakoupení 3 cˇ tyˇrmotorových letadel pro dálkový servis jihovýchodní Evropy a Daleký Východ [Acquisition of 3 Four-Engined Aircraft for Routes to Southeast Europe and Far East], 3 May 1948 and NARA, RG 59, CDF, Box 6673, Embassy Prague to DoS, 20 April 1948. 63 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 1, Zápis o 19. schuzi ˚ Leteckého poradního sboru [Record of the 19th Meeting of the Aviation Advisory Board], 21 April 1948 and Zápis o 21. schuzi ˚ Leteckého poradního sboru [Record of the 21st Meeting of the Aviation Advisory Board], 8 October 1948.

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Yet, ever since the communists seized the power in February 1948, ‘Czech air expansion to the Middle and Near East’ became a bone of contention for Washington. Already on 8 March, the Secretary of State Marshall instructed the US Embassies in India, Italy, Iraq, Pakistan, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Egypt and the Legation in Switzerland, that the ‘proposed extension [of CSA’s] European air routes to Near and Middle East’ should be ‘opposed if [at all] possible and practicable.’ In this regard, the Department of State therefore attempted to persuade countries that were ‘along the Soviet sphere periphery’ to ‘erect a “Common Front” counter-curtain’ that would prevent CSA operations into the crucial Middle Eastern area.64 Four months later, the US embarked on an even more restrictive course. ‘The Communist coup in Czechoslovakia, together with an increasingly aggressive Soviet policy aiming at the exclusion of U.S. aircraft from Soviet controlled areas’ forced the US official to revaluate their policy, which lead to the NCS 15/1 Directive. This posited that there was no economic basis for communist airlines to fly to the Free World, and thus political and military aims were at play. ‘Soviet interest in operating their transport planes in foreign countries [was] military and political rather than commercial’ since ‘commercial reciprocity [had] little meaning for the USSR.’ ‘Through the device of mixed companies or through Communist domination of national air lines in the satellite countries,’ the Directive went on ‘the Russians [were] able to place their air crews and policy agents on planes operated by these companies.’ Consequently, ‘by rotating crews, significant numbers of Soviet airmen [could] gain experience in flying outside the Soviet orbit.’ In addition to aerial reconnaissance training, the Directive stressed that ‘the operation of regular air transport services to Western countries by the satellites [was] advantageous to the USSR in that it [provided] for more effective liaison with Soviet agents and Communist parties abroad.’ For these reasons, the Directive posited that the Soviet bloc civil air carriers should be allowed to operate behind the Iron Curtain only in the event of Western airlines having the same rights in their respective territory. Also, because ‘a large proportion of the planes operated by the satellite airlines [were] of US origin… and… depended chiefly on the US for spare parts,’ the control 64 See FRUS, 1948, vol. IV, The Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic and Consular Offices, 8 March 1948 and The Secretary of State to the Embassy in Rome, 22 July 1948, 439 and 463 respectively.

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over the sale of aircraft and equipment to bloc countries was to be put in place. If measures ‘rigidly enforced,’ these could ‘prevent the satellites from obtaining replacement parts and other needed airline equipment from this country.’ At the same time, Washington ‘should continue to press for informal arrangements’ with the UK, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and Sweden to deny access to ‘overhaul, refitting and maintenance facilities to USSR and satellite aircraft’ on their territory.65 Despite the NSC 15/1 was not specifically targeted at Prague, CSA’s success in developing ‘the most extensive system of routes operating over countries outside the Soviet orbit’ inadvertently led to such a situation.66 In its efforts to stop all west- and south-bound traffic by CSA, Washington partially succeeded in early 1949 forcing the carrier to stop all its services to destinations in Near East. First, the connections to Cairo and Beirut were terminated because the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Lebanese government recalled their temporary operation permits. This was compounded, when 3 months later, Rome cancelled ‘onward rights to Lydda,’ Athens banned CSA flights ‘in retaliation against Czech assistance to Greek rebels’ and Ankara refused to ‘permit [CSA] service beyond Turkey.’67 While both Israelis and Czechoslovaks desired to maintain services to Lydda, two key factors prevented this from happening. First, the CSA failed to acquire the DC-4s from the third countries which would enable them to overfly Greece rather than land there. Second, the Czechoslovak diplomatic efforts failed to repeal bans emplaced by the Egyptians and Greeks or gain landing and overflight rights for the intended route to 65 Cf. FRUS, 1948, vol. IV, Report by the National Security Council, 12 July 1948, 451–6, quotes on pp. 452 and 455. For further details and implications of the report see e.g. Gormly, ‘The Counter Iron Curtain’, 248–79 and Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 95–104. 66 Cf. FRUS, 1948, vol. IV, Report by the National Security Council, 12 July 1948,

453. 67 Cf. FRUS, 1949, vol. V, The Chargé in Egypt (Patterson) to the Secretary of State, 28 January 1949, 187–8; Editorial Note, 194; The Secretary of State to the Embassy in Egypt, 31 August 1949, 213 ft. 2 and The Acting Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic and Consular Offices, 27 September 1949, 214–5. For respective Czechoslovak documentation see AMZV, MO-O, Box 3, folders Doprava letecká – povolení pˇreletu˚ [Air Transportation—Overflight Permits] and Doprava letecká – provoz s cizinou [Air Transportation—Foreign Routes], various documents as well as SOA, CSA, Box 118, Zahraniˇcné letecké linky-zastavení provozu [International Air Routes—Termination of Services], 11 January 1952.

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India via Iraq and Pakistan. In such case, the Greeks and Turks could not deny innocent passage since both countries, like Czechoslovakia, were signatories to the 1944 Transit Agreement.68 However, this did not occur because the Iraqi government revoked flight privileges for CSA in November 1948, and Teheran refused to issue a temporary operating permit for route connecting Czechoslovak and Iranian capital until a fully fledged aviation agreement between the two countries would be concluded. In April 1949, the Czechoslovak carrier thus faced a culde-sac.69 Having secured no four-engine aircraft in case Pakistanis and Indians would have eventually agreed to the services between Prague and Mumbai via Karachi, the company was forced to delay its plans of expansion to the Middle and Far East for 10 years.70 Yet, albeit the Department of State conducted sustained and systematic efforts to bring Western European countries in line with its policy of aerial containment, it failed ‘to obtain [their] wholehearted cooperation.’ Consequently, CSA ‘continue[d] to operate without serious restriction to and within Western Europe.’ In the light of reluctance on part of West European countries, Washington adopted a milder approach, that saw, on 5 January 1950, the succession of the NSC 15/3 over the NSC 15/1 Directive. The amended Directive stated that, with regard to the USSR and its satellites, the US had no objection to Eastern services by

68 At the time, all countries mentioned in paragraph above, except for Italy and Israel, had already adhered to the agreement. Hence, ipso facto, neither Italians who ratified the agreement only in 1984 nor Greeks were formally obliged to allow Czechoslovaks to fly to Israel as Tel Aviv only became a member party in June 1954. Cf. FRUS, 1949, vol. V, The Acting Secretary to Certain Diplomatic and Consular Offices, 27 September 1949, 214. 69 Cf. Ibid., The Chargé in Iraq (Dorsz) to the Secretary of State, 26 January 1949, 185–6 and AMZV, MO-O, Box 3, Prozatimní povolení pro pˇristání cˇ sl. letadel v Tehránˇe [Temporary Permit for Landing of Czechoslovak Aircraft at Teheran], 1 April 1949. 70 See next chapter.

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non-curtain states ‘when it has been clearly determined… that a fully realizable balance of advantage would result from such service’ to the West.71 Nonetheless, CSA did not profit from this policy relaxation for long. The first indication of an oncoming crisis arrived in early September 1950 with Pan Am skipping the stop in Prague on New York–Vienna route because of drastic drop in the number of passengers, cargo and mail to and from Czechoslovak capital.72 Then, in November, CSA undertook some 50 unauthorised overflights of West Germany. This was to ‘evacuate’ the delegates of the 1950 World Peace Conference from Sheffield to Warsaw after the Attlee government forbade the event to take place in the ‘Steel City.’73 In a politically tense atmosphere fuelled by the outbreak of Korean War in June 1950, John J. McCloy, the American High Commissioner in Germany, banned all overflights by the CSA of the American zone as of 1 December 1950 in response. This forestalled the company from further maintaining the connections to Zurich and Rome. Still, McCloy allowed the Prague-Frankfurt corridor to remain open but with reduces frequencies. The decision by the American High Commissioner outraged Prague, but vehement diplomatic protests led to no avail.74 71 Cf. FRUS, 1950, vol. IV, Report by the National Security Council to the President, 5 January 1950, 1–6, quotation taken from 2 and 5. For the US negotiations with the British and other European allies on coordination of aviation policies, see FRUS, 1948, vol. IV, 436–88 passim and FRUS, 1949, vol. V, 184–222 passim. See also Gormly, ‘The Counter Iron Curtain’, 248–79 and Engel, Cold War at 30,000 Feet, 95–104. 72 In July 1948, Pan Am refused to line up with a new restrictive US aviation policy arguing that elimination of Prague from New York–Vienna route would present substantial loss of revenue up to $170,000 a month. Cf. NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 26, folder Czechoslovakia–US Negotiations: Oct 1948–Aug 1959, Order by United States of America Civil Aeronautics Board, undated and Ibid., Box 90, folder USSR&Satellites–US Negotiations: Dec 1945–Dec 1948, Civil Aeronautics Board Memorandum, 1 July 1948. 73 For details on congress see e.g. Weston Ullrich, ‘Preventing “Peace”: The British Government and the Second World Peace Congress’, Cold War History 11, no. 3 (2011): 341–62 and Phillip Deery, ‘The Dove Flies East: Whitehall, Warsaw and the 1950 World Peace Congress’, Australian Journal of Politics & History 48, no. 4 (2002): 449–68. 74 Cf. AMZV, MO-T, Box 1, Lety pˇres Nˇemecko—pˇrelet americké zony [Flights Over Germany—Overflight of American Zone], 29 November 1950; Nota cˇ s. ministerstva zahraniˇcních vˇecí velvyslanectví Spojených státu˚ v Praze [Note of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the US Embassy in Prague], 27 November 1950; Letecké ˇ spoje CSR—Záznam pro s. ministra [Air Routes of the Czechoslovak Republic—Record for Foreign Minister], 5 June 1951 and Situation overview regarding the overflights of Germany, undated.

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Over the coming months, the Czechoslovak officials therefore attempted to reroute the services to Zurich via Frankfurt and Stuttgart and to Rome via Vienna and the British occupation zone in Austria, but these efforts did not delivered the desired outcome either. As regards the former, the High Commissioner McCloy demanded a complete and satisfactory explanation for the overflight affair prior any additional flight corridor could be opened. As for the latter, the Italians had zero interest in the resumption of the Prague–Rome service because of heavy financial losses experienced by Alitalia and detention of carrier’s Prague representative upon allegations of gold smuggling. At the same time, the British conditioned the granting of overflight rights for their zone in Austria with Italians granting the CSA landing rights in Rome. The Czechoslovaks desired to continue the services to Rome so desperately that they even offered the Italians financial compensations up to 1,300,000 Czechoslovak crowns. But this did not help either and Prague found itself in a blind alley once again.75 The relations further worsened in late spring and summer of 1951. First, on 5 May, Prague was notified by the Civil Aviation Board of the Allied High Commission for Germany that CSA was no longer to receive permits for its remaining routes to Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris and London on a yearly basis but a monthly one instead. Mere two weeks later, the British European Airways yet announced that they would not continue their service to Prague after the 31st of May due to unprofitability, discriminatory practices, and police surveillance of company’s representatives. Also, CSA’s access to ground facilities in London was revoked as of 17 June 1951.76 Finally, following the arrest of the US journalist and director of the Associated Press bureau in Prague William N. Oatis in April,77 the US, British and French in summer held further 75 Cf. AMZV, MO-T, Box 1, Pˇreklad noty amerického velvyslanectví [Translation of US Embassy Note], 9 February 1951 and TNA, FO 371/93130, Embassy Rome to FO, 10 January 1951 and Record of conversation with Mr. Lister concerning Prague–Vienna– Rome service, 5 February 1951. 76 Cf. AMZV, MO-T, Box 1, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Prague, to Embassy London, 18 May 1951 and Situation overview, undated. For British cross-references see TNA, FO 371/93130, passim. 77 Oatis was arrested by Czechoslovak secret policy (StB) on 23 April 1951. He was charged with espionage and on 4 July was sentenced to 10 years in prison in a show trial with fabricated evidence. For full details, see Slavomír Michálek, Prípad

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discussions on barring CSA from overflying West Germany as a part of retaliatory measures. Though the latter initially hesitated, the Allied High Commission eventually issued a ban on all CSA flights over the Federal Republic on 11 September 1951. This prevented the continuation of Czechoslovak services to Belgium and the Netherlands while the French Foreign Ministry recalled a landing permit for Paris already two days earlier, on 9 September. That same day, being urged by the Quai d’Orsay, Air France terminated its flights to Prague, too.78

ˇ Oatis. Cesskoslovenský komunistický režim versus dopisovatelˇ Associated Press [Case Oatis: Czechoslovak Communist Regime Versus Associated Press Correspondent] (Bratislava: ÚPN, 2005). 78 Cf. AMZV, GS-A, Box 82, Vojenská mise Berlín: informace [Czechoslovak Military Mission in Berlin: Information], 9 September 1951 and FRUS, 1951, vol. IV, ‘Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Webb) to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (Lay), 24 September 1951, 1281–5. See also Gormly, ‘The Counter Iron Curtain’, 272–3.

CHAPTER 3

Building an Empire of the Red Air

Relaunch of Services in Europe Despite services by Air France, BEA, Pan Am and CSA being interrupted, as shown in the previous chapter, some East-West aviation links still continued. Considering the services by Polish Airlines LOT to Paris and Brussels less security sensitive than those of CSA, the American Administration did not insist on closing down those connections. This was partly motivated by the need to preserve the landing rights at Warsaw for British diplomatic courier planes. The Poles had flown to the capitals of France and Belgium since 1946 and 1949, respectively, and also maintained a connection to Stockholm which was initiated the same year as the route to Paris. Neither was Prague stripped of all connections to the West. The Czechoslovak Airlines kept the route from Prague to Helsinki via Copenhagen and Stockholm while flying over East Germany and KLM, Sabena and Swissair connected the Czechoslovak capital with Amsterdam, Brussels and Zurich.1 Also, in order to secure safer operations on these lines, the Czechoslovak authorities agreed to upgrade a teletype system

1 Cf. FRUS, 1951, vol. IV, Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State (Webb), 1281 and FRUS, 1952–1954, vol. I Memorandum Prepared by the Aviation Policy Staff, Office of Transport and Communication Policy, 405–6. See also ADM, Box LR 00585, A Brief Survey of the Civil Aviation in Poland, October 1963 and Die polnische Luftfahrgesellschaft LOT, 21 March 1968.

© The Author(s) 2020 P. Svik, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1_3

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on the Frankfurt–Prague circuit to duplex standard. In this way, the teletypewriters could exchange messages in both directions at the same time as the new ICAO technical rules promulgated in March 1952 required.2 The release of AP correspondent William Oatis from imprisonment and his return to the US in May 1953 provided further opportunities for improvement of disrupted links. As an act of goodwill, Washington was ready to lift the ban on overflights over Western Europe immediately, but, in a reversal to their earlier positions, London and Paris at this time resisted relaxation of common policy as they wanted their own nationals held by the Czechoslovak authorities to be freed from confinement and repatriated to their home countries, too. After the government in Prague released one British and two French citizens from gaol in late October 1953, the French sided with the Americans and saw no objections to regranting CSA overflight rights any longer. The British held the line, however, arguing that they wished to maintain a policy of containment which they had agreed to upon repeated requests from the Americans in January 1949 and were unwilling to allow ‘the Czechs to fly over Germany unless some specific reason was advanced in favour of relaxing the ban.’3 What the Foreign Office officials implied here was obviously the resumption of the flights between London and Prague by BEA, but the Americans did not pay any attention to this at all. They eventually warned the British that the ban could be recalled by a simple two to one vote at the Allied High Commission because an unanimous decision was not required for instances like this.4 Despite this threat, however, Washington and Paris took no action of their own until the issue resurfaced in June 1954. At this point, it was in conjunction with the Soviet-French negotiations for a route between Paris and Moscow.

2 AMZV, MO-O, Box 3, Obnova leteckých linek pˇres západní Nˇemecko [Restoration of Aviation Lines Over West Germany], 27 August 1953 and Letecké telekomunikace Praha-Frankfurt [Airline Teletype System Prague–Frankfurt], 25 June 1952. 3 TNA, FO 371/105645A, FO Minute by P. de Zulueta, 22 May 1953; FO Minute by H. A. F. Hohler, 24 September 1953; Embassy Paris to FO, 27 November 1953 and FO to Embassy Prague, 30 November 1953 as well as TNA, FO 371/1040641, F.O. Minute by P. F. Hancock, 29 May 1953. 4 TNA, FO 371/105645A, Ministry of Civil Aviation to FO, 12 June 1953 and Record of Conversation: Czech Permit to Overfly Germany, 23 November 1953.

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The first incentive for the Franco-Soviets talks stemmed from the visit of Aeroflot’s chief, Marshal Zhavoronkov, to Paris in March 1954. After observing technical facilities at Le Bourget airport and the first generation of the De Havilland Comet aircraft in the Air France livery, the Soviet Marshal met with the newly appointed director of the French flag carrier Max Hymans. While both parties claimed at the time that the discussions only covered technical subjects, a mere three months later, on 29 June, the Soviets and French initiated a bilateral air agreement. This provided for opening a scheduled air connection between Paris and Moscow. The service, which was officially launched on 2 August 1954, was not direct, however. Aeroflot flew from Moscow to Prague where it connected with Air France whose planes then brought the passengers and cargo to Paris.5 Nonetheless, as British diplomats worried correctly, a part of the overall agreement was the resumption of the former CSA service to Paris in a fifty-fifty pool with Air France. Since this would have caused a serious infringement of London’s containment policy, the Foreign Office wanted to block all French proposals for relaxation of the overflight ban if such were to be placed before the High Commission in Germany, provided support from the Americans could be obtained. But the answer from the London US Embassy was clear and straightforward: the Americans had already ‘made up their minds to permit a resumption of Czech overflights of Western Germany’ and ‘will almost certainly support the Air France proposals in toto [emphasis in original], including the grant of reciprocal rights to the Czechs between Prague and Paris.’ Given these circumstances, an official of the civil aviation section of the Foreign Office’s General Department sceptically concluded in late July 1954 that ‘we should presumably not wish to carry our opposition to the point of a vote on the High Commission and may have to be content with accepting the resumption of Czech flights over Germany.’6 5 Cf. ‘Air Marshal S. Zhavoronkov’, Flight, 12 March 1954, 283; ‘Aeroflot and the West’, Flight, 2 April 1954, 415 and ‘Franco-Soviet Air Agreement’, Flight, 9 July 1954, 59. See also ADM, Box LR 00498, Direktor der Aeroflot besichtigt die Comet in Le Bourget, 16 March 1954 and Flugdienst Moskau-Prag-Paris eröffnet, 4 August 1954. 6 TNA, FO 371/110670, Proposed Inter-airline Agreement between British European

Airways and Aeroflot, 26 July 1954 and FO Minute by A. F. Comfort, 30 July 1954. But see also FRUS, 1952–1954, vol. I, Memorandum by the Secretary of State to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (Lay), 12 May 1954 and The Secretary of State to the Embassy in the United Kingdom, 10 August 1954, 434–5 and 438–9, respectively.

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With the British yielding up their rigid position, the Allied High Commission finally removed the ban as of 10 December 1954 responding to the Czechoslovak requests for overflight permits from 16 October and 2 December respectively. On 21 January 1955, after a long three and half years wait, Czechoslovak planes flew over West Germany to Paris again.7 Further reopenings by CSA ensued during the next two years, when the flights to Zurich, Brussels and Amsterdam were resumed.8 More importantly, however, the Franco-Soviet agreement was not an isolated incident, but rather represented a new dynamism in Moscow’s civil aviation policy vis-à-vis countries from outside the Soviet orbit. The first signs of increased activity can be traced back to December 1953 when Aeroflot officials invited their opposite numbers from the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), a flagship carrier of the Denmark, Norway and Sweden, to Moscow for business talks. These lasted some two months with intermittent breaks and, eventually, produced an interline agreement under which each airline doubled its operations to Helsinki (from three to six flights a week) as of 1 April 1954, while landing and departure times were coordinated so as to provide a quick connecting service between Stockholm and Moscow via the Finish capital. In addition, both airlines were allowed to book through each flight network and sell the respective tickets in local currency.9 Later in early March, while in Stockholm in order to acquaint himself more closely with the civil aviation infrastructure and airline management in Sweden, Aeroflot’s chief, Marshal Zhavoronkov, told the media that the Soviet Union was ready to build-up ‘closer air ties with the West’ at once. Afterwards, Zhavoronkov left for Copenhagen to tour the SAS facilities there and then continued to Paris for the above-mentioned talks with Air

7 See AMZV, MO-O, Box 3, Zahájení letecké linie Moskva-Praha-Paˇríž [Opening of the Airline Moscow–Prague–Paris], 4 August 1954; Letecká linie Praha-Paˇríž [Air Route Prague–Paris], 16 December 1954 and Zahajovací let na linii Praha-Paˇríž [Opening Flight on the Route Prague–Paris], 12 January 1955. 8 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 354, Pˇrehled tratí [Overview of Routes], 1949–1975. See also Gormly, ‘The Counter Iron Curtain’, 274–5 and ‘Czechoslovakian Comeback’, Flight, 7 September 1956, 457. 9 ‘S.A.S.-Aeroflot Agreement’, Flight, 11 December 1953, 750 and ADM, Box LR 00498, SAS signs interline agreement with Soviet carrier, 28 January 1954 and Abkommen der SAS mit der Aeroflot, 3 February 1954.

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France. Thence he flew to Zurich aboard of a Swissair plane where his European tour ended.10 The first anniversary of Joseph Stalin’s demise thus may have marked a growing interest on the part of Soviets to expand links with the West, but a closer look at the Aeroflot-SAS interline and Franco-Soviet air services agreements reveals that the policy fundamentals remained the same as they were a decade previously. The basic premises, that the services must be non-direct and must connect outside of Soviet territory with no foreign fliers and crews over the USSR, were as firmly in place in 1954 as in 1944. What did change, however, was Washington’s approach towards the interline agreements. With Franco-Soviet talks well under way, the Secretary of State, John F. Dulles, briefed the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council, James S. Lay in early May 1954, that the State Department did not expect the interline arrangements to ‘effect adversely’ the American civil aviation policy towards the Soviet bloc in any significant manner. The reason was that ‘these arrangements would involve direct connections at border points and through ticketing, but the routes of the flag carriers would remain unchanged.’ Yet, US officialdom still maintained that the individual agreements should be placed into a larger framework. By this Washington hoped to extract from the Soviets a commitment to the full and unrestricted exchange of transit and landing rights and acceptance of technical and other provisions which the ICAO and IATA had put in place since agreements made at the Chicago 1944 International Civil Aviation Conference and the AngloAmerican air service bilateral agreement, commonly known as Bermuda 1, in 1946. The achievement of these objectives eventually became a common strategy held by the Americans, British and French, which they followed during the 1955 Geneva Summit and ensuing talks with the Soviets.11

10 Zhavoronkov quote comes from ‘Aeroflot Executive’s Tour’, Flight, 5 March 1954, 254. See also ADM, Box LR 00498, Besuch des Präsidenten der Aeroflot in Europe, April 1954 and Aeroflot-Verhandlungen in Europe in February 1954, 1 March 1954. 11 Cf. FRUS, 1952–54, vol. I, Memorandum by the Secretary of State to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (Lay), 12 May 1954, 434–5 and FRUS, 1955– 57, vol. V, Summary of Recommendations Quantico Vulnerabilities Panel, 10 June 1955, 218–9. See also Gormly, ‘The Counter Iron Curtain’, 274–5.

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At the Palais des Nations in Geneva, the three leading Western countries jointly offered the Soviets free access to the West provided they pledged to the principle of full reciprocity and adopted existing international standards and regulations in exchange. To no one’s surprise, the Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov rebuffed the offer, but hinted that the USSR was ready to entertain bilateral proposals which would incorporate the mutual exchange of landing and transit rights. Western diplomats were taken aback by this, but did not give up their efforts at obtaining the broader principle, readdressing the issue during discussions with Molotov’s subordinates within the working group for trade relations.12 But the Soviet delegation refused to discuss aviation matters at all in this context arguing that ‘the bilateral air transport agreements [should] always be negotiated through normal diplomatic channels and would be considered each on its merits.’ When probed by American and French officials whether the USSR was then ready to ‘negotiate bilateral air agreement with the US’ or to exchange landing rights reciprocally to ease the ‘difficulties caused [to] travellers by necessity [of] transferring [at] Prague or Helsinki,’ the leading Soviet expert pointed out again that all ‘proposals should be made through diplomatic channels.’ And, in concluding the round, he ironically asked what the ‘civil aviation problems had to do’ with the ‘drop in US-Soviet trade since 1947.’13 Hitting a brick wall in Geneva, the smoke simultaneously generated over negotiations for a Soviet-Austrian aviation treaty nevertheless sent out clear signals that Molotov’s words were more than an attempt to drive a wedge between the Americans on one side and the British and French on the other. Moscow’s civil aviation policy was at last changing. In early July 1955, some two months after Austria regained its full sovereignty as part of the Khrushchev thaw,14 independently of each other, two Soviet officers visited the Office of Civil Aviation of the

12 Cf. FRUS, 1955–57, vol. V, Telegram from the Delegation at the Foreign Ministers Meetings to the Department of State, 8 November 1955 at 9 p.m. and Paper Prepared by the United States Delegation: Civil Aviation, undated, 714 and 765 respectively as well as Gormly, ‘The Counter Iron Curtain’, 276. 13 Cf. FRUS, 1955–57, vol. V, Telegram from the Delegation at the Foreign Ministers Meetings to the Department of State, 10 November 1955 at 5 a.m., 732–4. 14 For full details, see, most recently, Gerald Stourzh and Wolfgang Mueller, The Struggle for the State Treaty, Neutrality and the End of East-West Occupation, 1945–1955 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2018).

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Austrian Transport Ministry to inquire about the steps necessary to open regular air services between Moscow and Vienna. Their proposal followed a standard pattern and included the exchange of travellers and cargo at Budapest. The Austrians did not comment on this offer at all, however, and instead demanded the conclusion of a fully reciprocal bilateral air agreement similar to those that Vienna had recently signed with Luxemburg and Belgrade. There were two factors underpinning this position. As the Austrians had been forbidden from setting up their own airline under the occupation regime, they knew that it was the Soviet airline which would enjoy complete exclusivity on the route for some considerable time. Equally, they were well aware that most of the profit on the route would stem from the longer Moscow-Budapest segment, and thus wished to put an Austrian airline—once such were established—on an equal footing with Aeroflot.15 After these initial overtures, no developments occurred until 30 August when the Soviet ambassador to Vienna, Ivan I. Ilyichev, met with the Austrian Foreign Minister, Leopold Figl. During the conversation, Ilyichev declared an imminent desire on the part of the USSR for a prompt conclusion of an aviation agreement with Austria. Whether the talks would be held in Vienna or Moscow, the ambassador added, Marshall Zhavoronkov was ready to discuss the matter thoroughly with respective Austrian officials at the city of their choice. Following Figl’s preference, the Soviet delegation came to the Austrian capital with preliminary talks beginning on 23 September 1955. The Soviets manoeuvred to maintain their airline operations in Austria, which they had been able to conduct as an occupying power, with the embassy applying for a temporary operating permit which would enable Aeroflot to divert flights between Moscow and Vienna from an airfield at Bad Vöslau (some 30 km south of Vienna) to the city’s main airport at Schwechat.16 The Soviet company had provided first courier and later scheduled services to Bad Vöslau ever since the end of the war, but the Soviet

15 OeSTA, 393582-Wpol/55, Planmässiger Luftverkehr Sowjet Union – Österreich, 16 July 1955 and Letter from Bock (Ministry of Finance) to Figl with reply, 18 October 1955. 16 OeSTA, 393582-Wpol/55, Vorsprache des sowjetischen Botschafters Iljitschow bei dem Herrn Bundesminister, 31 August 1955; Übersetzung der Note der Botschaft der UdSSR, 17 September 1955 and Luftverkehrsabkommen mit der Sowjetunion – Kommentar zur Note, 24 September 1955.

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military handed over the main aerodrome of their occupation zone to Austrian authorities on 15 September 1955 to meet the terms of the State Treaty concluded in May of that year. On the same day, flights between the Soviet and Austrian capitals ceased, but were soon resumed as the first Aeroflot plane landed at Schwechat only seven days later. An official permit for the winter season was issued by the Austrian Office of Civil Aviation on 4 October, but this only presented an hors d’oeuvre to the main course, in the form of a bilateral aviation treaty.17 The final stage of negotiations began on 3 November when the Soviet delegates led by Marshall Zhavoronkov resumed talks with their Austrian opposite numbers. Swift progress was achieved and, five days later, the Foreign Minister Figl informed his colleagues in the Raab government that an agreement was ready for signature. During the talks, the foreign minister reported that the Soviets accepted the principles of sovereignty and reciprocity which were essential conditions for Austrians. This meant that planes of both countries were allowed to fly between Moscow and Vienna and each nation’s aviation rules and procedures were to be followed upon an aircraft of one signatory party entering the airspace of the other. The Raab government thus saw no overriding objections to treaty signature and entrusted Figl to initial the Soviet-Austrian aviation agreement on the next day, 9 November 1955.18 There were two minor downsides to this agreement, however. To some slight disappointment in Vienna, the Austrian-Soviet aviation agreement was not the first one which embodied the principles of sovereignty and full reciprocity, which Moscow concluded with a non-communist country. On 13 October, the Soviets surprisingly summoned the Finns to Moscow and, six days later, a Finno-Soviet air services agreement was sealed. The deal enabled Finnair to become the first non-curtain carrier ever to operate over USSR territory on its service from Helsinki to Moscow with flights starting in February 1956. Also, albeit the Austrians would have liked to join the Finns, Moscow allowed only nationals of the other

17 OeSTA, 393582-Wpol/55, Bundesministerium für Verkehr und verstaatlichte Betriebe, Amt für Zivilluftfahrt: Bescheid, 4 October 1955. See also ADM, Box LR 00498, Rückzug der Sowiets aus Wien, 17 September 1955 and Soviet Airliner in Vienna, 22 September 1955 as well as ‘Russian Expansion’, Flight, 20 September 1945, 320. 18 OeSTA, 393582-Wpol/55, Mündlicher Vortrag an den Ministerrat, 8 November 1955; Österreichisch-sowjetisches Luftverkehrsabkommen: Dienstzettel, 8 November 1955 and Pressekommuniqué, 9 November 1955.

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contracting party to operate aircraft over the Soviet border and beyond. This precluded the Austrian plan to contract foreign crews to fly the route on Vienna’s behalf. The Austrian Airlines, founded in September 1957, were unable to launch flights to Moscow before June 1959 and were thus surpassed not only by Finnair, but also by SAS, Sabena, KLM and Air France in flying over Soviet territory. The direct services between Moscow and Stockholm were initialised in May 1956 while the non-stop flights from Brussels, Amsterdam and Paris came two years later in June, July and August 1958, respectively.19 The last non-curtain airline whose aircraft eventually landed at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport before those of the Austrian Airlines was BEA. The margin was indeed slim: the latter introduced a service from London (14 May) some 20 days before the former launched the flights from Vienna (5 June).20 But there is one more peculiarity: it took five months to negotiate a deal for the Soviet-Austrian aviation agreement, yet it required five years of protracted talks until air transport between Moscow and London became reality. After a connection at Prague became unfeasible at the turn of May and June 1951 as both BEA and CSA terminated the London–Prague route, the travel between the capitals of the UK and the USSR became a highly bureaucratic and time-consuming journey. Passengers had to travel via Berlin or Vienna, which included a road transfer either from Tempelhof to Schönefeld airport controlled by the Americans and Soviets respectively or from the British run Schwechat airport to Bad Vöslau which was, as mentioned earlier, under Soviet command. Such transfers involved a complicated set of security, passport and duty controls upon entering and leaving the respective occupation zones. The only remaining option then was to fly with BEA to Copenhagen or Stockholm, thence to Helsinki with Finnair or SAS while using Aeroflot for the final leg to Moscow.

19 OeSTA, 393582-Wpol/55, Mündlicher Vortrag an den Ministerrat, 8 November 1955 and ADM, Box LR 00478, Moskau verhandelt mit Finnland über Luftverkehrsabkommen, 13 October 1955 and SAS Runs Slated to Moscow, 2 April 1956. See also Austrian Airlines, Geschäftsbericht für das Jahr 1959 (Vienna, 1959) and ‘Routes to Russia’, Flight, 4 November 1955, 726 and ‘Flight to Moscow’, Flight, 22 May 1959, 706. 20 ‘The New Link’, Flight, 15 May 1959, 655.

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Because of the low intensity of flights and poor coordination of their flight times, the journey could last several days.21 The volume of passengers between the two capitals was therefore low and it practically involved only diplomats and other high-ranking officials as both governments placed obstacles in the way of tourist travel. With the opening of the London office of the Soviet state tourist operator, Intourist, and removal of currency regulations, which had deterred the British from travelling to the USSR, there seemed to be a niche opening up in the nascent market. At least this was the belief of BEA, which in February 1954 proposed to Aeroflot that they should enter into an inter-liner agreement to accommodate the potential demand for air traffic between the UK and the USSR. The agreement would have provided for acceptance of each other’s tickets and a connecting service between London and Moscow via Berlin or Vienna with Helsinki, Prague and Warsaw being alternative routing options.22 Aeroflot officials did not hurry to respond, however. Their first reaction arrived towards the end of June when the assistant director of Aeroflot, Lieutenant General Zakharov, mentioned the offer from BEA to the assistant air attaché of the British Embassy at a reception in Moscow. ‘Zakharov,’ the embassy reported back to London, ‘was apparently anxious to know whether BEA was a government or a private company’ and whether its offer was ‘sponsored by the British Government.’ If that was the case, Aeroflot was ‘prepared to open negotiations’ at once. This dispatch from Moscow was the first time that British officialdom had heard of the matter. BEA apparently had informed neither the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation (MTCA) nor the Foreign Office about its approach to the Soviets.23 The subsequent discussions within the Foreign Office produced an official position on the BEA proposal in August 1954. The diplomats did not rebuff the idea of the interline agreement in essence, but refused a connection at Prague and Warsaw straight away. Referring to the above-mentioned case of the Air France–Aeroflot agreement, they expected that CSA or LOT would immediately place a request for 21 ADM, Box LR 00478, Luftverkehr Großbritannien-Rußland, 18 December 1955. 22 TNA, FO 371/110670, Letter from Leeson (BEA) to the commercial manager of

Aeroflot, 3 February 1958. 23 TNA, FO 371/110670, Embassy Moscow to FO, 24 June 1954 and MTCA to FO, 20 July 1954.

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reciprocal flying rights into London, which was to be avoided at any cost. Because of this, the Foreign Office was ready to back BEA’s proposal only if Berlin, Vienna or Helsinki were chosen as an eventual point of exchange. However, the connections via Tempelhof and Schönefeld and Schwechat and Bad Vöslau, respectively, did not only involve the ‘endless complications’ mentioned above, but the former was also politically sensitive. This was because of the problem of diplomatic recognition of the 1949-founded German Democratic Republic. While Soviet officials only dealt with consular requests from the American, British and French citizens, D. J. B. Robey warned from Berlin, that the citizens of all other Western nations coming to Berlin aboard of British planes would have to apply to East German authorities about consular matters. This could be embarrassing for those countries whose governments were ‘reluctant to extend even the limited recognition’ to the Ulbricht regime that would be ‘implied in acceptance of DDR visas in their national passports.’ E. J. W. Barnes emphasised the importance of this issue writing from Bonn, saying that the Foreign Office should oppose any idea of BEA flying to Schönefeld as this would have laid the British open to charges of ‘recognising the DDR’ without a doubt.24 Consequently, the whole matter remained dormant until it was revived by the Soviets a year later. In late September 1955, the Soviet government invited the British to Moscow for discussions on how to increase air travel between the USSR and the UK and offering a route via Berlin. Shortly before the negotiations started in mid-November, Aeroflot officials revealed that the planes should connect at Schönefeld, which would have reduced the flight time between London and Moscow by up to ten hours. This surprised the British, whose delegation consisted of MTCA officials and higher BEA management, nevertheless they turned down the offer on the ground of the diplomatic need to maintain non-recognition of East Germany by the UK. Notwithstanding this, the talks eventually produced an agreement which provided for through bookings and connections via Helsinki and Vienna. The northern route was to be used for travel between London and Moscow, while the southern for lines to and from destinations in the south of the Soviet Union. At the same time, 24 TNA, FO 371/110670, Proposed Inter-airline Agreement between British European Airways and Aeroflot (final version), 17 August 1954; Embassy Vienna to FO, 6 September 1954; Robey (British Military Government Berlin) to Peck (FO), 6 September 1954 and Barnes (UK High Commission, Bonn) to Peck (FO), 24 September 1954.

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both parties declared publicly that there were no prospects for an early introduction of direct air services in the immediate future.25 Despite the agreement, aviation relations between the two countries remained troubled. During May and June 1956, London and Moscow sent off signals to each other that non-stop flights were still an option on the table, but the British abandoned all attempts at striking a deal during late fall because of the political tensions injected into Anglo-Soviet relations by the Hungarian and Suez crises.26 The British reserved and suspicious attitude towards strengthening aviation links with the communist countries eventually began to evaporate in the summer of 1957. On 19 June, BEA and CSA struck a commercial agreement concerning the reintroduction of services on the London–Prague route. A deal was sealed by an exchange of notes between the British government, via the Prague embassy, and the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 23 July and 20 August, respectively, which provided temporary permits for operations. These were actually launched on 7 October with a BEA flight to Prague using the Vickers Viscount 700 turboprop. The CSA commenced its own flights to London with an Ilyushin Il-14 piston aircraft six days later.27 In July, the British also revisited the idea of direct air services between London and Moscow but to no immediate avail. The Soviets responded to MTCA’s feelers only after BEA reached an agreement with LOT on a reciprocal London-Warsaw service in late November 1957 with flights starting in April the following year. Anglo-Soviet talks now commenced in the UK capital on 9 December and lasted for ten days. In contrast to the Moscow meeting two years ago, the delegations agreed ‘with only a

25 Cf. ADM, Box LR 00478, Britische Luftfahrtdelegation nach Moskau eingeladen, 26 September 1955; Moskau-London in zehn Stunden, 15 November 1955 and BerlinSchönefeld kam nicht ins Spiel, 1 December 1955 as well as ‘Routes to Russia’ and ‘Anglo-Russian Agreement’, Flight, 4 and 25 November 1955, 726 and 818 respectively. 26 Cf. TNA, BT 245/451, MTCA Minute by J. R. Madge, 1 October 1957. But see also ADM, Box LR 00478, Anglo-Soviet Talks Go On, 20 May 1956 and ‘By Air to Moscow’ and ‘Moscow–London Moves?’, Flight, 8 and 22 June 1956, 759 and 821 respectively. 27 Cf. TNA, BT 245/358, Brief for Air Services Negotiations with Czechoslovakia: Appendix A (Details of the Temporary Agreement Currently in Force Between the UK and Czechoslovakia), 3 February 1958 and TNA, FO 371/127682, Prague Embassy to ˇ FO, 15 October 1958. See also NACR, MD II, Box 508, Sdˇelení CSA Ministerstvu dopravy [Notification from CSA to Ministry of Transport], 11 September 1957.

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minimum of discussion’ that the routing would be via Copenhagen, thus completely avoiding overflight of East and West Germany, respectively. Yet, eager to strike a deal, the Soviets went even further and made several additional concessions. They committed to ICAO standards and procedures for pre-flight planning, in-flight operations or accident investigation to a much larger degree than in their previous agreements with other nonbloc nations. Also, despite their standard practice of using Russian for air traffic control purposes, they hinted that the controllers might eventually communicate with BEA aircraft in English as far as this would be possible. Furthermore, they accepted omission of a standard Soviet provision on nationality of aircrew from the proposed arrangement and let the matter be settled by an informal exchange of letters by respective national authorities.28 The only point on which the Soviet delegation—led by Chief Marshal of Aviation Pavel F. Zhigarev, who replaced Zhavoronkov as Aeroflot’s director in January 1957—insisted was the use of Tupolev Tu-104 aircraft on the route. Derived from the Tupolev Tu-16 strategic bomber, this twin-engine jetliner had a larger fuselage and a fully pressurised cabin while retaining a glazed-nose—a characteristic feature of its military parent. The aircraft performed its maiden flight in June 1955 and saw the first commercial service with Aeroflot in mid-September 1956. A half year earlier, in late March and April, the Tu-104 prototype flew several times between Moscow and London on the occasion of a state visit to the UK by Nikita Khrushchev and Nikolai Bulganin. The plane, as its chief designer and the whole Soviet leadership secretly hoped, shocked Westerners and gave rise to suspicions that the USSR was not only catching up with but that it may actually surpass the West technologically. On the other hand, the noise blasts from its engines led to frequent complaints from local inhabitants whenever the plane landed or departed from Heathrow airport. On one such occasion in September 1957, an early morning take-off allegedly damaged roofs, cracked ceilings and broke windows of several houses in surrounding areas after which

28 Cf. TNA, BT 245/1420, Discussions between the Aeronautical authorities of the USSR and the UK held in London—9 to 19 December, 1957: Agreed Minutes of the Conference, December 1957.

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the British authorities forbade the Tu-104 from flying over London at night.29 During the 1957 December talks, the British therefore insisted that the plane must be properly noise tested and eventually silenced before being authorised to fly to Heathrow on a regular basis. The Soviet delegation tentatively accepted this condition and the Anglo-Soviet air services agreement was eventually signed and sealed on 19 December 1957. However, as it became clear over the following months, this was nothing but an evasive move to extract the signature of the agreement from the British. Rather than sending a plane to London for testing, the Soviets embarked on an offensive strategy and renegotiated with respective national authorities the terms of Aeroflot’s services to Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen and Paris. The outcome was that the Soviet company replaced the pistondriven Il-14s with the Tu-104s turbojets on all of these routes by early August 1958.30 This placed the British, and the MTCA in particular, into an extremely difficult situation. It became self-evident that Aeroflot was unwilling to silence the Tu-104 engines with additional noise-suppressors. Yet Zhigarev and his subordinates declared that the Soviet airline was ready to commence the London services immediately and considered the plane quiet enough as it was recently allowed to fly on the other Western European routes. BEA also hoped for an early opening of the air link between Moscow and London and the company’s chairman, Lord Douglas of Kirtleside, expressed himself that the delayed entry of Tu-104 into the Heathrow ‘could easily harm Britain’s position as one of the most important focal points of international air transport.’ In a propaganda volley aimed at London, Zhigarev gave an interview to the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya where he said that the MTCA position was hard to understand because the tests at Vnukovo airport and elsewhere revealed that Tu-104 was not noisier on take-off than the French Caravelle turbojet or turboprops such as the Super-Constellation and the DC-7

29 Cf. TNA, FO 371/133724, Armstrong (MTCA) to Wright (FO), 30 May 1958. See also Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev and the Creation of a Superpower (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 113–9 and Gordon and Rigmant, OKB Tupolev, 219–23. 30 Cf. TNA, BT 245/1420, Discussions between the Aeronautical authorities of the USSR and the UK, December 1957; TNA, FO 371/133724, Embassy Moscow to FO, 30 June 1958 and ‘Brevities’, Flight, 15 August 1958, 246.

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manufactured by the Americans. Moreover, the Chief Marshal pointed out that, in order to suit the British authorities, Aeroflot recently had adopted new departure procedures for Tu-104s which resulted in the reduction of take-off noise by 5–12 decibels, depending on the overall load factor of each aircraft.31 Unlike the British Comet or the American Boeing 707 that climbed at a relatively steep angle at full thrust, the Tu-104s had to climb at a slower rate with reduced engines to produce about the same level of noise (app. 97 dB) as the former aircraft. This, however, meant that much larger areas would have to be affected by noise and also raised serious safety concerns. The MTCA therefore insisted that the plane and new take-off procedures had to be tested at Heathrow, prior to any authorisation for scheduled operations.32 It was under these circumstances that Harold Watkinson, the transport and civil aviation minister, asked the chairman of BEA to approach Zhigarev privately and invite him to London. During the visit which was to take place in December 1958, the Tu-104 should also carry out ‘one or more demonstrations’ of the new take-off procedure. Zhigarev immediately realised that the British, in reality, wanted to test the aircraft on the spot and declined the invitation. Facing a stalemate, the MTCA policy began to crumble. At a cabinet meeting on 23 December 1958, Watkinson tabled a memorandum under which the Tu-104s would have been allowed into Heathrow for a one-month trial period without any prior testing. Nonetheless, the planes were to take-off only in a western direction to minimise the negative effects on local communities. Had the aircraft’s noise level proved the same or lower than that of the Boeing 707, the service could continue, otherwise stiffer conditions would have to be applied. Three months later, the MTCA position eroded completely, however. On 25 March 1959, Minister Watkinson deemed the new takeoff technique fully satisfactory and, after years of stalled and protracted

31 TNA, FO 371/133724, Kirtleside (BEA) to Watkinson (MTCA), 2 July 1958; Zhigarev (Aeroflot) to Kirtleside (BEA), 7 July 1958; FO to Embassy Moscow, 15 July 1958 and It is the Turn of the British to Speak, 1 August 1958. See also ‘A Noisy Overture’, Flight, 22 August 1958, 254. 32 TNA, FO 371/133724, Recent Investigations into the Noise of the Tu-104 on Take-off, undated; Jet Noise: Statement by the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, 25 August 1958 and Tu-104 Noise Level, 6 November 1958.

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negotiations, direct services between London and Moscow finally became a reality on 14 May.33 By the summer of 1959, both CSA and Aeroflot operations were widespread in Europe and Prague had reestablished itself as the main transition point for East-West traffic.34 However, the reopening or expansion of European routes was not an end goal for either airline. Both companies were determined to launch intercontinental operations. Mission was clear: to rediscover the vast areas of tropics and sub-tropics for the cause of worldwide socialist revolution. As before, CSA led the way by opening a connection between Prague and Mumbai in August 1959.

Entering the Third World The decision to start flights to long-haul destinations was, in the case of CSA, eventually made three years earlier, in 1956, when a new plan for the development of international air services during the years 1956– 1960 was approved in a series of phases. During 1956–1957, CSA aimed to restore its former routes in Europe. In the second step, and throughout phases three and four, the company would embark on worldwide expansion and launch lines into the Near and Far East, Africa, and Latin America. The connections envisaged for the year 1958 included a Prague–Sofia–Istanbul–Beirut–Teheran line and a revived connection between Prague and Cairo via Rome and Athens. Later, in 1959–1960, the airline should start services to Beijing and Mumbai via Cairo as well as commence operations on a Prague–Zurich–Algiers–Dakar–Rio de 33 TNA, FO 371/133724, Jet Noise: Statement by the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, 25 August 1958; Kirtleside (BAE) to Zhigarev (Aeroflot) with reply, 13 November and 26 November 1958, respectively; Jet Aircraft Noise: Cabinet Memorandum by the Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation, 18 December 1958 and FO to Moscow Embassy, 19 December 1958. See also ‘Moscow in the Summer’, Flight, 3 April 1959, 475. 34 By late 1950s, the Czechoslovak capital was not only well connected to other cities in Europe, but KLM, Sabena and SAS flew through Prague to Cairo. In addition, the Scandinavians stopped at Ruzynˇe airport on their weekly service from Stockholm to Santiago de Chile while Air India on its twice-weekly Mumbai–London service. With further stops along these routes, Prague became the ‘only reasonable gateway… for people travelling to Moscow’ from the countries of the emerging Global South as one British aviation official noted in early 1958. Cf. TNA, FO 371/133185, Madge (MTCA.) to Swann (FO), 24 January 1958 and Brief for Air Services Negotiations with Czechoslovakia: Appendix C, 3 February 1958.

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Janeiro–Buenos Aires route.35 This conception stemmed from a document entitled ‘Proposal for the Resolution of the Party and Government concerning the Improvement of the Quality of the Czechoslovak Civil Aviation’ which the Ministry of Transportation conceived of upon request from the Politburo during July and August 1956. Compared to the earlier CSA plan, the only difference was the addition of an East African route to Johannesburg, South Africa, via the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. The whole expansion scheme was then discussed with Eugene Mikhailovitch Beletzky, the Aeroflot’s director of operations and traffic, who raised no objections and approved it. Subsequently, the Politburo adopted the improvement proposal on 10 October.36 From a wider politico-economic perspective, all the documents highlighted that the proposed expansion of CSA’s air routes reflected the key principles of the nation’s foreign policy and was, in particular, designed to augment Czechoslovakian foreign trade with highly promising markets in the Third World countries.37 At the end of 1950s and in the early 1960s, however, policy became increasingly ideology-driven. The analysis concerning the proposed route to Indonesia written in the early months of 1960 highlighted that: in addition to purely economic gains, there would be an important political significance in intensifying relations between Czechoslovakia and the countries of the socialist camp in general with the countries in South and Southeast Asia. For most of these nations freed of colonial dependence only a short time ago, the political and economic support of the [socialist] countries… is a basic precondition for their further growth and development. Moreover, the imperialist powers still struggle to preserve or regain their economic and political foothold in this area [as US President Eisenhower’s 35 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 148, Návrh plánu obnovy a rozvoje zahraniˇcních leteckých tratí CSA v období od r. 1956–60 [The Proposal for Restoration and Further Development of CSA’s International Air Services for Years 1956–60], 24 January 1956. 36 Cf. NACR, UPV-T, folder 1276, Zpráva o návrhu na usnesení strany a vlády ke zvýšení úrovnˇe cˇ eskolovenského civilního letectví [Proposal for the Resolution of the Party and Government Concerning the Improvement of the Quality of the Czechoslovak Civil Aviation: Submission Report], 10 October 1956. The complete proposal can be found in the following folder no. 1277. See also NACR, KSC-UV-60, vol. 27, folder ˇ 361, Zpráva o stavu Ceskoslovenských aerolinií a návrhy k jejich rozvoji [Situation Report on Czechoslovak Airlines Including Company’s Development Proposals], 16 November 1956. 37 Cf. documents quoted in previous two references.

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recent tour had proven]. It is therefore reasonable to assume that the political and economic relations [of South and Southeast Asian nations] with the countries of the socialist camp would grow significantly. In this situation, the introduction and extension of our own air services fully reflected the aims and goals of [Czechoslovak] foreign policy and, in fact, it presents a historical necessity.38

Driven by the interplay of these reasons, CSA commenced a worldwide expansion of its services on 27 August 1958 when the formerly flown service to Cairo was relaunched. Next year, the company introduced the above-mentioned connection to Mumbai, India, which was in 1960 extended south-east to Jakarta, Indonesia, using Yangon in Myanmar and Phnom Penh in Cambodia as additional intermediate points. In 1960, CSA also started two other routes. While the first headed towards the Near East and connected Prague with Damascus and Bagdad via Athens, the second ran through the West African coast and linked the Czechoslovak capital via Zurich with Rabat in Morocco, Dakar in Senegal and Conakry in Guinea. Next year, in February, the Malian capital Bamako was also added to the route. In 1962, the Czechoslovak positions in the Near and Middle East were further reinforced by the launch of alternative connections to Damascus via Sofia and Ankara in March 1962 and to Jakarta via Beirut, Belgrade and Dhahran in November 1962 respectively. Finally, after the addition of Teheran and Kabul to the regional route network in late 1963, the lines stabilised next year along the following two configurations: Prague– Sofia–Ankara–Damascus–Bagdad and Prague–Sofia–Athens–Damascus– Teheran–Kabul, respectively. Following policy of ‘peaceful co-existence’ with the West, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev tried to build up the relations with the countries of the emerging Global South believing that the Eastern socialist economic model would be more appealing to them than the Western capitalism practised by their former European oppressors. Aeroflot therefore jumped 38 Almost identical or similar formulations can be found in the paperwork to other routes, too. Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 175, folder Linka Bombaj-Rangoon-Djakarta [Mumbai– Yangon–Jakarta Route], but see also other in the same box. As far as Eisenhower’s tour is concerned, the author of analysis likely referred to his ‘Flight to Peace’ tour around the globe in December 1959. For details see e.g. Paul M. McGarr, The Cold War in South Asia: Britain, the United States and the Indian Subcontinent, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 85–91.

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on the bandwagon and swiftly launched similar routes to those of CSA. By early 1964, the Soviet state airline regularly flew or had recently introduced services to Karachi in Pakistan via Kabul, to Jakarta via New Delhi and Yangon, to Damascus, to Khartoum via Cairo and to Accra in Ghana via Conakry, Bamako and Rabat.39 In doing this, Aeroflot was evidently using CSA’s membership of the ICAO and IATA and the good reputation of the Czechoslovak airline to prepare the ground for its own expansion in the Third World.40 The only exception to this ‘rule’ was a route to New Delhi which Aeroflot eventually pioneered before the Czechoslovaks came in. Still, Prague played an important role here, too. Representing an offshoot of the ongoing Soviet-Indian rapprochement, the initial framework for this connection was laid down in the interline agreement which Aeroflot and Air India concluded on 20 September 1955. The arrangement provided for an indirect service between New Delhi and Moscow via Zurich and Prague, whereas the first leg of the journey was flown by Air India, the second was by Swissair and the third was by Aeroflot. Nonetheless, the demand for travel behind the Iron Curtain was so high that the following year Air India detoured from its Bombay–Cairo–Rome–London air link via Prague once a week in order to capture more passengers. Further development occurred in June 1958 when the Soviets and the Indians struck a fully fledged aviation agreement which enabled direct flights between Delhi and Moscow via Amritsar and Tashkent. It was a bargain by which the Soviets committed to IATA 39 SOA, CSA, Box 354, Pˇrehled tratí [Overview of Routes], 1949–1975; ADM, Box LR 00498, Aeroflot: Airways to everywhere, 1964 and TNA, BT 245/1420, Aeroflot’s international services (outside Europe), March 1964’ and International services outside Europe by airlines (other than Aeroflot) of communist countries, March 1964. See also ‘Aeroflot’ and ‘Ceskoslovenske Aerolinie-CSA’, Flight International, 2 April 1964, 492 and 506 respectively. 40 While the author did not find any written documents confirming this claim, this was a general sentiment in Prague at the time. As Jaroslav Jechumtál, the CSA’s sales director between 1959 and 1967, confirmed the author during an interview on 26 February 2013, neither Aeroflot officials ever explicitly admitted that they were using the Czechoslovak airline to ‘smooth the path’ for them. However, in a sort of tacit agreement, the Soviets furnished CSA with newest machines sooner and on better financial terms than the other bloc airlines as a payback for this. Across Atlantic, the aviation officials at Washington felt the same way, too. In February 1961, for example, the State Department urged the Turkish Foreign Office not to grant the overflight rights to the Aeroflot only because these had been granted to the CSA in February previous year. Cf. Author interview with Jaroslav Jechumtal, 26 February 2013 and NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and satellites #1: Asia 1961–62, Embassy Ankara to DoS, 15 February 1961.

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tariffs, which they had refused to before, in exchange for significant speed and time advantages gained over Indians. Aeroflot’s Tu-104s covered the distance between the two capitals three to four hours faster than Air India’s Super Constellations. Nevertheless, sticking with the usual modus operandi, Aeroflot extended the Delhi connection to Yangon and Jakarta only on 31 January 1962, i.e. one and half year after the CSA paved the way.41 In any case, compared to just four services beyond Europe to Peking and Ürümqi in China, Ulaanbaatar in Mongolia and Pyongyang in North Korea by Aeroflot and none by CSA in 1957, the growth of these two airlines on the routes outside Europe at the turn of 1950s and in the early 1960s was enormous.42 As such, this expansion evidently echoed a major shift in bloc policy towards the non-aligned countries after the 1955 Bandung Conference which gave the initial impetus and provided a framework for the awakening of the Global South. During the Stalin years, as the Italian historian Sara Lorenzini pointed out, Moscow showed low interest in expanding its relations with the countries across this region partly because of the ‘great [geographical] distance between the Soviet Union and the colonial areas and newly independent states.’ In this respect, penetration of the developing countries by Aeroflot and CSA was directly aimed at overcoming these infrastructural deficiencies and its goal was to create efficient transportation links for the exchange of people (communist and foreign trade representatives, various technicians, students) and freight (machinery for newly bloc constructed factories,

41 Cf. ADM, Box LR 00478, USSR-India air agreement, 5 October 1955 and Press announcement by India’s Communications Minister, 15 November 1955; ADM, Box LR 00498, Aeroflot im internationalen Luftverkehr, July 1958; ‘Air India International’, Flight, 20 April 1956, 462; ‘Hands Across the Himalayas’, Flight, 20 June 1958, 830 and ‘Aeroflot’, Flight International, 12 April 1962, 550. See also Vojtech Mastny, ‘The Soviet Union’s Partnership with India’, Journal of Cold War Studies 12, no. 3 (2010): 52–9. 42 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 354, Pˇrehled tratí [Overview of Routes], 1949–1975; ADM,

Box LR 00498, Die sowjetische Zivilluftfahrt und ihr Flugmaterial, December 1958 and ‘Aeroflot and Minhaiduy’, Flight, 11 January 1957, 43–6. See also: David R. Jones, ‘The Rise and Fall of Aeroflot: Civil Aviation in the Soviet Union, 1920–91,’ in Russian Aviation and Air Power in the Twentieth Century, ed. Robin Higham, John T. Greenwood, and Von Hardesty (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998), 258.

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spare parts) between the USSR and its satellites and countries of interest in Africa, Near East and South/Southeast Asia.43 This claim is well supported by further evidence. In August 1956, the Soviet and Czechoslovak representatives met at Cairo with civil aviation officials from Egypt, Jordan and Syria. They offered the delivery of five Il14 aircraft and several helicopters to aid the establishment of a Pan-Arab airline. Moscow was also ready to provide the credits necessary to finance the whole operation. To all intents and purposes, this proposal might be understood best as an extension of the notorious arms deal which Egypt concluded with Czechoslovakia with the blessing of the USSR in 1955. However, while the Egyptian Air Force looked very much forward into the delivery of 86 MiG-15 fighters, 25 Yak-11 trainers, 47 Il-28 bombers and 20 Il-14 transports, the nation’s flag carrier Misrair declined the bid and remained British-leaning. Even after the Royal Air Force destroyed one of the three recently delivered Viscount medium-range turbopropos in Operation Musketeer during the Suez Crisis in November 1956, the Egyptians placed an order for two additional aircraft from Vickers a mere ten months later.44 Yet, the Soviets did not give up their attempts at gaining a stronger position in Arab aviation. When the Egyptians and Syrians discussed the details of the merger between Misrair and Syrian Airways in the spring of 1958, Moscow proposed the delivery of several Tu-104 turbojets in exchange for a 25 per cent share in the nascent United Arab Airlines (UAA). However, the Egyptian and Syrian governments turned down the offer as they had two years previously. The reason being that the Soviets were unwilling to submit any data on the durability and service life cycle of the Tu-104’s components and proposed to exchange all damaged spare parts for new ones, which would be highly costly. Albeit Moscow would have also accepted payment in local currency, the Egyptians and Syrians preferred to secure foreign

43 Cf. Sara Lorenzini, ‘Comecon and the South in the Years of Détente: A Study on East–South Economic Relations’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 21, no. 2 (2014): 183–99. For further reference on the attitudes of communist regimes towards the globalization, the role of Soviet bloc in the globalizing world and East-West trade, see also the other articles in the same issue of the journal. 44 ADM, Box LR 00478, Panarabischer Luftverkehr mit kommunistischer Unterstützung? 10 August 1956; ‘More Viscounts for Egypt’, Flight, 9 August 1957, 203 and Philip Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 1945–1968 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 92.

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credit to purchase three Comet jetliners with an extended flying range (variant 4C) from the British manufacturer de Havilland.45 After this second refusal in a row, the Soviets turned their attention to the west of the continent. The first on the radar was Ghana where its president, Kwame Nkrumah, made great efforts to make the country’s airline into a symbol of Pan-Africanism and the liberation of African countries from colonial oppression. Ghana Airways was established in July 1958 and was initially operated by personnel of the British Overseas Aircraft Corporation (BOAC). At the time, its fleet consisted of five American planes (four DC-3s and one Boeing Stratocruiser) and four British (two de Havilland Herons and two Bristol Britannias). To counterbalance the Western influence over the airline, Nkrumah signed an aviation agreement with the USSR and ordered six Ilyushin Il-18s and one Antonov An-15 in August 1960. The deal was financed through a £14.3 million credit which Moscow extended to Accra while receiving cocoa and other exotic produce in return. In early 1961, the Ghanaian government ousted BOAC from the company by buying out its minority share (40 per cent) and asked for two more Il-18s transports. In order to secure the operations and maintenance of the aircraft, Moscow stationed in Ghana some hundred pilots, technicians and engineers. Yet, to preserve the East-West balance, the Ghanaians also placed a contract with Vickers for three VC-10s and another one with Boeing for two 707s. And, towards the end of the year 1961, the airline magazine proudly announced: ‘born three years ago, Ghana Airways is Osagyefo, the president’s own baby. It is also the pride of Ghana [and] we are grateful to Osagyefo for the keen interest he has always shown in the activities and operation of the national airline… Ghana Airways is committed to flying high the National Flag and carrying aloft the spirit of African freedom, unity and solidarity to every corner of the globe.’46 45 ‘Arab combine’, Flight, 9 August 1958, 467; ‘Comet 4s for Misrair?’, Flight, 9 January 1959; ‘New Order for Comets’, Flight, 9 January 1960, 53 and ‘Misrair 1960’, Flight, 7 October 1960, 588–9. See also notices in the column ‘Airline Observer’ published in the Aviation Week on 7 April 1958, 3 November 1958, 1 June 1959 and 11 January 1960 respectively, 47, 45, 51 and 51 respectively. 46 Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 132–4 and ‘Ghana Airways Ltd.’, Flight International, 12 April 1962, 565. For quotes from airline magazine, see ‘Ghana’s Status Symbol’, Flight, 21 December 1961, 968–9. The weekly briefly commented that although ‘many airlines [were] primarily instrument of national prestige…, few of them ever have the honesty to admit it.’ In this respect, the statement by Ghana Airways was truly remarkable as it ‘surpasse[d] all other for its candid chauvinism.’

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Soon thereafter, however, dissatisfaction with the Soviet planes began to grow in Accra. Because of the extremely short time between the overhauls, i.e. required service intervals, the Il-18s reached abysmal operational figures. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that, according to the maintenance contract, all engine replacements had to be carried out in Moscow which involved an excessive amount of nonrevenue flying. On top of that, the planes only serviced the highly unprofitable routes to Khartoum and Beirut via Cairo causing an overall load factor of less than 20 per cent. Consequently, it proved cheaper to keep them on the ground than up in the sky.47 At the same time, the airline losses skyrocketed: almost £1 million for fiscal year ending June 1962 compared to £484,271 the year before and a mere £33,000 year ending June 1960. Nonetheless, the real losses could have actually been much higher, as an unnamed insider told Flight magazine in November 1961 that the company went some £6 million into the red in the last year alone which coincided approximately with US sources quoting a $16 million operating loss in 1961 and $20 million in 1962. In September 1963, Accra eventually struck an agreement with Moscow and returned four Il-18s while the remaining four were sent back to the USSR in March 1966. The Antonov was retired from Air Ghana’s fleet later in April 1964. All Soviet planes were thus phased out by April 1966 and over the following decades the airline operated a mix of British (VC-10, Viscount), Dutch (Fokker F28) and American (Douglas DC-8/10) planes.48 47 According to some reports, the engines had to be overhauled approximately every 300 hours. While the reasons may have been more complex, the US Department of Commerce in August 1956 suggested that the Soviet problems stemmed from lower quality aviation gasoline (AvGas) which contained a higher amount of tetraethyl lead. This was used to increase the octane rating to 100/130 number but higher lead percentage decreased the safety factor and led to ‘more frequent motor overhauls.’ Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and satellites #2: Africa 1962, Embassy London to DoS, 1 June 1962 and NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, folder USSR-USSR Negotiations: Aug 1955–Dec 1958, Review by US Department of Commerce Advisory Committee on Export Policy Structure, 16 August 1956. See also ‘Viscounts for China’, Flight International, 5 April 1962, 516. 48 Cf. Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 132–4 and Ben R. Guttery, Encyclopedia of African Airlines (Jefferson and London: McFarland, 1998), 74–7. See also ‘Straight and Level’, Flight, 2 November 1961, 690; ‘Ghana Disenchantment with the Il-18’, Flight International, 14 November 1963, 789; ‘Ghana Airways’, Flight International, 2 April 1964, 512 and ‘Ghana Airways Consolidates’, Flight International, 9 June 1966, 954. For US estimates, see NARA, RG 59, RREM, Box 1, folder Somalia Civil Aviation, African Civil Aviation Program, undated but comprised early 1963.

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Further to the North, the Soviets joined their comrades from Czechoslovakia in aiding a landlocked Mali whose president, Modibo Keïta, saw the development of transportation infrastructure an essential precondition for the growth of country’s economy. In October 1960, the Bamako government formed Air Mali and sounded out views on both sides of the Iron Curtain concerning who might be willing to give a hand with the carrier’s development. While Washington initially declined to provide any assistance at all and the British only donated three obsolete DC-3s, the Czechoslovaks offered five Aero-145 lightweight aircraft and training for pilots and technicians.49 In addition, Prague sent to Mali one complete crew to fly ex-BEA Dakotas along with two French crews as well as some engineers to oversee operations at the airports in Bamako and Gao, the economic centre on the Niger River and, more recently, a capital of the short-lived Tuareg state.50 In March 1961, Moscow stepped in and concluded with Air Mali a contract for delivery of two Il-18s, three Il-14s and an unspecified number of An-2 twelve-seater aircraft. The following month, Washington hastily countered with an offer of DC-4s and tried to dissuade the Malians from consummating the deal by arguing that the Soviet planes lacked sufficient airworthiness certificates and suffered frequent engine failures. Malians resisted, however, and Keïta told the US Ambassador that Bamako would have considered the proposition only if the planes were offered for free and declared the issue ‘dead.’51 With the arrival of the first two Il-18 turboprops in August, the airline opened a connection to Paris via Rabat and Marseilles. This once-aweek service was initially flown by Soviet crews who were training local personnel to assume operational positions later on. Over the next two years, the USSR supplied three Il-14s and two An-2 bi-planes from the original contract and one additional Il-18 aircraft in an executive class 49 A group of some 30 Malians left for Prague to undergo two year aeronautical and technical training on March 24, 1961. Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and satellites #1: Africa 1961, Embassy Bamako to DoS, 25 March 1961. 50 The British offered the crews for DC-3s, too, but were told that the Czechs were cheaper. Yet, Keïta refused to have the Czech crews only as he thought that this would be ‘discourteous’ to London. Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and satellites #1: Africa 1961, Embassy London to DoS, 28 February and 10 March 1961, respectively. 51 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and satellites #1: Africa 1961, DoS to Embassy Bamako, 31 March 1961 and Embassy Bamako to DoS, 9 May 1961.

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for Keïta’s private use. Furthermore, Aeroflot and CSA used the Bamako airport as a regional maintenance hub for their West African operations. By the mid-1960s, however, the Malians became seriously dissatisfied with the poor operational performance of their Il-18 and Il-14 transports. Consequently, they began to replace the Soviet machines with more upto-date designs such as the Boeing 727 or later Boeing 737 short- to medium-range jetliners during the 1970s. Nonetheless, the last Il-18 flew with Air Mali well into the mid-1980s.52 A similar pattern occurred in Mali’s western neighbour Guinea. After Pan Am showed no interest in helping Sékou Touré’s regime with building up civil aviation in the country, the Guineans approached the Soviet bloc. While Prague initially provided four Avia-built Il-14s and two Aero-145 air taxi aircraft as well as pilots and technicians to operate these planes, the Soviets constructed a new 3000 m runway at the Conakry airport. It came with radio transmitting stations so as to accommodate jet traffic. With this materiel and technical assistance, Air Guinée launched its operations in October 1960. During the next two years, CSA leased the company three more Il-18s as well as one Avia-14 in cargo configuration and another one with an executive style interior. The amount of bloc assistance to Guinea totalled $10 million from Czechoslovakia and $56.5 million plus an additional credit of 1.25 million in Guinean francs from the Soviet Union.53 Yet, the relations with Conakry were rather troublesome. However, it was not only with Prague and Moscow that difficulties arose. In October 1961, the Guineans expelled all the 35 Czechoslovak crews and technicians from the country because one pilot refused to fly a government delegation to the Ivory Coast and Ghana under bad weather conditions. Subsequently, feeling offended by being treated by the Czechoslovaks 52 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and satellites #2: Africa 1962, Embassy Bamako to DoS, 15 May 1962. See also ‘Air Afrique Emphasizes Measured Growth’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 29 November 1965, 31 and ‘Air Mali’, Flight International, 29 March 1986, 47. For this and previous paragraph, see furthermore Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 136–9 and 156 respectively and Guttery, Encyclopedia of African Airlines, 120–1. 53 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and satellites #2: Africa 1962, DoS to Embassy Conakry, 7 December 1962 and folder Problems with USSR and satellites #3: Africa 1963–64, Embassy Paris to DoS, 20 March 1963. See also Václav ˇ Nˇemeˇcek, Ceskoslovenská letadla [Czechoslovak Planes]: 1945–1984 (Prague: Naše vojsko, 1984), 77 and 96.

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and Soviets in the same paternalistic fashion as previously by the French, Conakry attempted to loosen the bloc’s grip and, in December 1962, Air Guinée struck a deal with Alaska Airlines. This included the wet-lease of two DC-4 aircraft until local crews could be trained by Boeing at Seattle. The planes arrived in April 1963, but were grounded a mere two weeks later as one of them crash-landed on its second scheduled flight. The next day, the Guineans switched back to bloc equipment causing a loss of $700,000 to Alaska Airlines which eventually had to be settled by the United States Agency for International Development. A similar situation repeated itself in 1965, but with Pan Am on the losing end. After this second failed arrangement with Western airlines, Air Guinée remained loyal to Soviet planes and technology until the early 1980s when the airline acquired two older Boeing B-707s, two second-hand B-720s from the Greek Olympic Airways and one brand new B-737.54 This rather poor record notwithstanding, the Soviets made a surprising comeback into Arab civil aviation in July 1964 when they sold Cairo seven Antonov An-24 high-wing, twin turboprop aircraft worth $2.3 million in local currency. These 48-seaters were destined for a revived Misrair, which began operations on Egypt’s domestic routes in August 1965. A full subsidiary of United Arab Airlines, the carrier lost two Antonovs in accidents involving some 30 causalities in early 1966 and amalgamated with the parent company a mere two years later.55 Gamal Nasser’s unyielding desire to show the flag across the globe and above it in the space as well as his avid desire to lead the Arab world and his fervour for neutralism enabled Moscow to tighten its grip on Egyptian civil aviation with further aircraft sales.56 In August 1968, Aeroflot dryleased UAA three Il-18 turboprop transports which complemented the company’s previous order of three Boeing 707 four-engine, long-range 54 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and satellites #3: Africa 1963–64, Embassy Paris to DoS, 20 March 1963. See also Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 134–6 and Guttery, Encyclopedia of African Airlines, 78–9 as well as ‘Airliner Market’, Flight International, 18 July and 12 September 1981, 151 and 780 respectively and ‘Air Guinée’, Flight International, 3 April 1982, 810. 55 Cf. ‘An-24s for UAA?’, Flight International, 16 July 1964, 85; ‘UAA Goes Russian’, Flight International, 9 October 1964, 621 and Guttery, Encyclopedia of African Airlines, 52–3. 56 Cf. e.g. ‘UAR Plans Follow-on to Star Satellite’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 6 July 1964, 273 and ‘Conflicts Hamper Arab Bloc Formation’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 May 1966, 35–8.

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jets. However, next year, the Soviets deterred Cairo with political pressures from concluding yet another deal with the American company for four 727 medium-range tri-jets while instead offering a similar design by Tupolev, the Tu-154 with turbofans. Still, the first machine of the envisaged fleet of eight was only delivered in the autumn of 1973. EgyptAir, which succeeded the UAA in October 1971, was therefore forced to wetlease the original 727s that had been offered to it from the Kuwaitis who had purchased them in the meantime. In addition, the company also rented three Il-62 long-range quad-turbofan transports with crews from Aeroflot to accommodate the increased demand from tourist travellers upon which the country, desperately looking for any hard-currency income, was extremely dependent.57 Nonetheless, not only did Assad flip to the Western side and fire thousands of Soviet advisers in 1972, but the Egyptians also soon became dissatisfied with the performance figures of the Soviet designs and sent the Il-62s back to the USSR the same month the first Tu-154 arrived. The reason was their high-operating costs and repeated technical issues. The latter transports proved no better, either. The aircraft suffered frequent failures of their fuel, electrical and stabilisation systems and were repeatedly overhauled in the USSR as the terms of contract required, at considerable cost. In July 1974, a plane with an unusually long maintenance record crashed on take-off for a training flight, killing the crew of six. Consequently, in September, the Egyptians suspended the loan instalments and returned all planes, including three An-24s, to the Soviets in February 1975. As replacements, EgyptAir ordered ten Boeing airplanes, the 727-200 and 737-200 series the next month.58 Albeit the Soviet manufactures sold dozens of planes to Kremlinfriendly regimes across the Global South from the mid-1970s throughout the 1980s, their poor safety record, low fuel economics and short time between overhauls made these no match for Western producers who dominated the markets in all other countries of the region. And, as

57 Cf. ‘Egypt Looks to West for Long-Haul Jets’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 16 May 1966, 53–6 and ‘U.S., USSR Vie for Egyptair Order’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 10 January 1972, 22–3. 58 Cf. ‘Deficiencies Cause Egyptair to Reject Tu-154’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 7 October 1974, 21; ‘Egyptair Returns Its Tu-154s’, Flight International, 27 February 1975, 314; ‘Egyptair: The Way Ahead’, Flight International, 13 March 1975, 426 and Guttery, Encyclopedia of African Airlines, 48–9.

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Chapters 5 and 7 demonstrate, the incapability of the Soviets to produce the next generation of jetliners powered with highly efficient high-bypass turbofan engines eventually wrecked their hopes for further expansion in this part of the world for good.

CHAPTER 4

Raising the Stakes

Global Aerial Containment and Its Limits From the other side of the Atlantic, Washington watched Soviet bloc aviation inroads into the non-aligned countries with great suspicion and considered them a serious blow to US national security. Such inroads lacked ‘any sound economic basis’ and the decision-makers on the Potomac believed that ‘over-the-air-penetration’ played an important part in a larger Soviet bloc aid program. The main purpose of this, one US government memorandum concluded, was ‘to reduce Western influence in the less-developed areas, and to increase Soviet bloc influence and build an image of Soviet power and friendship. Political objectives predominate over economic.’ The Kremlin’s ultimate goal was to create ‘socialist societies dominated by Communist parties [which would be loyal] to the bloc.’1 Concerns like this grew in intensity, evolving into a main current of US aviation policy towards the Soviet bloc. A departure point in these concerns was 9 December 1957, when the National Security Council (NSC) promulgated an updated Directive 5726/1 on ‘U.S. Civil Aviation Policy towards the Sino-Soviet Bloc.’ The NSC 5726/1 superseded the earlier NSC 15/3 which, with its focus on containing the bloc air 1 Cf. NARA, RG 59, SF, Box 3, folder Counter-Strategy, Program of the Sino-Soviet Bloc in the Free World: Purposes and Accomplishments, 8 April 1963.

© The Author(s) 2020 P. Svik, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1_4

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services to Western Europe as detailed in Chapter 1, was now obsolete. Maintaining the basic concept of aerial containment, the NSC 5726/1 Directive restressed that American aviation policy towards the Eastern bloc had to be ‘consistent with [US] national security’ objectives and based on ‘sound economic principles.’ This was because the USSR and other communist countries used the air services primarily ‘for the furtherance of [their] political and subversive activities… to the underdeveloped nations of the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.’ The civil aviation thus became, the Directive pointed out, ‘another field involving global competition between the Free World and the Communist Bloc.’ Consequently, the scale of NSC 5726/1 Directive moved forward dramatically with the main emphasis shifting from Europe to the complexities of the emerging Global South. Since late 1957, the US thus desired to keep bloc airlines out of all sensitive areas outside the Old Continent at virtually any cost.2 Despite unlikely that the State Department would have immediately sent the new Directive to the US Embassy in Athens, nevertheless the NSC 5726/1 seemed to have an instant impact. One day after its approval Czechoslovak transport ministry and CSA officials came to Athens for proving flights for the planned Prague-Cairo run. Yet, the delegation received a lukewarm reception. Despite high expectations of all concerned in Prague that the addition of three brand new Tu-104s to the CSA’s fleet would significantly increase the prestige and reputation of Czechoslovak aviation, there was no red carpet and champagne with local aviation officials to greet the arrival of one of these machines at the Greek capital. The Czechoslovak delegation therefore hurried straight from the tarmac to the office rooms to meet with the airport’s deputy director whom they found with an American military officer. Despite a somewhat cool atmosphere, neither of them raised any objections to a series of trial takeoffs and landings, which eventually took the place on the following day. Simultaneously, the Czechoslovaks held several additional meetings with both Greek aviation officials and diplomats. While the latter would eventually agree to direct flights between Prague and Athens, they would under no circumstances allow the CSA to overfly Greece on the planned routes to Beirut, Cairo and Damask. When repeatedly advised that this violated the 1944 International Air Services Transit Agreement to which both countries were signatories, the Czechoslovaks were privately told by 2 Cf. Chapter 1 and FRUS, 1955–1957, vol. IX, U.S. Civil Aviation Policy Toward the Sino-Soviet Bloc, 9 December 1957, 490–503, quotes from pp. 490, 493, and 496.

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a high-ranking aviation official that Athens would very likely withdrew [sic] from the agreement if Prague were to refer to the case ‘too loudly.’ The Greek diplomats further hinted that, with a view to ongoing political tensions in the Arab countries, the Czechoslovaks should expect to face the similar difficulties in Italy and Turkey, too.3 Clearly, the policy development in Washington was already having effects among its allies. After the delegation returned to Prague, the inter-departmental meeting on 18 December decided to relax the pressure on Greece since the airport at Athens was undergoing major improvement works and was deemed unfit to handle jet traffic on a regular basis until late 1958 in any case.4 Instead, the route was to go via Tirana, Albania, where the new ‘jet-friendly’ airport had recently opened and then from there onwards flying southwards over international waters avoiding Greece completely. At some point, the planes should have then turned east/east-south to fly over the Cyprus F[light] I[nformation] R[egion] to their desired destinations. Upon learning this from the Czechoslovak delegate to the ICAO regional meeting at Geneva in mid-March 1958, officials of the British Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation briefly contemplated whether it might be possible to bloc CSA planes from accessing the Cyprus FIR, but the Foreign Office concluded that there were no reasonable, lawful grounds for such a step.5 Similarly, though sympathetic with American policy of aerial containment directed at Eastern Bloc civil aviation, the British felt obliged to approve the Czechoslovak request for a refuelling stop at Bahrain en route to Mumbai despite Washington having urged them to preclude this by declaring the local airport was ‘technically unsuitable for Tu-104s operations.’6 3 Cf. NACR, MD II, Box 508, Zpráva o úˇcasti na technickém letu letadlem Tu-104A

do Athén [Report on the Technical Flight of a Tu-104A Plane to Athens], 19 December 1957. 4 Ibid. See also Robin Svoboda, Ceskoslovensko-egyptské ˇ vztahy v letech 1952–1958 [Relationship Between Czechoslovakia and Egypt in the Years 1952–1958] (MA thesis: Charles University Prague, 2014), 66–7. 5 Cf. BT 245/358, MTCA Minute by J. R. Madge, 10 April 1958; Letter from Madge (MTCA) to Giles (FO), 18 March 1958 and MTCA Minute by Barton, 14 March 1958. 6 Under the terms of the International Air Transit Agreement, Bahrain was under British authority at the time. London delayed the decision on approval of technical stop for a year, since the Anglo-Czechoslovak aviation talks in early February 1958. In February 1959, permission was granted but no Czechoslovak technicians were allowed to be stationed on the spot upon request from Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the Monarch of Bahrain.

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Once the Czechoslovaks introduced flights to Cairo in August 1958 and to Mumbai in August 1959, containment in the region was about to erode completely. The Greeks gave up their rigid position in late 1959, which enabled CSA to initiate flights between Prague and Baghdad via Athens and Damascus as of 25 June 1960. The Turks resisted somewhat longer, but in August 1961 they allowed Aeroflot to overfly Turkish territory on its twice-a-week service to Cairo.7 Thus, as the State Department prophetically briefed all US diplomatic outposts in early March 1961, ‘Soviet bloc air penetration of the Near East [was] an accomplished fact’ and the only option left was to keep the penetration in ‘manageable proportions and within the framework of orderly development of civil aviation.’8 With the American position in the Eastern Mediterranean imploding, Washington’s main attention shifted further south. In this regard, the bloc air penetration of North and West Africa became the chief concern for the State Department in the next two years. A loud alarm bell rang on 23 April 1962 when the Soviet-Sudanese air agreement was signed at Khartoum. Both Moscow and Washington recognised this strategically located country as a key to the former’s access to sub-Saharan Africa. This had become evident during the initial stage of the Congo crisis in the second half of 1960. Since the Greek and Sudanese governments continuously turned down Soviet requests for overflight and refuelling rights en route to Leopoldville (now renamed Kinshasa) via Cairo and Juba, respectively, the assistance for Patrice Lumumba’s faction had to be flown over Rome, Rabat and Accra. This necessitated a significant detour from the much more ideal route and prevented Moscow from At the turn of 1960–61, the stop was transferred to the nearby Dhahran airport, Saudi Arabia, in the aftermath of the power struggle between King Saud and his brother Crown Prince Faisal. Cf. BT 245/358, Report on Civil Aviation Discussions with a Czechoslovak Delegation 3rd–7th February 1958, 13 February 1958 and FO 371/141681, FO to Bahrain with reply, 20 and 24 February 1959, respectively. See also NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #1, Asia 1961–62, Embassy Jidda [Jeddah] to DoS, 9 May 1962. 7 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 354, Pˇrehled tratí [Overview of Routes], 1949–1975 and NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 2, folder International Civil Aviation Intelligence Resumes, February 1960–January 1962, Turkey to Grant USSR Overflight Rights on Cairo Route, 17 August ˇ 1961. But see also SOA, CSA, Box 175, Linka CSA Praha-Baghdad [CSA’s Route Pragueˇ Baghdad], 16 April 1960 and Zapojení Turecka do letecké sítˇe CSA [Inclusion of Turkey into the CSA’s Route Network], 24 November 1960. 8 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 2, folder International Civil Aviation Intelligence Resumes, February 1960–January 1962, DoS to all diplomatic posts, 3 March 1961.

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delivering materiel and personnel aid in numbers sufficient enough to sustain Lumumba as the Prime Minister, who was assassinated in 1961.9 In the light of all this, not surprisingly Washington perceived the aviation bilateral between Moscow and Khartoum as a complete game changer, which would facilitate further Aeroflot inroads into Central and East African countries and, consequently, strengthen Kremlin’s political influence in these vital regions.10 Even worse, on 2 May 1962, Czechoslovak and Senegalese officials initialled an agreement which provided for reciprocal air services between their capitals. CSA planes had stopped for refuelling at Dakar ever since the Conakry run started in July 1960, but now the State Department worried that the new bilateral was aimed at preparing the ground for a jumping off point for Czechoslovak services to Latin America.11 In turn, officials at the Standing Group of the National Security Council discussed aviation matters twice within a mere three days, on 11 and 14 May 1962. Lamenting the low political significance given to civil aviation matters within the State Department, it was decided to devise both an immediate assistance programme for Africa and, if deemed necessary, a long-term civil aviation assistance scheme. Equally important, on 11 May a meeting of the Standing Group recalled NSC 5726/1 adopted mere three years ago and requested the State Department to determine whether or not a new policy directive on the subject should be adopted.12

9 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 2, folder International Civil Aviation Intelligence Resumes, February 1960–January1962, NATO Discussion of Bloc Applications for Overflight Rights, 19 January 1961. See also Sergey Mazov, A Distant Front in the Cold War: The USSR in West Africa and the Congo, 1956–1964 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010), 76–128 and 96–8 in particular and Alessandro Iandolo, ‘The Soviet Union and the Congo Crisis, 1960–1961’, Journal of Cold War Studies 16, no. 2 (2014): 32–55 and 48 in particular. 10 Cf. FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. XXI, Memorandum from the Special Assistant to the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Achilles) to the Under Secretary (McGhee), 10 May 1962, 315 and Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 141–5. 11 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2: Africa 1962, Embassy Dakar to DoS, 4 May 1962. 12 FRUS, 1955–1957, vol. IX, U.S. Civil Aviation Policy Toward the Sino-Soviet Bloc, 9 December 1957, 490–503; FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. XXI, Memorandum from the Special Assistant to the Under Secretary and Record of Actions Taken at a Standing Group Meeting of the National Security Council, 10 May 1962, 315–8 and 318 respectively. See also Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 145.

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This sparked feverish interest in East-West aviation within the Department with dozens of papers and memoranda produced over the next couple of months. All these documents shared great concern over the situation with American suspicions continuously growing throughout the latter half of 1962 when both Czechoslovak and Soviet diplomats ‘began another vigorous drive to expand [CSA’s and Aeroflot’s] air routes in Africa.’ In this regard, Moscow sought two objectives. The first was to ‘establish a route across the cent[re] of the continent linking its current routes in the East and the West’ via Chad, Nigeria and Ghana. The second was to extend the Cairo-Khartoum line southwards to Somalia, Kenya and Madagascar. Meanwhile, Prague managed to reach an agreement with Tunis granting CSA rights to fly over Tunisia to Accra in Ghana and on to Lagos, Ghana’s capital and the most populous city in Nigeria, respectively. Furthermore, negotiations were initiated with the government of Sudan, with the aim of expanding CSA services to Khartoum. Both countries then made overtures towards Brazil with regard to talks on eventual CSA and Aeroflot services to Rio de Janeiro.13 In case the projected Czechoslovakian and Soviet services would eventually come to fruition, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research memorandum warned in February 1963, that the Soviets would improve their airlift capabilities in Africa by pioneering new routes to strategically important countries and areas across the continent. In turn, this would enhance their potential for intelligence gathering and carrying out subversive operations. Furthermore, the bloc airlines could extend their collaboration with local African airlines and would thus acquire new channels for generating additional air traffic between the Soviet bloc and Africa. At the same time, Western carriers in Africa would be placed under increased pressure. Finally, new routes to African countries would enhance the bloc’s prestige worldwide.14 Internal discussions within the department culminated in a proposal for a new bloc aviation policy. This consisted of two documents: one entitled ‘Statement of United States Civil Aviation Objectives as Related to SinoSoviet Bloc Civil Aviation Activities in the Free World’ and the other ‘Policy Statement on Bilateral Civil Air Relations between the United 13 NARA, RG 59, SF, Box 4, folder European Consultations, Memorandum by Morris H. Crawford: Soviet Bloc Civil Air Expansion in Africa, 21 February 1963. 14 Ibid. Research Memorandum RAF-6: Containing the Soviet Bloc Civil Aviation Offensive in Africa, 18 February 1963.

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States and the Sino-Soviet Bloc.’ With much ink and fervour, the Policy Statement emphasised that a ‘civil air penetration of developing countries’ by communist airlines was ‘undesirable as it [could] enhance Bloc’s capability to attain its military and political objectives.’ At a time of external crisis ‘air traffic rights can be used to support footholds which the bloc powers have gained through other means’ whereas ‘Bloc influence, and control over, air facilities within a country could enable it to act quickly and decisively’ during a period of internal instability.15 In view of this, the second document—Statement of United States Civil Aviation Objectives—pointed out that the United States should, whenever politically and economically feasible, seek to discourage ‘the operation of bloc air transport services’ into the ‘less-developed countries’ in Africa, Asia and Latin America in particular. Equally important, Washington should prevent any bloc aviation aid ‘in the form of sales or gifts of aircraft and equipment [as well as] training or management assistance’ by offering similar help alone or in conjunction with its partners and, eventually, through the ‘ICAO and other international organizations.’16 Nonetheless, reading through the documents reveals that the prospects for reaffirming aerial containment policy as suggested by the State Department did not seem exceptionally bright. This soon revealed itself. On 12 July 1962 on invitation from George C. McGhee, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Department officials met with the representatives of the CAB, FAA, CIA, Department of Defence, the Agency for International Development and Bureau of the Budget. The purpose of the gathering was to ‘discuss steps [how] to counteract Soviet Bloc penetration of the developing countries through aviation activities [and] to assure a constructive response to the aviation aspiration of these countries.’ On hearing this a CIA representative sceptically remarked that ‘there was not a great deal [US] could do to forestall the expansion of [A]eroflot system since the granting of landing and transit rights [was] a question of sovereignty.’ He then added that the Agency considered the provision of ‘Soviet equipment and technicians’ a ‘more important problem.’17 15 Ibid. Policy Statement on Bilateral Civil Air Transport Relations Between the United States and the Sino-Soviet Bloc, 18 January 1963. 16 Ibid. Statement of United States Civil Aviation Objectives as Related to Sino-Soviet Bloc Civil Aviation Activities in the Free World, 13 November 1962. 17 Cf. FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. XXI, Memorandum from the Special Assistant to the Under Secretary and Record of Actions Taken at a Standing Group Meeting of the

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Somewhat later, in November 1962, Fowler Hamilton, the administrator of the newly established Agency for International Development, launched a frontal attack. In a memorandum addressed to Clare H. Timberlake, who at the time served as a special assistant to George C. McGhee, Hamilton questioned the whole rationale for maintaining the policy of aerial containment. According to his opinion, diplomats had highly overestimated the dangers stemming from Aeroflot’s expansion as the recent developments provided no support whatsoever to the thesis that ‘civil aviation [was] a super-vehicle for the export of Soviet ideology and influence.’ Not least important were in his view also the economic aspects. Albeit the US enjoyed ‘a qualitative and quantitative superiority’ which the bloc countries would have been unable to ‘challenge frontally in the foreseeable future,’ he emphasised that the costs ‘of [all] preclusive or pre-emptive efforts’ had to be always considered ‘in relation to the benefits they can offer.’ Any ‘non-selective approach’— warned Hamilton—‘could prove prohibitively costly, ineffective, and embarrassing in terms of overall US objectives.’ Furthermore, and most important, the new proposal for Soviet bloc aviation policy presented a ‘deliberate deviation from the main thrust of US policy in this field’ as recently sketched out by the International Air Transport Study Group.18 A large-scale body consisting of the representatives of the government and major industry stakeholders, the International Air Transport Study Group was presided over by the Interagency Steering Committee. This seven man Committee was appointed by President Kennedy in September 1961 in order to ‘determine whether US air policies developed since 1944 [could] adequately serve US interest in the future.’ Its chairman was Najeeb E. Halaby, the administrator of the FAA, who was principally assisted by the Committee’s Executive Secretary Kenneth R. Hansen, otherwise an assistant director at the Bureau of the Budget. In addition to Halaby and Hansen, the members of the Committee also included Alan S. Boyd, the chairman of the CAB and four high-ranking officials from

National Security Council, 10 May 1962, 317–8 and NARA, RG 59, SF:22.3.1., Box 6, folder Bloc Civil Aviation, Summary Minutes: Meeting Task Force on Soviet Civil Air Penetration, 12 July 1962. 18 NARA, RG 59, SF, Box 4, folder Draft NSC Aviation Policy, Memorandum for Timberlake by Hamilton, 5 November 1962.

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the Agency for International Development and Departments of State, Commerce and Defense, respectively.19 The outcome of the one and half year-long study presented the Statement on International Air Transport Policy which President Kennedy formally adopted on 24 April 1963. The first paragraph of the Statement is worth quoting in toto as it not only reflected much of the glamour connected with aviation during the jet-set era,20 but also, as in the mid1940s, highlighted that the industry effectively made the world global while envisioning even brighter prospects for the future: The international air transport industry is one of the marvels of our remarkable age. It has helped to shrink our globe, to conquer distance and time. In a quite literal sense it has made all of us around the world neighbo[u]rs or potential neighbo[u]rs. The youngest of the transport industries, it has been almost constantly the scene of technological revolutions, and more are in sight. Its future is as limitless as its past is brief.21

Calling for further deregulation and liberalisation of the industry to face the increased competition from non-American carriers, the fifteen-page document only touched briefly twice on the Cold War towards its end. First, when recommending that the US should pay an increased attention to aviation assistance to less-developed countries. Nonetheless, at the same time, the statement gave no blank cheque, emphasising that any aviation assistance which would be provided for ‘political or national security reasons’ should be ‘subjected to the same rigorous justification that applies to other projects’ deserving of US aid funding. Second, when stating that the primary objective of US air transport policy should be ‘to develop and maintain an expanding, economically and technologically efficient international system best adapted to the growing needs of the

19 NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 3, Statement on International Air Transport Policy, April 1963 and NARA, RG 59, SF, Box 6, folder Conference on International Air Transport Policy, passim. 20 Cf. Van Vleck, Empire of the Air, 237–80. 21 NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 3, Statement on International Air Transport Policy, April

1963.

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Free World’ in which the US air carriers would be able to compete on a ‘fair and equal’ footing in ‘world aviation markets.’22 Since this major policy guideline lacked any explicit anti-bloc reference, despite the initial briefs requiring the steering committee to take the Soviet bloc objectives into consideration,23 the State Department’s EastWest aviation policy consequently seemed to fall somewhat into limbo.24 With Najeeb Halaby intensively lobbying White House officials to transfer the whole agenda of international aviation from the hands of diplomats to the FAA’s exclusive competence,25 Kennedy’s inner circle began to consider moving forward with US-USSR aviation talks if a reasonable quid pro quo on a political level could be obtained.26 Yet, the US-USSR civil aviation relations and the attempts to build an air link between the two countries have deeper roots than one perhaps might expect and, in fact, they date back to the 1930s.

22 Ibid. 23 Cf. NARA, RG 237, IRF, Box 20, International Air Transport Study: FAA Memorandum to Heads of All Washington Offices and Services, 13 October 1961. There are no references to any threat stemming from bloc aviation activities in non-aligned countries in the background papers, either, cf. NARA, RG 59, SF, Box 6, folder Conference on International Air Transport Policy, passim. 24 Averell Harriman, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, dispatched both the Policy Statement on Bilateral Civil Air Relations and the Statement of US Civil Aviation Objectives for an interdepartmental screening on 1 May 1963. However, it is highly unlikely that these documents were ever approved and adopted by the NSC since the State Department officials still discussed the similarly entitled document ‘Statement of US Policy on Communist Bloc Aviation Activities’ ten months later, in February 1964. Yet, at that time, even the State Department realised that the strategy of global aerial containment was practically unfeasible (see below in the main text). Cf. FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. IX, Memorandum by the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs (Harriman), 19 April 1963, 709–11 and NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder General Policy, Ferguson to Guthrie, 18 February 1964. 25 NARA, RG 59, SF, Box 3, folder Civil Aviation, McGhee to the Secretary (Rusk), 23 January 1963, but see also corresponding documents in the folder Civil Air—US Policies International in the same box. 26 NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder Civil Air Transport Negotiations, 1962–66, Memorandum for McGeorge Bundy (White House) by Llewellyn E. Thomson (DoS), 28 January 1963.

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Archenemies Getting in Touch Contrary to their negative attitude in the post-World War II era, the Soviets were relatively open to aviation contacts with the outside world during the interwar years. Typical of this was cooperation with Weimar Germany, including the joint-stock Russian-German airline Deruluft (Deutsche-Russische Luftverkehrgesellschaft), joint production of engines and completed aircraft by Junkers at the Fili factory near Moscow and a highly secret Reichswehr training and proving ground at Lipetsk airfield. In exchange, Red Army officers familiarised themselves in Germany with the tactics of Blitzkrieg, for which most of them later paid with their lives, and Soviet designers (Tupolev in particular) learned how to manufacture all-metal planes using corrugated duraluminium-covered airframes. Nonetheless, Soviet-German relations, already cooling in the late 1920s, became even colder after the Nazis seized power in 1933. The business and military connections were gradually replaced by Dutch and French influence while Aeroflot, which came into being in March 1932, initiated routes to Prague and Stockholm in August 1936 and July 1937, respectively. Whereas the former line came through a pool agreement with CSA, the latter was with the Swedish airline A. B. Aerotransport. Only a month after the connection between Moscow and Stockholm was opened, Deruluft was dissolved.27 By the mid-1930s, Soviet aviation circles began to look for inspiration much further afield than Western Europe, however. On 10 July 1935, the newspaper Izvestia published a report from a tour which Andrei Tupolev and his team recently undertook in the US. Tupolev seemed to be particularly impressed by the organisation of air routes and their growing automation. Admiring the elaborate system of light and radio beacons, which enabled aircraft to stay on course day and night under all weather conditions using on-board instruments and semi-automated

27 For Deruluft see e.g. Karl-Dieter Seifert, Der deutsche Luftverkehr 1926–1945 – auf dem Weg zum Weltverkehr (Bonn: Bernard&Graefe Verlag, 1999), 215–22 and ‘DERULUFT – die Luftbrücke nach Osten’, Flieger, February 1976, 54. For discussion of foreign interests in the Soviet aviation during this era, cf. Higham, Greenwood and Hardesty, Russian Aviation and Air Power, passim. But see also infra and ADM, Box LR 04319, Pierre Cot, aides leave for Russia to cement bond, 13 September 1933; Poseshcheniye SSSR frantsuzskim ministrom aviatsii [Visit of the USSR by the French Minister of Aviation], 15 September 1933; Na aviatsionnykh zavodakh Frantsii [At French Aircraft Factories], 20 May 1934.

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transmissions of weather forecasting, he concluded that aviation in the US was second to none and far ahead of Europe’s.28 A year before, his colleagues from the Tsentralniy Aerogidrodinamicheskiy Institut (Central State Aero-Hydrodynamic Institute [TsAGI]) had been equally astonished. Describing the latest aircraft models such as the Douglas DC-2 and Lockheed Electra for the newspaper Pravda, they paid great attention to recent aerodynamic improvements including the addition of drag flaps, the use of retractable landing gears and propellers with variable pitch blades. Despite proudly stating that the USSR was ahead of the capitalist countries in production of gigantic planes such as the Tupolev ANT-20/25 and in electric welding techniques, the TsAGI engineers called for an immediate construction of a wind tunnel which the Americans, British, French and Germans had already at their disposal, to help with developing new designs. They emphasised that the high costs should not be allowed to prohibit such an undertaking as it was evident that aviation supremacy was likely to decide the outcome of wars in the future.29 These voices found a listening ear in the Kremlin. As a result, in 1936, the Soviet government briskly negotiated with the Douglas Aircraft Corporation an agreement which enabled the licensed production of DC-3 planes in the USSR. And the Lisunov Li-2s (initially designated PS-84) soon became the main transport of both Aeroflot and Red Army Air Force for the next two decades.30 The following year, 1937, saw another major landmark in the history of American-Soviet aviation. Surpassing earlier achievements by aviators from both countries who flew between the US and USSR over the Bering Strait, two Soviet crews—Chkalov, Baydukov, Belyakov and Gromov, Yumashev, Danilin—reached Vancouver in the State of Washington on 20 June and San Jacinto in California on 14 July, respectively, from Moscow

28 ADM, Box LR 00805, Iz amerikanskikh vpechatleniy [American Impressions], 10 July 1935. 29 ADM, Box LR 04319, Na aviatsionnikh zavodakh Soyedinennykh Shtatov Ameriki [At Aircraft Factories in the USA], 22 May 1934. 30 Cf. e.g. ‘Civil Aviation Cooperates in Russian War Effort’, Aviation, November 1941, 51; Reina Pennington, ‘From Chaos to the Eve of the Great Patriotic War, 1922–41’ and Jones, ‘The Rise and Fall of Aeroflot’, in Higham, Greenwood, and Hardesty (eds.), Russian Aviation and Air Power, 41 and 241–56 respectively, but see also passim in other chapters of the volume.

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over the North Pole. While Chkalov was originally destined for San Francisco but had to land at Vancouver due to bad weather, Gromov’s flight of nearly 11,000 kilometres set a new long-distance record.31 Immediately after the first crossing, the Soviet government set up a special commission to prepare the opening of a Moscow–San Francisco transpolar route. At first Washington procrastinated. The Roosevelt Administration considered the immediate start of flights a little premature since all technical, security and business aspects of the proposed line needed to be properly addressed. Then another famous Soviet flier of the era, Sigizmund Levanevsky, and his crew of six went missing when attempting at transpolar crossing between Moscow and Fairbanks, Alaska.32 That combined with the fact that Pan Am was showing no interest in the route, the US government decided in May 1938 that more proving flights were required prior to any further discussion of the possible route.33 In March 1939, Aeroflot declared itself ready to commence a transpolar service between Moscow and New York immediately, but, as the British weekly Flight laconically commented, the news was simply ‘too good to be true.’ It did not happen, but the Soviets did not give up completely and in July 1940 invited Pan Am to open a bureau in Moscow, but perhaps predictably, little came of this.34 31 Cf. e.g. ADM, Box LR 00805, Letnoye puti v Ameriku [Air Routes to America], 10

September 1936; ‘Russia Making History’, Flight, 24 June 1937; ‘Russia’s Fine Effort’, Flight, 22 July 1937, 110; ‘Russians Cross Pole’, Aviation, August 1937, 64 and ‘Soviet Union Trans-Polar Flights, 1937’, Arctic Regions 2, no. 14 (1937), 97–8. 32 In fact, this was Levanevsky’s second attempt at trans-polar crossing. In August 1935, he made an effort at Moscow–San Francisco crossing aboard of an ANT-25 aircraft. However, an oil leak developed early into the flight which forced Levanevsky to interrupt his mission over the Barents Sea. This incident, along with vivid foreign contact, may have eventually contributed to Tupolev’s arrest on 21 October 1937. Charged of sabotage and espionage, Tupolev and number of his companions were lucky enough to survive the purges, but were imprisoned in NKVD’s controlled premises near Moscow where they continued to work on new aircraft designs. Cf. ADM, Box LR 00805, Marshrut transarkticheskogo perelta [Transarctic Flight Route], 30 July 1935; ‘Tale of Two Oceans’, Aviation, September 1937, 63–4 and Greenwood, ‘The Designers’, in Higham, Greenwood and Hardesty (eds.), Russian Aviation and Air Power, 170–1. 33 ADM, Box LR 00478, UdSSR: US-Kommission, 24 June 1937; Sowjetunion: I. Moskau.(0)., 30 July 1937 and Sowjetunion: 3. Moskau.(0)., 20 May 1938. 34 Cf. ‘Polar Service?’, Flight, 23 March 1939, b and ADM, Box LR 00478, Keine Vetretung der P.A.A. in Moskau, 4 July 1940. For general context it is worth to remind that neither the US nor USSR were the belligerents in the World War II at that time. Beyond any doubt, Aeroflot and A. B. Aerotransport maintained the connection between

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Four years later, in August 1944 with the allies now looking all set for victory and post-war matters coming to prominence, the Soviets made overtures for a non-direct connection between Washington or New York and Moscow via Cairo or for a joint US-USSR airline to serve the route non-stop. However, as Chapter 1 details, Washington did not respond positively. After this, the idea of establishing air connections between the two countries remained dormant for the next 11 years. In October 1955, an eight man delegation comprising the members of the US Congress transportation subcommittee led by Representative Oren Harris travelled to the USSR as the first inter-parliamentary visit since the end of the World War II. In Moscow, during the talks with senior Soviet government and Aeroflot officials, the Congressmen were told that the Soviet carrier was ready to entertain the possibility for opening air routes between the two nations. In this regard, the Soviet authorities encouraged Pan Am to send its representatives to Moscow at an early date to explore the matter in more detail.35 In fact, Juan Trippe, Pan Am’s president, had written before all this to the CAB Chairman, Ross Rizley, on 30 August 1955, that his company was ready to contribute towards ‘increasing personal travel and trade between the Free World and the USSR.’ Should the opening of a connection to Moscow be in the US ‘national interest,’ he remarked then the airline was ‘prepared to move in a prompt and orderly manner’ and extend either its service to Helsinki or Berlin on to Moscow. Initially, Rizley replied to Trippe’s letter in a non-committal way on 21 September, but then on 13 December 1955 he changed his tone. A second letter authorised Pan Am to ‘investigate the prospects for an interline arrangement with the Soviet carrier, Aeroflot, involving exchange of traffic at a point

Moscow and Stockholm just until the outbreak of Operation Barbarossa on 22 June 1941. In 1940, Aeroflot reportedly flew on regular or semi-regular services to Berlin and Sofia, too. Cf. ADM, Box LR 00478, U.d.S.S.R./Schweden: Moskau-Stockholm, 9 May 1941; ‘Moscow to Berlin’, Flight, 18 January 1940, 463; ‘Soviet Air Transport’, Flight, 16 May 1940, 463; ‘Scandinavian Effort’, Flight, 6 April 1944 and ‘Aviation Abroad’, Aviation, December 1940, 106. 35 ADM, Box LR 00478, Harris Subcommittee Discusses US-Soviet Air Deal; PAA Mentioned, 12 October 1955 and Amerikanischer Luftverkehrsausschuß verhandelt mit der Aeroflot, 15 October 1955.

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or points outside Soviet territory.’36 The CAB letter of 13 December indeed represented a wider consensus within the administration since Pan Am received the same information both in writing and during conversations with the State Department officials. These exchanges took place on several occasions in late December 1955 and during the first quarter of 1956.37 On 24 April 1956, the Pan Am’s Vice-Presidents Russell Adams and Samuel Pryor called at the Soviet Embassy in Washington where they were advised that officials in Moscow were considering awarding the American carrier ‘a unilateral permit’ for a route to the USSR until Aeroflot would be ready to start its own services to the US. Since the State Department considered ‘a unilateral permit… even more desirable than a reciprocal exchange under a bilateral agreement,’ the airline officials applied for visa to travel to the USSR with the aim ‘to discuss the details of possible Pan American service to Moscow.’38 After some delay, in August, the Soviet Embassy in Washington issued a visa entitling Pan Am representative, John T. Shannon, Atlantic Division operation manager, to discuss and conclude a routine interline agreement with Aeroflot. This took place on 24 August 1956 when Shannon and Aeroflot’s assistant director Zakharov signed a standard IATA-type interline agreement.39 Despite Shannon reporting that Zakharov toasted the agreement as ‘merely a beginning of a very close relationship between the two companies,’ in the following weeks the relations between the two companies cooled down. Reportedly, Aeroflot’s leadership was offended that Pan Am did not send to Moscow

36 Cf. NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, folder USSR-US Negotiations: August 1955–

December 1958, Letter from Trippe (Pan Am) to Rizley (CAB), 30 August 1955 and Letters from Rizley (CAB) to Trippe (Pan Am), 21 September and 13 December 1955 respectively. 37 NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, folder USSR-US Negotiations, DoS to Moscow Embassy, 9 February 1956; Letters from Barringer (DoS) to Adams (Pan Am) and Prochnow (DoS) to Trippe, 20 February 1956 and 24 April 1956. 38 NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, folder USSR-US Negotiations, Letter from Trippe (Pan Am) to Dulles (SecState), 24 April 1956 and Memorandum for Under Secretary (Hoover) by Prochnow, 24 April 1956. 39 NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, folder USSR-US Negotiations, DoS to Embassy Moscow, 21 August 1956; Embassy Moscow to DoS, 23 and 24 August 1956 respectively and DoS to Embassy Reykjavik, 14 September 1956.

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at least a vice-president but only a relatively junior official with no power to discuss an eventual launch of Pan Am’s service to Moscow.40 Another attempt to revitalise the somewhat anaemic relations came in late October 1957 during bilateral talks in Washington on the subject of technical, scientific and cultural exchanges. The last of the 52 proposals, which the Soviet representatives tabled, concerned the establishment of reciprocal air transportation between the two countries. While leaving all ‘technical discussions’ and ‘substantive exploration’ of issues at hand for later, the parties reached an in-principle agreement on establishing air services. This was incorporated as Section XIV into the final document which John Foster Dulles’ Special Assistant, William S. B. Lacy, and Soviet Ambassador to the US, Georgi N. Zaroubin, signed on 27 January 1958.41 Yet, the aviation officials in Washington were in no hurry. It was only an ‘informal remark’ that ‘the USSR [was] prepared to commence negotiations’ made by the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, to the American Ambassador in Moscow, Llewellyn E. Thompson in late July 1958, which forced them to act.42 With Pan Am insisting that a suitable capacity sharing formula should be found otherwise it was at high risk of being heavily outperformed by Aeroflot,43 Thompson handed a note 40 According to Shannon, however, the Aeroflot officials did not broach this question at all, cf. NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, folder USSR-US Negotiations, Letter from Adams (Pan Am) to Durfee (CAB) including business trip report by Shannon and ADM, Box LR 00478, USSR-PAA Relation Reported to Have Cooled and PAA zeigte wenig Interesse für Aeroflot-Pläne, both 4 September 1956. 41 NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, folder USSR-US Negotiations, DoS circular telegram, 24 January 1958; Agreement between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic on Exchanges in the Cultural, Technical and Educational Fields and Joint US-USSR Communiqué, both 27 January 1958. 42 NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, Letters from Mann (Assistant Secretary Economic Affairs) to Thompson (Ambassador Moscow) and to Durfee (CAB Chairman), 25 August and 10 September 1958 respectively. 43 Pan Am correctly expected that the majority of the travelers between the two countries would be the Americans. Since, unlike Soviet citizens, they would be free to choose an airline with which they wished to travel, ‘a great many of them would undoubtedly be attracted to the Soviet air service, partly by novelty and partly through its offering a high degree of luxury, which the Soviet Union could well afford for the propaganda advantages….’ In the end, should a liberal Bermuda-type agreement be concluded, the company warned, Washington ‘would place millions of dollars provided by United States citizens at the service of Soviet air transportation, of Soviet propaganda, and of Soviet military and political effort generally.’ While in the end, it was not the luxury of Soviet aircraft which forced the Americans to choose Aeroflot for their travels, this assessment

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by which the United States invited the Soviet Union for bilateral aviation talks on 24 October 1958. Albeit the First Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vasili Kuznetsov, ‘expressed pleasure’ upon receipt of the note, the official response from the Ministry arrived only two months later, on 25 December. It stated that the matter was ‘under consideration of competent Soviet organi[s]ations’ and that the ministry would inform the American Embassy as soon as it would receive their ‘appropriate views.’44 Yet, it was not until March 1960 that the State Department heard a reply to its invitation to parley delivered one and half years previously. In a note dated 30 March, the Soviet Ministry declared itself to be ‘now ready to open discussions’ on an aviation agreement. To this the State Department replied on 22 April through the American Embassy in Moscow inviting the Soviet team to Washington for initial talks on the 18 July. The downing of the U-2 spy plane and capture of its pilot, Francis G. Powers on 1 May by the Soviets notwithstanding, the preparations for the meeting continued because of the ‘general disposition’ on part of the US Administration to ‘continue normal negotiations and exchanges with the Soviet Union.’ However, on 9 July, the Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, Foy D. Kohler, briefed the Secretary of State Christian Herter, that the Soviets had announced that Powers’ interrogation was completed and that he was to be ‘arraigned for trial by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court.’ Two days later, Kohler added that the State Department had received yet another note in which this time Moscow confirmed a ‘deliberate shooting down’ of yet another US Air Force plane on 1 July. This was a RB-47 reconnaissance aircraft that was collecting signal intelligence near Kola Peninsula in international airspace where it was attacked by a Soviet MiG-19 fighter, resulting in the loss of four crew members. The two surviving fliers were detained and sent to Moscow for trial. Under these circumstances, and in the light of likely ‘adverse domestic reaction,’ it was decided to postpone the air negotiations ‘until a more suitable time.’45

proved correct and indeed prophetic as Chapters 7 demonstrates. Cf. NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, Pan Am Memorandum on Negotiations for US-USSR Air Transport Agreement, 11 September 1958. 44 NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, DoS to Moscow Embassy, 2 October 1958 and Moscow Embassy to DoS, 24 October and 25 December 1958 respectively. 45 NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder Civil Air Transport Negotiations, 1960–1, 197, Note of the Embassy Moscow for the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 22 April

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Such time seemed to arrive with the new Kennedy Administration taking the reins in January 1961. As part of the secret deal over the release of two RB-47 crews negotiated by US Ambassador Thompson in Moscow, Washington committed to relaunching negotiations with Moscow over a civil aviation agreement. To this effect, as ‘one of the first steps… to normali[s]e relations with the USSR,’ the State Department invited the Soviet side by an aide-memoire of 24 January to reopen negotiations. Moscow accepted by a note of 4 February. Two months later, on 24 March, the State Department transmitted a draft of bilateral aviation agreement, approved by the president, to the Soviet Embassy in Washington and invited the Soviet negotiators to talks in the US capital on or about 25 April. Since the Soviet side required more time to compare the American proposal with their own draft, the opening of negotiations was rescheduled for 18 July.46 After something over two weeks, the talks produced an agreement which was initialled on 4 August 1961. Subsequently, Pan Am and Aeroflot approved an Agreement for Provision of Services which was signed ten days later on 14 August. These provided for non-stop services between New York and Moscow twice a week during the summer season (1 April–31 October) and once a week during the winter season (1 November–31 March). Pan Am was authorised to fly with the B 707 jetliner and Aeroflot with Tu-114 turboprops. However, three days before the main US-USSR bilateral agreement was to be signed on 21 August 1961, President Kennedy met with Secretary Rusk and Assistant Secretary Kohler in the White House. At that meeting in the light of the unfolding situation in Berlin, where the construction of the Wall had begun on 13 August, the president decided to postpone

1960 and Memorandum for Herter (Secretary) by Kohler (Assistant Secretary), 12 July 1960. 46 NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder Civil Air Transport Negotiations, 1960–1, Memorandums for Rusk (Secretary) by Kohler (Assistant Secretary), 7 February and 15 June 1961 respectively as well as Memorandum for Rusk (Secretary) by Tyler (Dep. Ass. for European Aff.), 25 July 1961. For the US draft proposal cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 4, folder USSR—Bilateral #3, Draft of Proposed US/USSR Bilateral Air Transport Agreement, 12 July 1960, but see also other papers in this folder as well as other folders in this box pertaining to the US-USSR talks and documenting the discussions within the concerned US departments at the turn of 1950–1960s.

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the ‘actual signing and implementation’ of the air agreement ‘to a more propitious time.’47 After eleven months, in July 1962, the Kennedy Administration was reminded of the outstanding agreement by Yuri Zhukov, a foreign editor at Pravda newspaper and prominent political figure. During a reception held for leading journalists at the American Embassy in Moscow on 18 July 1962, Zhukov inquired of outgoing Ambassador Thompson whether the administration could finalise the air transport agreement in order to ‘help’ Khrushchev to face ‘strong opposition to his policies’ of domestic economic reforms.48 Two days later, Kennedy spoke with William R. Tyler, Deputy Assistant for European Affairs but he did not want to ‘make a conciliatory gesture of this kind’ unless Moscow would commit to abstain from any ‘unilateral action detrimental to the West on Berlin.’ This view was also shared by Charles E. Bohlen, Special Assistant for Soviet Affairs and former American Ambassador in Moscow.49 Then in December 1962, upon leaving for Paris for the meeting of the North Atlantic Council, Secretary Rusk ordered the State Department to reexamine the desirability of concluding US-USSR aviation agreement as a preliminary for possible future action. Considering the subject in late January 1963, Thompson, appointed Ambassador at Large for Soviet 47 NARA, RG 237, CCF, Box 3, folder Civil Aviation—USSR: 1962–1966, Civil Air Transport Agreement between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 21 August 1961 as well as NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder Civil Air Transport Negotiations, 1960–1, Agreement for Bilateral Provision of Services between the Main Administration of the Civil Air Fleet of the USSR and Pan American World Airways, Inc., 14 August 1961 and Memorandum for the files by Kohler (Assistant Secretary), 18 August 1961. 48 In this regard, the Soviet leader did not leave the aviation sector unattended. For example, sometime in 1962 or early 1963, Khrushchev at the Politburo meeting criticised that Ivchenko AI-20 turboprop power plants fitted to Il-18s and An-10s airliners had an overhaul period of only 500 hours whereas the British turboprop engines kept operating for 2200–2500 hours. In response, the Ivchenko design bureau reportedly developed the engines which pass a 8000 hours overhaul test but the Soviets somehow forgot to deliver these engines to Ghanaians whose Il-18s had to be overhauled every 300 hours as mentioned in previous chapter. Cf. Chapter 3, ft. 47 and ‘Khrushchev Admits Turboprop Problems’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 13 January 1964, 82. For original reference see FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. V, Telegram from the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State, 19 July 1962, 463–4. 49 Cf. NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder Civil Air Transport Negotiations, 1962– 66, Memorandum for Bundy (White House) by Brubeck (DoS Executive Secretary), 27 July 1962.

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Affairs after returning from Moscow, suggested using the aviation agreement as a bargaining chip to extract from Moscow a concession on some major issue such as ban on nuclear weapon tests. Thompson’s quid pro quo proposal was subsequently accepted while the only value that had changed over time was the subject for which the aviation agreement should be traded. For example, the legal adviser to the Department of State, Andreas F. Lowenfeld, in July 1963 suggested amendments to the Agreement should ‘include a New York-Berlin-Moscow route’ since ‘after all, much of the discussion over Berlin [had] turned on questions of transportation’ between the exclave and the Federal Republic.50 Nonetheless, on 4 September, the CAB chairman, Allan S. Boyd, sent a letter to Dean Rusk informing the Secretary that the Board had re-assed its position towards the agreement. Looking at the issue at hand from the ‘standpoint of aviation economics,’ the Board determined that ‘a New York/Moscow air route would be of marginal economic value for a US carrier at best for sometime in the future’ and would thus be ‘disadvantageous to the United States.’51 Still, to keep the game in play, Foy Kohler, who replaced Thomson in the post of American Ambassador to Moscow in September 1962, mentioned during a meeting with the Foreign Minister Gromyko on 3 December 1963 that the flights between New York and Moscow could begin in June the following year. A few days later, at invitation from Aeroflot director Yevgeny Loginov, the FAA Administrator Najeeb Halaby went to Moscow on 11 December to discuss technical issues related to the pending agreement. Albeit Halaby found the Tu-114 aircraft extremely noisy, the result of the week-long talks with various Soviet aviation officials was that ‘there [were] no known insurmountable technical or operation obstacles to the New York-Moscow service’ as he informed Secretary Rusk after his return. After further consideration, Rusk told Halaby that he would ‘aim at signing the Air Agreement but

50 Cf. NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder Civil Air Transport Negotiations, 1962– 66, Letter from Brubeck (DoS Executive Secretary) to McGhee (Under Secretary for Pol. Aff.), 14 December 1962; Memorandum for Bundy (White House) by Thomson (DoS), 28 January 1963 and Memorandum for Meeker (Deputy Legal Adviser) by Lowenfeld (Legal Adviser), 29 July 1963. 51 Cf. NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, Letter from Boyd (CAB Chairman) to Rusk (Secretary), 4 September 1963.

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not before February’ 1964. As it turned out this was an essential precondition since Loginov refused to consider any technical measures unless a 1961 air services agreement was signed.52 Yet, half a year later, it was clear enough that any signing of the air services agreement would certainly not take place until after the November 1964 presidential elections.53 Immediately after them, Soviet affairs specialists within the State Department urged Dean Rusk, who continued as the Secretary of State during Lyndon B. Johnson’s second term, to endorse the air agreement since it provided an ‘excellent vehicle for an initial step forward in our relations’ with the new General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev who ousted Khrushchev from the leadership on 14 October. However, such a view was instantly countered by Latin American specialists including the Assistant Secretary of State for InterAmerican Affairs, Thomas C. Mann. They continuously objected to the wisdom of the air agreement and argued that its conclusion would only serve to facilitate Soviet and Cuban services to Latin America. The latter position prevailed and the US-USSR transport agreement consequently entered ‘a state of suspension’ as a briefing paper by the Office of Soviet Union Affairs noted in late February 1966.54 However, an urgent review of the issue following a luncheon between president’s Special Assistant, Walt W. Rostow, Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara and Secretary Rusk on 30 August 1966 concluded that using the agreement ‘as a bargaining item… [had become] counterproductive.’ Instead, Ambassador Kohler suggested signing the agreement ‘as evidence of the sincerity [of US desire] to maintain normal 52 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 5, folder USSR—Bilateral: 1966, Embassy Moscow to DoS, 20 December 1963 containing minutes of Halaby meetings and letter exchange with Loginov (enclosure nos. 1–5). See also FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. V, Telegram from the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State, 3 December 1963, 838–9 and Memorandum of Conversation, 23 December 1963, 848–52. 53 Cf. NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder Civil Air Transport Negotiations: 1962– 66, FAA Memorandum for File by Maloy, 23 April 1964. 54 Cf. NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder Civil Air Transport Negotiations: 1962– 66, Memorandum for Rusk (Secretary) by Mann (Ass. Secretary), 9 November 1964 and Briefing Paper for S[oviet] and [E]astern European [E]xchanges Staff, 28 February 1966. See also FRUS, 1964–1968, vol. XIV, Memorandum from Secretary of State Rusk to President Johnson, 4 April 1964, 53–4 and Information Memorandum from the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (Davis) to Secretary of State Rusk, 9 November 1964, 170–1 and Telegram from the Embassy in the Soviet Union to the Department of State, 3 December 1963, 838–9.

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relations with the USSR.’ The Bureau of European Affairs seconded this view and pointed out that the signature of the document would be ‘a sweetener in a prolonged stand-off situation’ between Washington and Moscow. At this time, President Johnson agreed and asked Rusk to consult with Congressional leaders over the matter. The feed-back from Congress was supportive and first Kohler in Moscow and then Rusk in New York then discussed aviation matters with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko. Coming to the US for the UN General Assembly meeting, Gromyko met with Rusk twice on 22 and 24 September, respectively. Despite existing difficulties over Vietnam and Berlin, it became clear that the Soviet Foreign Minister would not allow these issues to preclude either the conclusion of an aviation agreement or talks on other technical matters such as the peaceful use of atomic energy and the Outer Space Treaty which the US, UK and USSR signed on 27 January 1967.55 But this was hardly surprising. Already during a Pan Am Board of Directors’ visit to the USSR, Aeroflot’s First Deputy Director, G. S. Shchetchikov, on 23 June told Najeeb Halaby, who joined Pan Am as a vice-president after his tenure at FAA ended in 1965, that opening of a New York– Moscow service route ‘could contribute to the settlement of many other problems such as the conflict in Vietnam’ the continuation of which the Soviet official considered ‘senseless.’56 Thereafter, Soviet and American representatives swiftly met in Washington on 18 October and struck a deal over the updated 1961 Civil Air Transport Agreement within two weeks. This was signed by Undersecretary Thompson and Aeroflot director Loginov on 4 November 1966. Compared to the 1961 version, the major difference was the addition of four intermediate stops for technical purposes. These included Oslo, Stockholm, Shannon and Gander. To this effect, a 1961 Pan Am-Aeroflot agreement was modified as well. The revised text came into effect on 23 January 1967.57 However, at this time it also became apparent that the 55 See FRUS, 1964–1968, vol. XIV, Memorandum from the Executive Secretary of the Department of State (read) to the President Secretary of State Rusk to President’s Special Assistant (Rostow), 31 August 1966, 413–5; Editorial Note, 418–9 and Memorandum from the Ambassador at Large (Thompson) to Secretary of State Rusk, 28 September 1966, 419–20. 56 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CCF, Box 3, folder Civil Aviation—USSR, 1962–66, Embassy Moscow to DoS: Enclosure 3, 1 July 1966. 57 Cf. NARA, RG 59, USSTR, Box 14, folder Civil Air Transport Negotiations: 1962– 66, US-USSR Civil Air Talks: Item for President’s Evening Reading, 26 October 1966 and

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early introduction of the route would face another problem. Despite the Department of State pressing for flights to commence in May as agreed, the Soviets, rather than flying the obsolete Tu-114 turboprops, desired to wait until the new Il-62 quadjets would become available. In addition to purely image and propaganda aspects, the problem also concerned the refurbishment of the former aircraft with costly beacon transponders and distance measuring equipment. Since the Il-62s would already come with these instruments, the Soviets refused to mount them on Tu-114s and rather placed ‘technical’ obstacles in order to defer the opening of the route.58 In March 1967, for example, the US offered London, Stockholm and Copenhagen as additional intermediate stops, but the Soviet carrier insisted on Montreal where it began to fly in November 1966 under the terms of a bilateral air agreement which Canada and the USSR signed five months earlier. Further procrastination followed. In late April 1967, the Soviet Embassy on behalf of Aeroflot informed the FAA that the airline would not commit to accepting absolute liability for persons, luggage and goods under the amended 1929 Warsaw Convention.59 In the end, as the FAA Assistant Administrator, Raymond B. Maloy, and other members of his team predicted already in January 1966, the eventual ‘slippage’ because of Soviet insisting on Il-62s could be longer and the services would not likely begin until 1968. This proved correct with inaugural

NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 5, folder USSR—Bilateral: 1966, DoS circular telegram by Rusk, 3 November 1966. See also ‘New York–Moscow’, Flight International, 2 February 1967, 160. 58 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 5, folder USSR—Bilateral: 1966, Embassy Moscow to DoS, 19 January 1967; DoS to Embassy Moscow, 24 March and 12 June 1967 respectively. The protocols to the technical meetings between American and Soviet delegations can be found in NARA, RG 237, RRIAP, Box 1, folder Air Transport Agreements—US/USSR (1). 59 NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 5, folder USSR—Bilateral: 1966, DoS to Embassy

Moscow including Enclosures 1–5, 31 March 1967 and DoS to Embassy Moscow, 26 April 1967 as well as NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #3, Canada, Soviet sign Montreal–Moscow Air Pact, undated. See also ‘New York–Moscow Flights May Starts Soon’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 25 September 1967, 26–7.

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flights by Pan Am and Aeroflot departing New York and Moscow respectively on 15 July 1968.60 Yet, the convoluted US-USSR negotiations which took some 13 years until the New York–Moscow route became reality were not the only set of talks in which Moscow and its Prague proxy were actively engaged in with the Western countries during the 1950s and 1960s.

60 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 5, folder USSR—Bilateral: 1966, DoS to Embassy Moscow, 9 December 1966 and Embassy Moscow to DoS, 19 January 1967. See also ‘New York–Moscow Inaugurals’, Flight International, 18 July 1968, 82.

CHAPTER 5

Trading Bananas for Permafrost

Testing the Ground In late February 1957, SAS introduced a twice-weekly transpolar flight from Copenhagen to Tokyo. Using the ultimate ‘Seven Seas’ version of the piston-powered DC-7 airliner with a maximum range of 9000 km, the company connected the two cities via Anchorage in about 30 hours. Heading over Greenland, Canada, Alaska and Pacific, this pioneering connection was about 4000 km shorter than the established route to Japan over the Middle East, India and Southeast Asia. This covered approximately 12,000 km while flights between Europe and Japan took some 44 hours on average. With the advent of faster jet transports, SAS estimated it could cut travel time on the polar service to about 12 hours, but the ultimate hope of its officials was to someday connect the Danish and Japanese capitals via Siberia. If that came about, the distance between Copenhagen and Tokyo would only be 8000 km and the route would almost be identical with the shortest, great circle path between the two cities.1 However, to do that SAS or indeed any other airline would of course need Soviet agreement. 1 ‘SAS Ready to Fly Polar Route to Tokyo’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 14 June 1954, 91 and ‘SAS Starts Service on Transpolar Route’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 28 January 1957, 57.

© The Author(s) 2020 P. Svik, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1_5

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When SAS officials had first raised such an option during talks with Aeroflot representatives in October 1955, their proposals received a lukewarm reception. Yet, two months after the Scandinavian carrier launched its Polar route, the Soviets announced that they were planning to open a connecting trans-Siberian service between Copenhagen and Tokyo via Moscow and Beijing with the Tu-104 jets.2 To this effect, on several occasions in 1957 and 1958, the Soviets offered the Japanese landing rights at Khabarovsk for routes from Tokyo or other points in Japan in exchange for a Moscow–Tokyo route for Aeroflot. Unsurprisingly, the Japanese declined and demanded the rights to Moscow and, eventually, points beyond. To this the Soviets would not concede, arguing that there was ‘no international air route… at present between Khabarovsk and Moscow’ and for that reason ‘no foreign aircraft [could] conduct flights over [the Siberian] region.’ Instead, they proposed that the Japanese could fly to Moscow from points in Europe. In this regard, Copenhagen and Berlin were mentioned but the Japanese told the Soviet Embassy in Tokyo in sharp terms that they would not even consider such an unbalanced offer.3 In 1960, the discussions about an opening of services between Tokyo and Moscow revived but occasional overtures from both sides over next three years were to no avail. In general, as the American Embassy reported to Washington in January 1962, the Japanese considered rights to Moscow ‘extremely valuable, perhaps even more valuable than the right to an air route to New York.’ However, it was not ‘service to Moscow itself which [was] so attractive but the opportunity to fly beyond Moscow to Europe’ because ‘a trans-Siberian route through Moscow to London [was] approximately 1500 miles [2400 km] less than a [Polar] route via Anchorage and Frobisher [Bay] and approximately 2900 miles [4700 km] less than a route through southern Asia.’ But, as the dispatch emphasised, ‘the hard core of the Japanese problem [was] to obtain Soviet authority

2 ADM, Box LR 00478, Die skandinavisch-russischen Flugverbindungen, 17 October 1955 and SAS-Verhandlungen mit Moskau?, 26 October 1955. See also ‘Brevities’, Flight, 26 April 1957, 561. 3 FRUS, 1955–1957, vol. IX, U.S. Civil Aviation Policy Toward the Sino-Soviet Bloc, 9 December 1957, 492 and NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 90, folder USSR-US Negotiations, Embassy Tokyo to DoS, 8 September 1958. See also Johannes L. Kneifel, Fluggesellschaften und Luftverkehrssysteme der sozialistichen Staaten (Nördlingen: Verlag F. Steinmeier, 1980), 141.

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to operate commercial aircraft over Siberia.’4 With no prospects of the Soviets allowing the Japanese to use their aircraft in the foreseeable future, in October 1963, Tokyo therefore proposed that Japan Airlines would charter Tu-114 turboprops ‘using Japanese radio operators, stewardess and plane marking.’ Such chartered services should be temporary for a period of one or two years after that a full reciprocal service should be established. The Soviets rebuffed the offer again with an argument that since the aircraft would be in Japan Airlines livery ‘the Soviet flag [would] not [still be] permitted in Tokyo.’5 On the other side of the Euro-Asian land mass, along with the Scandinavians, the British tried to open up ‘the Siberian fortress’ for air travel, too. In early September 1955, Sir Miles Thomas, chairman of the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), travelled to Moscow hoping to extract from the Soviets trans-Siberian rights between Moscow and Beijing. In comparison with existing routes, this would have allowed BOAC to save some 5600 kilometres [3480 mi] on flights to Tokyo, about 2000 kilometres [1240 mi] on flights to Hong Kong and approximately 800 kilometres [500 mi] on flights to Sidney. Waiting for delivery of Bristol Britannia turboprop airliners, BOAC lacked a long-range plane capable of flying to Tokyo over the Polar route and for that reason Thomas put much faith in striking a deal with the Soviets. This would have enabled the Corporation to use current machines and, exploit the shorter route between London and Tokyo via Moscow and Beijing, which was 3200 kilometres less than the Polar route. Nonetheless, Thomas’ hopes remained unfulfilled since the Soviets were only interested in

4 NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #1, Asia 1961–62, Embassy Tokyo to DoS, 4 January 1961. 5 NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #1, Asia 1961–62, Telegrams from Embassy Tokyo to DoS dated 10 May 1962 and 20 October 1962, respectively, as well as NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 2, folder International Civil Aviation Intelligence Resumes #2, 1962–63, DoS Weekly Civil Air Summary, 27 October– 2 November 1963, Embassy Tokyo Comments on JAL-Aeroflot Proposal, 28 October 1963 and Soviets Not Likely to Accept Japanese Airlines Charter Proposal, 1 November 1963. See also Kneifel, Fluggesellschaften und Luftverkehrssysteme, 141 and ‘JAL to Inaugurate Flights Beyond Moscow’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 17 November 1969, 36.

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opening a route to London at this time and were not prepared to trade a route across Siberia.6 Following an exchange of letters between Gerald d’Erlanger, who replaced Thomas as BOAC chairman in 1956, and the transport and aviation minister Watkinson in December 1957, early 1958 saw a renewed interest on part of the main British overseas carrier to ‘open up’ shorter connections to the Far East, Southeast Asia and Australia.7 On 14 January, the Corporation requested the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation to extract from the Czechoslovaks, who were coming to London for aviation talks in early February, rights beyond Prague for routes to Honk Kong, Tokyo, Australia and East Africa via Damascus, Cairo or some other points in the Middle East. After consulting the Foreign Office, the ministry officials decided not to table these requests at all. The reason was that neither they nor diplomats at the Foreign Office regarded traffic rights at Prague as sufficient quid pro quo for demands they expected CSA to make in return for rights for entry into Africa, Asia and North America. In the end, this decision proved foresighted. The Czechoslovak delegation eventually inquired about rights for a transatlantic route but the British negotiators refused to discuss any rights beyond London claiming, in contrast with reality, that BOAC had ‘no immediate intention’ to operate ‘through Prague to the Middle and Far East.’8 However, with regard to the Soviet Union, the situation looked entirely differently as Robert S. Swann of the Foreign Office’s General Department pointed out in his minute of 2 July 1958. Because the country did not adhere to the 1944 International Air Transit Agreement and covered ‘a huge landmass conveniently situated from the point 6 ADM, Box LR 00498, London–Tokio ohne Umweg?, 2 September 1955 and ADM, Box LR 00478, Britische Luftfahrtdelegation nach Moskau eingeladen, 26 September 1955. 7 See TNA, FO 371/133724, d’Erlanger (BOAC) to Watkinson (MTCA), 13 March 1958 and ‘BOAC Seeks Route Across Russia, China’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 10 March 1958, 31. For reference on exchange of letters in December 1957, cf. TNA, FO 371/133724, Simpson (FO) to Custance (MTCA), 4 July 1958. 8 TNA, BT 245/358, Jack (BOAC) to Paris (MTCA), 14 January 1958; Madge (MTCA) to Swann (FO), 24 January 1958; Scott-Malden (MTCA) to Jack (BOAC), 31 January 1958 and Note on UK/Czechoslovak Negotiations for an Air Service Agreement commencing 3 February 1958, 7 February 1958. For letter exchange see, TNA, FO 371/133724, Simpson (FO) to Custance (MTCA), 4 July 1958.

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of view of air routes,’ the Soviets could demand significant concessions for allowing ‘foreign airlines to transit their territory even for non-traffic purposes.’ For these two reasons, Swann realistically acknowledged that ‘any solution to [BOAC’s] problem[s] would probably involve a series of interlocking reciprocal bargains’ by which Aeroflot would receive rights for New York via London whereas the British carrier would gain access to Tokyo by way of Moscow. Nonetheless, the feasibility of any such proposal would necessarily depend on two factors. First, whether the Americans and Canadians were willing to see Aeroflot flying regularly over the Atlantic and, second, whether the Soviet carrier was interested in serving destinations in North America. Since Swann’s ideas found wide support both within the Foreign Office and the MTCA, British diplomats sought the opinion of their counterparts in Washington and Ottawa during the summer of 1958.9 With the Americans ‘highly suspicions of anything which could be interpreted as a desire on the part of their European allies to do business with the Russians behind their backs,’ the head of the General Department, K. J. Simpson, urged an ‘extremely careful’ approach in a letter of 4 July addressed to the Deputy Secretary of the MTCA, M. M. V. Custance. Surprisingly, in September 1958, the State Department let the British know that Washington would have no objections against the trading of a trans-Siberian route for BOAC for a transatlantic route for Aeroflot provided such a bargain did not facilitate flights beyond the United States to Central and South America by Aeroflot. Obviously, what the Americans feared was that London might eventually grant the Soviet carrier refuelling rights at some British point in the Caribbean. While the Canadians did not raise any concerns about the plan either, by early December, the only remaining unknown was the position of Moscow.10 Yet, it was only after the introduction of the London–Moscow route in May 1959 that Soviet officials were consulted about exchanging the trans-Siberian route for transatlantic rights. The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the MTCA, John Hay, first raised the issue with Deputy Chief of Aeroflot, Colonel V. Bashkirov, in Moscow on 17 May and, five days later, with Aeroflot’s 9 See TNA, FO 371/133724, FO minute by Swann, 2 July 1958 as well as Custance (MTCA) to Simpson (FO), 9 July 1958 with Simpson’s reply on 18 July, respectively. 10 See TNA, FO 371/133724, FO minute by Swann, 3 December 1958 and TNA, BT 245/1420, Brief for Civil Aviation Talks Between the United Kingdom and the USSR: Moscow July 1965, 14 June 1965.

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director Zhigarev during a luncheon in London. However, both men reacted to Hay’s inquiry in an evasive and discouraging way.11 Somewhat later, on 15 September 1959, the MTCA Undersecretary, Alison Munro, met at her own request with deputy chief Bashkirov who was accompanied with another lower ranking Aeroflot official. During the discussions which took place at the Soviet carrier’s headquarters in Moscow, Bashkirov ‘made no attempt to run away’ from the subject and made clear that the Soviets would not allow any foreign carrier to fly across Siberia to Japan until after striking a deal with the Japanese over Aeroflot flights to Tokyo. Munro then turned attention to a possible route to Australia via Novosibirsk, points in China, Honk Kong and Manila but Bashkirov rebuffed such an option, too. He first said that Aeroflot was not interested in flying to Australia for the moment and then emphasised that Moscow regarded the opening of trans-Siberian air routes as ‘extremely difficult’ because they did not yet meet ICAO standards. It was a Soviet policy to ‘get these routes [gradually] equipped for international traffic’ Bashkirov said but he was unable to tell ‘when this would be achieved.’12 In the following years, as a paper by the British Ministry of Aviation13 summed up in 1965, ‘there was a [general] lull in activity on this front’ while the main dynamics in East-West aviation relations shifted elsewhere.14

Aiding an Ally Far Afield Following the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista’s regime at the turn of 1958–1959, the new Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, began to intensify relations with the bloc countries in the latter half of 1959. Ready to give a hand with the build-up of a socialist society in a tropical paradise, the

11 Cf. TNA, BT 245/1420, Note of a Conversation Between Hay and Bashkirov on 17 May 1959, undated; British Rights to overfly the USSR: Conversation Between Hay and Zhigarev, 22 May 1959 and FO to Moscow Embassy, 29 May 1959. 12 Cf. TNA, BT 245/1420, Note of Mrs. Munro’s Discussion with Colonel Bashkirov

and Colonel Danilychev, 17 September 1959. 13 After the formation of the second Harold Macmillan Cabinet in October 1959, the MTCA was split into two separate ministries: The Ministry of Aviation and the Ministry of Transport. 14 TNA, BT 245/1420, Brief for Civil Aviation Talks Between the United Kingdom and the USSR: Moscow July 1965, 14 June 1965.

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Czechoslovaks and Cubans in early 1960 concluded an agreement for launching bilateral air services between Prague and Havana. In considering possible routings for such flights, the CSA evaluated three options: (1) Prague-(Paris)-Azores-Bermuda-Havana; (2) Prague-Rabat-AzoresBermuda-Havana and (3) Prague-Shannon-Gander-Bermuda-Havana. For its own part, the CSA initially preferred a route via Rabat as it promised to offer additional passenger and cargo volumes at Morocco’s capital.15 To this effect, in early August 1960, Czechoslovak diplomats had approached the British Foreign Office requesting a technical stop at Kindley Air Field at Bermuda for a route between Prague and Havana via Rabat. After London orally gave its approval on 24 August, the Czechoslovak Ministry of Foreign Affairs despatched notes to the capitals of all countries along the three proposed routes in September and October. To the north, Prague sought overflight rights from West Germany, France and the UK and landing rights at Shannon in Ireland and Gander in Canada. In the south, landing rights in the Azores and a direct route to Havana were requested from Portugal. Responses to these requests varied to some extent. While most countries decided to delay, Portugal refused the landing rights only to receive another note asking for transit rights over the Azores to Kindley, which Lisbon found hard to deny since both countries were signatories to the 1944 Transit Agreement. Ottawa shared those sentiments, too, but both the Canadians and Portuguese determined to do nothing for the time being.16 On the other hand, as the Czechoslovaks had ‘a clean slate vis-à-vis the UK insofar as its obligations under the Chicago Convention and the Transit Agreement were concerned,’ the Ministry of Aviation Deputy Secretary Munro felt obliged to tell the American Civil Air Attaché on 25 October that the British ‘did not have the key to the solution’ in terms of denying their request. Consequently, by a note of 11 November, the Foreign Office

15 SOA, CSA, Box 175, Studie o navrhované letecké linii CSA Praha-Havana [Analysis of the Proposed CSA’s Prague–Havana Route], 5 September 1960. 16 NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 2, folder International Civil Aviation Intelligence Resumes, February 1960–January 1962, Resume No. 49, Entry for 18 October 1960; Resume No. 50, Entry for 9 November 1960 and DoS Weekly Civil Air Summary, 7–11 November 1960, Czechoslovak Want Air Transit Rights to Cuba, 10 November 1960.

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gave its clearance for a route via Shannon including the overflight rights for mainland UK and technical stop rights at Kindley.17 When the American Embassy in London learned of this decision three days later, the Air Attaché expressed ‘amazement and irritation’ at such a step to both the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Aviation. The British relented after this, and handed another note to the Czechoslovak Ambassador on 1 December stating that due to an ‘oversight’ the note of 11 November failed to explain that Prague needed to obtain prior permission from the US Air Force authorities ‘who [were] in operational control of the airport’ at Kindley pursuant to the Leased Bases Agreement of 1941. On 13 December, the Czechoslovak Embassy in Washington subsequently approached the State Department but there was no response to the note requesting ‘approval of a technical landing at the Kin[d]ley Field Airport.’18 Having won a skirmish with the British and effectively preventing CSA from using Bermuda,19 the Americans continued their pressure on forestalling all bloc flights to and from Cuba and brought the issue to NATO. The semi-official and irregular flights by Cubana de Aviación to Prague via London, Lisbon and Madrid as well as the pending CSA applications for a route to Havana either via Azores or via the North Atlantic thus became ‘a standard item on NATO Political Committee agenda’ during the first half of 1961.20 Albeit Washington was ‘evidently

17 See NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, Europe—1963, Material relating to Czech request for technical stop rights at Kindley AFG: Tab 6, 1 November 1960 and Tab 7, 19 January 1961. 18 Ibid. Tab 4, 13 December 1960 and Tab 7, 19 January 1961 as well as NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 2, folder International Civil Aviation Intelligence Resumes, February 1960–January 1962, DoS Weekly Civil Air Summary, 14–18 November 1960, UK Grants Czech Airline Transit Rights to Cuba, 15 November 1960. 19 Since the Americans found no legal ground for denying CSA landing rights for

technical purposes either, they were prepared to close Kindley airport for all civilian traffic completely rather than let the Czechoslovak carrier in. Both Foreign Office and MTCA considered this as a breach to the February 1948 US–UK Agreement which opened certain military bases in the Caribbean for civilian use. Nonetheless, no showdown on the issue occurred since further developments made it irrelevant. Cf. TNA, FO 371/158645, docket Czech Airlines Prague-Havana Service containing various documents from December 1960 to February 1961 and NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 2, folder International Civil Aviation Intelligence Resumes, February 1960–January 1962, DoS Weekly Civil Air Summary, 11–17 February 1961, UK Dislikes Our Proposal on Czech Use of Kindley Airfield, 15 February 1961. 20 Cf. TNA, FO 371/158690, UK Del. to NATO to FO, 14 February 1961.

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determined to press [the] issue hard’ and organise member countries along a common line, the first crack in this strategy soon appeared. On 15 February, the Canadian government decided to permit the Czechoslovak carrier use of Gander for technical landings. And, by the end of June, the common front promoted by the Americans was increasingly eroded since Paris decided to grant CSA overflight rights following similar permits being issued by Denmark and others.21 Securing rights from Copenhagen, Prague narrowed down the options and modified the routing so as to avoid West Germany from which a permit was unlikely to be forthcoming. To this effect, a note of 28 June 1961 from the Czechoslovak Ambassador in London requested the British Foreign Office to grant clearance for flights to Havana with a technical stop at Prestwick or, failing that, Manchester airport.22 However, in the light of acute East-West tensions over Berlin, the Foreign Office now decided to ‘placate the Americans’ and play ‘the hand as slowly as possible.’23 This stalling tactics worked until October when the Czechoslovaks, frustrated by their inability to gain transit rights for Cuba from the Portuguese and the British as well as for Guinea from the Spanish, threatened to ‘lodge a complaint with ICAO’ unless ‘a more cooperative attitude [would be] adopted’ by London, Lisbon and Madrid. Somewhat later, in early November, Prague also notified Dublin that flights to Havana through Shannon would ‘start in the very near future.’ Though short notice, this was legally sufficient for launching services under the terms of the 1944 Transit Agreement and the British were reluctant to breach such international obligations even though the Americans urged them to do. Under these circumstances, the Foreign Office felt unable to hold the common front promoted by the Americans and

21 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 2, folder International Civil Aviation Intelligence Resumes, February 1960–January 1962, DoS Weekly Civil Air Summary, 11–17 February 1961, Canada to Grant Czech Landing Rights Enroute to Cuba, 15 February 1961 and TNA, FO 371/158690, UK Del. to NATO to FO, 25 January; 25 May and 21 June 1961, respectively. 22 Cf. TNA, FO 371/158646, Czechoslovak Embassy London to FO, 28 June 1961 and FO to UK Del. to NATO, 4 July 1961. 23 Cf. TNA, FO 371/158646, Czech request for technical stop rights in the UK, 9 August 1961; Czech air transit rights, 20 October 1961 and Shovelton (MTCA) to Riddoch (UK ICAO Representative), 27 October 1961.

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gave its clearance to flights between Prague and Havana with non-traffic stops at Prestwick or Manchester on 16 November 1961.24 The once-weekly service at last commenced on 3 February 1962 with flights taking some 23–24 hours westbound and 20 hours eastbound. Six months after the connection was launched, the CSA asked the Irish Department of Transport and Power for traffic rights at Shannon. Both the Department and the Ministry for External Affairs looked at the idea with favour but, in early August, the Lemass government decided to ‘defer indefinitely any further action’ on the request after receiving strong objections from the Americans.25 This was a setback for CSA but in early July other and much larger threats emerged for Washington. On 10 July 1962, as the newspaper Izvestia informed its readers, ‘the Soviet aerial giant, the Tu-114, [was] blazing a new, international trail.’ With Aeroflot’s director Loginov aboard, the turboprop left Moscow for the Guinean capital Conakry from where, two days later, it flew on to Havana. On 15 July, the official tribune of the Communist Party of the USSR, newspaper Pravda, carried another article informing the world that Soviet-Cuban air talks were nearing successful completion and that regular flights between Moscow and Havana would begin in the very near future. Next day, the 16th, the Soviet delegation left Havana and returned via Conakry to Moscow. Frightened State Department officials immediately contacted US diplomatic outposts in The Hague, Lisbon, London, Paris, Santo Domingo, Barbados, Conakry, Curacao, Georgetown, Hamilton, Kingston, Martinique, Nassau, Paramaribo, Ponta Delgada, Port of Spain and Rabat to intervene with local governments to prevent opening of any such service by denying the Soviet carrier both overflight and landing rights along all conceivable routes in the mid-Atlantic. The other note, which the Department sent to London upon learning that Aeroflot’s trial flights were under active consideration, instructed its Embassy officials to ‘urge [Her Majesty Government] in the strongest terms’ not to

24 Cf. TNA, FO 371/158646, Riddoch (UK ICAO Representative) to MTCA, 13 October 1961; FO to Washington Embassy, 3 November 1961; FO to Czechoslovak Embassy London, 16 November 1961 and FO to Embassy Lisbon, 29 November 1961. 25 Cf. NACR, KSC-UV-60, folder 230, item 401, Pozvání k zahajovacímu letu ˇ Ceskoslovenských aerolinií na Kubu [Invitation to Inaugural Flight of the CSA to Cuba], 18 January 1962 and NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, North&South America 1962, Embassy Dublin to DoS, 24 and 26 July 1962, respectively, and DoS to Embassy Dublin, 6 August 1962.

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permit the Soviet carrier to ‘overfly or make technical stops in Trinidad or Jamaica.’ At the same time, they reminded the British that the USSR was not a party to the 1944 Transit Agreement and, therefore, the present situation was ‘not analogous’ to CSA’s request for landings at Kindley Field.26 In August and September, the State Department diligently monitored possible developments on both sides of the Atlantic from the Tropic of Capricorn up to the North Polar Circle. In fact, it recorded no Aeroflot interest in securing a regular scheduled route but it did uncover an increasing amount of requests for charter operations between Moscow and Havana. According to the local police in Nassau, in the Bahamas, one such flight on 5 September 1962, carried 56 technicians and a crew of 13 while another, which flew to Cuba via Recife on 20 September, was, as the airline declared to the Brazilian Directorate for Civil Aviation, loaded with medicines.27 Albeit the overall number had been low—some ten flights via both the North Atlantic and mid-Atlantic route—the Kennedy Administration became ‘increasingly’ worried about Aeroflot’s charters since they came ‘at time when [the] USSR [was] making concerted effort [to] materially assist [the] Cuban military build[-]up.’ The State Department therefore asked its representation to NATO to raise the subject within the organisation’s Political Committee with the aim of barring the Soviets from overflying and landing on the territory of member states.28 The subject was first discussed on 9 and then on 18 October 1962. The Americans expected reluctance on the part of the British and, possibly, Canadians, to fall in line with their aims but the meeting witnessed a surprising consensus on the matter. Since the USSR was neither an ICAO member state nor party to the 1944 Chicago Agreement, Ottawa decided not to approve any more flights by the Soviet carrier unless they were bound for the United Nations meetings or carrying special cultural 26 Cf. TNA, BT 245/1242, Embassy Moscow to FO, 11 July 1962 and Embassy Washington to FO, 13 July 1962 as well as NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, North&South America 1962, DoS to Embassy London, 9 July 1962; Embassy Moscow to DoS, 16 July 1962 and DoS to several posts, 19 July 1962. 27 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, North&South America 1962, Consulate Nassau to DoS, 5 September 1962 and Embassy Rio de Janeiro to DoS, 20 September 1962. 28 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, North&South America 1962, DoS circular telegram, 8 October 1962.

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groups. London did likewise. Nonetheless, the instructions for the UK Delegation to NATO emphasised that ‘any economic embargo of Cuba’ was not a course the Macmillan cabinet wished to follow since ‘Her Majesty’s Government’s policy [was] to foster economic exchanges with the Soviet bloc.’ It was for this reason that Soviet aircraft were permitted ‘to overfly or make technical stops’ in the UK on their way across Atlantic. However, because the Soviets refused to reciprocate with BOAC with overflight and landings rights across the USSR for its services to the Far East, London would not grant any further permits until Moscow issued a permit to the British carrier.29 But then things changed dramatically. In response to the outbreak of the missile crisis on the 16th of October, Washington embarked on an even more punitive course. It urged London and Ottawa ‘to prevent Cubans [and] Czechs from operating through their territory to Havana’ even if they had to force the planes to land and search them for warlike materials. At last, in accordance with Article 35 of the Chicago Convention, which forbade airlines to carry ‘munitions or implements of war’ without prior permission of the overflown state, both countries agreed to increase the inspections on scheduled services by CSA and Cubana. However, they refused to break the existing bilateral agreements or deny treatment under the terms of 1944 Transit Agreement.30 For Aeroflot, however, the obstacle which the British put in place meant a substantial complication. From late October until the end of December, the Soviets therefore intensified efforts to re-route flights via points in Africa while testing the strength of NATO’s common front at the same time. Despite the assurances which Léopold Senghor of Senegal and King Hassan II and his foreign minister, Ahmed Balafrej, of Morocco

29 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2,

North&South America 1962, DoS circular telegram and Embassy Paris to DoS, 8 and 9 October 1962, respectively, as well as TNA, BT 245/1242, FO to UK Del. to NATO and UK Del. to NATO, 17 and 18 October 1962. But see also a Note by the MTCA entitled ‘Russian overflights and technical landings in the UK territory’ and dated 16 October which provided a basis for the British position and which is located in the same file. 30 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, North&South America 1962, DoS circular telegram and Embassy Ottawa to DoS, 24 and 25 October 1962, respectively, as well as and DoS circular telegram, 24 October 1962 as well as TNA, BT 245/1242, FO to UK Del. to NATO, 24 and 30 October 1962 and FO Note by Ramage, 12 November 1962.

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gave to US representatives, the Tu-114 turboprops made two round trips to Cuba via Dakar on 20 October and 13 December and one via Rabat on 17 December, respectively. In addition, before Christmas, these two African countries and Trinidad and Tobago, which gained independence on 31 August 1962, enabled Cubana to ferry home one of the three Il-18 planes, which the airline had purchased from the USSR. Somewhat earlier, on 11 December, Havana placed the same request with the British but this was refused. In the same way, London and Ottawa also declined to issue a permit for a special flight to carry a Soviet delegation for celebration of the fourth anniversary of the Cuban revolution.31 Yet, in a highly unexpected and spectacular move, the Soviets on 17 December announced to Copenhagen, London, Reykjavik, Oslo, Ottawa and Washington that, as of 22 December, Aeroflot would launch a twiceweekly service from Moscow to Havana via Murmansk and thence over the Norwegian and Greenland Seas, through the Denmark Strait down the Atlantic Ocean and the Florida Straits. Since the whole second leg was over neutral waters, there was no way for Washington alone or with the help of its NATO allies to contain the Soviet carrier except for denying flight information services. However, a provision of air traffic service was something which even the United States felt ‘obliged [to] provide’ for the sake of ‘protection [of] all aircraft operating in New York and Miami oceanic control areas.’ So, it looked like the route would go ahead, which, as a hastily prepared memorandum by the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research on 20 December indicated would amount to a very significant achievement for the Soviets. The memorandum stated that ‘the new route [had] several dramatic aspects.’ Not only would it ‘mark the first entry of Soviet civil airlines into the Western Hemisphere’ but it would ‘be flown by the world’s largest aircraft over the world’s longest scheduled nonstop flight.’ Albeit such service would be suboptimal in terms of passenger and payload capacity, it would ultimately ‘demonstrate Soviet determination to expand its international air access 31 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, North&South America 1962, Embassy Dakar to DoS, 27 October and 14 December 1962, respectively; Embassy Rabat to DoS, 15 and 21 December 1962, respectively; DoS to Embassies Rabat, Lisbon and Barbados, 16 December 1962; DoS to Embassies Ottawa, London, and Copenhagen, 20 December 1962 and DoS to Embassy Conakry 21 December 1962 as well as TNA, BT 245/1242, UK Del. to NATO to FO, 9 January 1963. For details of US diplomatic interventions in African states, see Muehlenbeck, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 147–55.

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to certain areas in support of specific political and economic objectives, regardless of cost and Western restriction.’32 Such prestige notwithstanding, the Soviets seemed unready to sacrifice all economy for political aims. In mid-December 1962, their Cuban proxy approached the Guinean government and asked for landing rights for an intended Moscow–Zurich/Belgrade–Rabat– Conakry–Recife–Trinidad–Havana route. With only 22,000 litres of aviation gasoline at their disposal due to shortage in fuel delivery, the Guineans felt serious troubled to meet the demand placed by regular, scheduled traffic but eventually agreed that Cubana could perform one trial flight in the third week of December. This eventually enabled the airline to ferry home the second of the three above-mentioned Il-62s.33 Nonetheless, in January 1963, the Guinean government was even more forthcoming and allowed Aeroflot to refuel at Conakry en route to Cuba provided the situation with fuel shortages could be solved. This was indeed a delicate matter since the planes had been refuelled by mobile tankers provided by the United States Agency for International Development and were operated by employees of Mobil Oil. Nonetheless, the gasoline was not furnished by the American company but by the Dutch Shell and the Guinean state-owned oil company, Onah. By the end of June, the situation seemed to be resolved and the first Tu-114 landed at Conakry on the 27th. Carrying 40 transit passengers, the turboprop took on 17,000 litres of aviation gasoline and departed for Cuba within hours from where it returned to Moscow via the North Atlantic.34 However, the Guinean president, Sékou Touré, severely underestimated the ‘strength of American reaction’ to this step. Urged by Khrushchev, who wrote to him sometime in early 1963 that while Senegalese allowed Aeroflot to refuel en route to Cuba at the US-built

32 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, North&South America 1962, DoS to Embassies Ottawa, Reykjavik, Oslo, and London, 19 December 1962 and TNA, BT 245/1242, Embassy Washington to FO, 24 January 1963 which contains memorandum referred to supra. 33 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, North&South America 1962, Embassy Conakry to DoS, 28 December 1962. 34 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #3, Africa 1963–64, Embassy Conakry to DoS, 27 June 1963 and TNA, BT 245/1242, Embassy Conakry to FO, 8 July 1963.

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Dakar airport the Guineans were refusing such a courtesy at the Sovietbuilt Conakry airport, Touré bent to Soviet leader’s will. He overruled dissenting domestic voices and personally cleared the Tu-114 flights ‘without realising implications’ as American and British diplomats were united in their views. Since Touré and his second number, Saifoulaye Diallo, had given US officials repeated assurances prior the outbreak of the Cuban missile crisis that Conakry would not facilitate air transport between Moscow and Havana via its territory, the Kennedy Administration now considered strong counter-measures were justified. The US threatened to interrupt rice shipments, which Conakry badly needed to overcome periodical shortages and cut back on materiel and other assistance which poured in regularly from the US to the country. Frightened Touré immediately called his closest associates in. The so-called Guinean Big Four35 then decided that ‘everything would be settled in accordance with the United States wishes’ and the US Embassy was accordingly informed on 7 July. The last, out of three Aeroflot flights thus took place on 11 July.36 Albeit Air Guinée continued to rely on Soviet planes as described in the Chapter 3, on the political level Touré seemed to lean more towards Washington in the aftermath of the ‘overflight affair.’ This is well illustrated by the visit to Conakry in late December 1964 by Ernesto Che Guevara, the prominent revolutionary leader. He personally conveyed to Touré a message from the Soviet leaders expressing the desire to reopen talks on Aeroflot flights to Cuba. However, the president ‘categorically refused’ to discuss the issue and said that the whole offer was ‘only [a] Russian ploy [to aggravate] Guinean-US relations.’ Some seven months later, at the turn of July and August 1965, Moscow persisting in its objectives re-approached the Senegalese President Senghor to facilitate flights to Havana via Dakar but the outcome was similarly disappointing

35 The group consisted of Touré, his half-brother Ismaël, Minister of Economy and Finance, Diallo, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Fodéba Keïta, Minister of Defence and Security who was in May 1969 executed for alleged involvement in the army coup to overthrow Touré. 36 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #3, Africa 1963–64, DoS to Embassy Conakry, 24 June 1963; Embassy Conakry to DoS, 27 June, 4 and 17 July 1963, respectively, and DoS to Embassy Paris, 29 August 1963. For British counter-references, see TNA, BT 245/1242, Embassy Conakry to FO, 5, 8 and 11 July 1963, respectively, and Embassy Washington to FO, 15 July 1963.

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as in the case of Guinea.37 Yet, rather than a ‘ploy’ to bind the African countries closer to the bloc as Touré believed, these moves signalled a desperate desire on the part of political and aviation circles in Moscow to improve the economic and airlift potential of Aeroflot operations to Cuba. This was because the distance flown over water between Murmansk and Havana (some 9075–9260 km [5640–5745 mi]) already exceeded the normal maximum range of the Tu-114s (8950 km [5560 mi]). For this reason, the capacity on the flights was heavily restricted from the normal 170 seats to 80 while extra fuel tanks were squeezed into the cargo hold to achieve the necessary safety margin. The added tanks, in turn, limited the maximum payload from 22,500 to only 6700–6800 kilograms.38

Birth of the Global Route Structure In the light of this, the Soviets were exceptionally stubborn in their desire to obtain a technical stop for the Moscow–Havana route. Since the British were equally determined to gain the rights through the USSR for BOAC, it looked like a deal could be struck. No time was wasted when the aviation teams of the two countries met for discussions in Moscow on 6 July 1965. Yet, Soviet officials declined to discuss a trans-Siberian route since neither of the existing corridors had been upgraded to meet international ICAO standards. Instead, they tabled an offer to exchange rights for a route to Delhi via Moscow for BOAC in return for Aeroflot rights to overfly or possibly make a stop in the UK en route to Cuba. In the end, the Soviet team argued that such concession would ‘cost [the British] nothing in civil aviation terms [because] the Czechs [were] already overfly[ing].’39

37 Cf. NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #3, Africa 1963–64, Embassy Conakry to DoS, 31 December 1964 and NARA, RG 59, CFPF, Box 621, folder AV-Aviation (Civil) Cuba-A, DoS to Embassy Dakar, 5 August 1965. 38 Cf. NARA, RG 59, CFPF, Box 621, folder AV-Aviation (Civil) Cuba-A, Memorandum by Harriman (DoS Ambassador at Large) to Read (DoS Executive Secretary), 14 June 1966. See also ‘Tu-114 Moscow–Havana’, Flight International, 24 January 1963, 134 and Gordon and Rigmant, OKB Tupolev, 229 and 231, respectively. 39 TNA, BT 245/1418, Embassy Moscow to FO, 6 July 1965.

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Nonetheless, the British delegation was not authorised to concede to this limited bargain as both the Ministry of Aviation and the Foreign Office considered a route to Delhi ‘far less valuable commercially’ than a route across Siberia. Only if the Soviets would ‘accord [an] effective reciprocity,’ i.e. exchange the trans-Siberian rights for their rights to the North America, was London ready to risk the political consequences of such a deal. In this regard, the diplomats were afraid of ‘the hostility with which the United States Government and some other governments would certainly view’ any relaxation of the NATO policy towards Soviet flights to Cuba. However, because the British decision in 1962 was based on ‘lack of reciprocity’ rather than on political considerations, the Wilson government did not feel obliged ‘to ask the Americans or anyone else’ for permission to strike an agreement with Moscow should a suitable quid pro quo be obtained. The Assistant Permanent Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Terence W. Garvey, explained this situation to Michael N. F. Stewart, another ranking diplomat who served as the Minister at the British Embassy in Washington at that time. The above-mentioned Soviet offer did not provide a reasonable balanced deal for the British and so the talks broke off on 7 July 1965 after two days of ‘friendly discussions’ as the released press announcement stated.40 After the Anglo-Soviet talks recessed without an agreement, the Soviets slackened their efforts for one and half years. Albeit Aeroflot’s director Loginov during his visit to Sweden and Norway in early June 1965 sent out signals that SAS would ‘soon receive rights to operate scheduled service to the Far East over Siberia,’ not much occurred in this regard until the end of 1966.41 Then, in November, the Soviet carrier proposed to KLM a joint interline service to Cuba under which Aeroflot would carry the passenger and cargo from Moscow to Amsterdam where they would be picked up and ferried by the Dutch carrier to Havana. A month later in December, during the visit of Soviet Premier Kosygin to Paris, Loginov and French aviation officials discussed ‘at technical level’ possible

40 TNA, BT 245/1418, Embassy Moscow to FO, 7 July 1965; Embassy Moscow to Ministry of Aviation and Garvey (FO) to Stewart (Embassy Washington), both 8 July 1965 as well as Ministry of Aviation Minute to PS (Stonehouse)/Minister (Jenkins), 15 June 1965. 41 TNA, BT 245/1418, Extract from letter from Embassy Stockholm to FO, 18 June 1965; FO to Embassy Moscow, 24 June 1965; Embassy Moscow to FO, 25 June 1965 and SAS Trans-Siberian rights, 22 June 1965.

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flights by Aeroflot to the Americas, including Cuba, via Paris. But, yet again, their efforts produced no agreements.42 Even more importantly, in October 1966, the Soviets returned to Loginov’s earlier overture and approached Denmark, Norway and Sweden with a bid to exchange transatlantic rights for Aeroflot for SAS rights to Leningrad. This was not a bargain which the three Scandinavian countries would accept. However, if SAS were granted rights to Japan across Siberia, Aeroflot would then be granted overflight of Scandinavia en route to Cuba. When State Department officials learnt of this from Danish and Norwegian representatives on 19 October, they ‘were somewhat taken aback by this rather heavy-handed approach particularly in view of constant discussion by both Governments on East-West bridge building in recent year.’ The Americans found this rhetoric rather disturbing and contrary to the common NATO policy adopted towards Soviet flights to Cuba in October 1962. Over the next few weeks, they therefore attempted to prevent any eventual agreement from materialising by explaining to the three Scandinavian governments that granting Aeroflot overflight and technical stop rights would provide ‘significant benefits to Soviet support of Cuban subversion [activities] in Latin America.’43 In the light of these arguments, Oslo began to yield and refused to permit Aeroflot to overfly Norway on flights to Havana even in the event of SAS gaining rights to transit Siberia, but offered the Soviets an option to choose any other ‘third point’ in North America in addition to New York and Montreal. Since the Soviets were only interested in shortening Aeroflot operations to Cuba, by the end of 1966 the talks faced an impasse after two rounds of negotiations were held in Stockholm. Yet, the neutral Swedes were determined to permit the overflights, so the Danes saw no other option than go along. As the officer in charge of aviation matters at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs explained to

42 NARA, RG 59, CFPF, Box 621, folder AV-Aviation (Civil) Cuba-A, Embassy Paris to DoS, 20 December 1966; DoS to Embassy Paris, 14 December 1966 and DoS to Embassy Hague, 25 November 1966 as well as NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, Embassy Paris to DoS, 5 January 1967. 43 NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, DoS to Embassies in Copenhagen, Oslo and Stockholm, 21 October 1966 and 7 January 1967, respectively.

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US Embassy representatives on 6 January 1967, the rationale for the decision was that Copenhagen was not in a position to block it alone in any case. Securing the consent in Stockholm, the Soviets could either bypass Denmark via Skagerrak or strike a deal with other European countries with the French and Swiss most apt in this regard. When the American diplomats attempted to counter and once again pinpointed the political importance of the whole matter, the official replied that ‘Denmark had its own political problems with refusing the Soviet request’ since such a step would have ‘adverse effect on Danish public support for NATO.’ After all, the Danish diplomat concluded, Copenhagen’s ‘only obligation in NATO context [was] to consult with interested parties, namely the United States and this [had been] done.’44 In this context, the third round of talks which commenced in Moscow on 10 January was a formality. Three days later, an agreement was initialled with the Soviet government on the one hand and the governments of Denmark, Norway and Sweden on the other which was formally endorsed on 27 January 1967. The document permitted Aeroflot flights to points in Europe (Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels and London) and North America (New York, Montreal, Havana) via Scandinavian countries in exchange for SAS flights to points in Southeast Asia (Bangkok, Djakarta) via Tashkent and to Japan (Tokyo) across Siberia using their own aircraft. On the flights to Havana, the Soviet carrier was allowed to refuel in Stockholm and Copenhagen. Yet, should the SAS flights to Tokyo not materialise within two years because of Soviet failure to construct an international route up to ICAO standards, the three Scandinavian governments reserved the right to reconsider and revoke all concessions provided to the USSR under the agreement.45 A couple of weeks later, on 3 March 1967, there was another important agreement—this time between Moscow and Tokyo—which came into effect. Since the subject of Soviet-Japanese negotiations slipped from the radar earlier in this chapter, not much occurred until December 1965. 44 NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, Embassy Stockholm to DoS, 21 December 1966; Embassy Copenhagen to DoS, 30 December 1966 and 6 January 1967, respectively; DoS to Embassies in Copenhagen, Oslo, and Stockholm, 30 December 1966 and Embassy Oslo to DoS, 2 January 1967. 45 NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, Embassy Stockholm to DoS, 14 January 1967; Embassy Copenhagen to DoS, 17 January 1967; Briefing notes on USSR-Japanese and USSR-Scandinavian air transport agreements, 10 February 1967 and Embassy Oslo to DoS, 20 March 1967.

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At that time, Tokyo eventually accepted that Tu-114 turboprops would not be painted with Japan Airlines colours but would fly in Aeroflot livery with the markings of Japan carrier near the front doors. Next month, in January 1966, this deal was sealed with the bilateral air agreement by which Moscow committed to enabling fully reciprocal services within two years after the commencement of flights with Soviet machines. Albeit the services were originally scheduled to begin in June 1966, it eventually took another 11 months until they became a reality on 18 April 1967. This was because the Japanese and Soviet carriers had difficulty reaching a mutually satisfying formula regarding fares, cargo tariffs and revenue sharing.46 In the end, construction work on the new international airway across Siberia took more than the two years as envisaged in the Scandinavian and Japanese agreements. Opened in early 1970, the route ran north of Moscow to the town of Kotlas, thence pass the geographical boundary between Europe and Asia west of Khanty-Mansiysk from where it continued over the great circle to the village of Ekimchan, north of Khabarovsk. From there it continued to Yedinka where it left the territory of the USSR, sharply turned south and headed over the Sea of Japan to Tokyo. Despite the above-mentioned concessions to Aeroflot by SAS, the carrier was not among the first airlines to use the new route. Since the Japanese preferred to introduce connections to Paris and London first, flights between Copenhagen and Tokyo were only inaugurated in early April 1971. This was a whole year after Japan Airlines and Air France launched their services between Paris and Tokyo in March and April 1970, respectively, and ten months after the Japan carrier and BOAC opened flights between London and Tokyo in June 1970. While Japan Airlines and SAS used the DC-8s on the route, Air France and BOAC used B707s. For its part, Aeroflot served all these routes with the Il-62 quadjets as a connecting service via Moscow.47 46 NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #2, Briefing notes on USSR-Japanese and USSR-Scandinavian air transport agreements, 10 February 1967. See also ‘Airlines Observer: Moscow–Tokyo’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 17 January 1966, 49; ‘Japan-Soviet Deadlock’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1 August 1966, 29 and ‘Tu-114 Carries Aeroflot, JAL Marking’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1 May 1967, 33 as well as ‘Horse-Trading over Siberia’, Flight International, 9 March 1967, 343 and ‘Moscow–Tokyo Opening’, Flight International, 27 April 1967, 657. 47 Cf. Kneifel, Fluggesellschaften und Luftverkehrssysteme, 142–3. See also ‘Siberia to Divert Polar Air Traffic’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 17 January 1966, 49 and

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A prominent aviation journalist and editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology, Robert Hotz, attributed ‘the opening of… secret Siberian domain to international air travel’ to the ‘Soviet reali[s]ation that its physical and mental isolation from the rest of the world… hampered its progress without adding materially to its national security.’ In other words, the Lockheed U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft and the Samos satellites ‘made much of [Soviet] secrecy technically obsolete, in the same manner that the jet transport Great Circle routes [had] superseded the camel caravan trails and the Transsiberian Railroad.’48 Albeit security and military aspects prevailed in analyses among Western aviation diplomats, too,49 there was another major factor which explains the Soviet sluggishness in opening an international airway across Siberia. As the NSC 5726/1 Directive already hinted in 1957, a part of the problem rested with the mutual incompatibility of the Soviet and Western avionics and ground-based equipment. For example, despite the ‘high quality’ and general capability of ‘meeting US and… ICAO standards,’ the Soviet system for instrumental landings, SP-50 Materik (Continent), could not be received and processed by Western aircraft. The bloc aircraft were, vice versa, unable to work with the Western Instrumental Landing System (ILS). Thus, ‘with some possible exceptions, such as navigational radar, altimeters etc.,’ all other instruments were not essentially ‘interchangeable’ and it was also not ‘feasible,’ the Directive maintained ‘for US or Soviet aircraft to carry adapters to make their respective electronic equipment compatible with each other’s systems.’ A related but distinct problem was that the USSR, and bloc countries as such, had a shortage of equipment since they were unable to produce the avionics and ground hardware in large quantities.50 By the second half of the 1950s, the situation thus resulted in Aeroflot and CSA planes carrying both Western and Eastern instruments while the same also applied to major international airports, Moscow Vnukovo

‘Siberian Survey’, Flight International, 3 February 1970, 183; ‘JAL Across Siberia’, Flight International, 9 April 1970, 584; ‘Price of Siberia’, Flight International, 11 June 1970, 957 and ‘SAS will inaugurate’, Flight International, 25 March 1971, 411. 48 ‘Blazing a New Trail’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 23 January 1967, 21. 49 NARA, RG 237, CSF, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #1, Asia

1961–62, Embassy Tokyo to DoS, 25 July 1962. 50 Cf. FRUS, 1955–1957, vol. IX, U.S. Civil Aviation Policy Toward the Sino-Soviet Bloc, 9 December 1957, 491.

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and Prague-Ruzynˇe, too. This was of course prohibitively costly both in terms of acquiring the equipment from the West and significantly decreased operational economies: in particular this applied to heavier planes.51 During the 1960s, as the traffic crossing the Iron Curtain grew, bloc avionics and ground hardware therefore began to be increasingly geared towards Western standards. Nonetheless, it still tended to be heavier and less ergonomic because the electronics industry in the East had great difficulties coping with increasing miniaturisation (semiconductors, microcircuits and later chips) and corresponding automation pressures.52 For this reason, the bloc countries continued to purchase the equipment periodically from UK manufacturers such as Standard Telephones and Cables and the Marconi Company. But, on occasion, they acquired military non-sensitive items from Canada and the US, too. Thus, for example, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria had purchased six Omni-Directional Range (VOR) radio beacons from Canadian Raytheon as well as five distance measuring instruments and 50 non-directional beacons from the American companies Butler National and Southern Avionics, respectively. Within the bloc, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria were the leaders in updating their equipment to the international standards but by the late 1960s the worldwide standardisation pressures were so strong that the USSR could not afford to be left behind.53 In this regard, the opening of the international trans-Siberian route and Soviet accession 51 NA, KSC-UV-60, folder 27, item 361, Informativní zpráva o souˇcasném stavu civilního letectví [Report on Current Situation in Civil Aviation Sector], 17 May 1956 and SOA, CSA, Box 239, Zpráva o stavu radiové výstroje letadel velké dopravy CSA [Situation Report on Radio Equipment of CSA’s Aircraft], 6 February 1967. See also ‘Flight to Moscow: Operational Background to BEA’s New Service’, Flight, 29 May 1959, 734–6. 52 Cf. FRUS, 1955–1957, vol. IX, U.S. Civil Aviation Policy Toward the Sino-Soviet Bloc, 9 December 1957, 491 and SOA, CSA, Box 239, Zpráva o stavu radiové výstroje letadel velké dopravy CSA [Situation Report on Radio Equipment of CSA’s Aircraft], 6 February 1967. See also ‘Flight to Moscow: Operational Background to BEA’s New Service’, Flight, 29 May 1959, 734–6. 53 The West to East equipment sales were indeed so common that it is beyond one’s capacity to track them thoroughly, particularly when mapping such technology transfers individually would add only very little to the overall picture of historical developments. As a pars pro toto example, see ‘VOR Beacons for Russia’, Flight International, 7 January 1965, 2; ‘Cossor Transponders for Aeroflot’, Flight International, 6 May 1965, 690; ‘Bulgarian Order for STC’, Flight International, 20 January 1966, 87; ‘British ILS for Moscow’, Flight International, 28 April 1966, 694 or ‘East Europe Echoes Soviet ATC Drive’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 22 October 1973, 103–4. See also Stefan Albrecht, ‘Luftfahrt zwischen ICAO- und Sowjetstandards’, in Gerold Ambrosius,

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to the ICAO in October 1970 could be seen as a symbolic end to the ‘double-track era’ albeit the bloc countries (and Russia until 2011) kept using the metric system instead of knots and foots. In its long-term effects, the opening of Siberia to air traffic had tremendous consequences and radically changed the economic and transportation patterns in Eurasia. There were only four return frequencies, i.e. eight flights, a week allocated to Japan Airlines and half of this amount to other non-Bloc airlines in 1970, but nowadays Lufthansa alone flies about 180 flights a week across Siberia while Russia takes some 300–400 million Euros a year solely from EU carriers on overflight charges. Albeit such fees should have been abolished by 2014 as Brussels and Moscow agreed prior to Russia’s admission to the World Trade Organisation in 2012, in fact, they are still in place. Yet, unlike in previous decades, the fees are not charged directly by Aeroflot but by the Federal Air Transport Agency, Rosaviatsiya, which indeed may still continue subsidising the carrier from such income.54 The crucial importance of the Siberian airspace can also be seen from the fact that Moscow threatened to bar EU airlines from using it in response to the tightening of sanctions against Russia in the aftermath of the downing of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 by pro-Russian separatists over eastern Ukraine on 17 July 2014.55

Christian Henrich-Franke, Cornelius Neutsch, and Guido Thiemeyer (eds.), Standardisierung und Integration europäischer Verkehrsinfranstruktur in historischer Perspektive (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009), 183–96. 54 Cf. ‘KLM’s Siberian Rights’, Flight International, 6 August 1970; ‘EU and Russia Agree to Scrap Siberian Flight Fees’, Politico, 25 November 2011, https:// www.politico.eu/article/eu-and-russia-agree-to-scrap-siberian-flight-fees; ‘Overflight Fees to Remain After 2014’, The Moscow Times, 4 September 2013, https://www.the moscowtimes.com/2013/09/04/overflight-fees-to-remain-after-2014-a27387 and European Parliament, Eurasian Economic Union: The Rocky Road to Integration, April 2017, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/599432/EPRS_B RI(2017)599432_EN.pdf. All Accessed 1 April 2020. 55 Foreign Affairs Council, Council Takes Action on the Downing of Flight MH17 , 22 July 2014, https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/fac/2014/07/22; ‘Moscow May Force European Airlines to Fly Around Russia’, Reuters, 5 August 2014, https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-ukraine-crisis-russia-airlines/moscowmay-force-european-airlines-to-fly-around-russia-idUKKBN0G50CS20140805 and ‘Russia in Sanction Threat Against EU’, EUobserver, 6 August 2014, https://euobserver.com/ foreign/125193. All Accessed 1 April 2020.

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Thus, as Robert Hotz of Aviation Week & Space Technology stressed in his editorial on 23 January 1967, it was ‘once again the jet transport, with the inexorable thrust of its technology [that had] played a major role in changing political and economic patterns that had previously defied all efforts to alter them.’ ‘Foreign trade and cultural and technological interchanges,’ Hotz went on became ‘a vital necessity for the existence of the Soviet Union, and the jet transport [was] the harbinger of the changing policy to reach these goals. Ever since it developed a jet transport, the Soviet Union [pushed] its airlines tentacles farther and farther throughout the world in every possible direction.’ Eventually, Hotz wrote on 20 October 1969, the trans-Siberian airway and the new US air links across Pacific unleashed the global route expansion which was altering ‘traditional concepts of operations, marketing and management.’ Yet, as he stressed, too, there was still one more factor to take into account. This was the advent of ‘the new generation of subsonic wide-body, high-bypassratio turbofan transports,’ which fundamentally changed the aviation and brought the era we now live in.56

56 Cf. ‘Blazing a New Trail’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 23 January 1967, 21; ‘Changing Global Patterns’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 28 October 1968, 21 and ‘The Global Explosion’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 October 1969, 21.

CHAPTER 6

In the Shadows of Backwardness

A Quest for ‘Airbus’ By the mid-1960s, the aviation industry was in flux. On the one hand, supersonic aircraft bore a promise of rapid passenger transport at velocities unprecedented in the history of humankind. On the other, the ‘airbuses,’ as the new class of planes with wider fuselage was generally labelled at the time, foreshadowed an era of higher per seat revenues for airlines despite the lower fare rates for travellers.1 Yet, with the American supersonic programme suspended in March 1971 and Soviet Tu-144 Konkordski facing recurrent technical issues which effectively prevented its entry into regular service with Aeroflot, the winner of Mach 2 technological competition, the Franco-British Concorde, turned out to be no match for twin-aisle jets with up to ten abreast seating for passengers. Outfitted with the state-of-the-art turbofan engines, the wide-bodied planes were able to carry higher volumes of passengers with superior fuel economy than the splendid supersonic swan. In an environment of ever-increasing oil prices,

1 Cf. e.g. ‘Airlines Plan for Both Large Jets, SST’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 7 March 1966, 180–3.

© The Author(s) 2020 P. Svik, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1_6

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the gem of aircraft engineering was thus left with an extremely narrow, high-end market and would be relegated, sooner or later, to extinction.2 Equally important, the ‘airbuses,’ whose development was a no less prestigious matter than those of supersonic transports, fundamentally transformed the character of civil aviation from their introduction in the early 1970s. This was mainly because of the increased pressures on worldwide standardisation of operations and procedures, which ranged from aircraft interior design to airport planning, from advanced avionics to automated baggage handling systems, from rapid electronic ticketing to container loading systems using belts and rubber drive wheels.3 But, in fact, a demand for high-performance heavy-lift transports originated from somewhat different customers than the commercial airlines. In March 1964, the US Air Force announced its plans to develop a new heavy logistics transport system (CX-HLS) to replace aging propeller-driven aircraft such as the Douglas C-124 Globemaster II with a cutting edge jet-based technology. The intended transport was to have a range of 5000–5500 miles (app. 8000–8800 km) with 100,000 lb. (app. 45.4 t.) payload and the width and length of the cargo compartment was to be 17.5 ft. (5.33 m) and 100 ft. (30.5 m), respectively. All major American airframe manufactures responded and initial drawings by Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed were selected for further study in January 1965. The three proposals shared the similar double-deck layout: with the lower deck designed as the cargo hold with large nose doors and foldable ramp in the aft section to facilitate its fast load and unload, and the upper deck was configured to accommodate the crew of six and up to one-hundred paratroopers. Also, in spring 1965, a decision was made eventually to extend the width of the fuselage to enable the

2 For American supersonic program, see, for example, Mel Horwitch, Clipped Wings:

The American SST Conflict (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1982) and Erik M. Conway, High-Speed Dreams: NASA and the Technopolitics of Supersonic Transportation, 1945–1999 (Baltimore and Toronto: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005); for Soviet Tu-144, e.g. Howard Moon, Soviet SST: The Technopolitics of the Tupolev-144 (New York: Orion Book, 1989) and Yefim Gordon, Dmitriy Komissarov, and Vladimir Rigmant, Tupolev Tu-144: The Soviet Supersonic Airliner (Atglen: Schiffer Publishing, 2015) whereas for Concorde, for instance, Kenneth Owen, Concorde: Story of a Supersonic Pioneer (London: Science Museum, 2001) and Jonathan Glancey, Concorde: The Rise and Fall of the Supersonic Airliner (London: Atlantic Books, 2015). 3 Cf. e.g. ‘Giant Jets to Force New Concepts’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 November 1967, 39–45.

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simultaneous transportation either of two M-48/60 Patton tanks or two Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters with folded propellers.4 The air force also desired an airlifter to be powered by four power plants, each with approximately 40,000 lbf. (178 kN) dry thrust and with cruising speed approaching Mach 0.8 (950 km/h). Along with Allison Engine Company producing turboprops for Lockheed C-30 Hercules, two other major engine manufactures, General Electric (GE) and Pratt&Whitney (P&W), applied for the CX-HLS contract. By July 1964, turboprop propulsion was discarded, however, and the GE1/6 and JTF14E turbofans by GE and P&W, respectively, were shortlisted for further testing.5 Over the next twelve months, until the final decision on the power plant was taken in August 1965, the US Air Force poured into engine research an additional $24 million of which 60 per cent was received by the former firm while the remaining 40 per cent went to the latter.6 As indeed these figures might hint, the final contract went to GE. Delivering the first ever high-bypass-ratio, high-pressure-ratio and 4 ‘CX-HLS Requirements’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 23 March 1964, 20;

‘C-5A Study Contracts’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 21 December 1964, 27 and ‘USAF to Hear C-5A Briefings This Week’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 26 April 1965, 35–8. 5 In essence, the difference between the turbojet and turbofan engine is that, unlike in the former, a certain amount of air bypasses the core of power plant in the latter. The higher volume of the air is ducted around the core turbine (bypass ratio), the better thrust and specific fuel consumption characteristics engine has at high subsonic speed at standard cruising altitude of 32,000 ft. (9750 m). By bypass ratio equal or less than 2, one speaks of low-bypass turbofans. The power plants with bypass ratio between 2 and 4 are called medium-bypass turbofans whereas those with ratio over 4 high-bypass turbofans. The high-bypass turbofan engines are also significantly less noisy than the previous types. Since the 1970s, the high-bypass turbofans became standard for large civilian and military transports, the medium-bypass engines for smaller private jets and the low-bypass power plants (often with added afterburners) for fighter and strike aircraft. The pure turbojets (with or without afterburners) are most advantageous for supersonic aircraft. This is because straight jet accelerates the air passing through the turbine to high supersonic speeds and thus becomes most effective at supercruise, i.e. sustained flight at Mach 1+ speeds. Analogously, in line with the theory of propulsion efficiency, the idea of turbofan engine is to bring the speed of the exhaust jet stream closer to the speed of aircraft which typically flies somewhere at 800–900 km per hour (500–560 mph). This is achieved by mixing the supersonic turbine exhaust gases with the air which is ducted around the core and which is close to the speed of aircraft. 6 ‘CX-HLS Engine Studies’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 4 May 1964, 17; ‘Pratt&Whitney Testing Basic Version of CX-HLS Powerplant’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 July 1964, 17; ‘C-5A Study Contracts’, Aviation Week & Space Technology,

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high-turbine-temperature turbofan engine, GE1/6 prototype was about 10 per cent more fuel efficient than the P&W power plant while also surpassing its competitor in all other desired parameters at the same time. The only disadvantage was the size and weight of the GE engine. The JTF14E had a diameter that was smaller by 30.5 cm (1 ft.), was approximately 1.6 m (9.5 ft./15 ft.) shorter and weighed about 200 kg less (6600–700 lb./7150 lb.). However, the GE achieved a much higher bypass ratio of 8 as compared to ‘only’ 3.5 by P&W. Nonetheless, even this lower figure was remarkable since an early version of the contest power plant designated STF-200/C had a by-pass ratio of 2 whereas the by-pass ratios of the most advanced serially produced turbofans of the era were even lower.7 The GE1/6 was thus clearly a path-breaking engine and it bore the military designation TF39. But it was not just the engine that was innovative since the airlifter was also to be equipped with trend setting avionics, too. These included, among other things, a navigation radar using the dual inertial-Doppler system, radio altimeter linked with the auto-throttle and an advanced terrain-following radar enabling all-weather landings by autopilot, automatic de-crab system for crosswind touch-downs, computer-based in-flight diagnostics and an electronic flight recorder. All this involved a wide use of microcircuits which were still far from common at the time. Thus, announcing the victor of a $2 billion airframe contract in late September 1965, the US Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, stated with satisfaction that the new Lockheed C-5A would be approximately 30 per cent faster than the latest

21 December 1964, 27 and ‘P&W Seen Continuing STF-200 Engine’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 16 August 1965, 42. 7 ‘C-5A Engines Feature Basic Differences’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 3 May 1965, 22. Whereas the first turbofan engine to reach mass production, RB80 Conway by Rolls-Royce, in 1955 achieved a by-pass ratio of just 0.3, by early 1960s the P&W’s JT3D and GE’s CJ805-23B power plants topped at 1.42 and 1.56, respectively. Cf. ‘Aero Engines 1962: Data for Representative Engines’, Flight International, 28 June 1962, 1025. For an evolution of these early engines and theory behind the turbofan propulsion, see George E. Smith and David A. Mindell, ‘The Emergence of the Turbofan Engine’, in Peter Galison and Alex Roland (eds.), Atmospheric Flight in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 107–55.

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Soviet-built transport, Antonov An-22, while having double its payload capacity.8 The An-22 was the then-largest aircraft in the world and it revealed itself to Western eyes two months earlier at the 26th Paris air show. Outfitted with the four improved Kuznetsov turboprop engines with two contra-rotating propellers,9 the prototype arrived at Le Bourget on 16 June reaching the French capital from Moscow non-stop in five hours and five minutes. Looming over all other aircraft, the ‘monstrous An22’ crowned the massive Soviet display and intense sales efforts as Flight International agreed in unison with Aviation Week & Space Technology. Apparently a military cargo plane by design, the astonished Westerners wondered whether a passenger transport was in planning since the aircraft bore civilian designation and Aeroflot markings. Its chief designer, Oleg Antonov, affirmed saying that his bureau was studying a stretched twindeck version for up to 720 passengers. This immediately spurred the discussions as to whether such large commercial transport ‘would or could be produced soon’ in the Free World, too. While the Western European manufacturers and airlines hardly saw any market potential for a big ‘civilian airbus’ in the foreseeable future, Donald Douglas, Jr., hinted that his company could eventually build a 1000-seater based on the CX-HLS design.10 The words by Douglas Aircraft Company’s president were very much indicative of developments in the next nine months. Losing the military contract, Boeing and Douglas scaled down their CX-HLS proposals by 8 Cf. ‘Latest Avionics Equipment Planned for C-5A’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 3 May 1965, 23 and ‘Lockheed Wins C-5A Airframe Contract’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 4 October 1965, 23. 9 The earlier version of this engine powered both long-range Tu-114 civilian airliner

and Tu-95 strategic bomber from which the former was derived. The NK-12 turboprop was eventually developed by a team of expatriated German engineers led by Ferdinand Brandner, himself Austrian, from the Junker’s Jumo 022 turbine at Kuybyshev (now Samara) at the turn of 1940s/50s. Cf. e.g. Jürgen Michels, ‘Überstellung der mitteldeutschen Luftfahrtindustrie und ihrer wichtigsten Fachleute in die Sowjetunion’, in Jürgen Michels and Jochen Werner (eds.), Luftfahrt Ost 1945–1990 (Bonn: Bernard & Graefe Verlag, 1994), 67–71. 10 Cf. ‘The Airborne Days’ and ‘The New Russians’, Flight International, 24 June 1965, 998 and 1000–5, respectively, as well as ‘An-22, SST Model Climax Soviet Display’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 21 June 1965, 28–31 and ‘An-22 Spurs Airbus Discussions in West’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 5 July 1965, 24–5.

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about a third and offered commercial double-deckers with capacity of about 500 passengers. Absent from the civil airliner market since the production of its L-188 Electra turboprop ceased in 1961, Lockheed too continued design studies and proposed a three-deck behemoth with 900 seats hoping to re-establish itself in the civilian sector.11 Yet, apart from the unexpected An-22’s appearance at the Paris air show, there was another major stimulus for all three companies to suggest the conversion of CX-HLS designs. Promising the reduction of long-haul fares by about 30 per cent, the Pentagon, the Department of Commerce and the FAA urged US companies to design an aircraft for dual, civil-military use hoping some of its tremendous costs would eventually be shared by the private sector. With the prospects of a supersonic boom in passenger transport by the mid-1970s, the niche in the market looked extremely slim. However, neither of the firms wanted to let the opportunity go.12 The question who was going to produce the jumbo jets was resolved on 13 April 1966 when Juan Trippe and William Allen, the presidents of Pan Am and Boeing, respectively, signed a $525 million contract for delivery of twenty-five 747s to the airline. Next month, Douglas withdrew from the competition for the long-haul jumbo market announcing its priority would be a short-range, twin-aisle transport with 250–350 seats to see service at the turn of 1970/71 while employing all technological advances brought about by the CX-HLS programme.13 After being eliminated from a government-sponsored competition for an American supersonic carrier in January 1967, Lockheed immediately shifted the

11 Cf. e.g. ‘Boeing Studies Three Civil C-5A Versions’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 27 December 1965, 46–52 as well as ‘Boeing Shifts to Low-Wing 747 Design’; ‘Lockheed Proposes Triple Decks, 900 Seats for Civil C-5A Version’ and ‘Layouts, Characteristics Shown for Douglas DC-10’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 21 February 1966, 37–9, 39 and 40–1, respectively. 12 Cf. ‘CX-HLS Studies as Commercial Transport’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 November 1964, 27 and ‘Boeing Reconsiders Stretched 707 Version’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 30 November 1964, 24–5. 13 Cf. Van Vleck, Empire of the Air, 272–3 as well as ‘Boeing 747 Ordered’, Flight

International, 21 April 1966, 655–6 and ‘A Douglas Airbus?’, Flight International, 19 May 1966, 825. Lockheed followed the L-500 design based on C-5A for somewhat longer than Douglas but these efforts led to no avail, see ‘747, L-500 Seatings Innovations Sought’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 25 July 1966, 44–45 and ‘C-5A Commercial Cargo Version Planned’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 November 1967, 213–4.

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targets for its engineering staff, too, and swiftly countered Douglas DC10’s proposal with a similar design designated CL-1011.14 This started a tight, shoulder-to-shoulder competition of both producers for a ‘cost-tocost’ range aircraft with three engines and wide-bodied fuselage of which the DC-10 eventually emerged as the more successful.15 Across the Atlantic, in Western Europe, aircraft industries and politicians had also intensively pressed for a short-haul ‘European airbus’ with capacity of 200–300 seats ever since the 1965 Paris fair. The European manufacturers considered a collaborative development of such transport at a transnational basis as the only way to survive in the market dominated by American designs. Reflecting that conviction, John Stonehouse, Harold Wilson’s Minister of State for Technology, spoke of ‘a new era in technological relationships within Europe’ in which the ‘European aircraft industry [would be competing] with the goliaths of the air world, the United States and Russia’ on an equal footing. Others, such as de Gaullists in France, regarded aerospace a vital export technology at a time when East–West relations were improving and for them the post-World War II order seemed to be over once and for all.16 Several preliminary 14 Cf. ‘America’s Airbus’, Flight International, 13 July 1967, 42–3 and ‘Commercial Aircraft Survey: L-1011’, Flight International, 23 November 1967, 864–5. 15 By early March 1969, the received and expected orders for L-1011s surpassed those of DC-10s, but eight month later pendulum shifted to the latter by a slight margin (181 compared to 201). In February 1971, the mounting development costs of aircraft’s power plant (RB211 turbofan) forced the Rolls-Royce into bankruptcy and the whole programme was eventually sustained on British government funding and a $250-million federal loan guarantee to Lockheed’s creditors. Because of associated production delays, some of the airlines cancelled their orders and opted for alternate airframe producers. At a time when the TriStar’s production terminated, McDonnell Douglas delivered to its customers 369 DC-10s as compared to 249 L-1011s. Cf. e.g. ‘Race for Giant Jet Market Intensifies’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 10 March 1969, 220–1; ‘National Airlines Picks DC10 for Airbus Order’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 October 1969, 198; ‘Carries, Banks Queries in L-1011 Accord’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 5 April 1971, 22– 3; ‘Depression Fear Carries Loan Bill’ and ‘Lockheed Still Faces Airlines Negotiations’ Aviation Week & Space Technology, 9 August 1971, 24–5 and 25, respectively as well as ‘PSA Canceling L-1011 Orders’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 3 January 1972, 21. For the sales figures, see, e.g., ‘Commercial Aircraft of the World’, Flight International, 12 October 1985, 56 and 61, respectively. 16 The quotes come from Stonehouse’s speech before the Assembly of the Western European Union in Paris in June 1967 and his public statement upon returning from Bonn where he was to sign a Memorandum of Understanding on Airbus production three months later. A labour politician, and an agent of the Czechoslovak secret service who in 1974 faked his own death disappearing in Australia, served at the time as the

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drawings of the intended airliner emerged prior to the final design specifications being announced in early spring 1967. Receiving a type number A-300, the airbus would carry 298 passengers, seated ten-abreast in an all economy arrangement, with a maximum range of some 2200 kilometres. Also, the fuselage diameter was chosen to be about one meter wider than the technical optimum for the size of the aircraft to enable a side-by-side loading of two containers compatible with those of Boeing’s jumbo jet. This was to facilitate cargo handling and avoid airport congestion.17 According to a tentative production agreement and subsequent Memorandum of Understanding which the British, French and West German governments signed in July and September 1967, respectively, the plane would be built by two consortiums: the airframe by Sud-Aviation/Hawker Siddeley/Deutsche Airbus and the engines by Rolls-Royce/Snecma/MAN-Turbomotoren with Sud-Aviation and Rolls-Royce as respective leaders. However, with a highly reserved attitude towards the plane on the part of airlines and with the Rolls-Royce and British government investing more time and money into research for a contending Lockheed design, the pan-European honeymoon was over by the summer 1968.18 Another half year later, the whole programme seemed to be in melt down: the airframe consortium proposed a scaled down 250-seater while Henri Ziegler, Sud-Aviation’s president, hinted

Minister of the State at the short-lived Ministry of Technology where he handled the aviation matters. Cf. ‘Vital Collaboration’, Flight International, 22 June 1967, 1024 and ‘Europeans Agree to Start Airbus Project’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 October 1967. For the views in other countries, see, e.g., ‘The Anglo-French Alliance’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 3 October 1966, 21 and ‘Special Report: Europe Shifts Basic Patterns’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 29 May 1967, 84–91. 17 Cf. ‘Sud-Dassault Team Designs Galion Airbus as Caravelle Follow-on in Markets Outside U.S.’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 9 May 1966, 74–81; ‘Now or Never: The German Airbus Symposium’, Flight International, 16 February 1967, 229–30; ‘Europe’s A-300 Airbus’, Flight International, 27 April 1967, 655 and ‘25 Flying Years: A300/A310’, A Flight International Supplement, 29 October–4 November 1997, 12. 18 Cf. e.g. ‘Airbus Wins Tentative Approval’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 31

July 1967, 25 and ‘25 Flying Years: Airbushistory’, A Flight International Supplement, 29 October–4 November 1997, 8 as well as ‘Government Role Spurs L-1011 Success’; ‘Airbus Balance-of-Payments Offset Pact Set’; ‘U.K: Aiding Rolls in RB211 Engine Market’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 8 April 1968, 33–34; 34 and 35, respectively, and ‘Britain First’, Flight International, 27 June 1968, 941.

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the P&W JT9D and GE CF6-50 turbofans could be viable alternatives to the RB207 of Rolls-Royce.19 The British protested arguing that this would have been a flagrant breach of the September 1967 Memorandum, but considering this dead anyway, Anthony Benn, the Minister of Technology, then proposed a projected BAC Three-Eleven aircraft to replace the A-300 as a new European airbus. Nonetheless, the French, despite cuts in their aerospace budget in late 1968, and the West Germans, determined to break into the civil airliner market after the post-war hiatus, did not want to play roles as minor partners and Benn’s overtures thus received little, if any, attention. Consequently, on 10 April 1969, the British government withdrew from the Airbus programme, while the governments of France and Federal Republic readjusted the cost-sharing formula to a fifty-fifty basis and invited other West European countries to take part in the project if they wished to do so. A decision by the London government did not mean that the British left the project completely, however. Hawker Siddeley stuck with its French and West German partners, delivering an innovative wing design which allowed all three engines to be paired with the aircraft. Albeit a configuration with Rolls’ RB211 turbofans was initially offered to the airlines as a courtesy and open arms gesture, the main power plant for the airplane eventually became the GE CF6-50 turbofan. Yet, three years after the A-300 entered service with Air France in May 1974, the P&W JT9Ds were added as a secondary option but this combination never became as popular with the airlines as the aircraft’s primary propulsion by GE.20 19 The JT9D and CF6-50 were uprated versions of the engines which the P&W and GE delivered for the initial CX-HLS competition. While the former was subsequently developed for Boeing 747 jumbo jet, the latter for Douglas DC-10 transport. The RB207 was projected high-bypass turban with diameter larger and thrust-ratio higher than its American competitors. It was to power the initial 300-seat version of the A-300, but its development was put on hold in favour of the smaller and less powerful RB211 for Lockheed L-1011 in early 1968. Soon after the A-300 had been scaled down to 250 seats in late 1968, the RB207 development was completely abandoned. Cf. ‘Aero Engines 1969’, Flight International, 2 January 1969, 26 but see also ‘European Airbus Anxieties’, Flight International, 28 November 1968, 882–3 and ‘Data on Smaller A-300 Readied’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 December 1968, 22. 20 Cf. ‘Sud and the RB207’, Flight International, 21 November 1968, 808; ‘The European Airbus: Case for the BAC Three-Eleven’, Flight International, 13 March 1969, 393 and ‘Getting on with the Airbus’, Flight International, 25 December 1969, 977–8 and 983, respectively. See also ‘French Face New Aerospace Budget Cuts’, Aviation Week &

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Behind the Iron Curtain, the Soviet authorities carefully monitored all these developments, not least because Aeroflot badly needed wide-bodied aircraft, too. The extensive expansion, which the company launched on domestic and international routes in the 1960s (see previous chapters), stretched beyond its technical capabilities causing regular delays or flight cancellations for passengers. This raised bitter dissatisfaction with the company’s on-the-ground and in-flight services as well as with management practices. They all became a subject of frequent criticism which ranged from common citizens to high-ranking party officials and aircraft engineers. A period report by Soviet inspection authorities, which made its way into the Aviation Week & Space Technology stated the situation without any frills: the delayed or cancelled flights ‘are caused by the [Aeroflot’s] weak administration with respect to aircraft repair and servicing, flight scheduling, supply, construction of necessary ground facilities and passenger service.’21 The arrival of the second generation of narrow-bodied jetliners—Tu 134 and 154, Il-62 and Yak-40—eased the strained conditions to some extent, but it was nonetheless evident that the company required medium to large capacity aircraft to augment its operations on overcrowded domestic high-density routes.22 These included major trunk lines from Moscow to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) and Kiev as well as to holiday routes to Simferopol, Sochi and Mineralnye Vody serving Crimean and Space Technology, 2 December 1968, 22–3; ‘France, Germany Push A-300B Program’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 21 April 1969, 30 and ‘25 Flying Years: Airbus History’, A Flight International Supplement, 29 October–4 November 1997, 8 and 11. 21 The American aviation magazine overtook the report from the Soviet newspaper Trud (Labour) quoting the USSR’s National Control Committee as a source. Since the Trud was an official tribune of the Soviet Labour Unions, the original report was likely produced by the People’s Control Commission. The official name of the commission in Russian was Komissiya sovetskogo kontrolya. This literally translates as the Soviet Control Commission which explains the shift in nomenclature. Cf. ‘Aeroflot Registers Traffic, Profit Gains’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 October 1967, 27–9, quote on p. 29. 22 Yet, the safety record of the airline and these machines in particular was extremely horrible. In April 1974, a contact from within the Soviet Aviation Ministry informed an unnamed US businessman that 588 persons perished in crashes previous year. Since the entrepreneur in question was actively engaged in talks with the ministry about improving the safety of ground operations at the airports in the USSR, he believed that the figure was in all likeliness correct. As he critically noted to the staff of Moscow Embassy, this then meant that ‘Aeroflot lost more passengers during 1973 than rest of scheduled carriers in world combined.’ Cf. NARA, RG 59, SCSF, Box 13, AV 1-General Policy, Plans, Coordination, 1974–1976, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 23 April 1974.

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other Black Sea resorts. By mid-1968, Robert Hotz of Aviation Week & Space Technology reported from Moscow that the following options were on the table: a projected 500-passenger airbus with wide-bodied fuselage; the stretched 250-seat version of the Tupolev Tu-154 Trijet short- to medium-range airliner for servicing major domestic routes; the extended version of Il-62 quadjet with capacity of 204 seats for long-haul operations to Australia and Latin America and a mixed version of the Antonov An-22 freighter for 300 passengers and 32 tonnes of cargo for longrange, heavy-duty operations in Siberian and Arctic regions. While the latter designs should have seen service by the early 1970s, the airbus entry was expected sometime after the middle of the next decade.23 At the 1971 Paris air show, however, Genrikh Novozhilov, who replaced the then retired Sergei Ilyushin as chief of the design bureau a year before, told the American aviation magazine that the plans for stretched airliners had been completely abandoned as technically impractical. Introducing the transcontinental version of the Il-62 aircraft with extended range of 10,300 km and the Il-76 high-wing turbofan freighter, he stressed that, at the moment, all efforts were put into designing a new wide-bodied transport for Aeroflot.24 The Ilyushin bureau was tasked to develop such a plane, which subsequently received designation as Il-86, by decision of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers, 8 September 1969.25 The final specifications of the Il-86 reached the designers half a year later, on 22 February 1970. They called for a 350-seater with a range of 23 Cf. ‘Aeroflot Developing New Turbofan Fleet’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 5 August 1968, 40–3. 24 ‘Il-62M200 Held Key to Aeroflot Goals’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 14 June 1971, 24–5. According to Aeroflot officials, Ilyushin bureau received a freighter contract because Il-62 was better suited for civilian operations than Antonov An-24 heavylifter which was primarily constructed for Soviet military. Among other reasons, the Il62’s speed advantage and fuel economy were mentioned, too. Nonetheless, the fact that Antonov, along with the economist Evsei Liberman, was one the main proponents of Khrushchev’s economic reforms and publicly criticised the Soviet methods of planning (those of Aeroflot including) since early 1960s could have played certain role in Il-72 and Il-86 decisions as well. Cf. ‘New Il-76 Built to Aeroflot Specifications’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 31 May 1971, 29 as well as ‘Antonov Criticizes Soviet “Quota” System’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 23 July 1962, 74–80 and ‘Antonov Urges “Cost Accounting” in USSR’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 March 1966, 103–13. 25 See Yefim Gordon, Dmitriy Komissarov and Sergey Komissarov, OKB Ilyushin: A History of the Design Bureau and Its Aircraft (Hinkley: Midland Publishing, 2004), 324.

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3600 km with a 40 tonne load and cruising speed of 900 km/h. The airbus was also to service smaller regional airports with shorter and softer runways: the minimum required length for tarmac was set at 2600 metres. Since many of those remote ports not only lacked bridges to the gates but also automated systems for baggage processing, the airliner would have to adjust to the principle of ‘carry-on baggage plus containers.’ After several possible arrangements were studied, the final one emerged with passengers checking in and stowing their baggage and belongings in the lower deck and then proceeding via three internal staircases into the upper flight deck.26 At the same time, a decision was made to build a lowwing airliner with four aft-mounted engines since initial layout based on the Il-76 freighter was deemed obsolete for an ‘airbus’ class of aircraft. The basic idea behind the decision was to mate an extended twin-isle passenger cabin with nine-abreast seating in 3-3-3 configuration to the cockpit, undercarriage, wings and empennage of the Il-62 M airliner. Such a solution would have provided for a quick and efficient solution with the aircraft projected entry into service by mid-1970s.27

Missing the Train and Attempts at Technology Acquisition In 1972, three years into the airliner development, the Ilyushin engineers realised, however, that there were two essential obstacles in its projected path. Despite employing double-slotted flaps, the Il-62 wings with clean leading edge were not big enough to keep the much larger and heavier plane in the air. Consequently, a completely new wing which was approximately 50 square metres larger and utilised both triple-slotted flaps and full-span slats had to be developed. The other issue concerned the Soloviev D-30KU medium-bypassed turbofan engines which had been selected to power the airliner. It became clear that a fully loaded plane would stall and crash on take-off if one of the more critical, outer engines malfunctioned during the initial steep climb. The design team attempted to mitigate the issue by redesigning the aircraft into a trijet with either

26 Ibid., 323–6. 27 Ibid., 326 and ‘Aeroflot’s New Wide-Body’, Flight International, 22 January 1977,

160.

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three aft-mounted engines or one aft-mounted and two wing-mounted engines.28 However, by early 1973 the airliner emerged with four engines mounted in pods under the wings with the power plant changed to Soloviev D-30KP—a fine-tuned version of an earlier engine with slightly higher bypass and thrust ratio. Speaking for the Aviation Week & Space Technology, Ilyushin’s director Novozhilov explained that a change in aircraft design was carried out in order to ‘achieve better engine-out performance and greater maneuverability in airport approach and missed approach patterns.’ At the same time, he vehemently denied that the engine switch could have been prompted by his recent visit to Boeing’s factory at Everett near Seattle saying that instead an Ilyushin Il-22 bomber prototype from 1946, which used the pylon-mounted engines, was the only source of inspiration. A state-of-the-art avionics was planned for Il86, too. This included navigational aid and weather radar designed in accordance with latest ICAO specifications as well as computer based inflight diagnostic equipment both of which were either to be procured directly from the US or built under a license agreement in the USSR.29 Nonetheless, with the Il-86 development significantly behind schedule, the Ministry of Aviation Industry and the Ministry of Civil Aviation, i.e. Aeroflot, commenced a backup plan to take up traffic on desperately overloaded major trunk lines and holiday routes. The first details of the scheme surfaced in October 1973 when a high-level Soviet delegation visited the production sites of all three US major airframe producers as well as those of engine manufactures.30 The tour was held within the framework created by the agreements on technical cooperation which the Soviet State Committee for Science and Technology had instigated with a number of US firms in the wake of the May 1972 Moscow Summit between President Richard Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev.31 The meetings with the representatives of American aviation industry, however, revealed that the Soviet officials not only desired to 28 Gordon et al., OKB Ilyushin, 326–7; ‘Aeroflot’s New Wide-Body’, 160 and ‘Soviet Drawings Show Design Studies for Il-86’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 17 September 1979, 34–5. 29 ‘Cf. ‘Aeroflot Airbus Developments’, Flight International, 1 February 1973, 156 and ‘Soviets Speed Il-86 Development’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 July 1973, 21. 30 TNA, BT 359/12, FCO to Washington Embassy, 25 October 1973. 31 TNA, BT 359/12, Washington Embassy to FCO, 5 March 1974.

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procure airplanes, which had been known about for some time, but were also interested in large-scale technology transfers.32 The scope of transfer and its exact quid pro quo emerged from the subsequent talks which Boeing, Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas held with the Soviets during the first quarter of 1974. These showed that Moscow was willing to procure up to 30 aircraft, but conditioned the outright purchase of technology with mutual ‘scientific and technical cooperation.’ This would have included ‘construction of a vast aircraft production complex’ on a greenfield site and ‘joint design and development of a wide bodied aircraft.’ The plant would employ 100,000 workers with a nearby new build city housing 500,000. A particular type to be produced was a derivative model of one of the already existing American wide-bodied aircraft but with an extended range of 11,500 km. There would be 50 aircraft and 700 engines coming off the production lines each year with the state-of-the-art Western know-how and machinery being utilised for their construction. In return, Washington would take at least a few Yakovlev Yak-40 commuter planes or cargo moving helicopters for American customers to help offset the purchasing price of the widebodied aircraft. Yet, the largest bulk of costs would be recovered from the supply of aircraft parts to US partner companies and by sales of the jointly-developed airliner to the Soviet bloc and non-aligned countries.33 The responses of concerned Western enterprises to such grandiose plans varied greatly. As Charles O. Cary, the Assistant Administrator for International Aviation Affairs at the FAA, told an officer of the British Department of Industry, ‘McDonnel[l] Douglas were less interested than Boeing or Lockheed and … the US engine companies had only limited interest,’ too.34 The ‘limited interest’ on part of GE and P&W was hardly surprising since both companies were informed already on 16 December 1973 that the US government East-West Trade Committee chaired by George Shultz, the Secretary of the Treasury, decided to sanction neither the sale of CF6 and JT9 turbofan engines nor their licensed production 32 TNA, CAB 148/138, Possible Sale of RB211 to the Soviet Union: Memorandum

by the Department of Trade and Industry, 29 October 1973 and NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 15 November 1974. 33 Cf. TNA, FCO 55/1311, Report on Discussions in Moscow 20–26 January, 1974 and Notes on Meetings held during visit to Moscow—20–26 January, 1974 as well as NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 27 March 1974. 34 TNA, BT 359/12, FCO to Washington Embassy, 10 May 1974.

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in the USSR. This left the door entirely open for Rolls-Royce since its RB211 turbofan remained the only option left on the table.35 Hit by high development costs of the TriStar airliner combined with low interest on part of airlines because of the decreased demand for air travel in the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis, the Lockheed/Rolls-Royce tandem seemed to be the most receptive to Moscow’s lures. Considering the business opportunity in the USSR a sort of ‘salvation’ from deep financial constraints, both companies signalled their readiness to deliver the completed planes as well as aid the Soviets with factory construction and joint development of a long-range derivate of the L-1011 aircraft, a position they had held ever since the October 1973 talks.36 While the ban on engine sales seemed to indicate that US officialdom was completely adverse to any deal with the Soviets, this was not entirely so, however. On 25 February 1974, George Shultz, in a meeting with the Soviet Minister of Foreign Trade Nikolai Patolichev, informed him that Washington was ready to open discussions with Moscow on a bilateral airworthiness agreement, the conclusion of which would substantially facilitate the sale of Yakovlev Yak-40 jets in the US and the sales of American wide-bodied airplanes in the USSR. He also anticipated that ‘any approved’ deal over airplanes would include a ‘transfer of normal technological information related to the safe and economic operation and maintenance of the aircraft.’ Furthermore, the administration would approve the export and licensed production in the Soviet Union of ‘selected aircraft components’ provided no ‘information of militarilysensitive nature’ would be involved. However, it was rather ‘doubtful’ that a joint aircraft design and factory construction would be licensed. On the next day, the presidents of Boeing, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed were briefed on the substance of the Schultz-Patolichev meeting and the US Department of Commerce issued formal letters to all three companies, which contained the same information, on 26 April 1974.37

35 TNA, BT 359/12, FCO to Washington Embassy, 11 January 1974. 36 TNA, BT 359/12, Brief for DTI Team’s Discussion with the US Administration on

the Sale of Wide Bodied Jets, their Engines and Technology, to the Soviet Union, 24 January 1974 and TNA, FCO 55/1311, Possible Sale of the RB211 Aero Engine to the Soviet Union, 4 February 1974. 37 NARA, AAD, RG59, DoS to Moscow Embassy, 28 March 1974 and TNA, FCO 69/533, Memorandum by the Department of Industry, Possible Sale or Licensing of the RB211 in the Soviet Union: Annex B.

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The intense contact between the Soviet authorities and American firms continued during the spring and early summer with an L-1011 owned by the British charter airline, Court Line Aviation, appearing in April 1974 in Moscow for on-sight inspection. Also, despite the briefs from Washington, neither Boeing nor Lockheed shelved the idea of a joint airliner development. Whereas the former asked the concerned departments to clarify whether ‘the transfer of design information only’ would eventually be approved, the latter was willing to assist the Soviets anyway since the Burbank company did not expect a derivative aircraft flying before 1980. At that time, the original plane would have been in service for at least 12 years and a derivative transport would be no competition for it. On top of this, the Soviets would have provided Lockheed or other American firms with the capital required to produce the next generation of aircraft. Thus George C. Prill, Lockheed’s international director and former FAA Assistant Administrator painted this picture of developments to the American ambassador in Moscow in May 1974.38 This argument by one of the most influential people in American aviation business at the time may have had its own logic of fiscal and economic pragmatism, but there were some other arguments to be heard, too. As soon as the news leaked that US firms were considering building a turnkey aviation complex which would, in fact, have been the largest in the world, strong opposition against any such deal began to arise. In the early 1970s, US manufactured planes dominated airline fleets worldwide, taking more than 70 per cent of the market, with aeronautics products accounting for 8 per cent of all US exports at the same time. Critical voices from within the industry therefore argued that meeting Moscow’s demands would significantly undermine the American preponderance in the markets at a time when the whole industry was badly hit by the consequences of the oil crisis. Also, the unions voiced concern about job transfers from them to the cheaper Soviet workforce.39 The main speaker for these dissenting voices eventually became Henry M. Jackson, a Democratic Senator for Washington State, in whose 38 NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 17 May 1974 and DoS to Moscow Embassy, 27 June 1974 and TNA, BT 359/12, Washington Embassy to FCO, 15 May 1974. See also ‘Court Line’s TriStar “Halcyon Days”’, Flight International, 18 April 1974, 473. 39 TNA, BT 359/12, LA Consulate-General to FCO and the Department of Trade and Industry, 8 February 1974 and Washington Embassy to FCO, 14 May 1974.

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constituency Boeing’s production facilities were primarily located. A wellknown anti-communist, Jackson attacked the projected deal on several occasions and partly as a result of his efforts, the final blow for the US–Soviet project came on 22 July 1974. Two and half weeks before President Nixon stepped down from office facing the threat of impeachment, Arthur Hartman, the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Multi-National Corporations that the airframe manufacturers would not be allowed to build a plant for wide-bodied aircraft in the USSR. Such a manufacturing complex, he added, could eventually be used for military purposes which would have been contrary to US national interest.40 This decision met with immense displeasure in Moscow, but the Soviets seemed to be determined to strike a deal on planes even if the factory construction was definitely out of the question. In early October 1974, Dzhermen Gvishiani, deputy chairman of the State Committee for Science and Technology, visited the United States in order to bolster the contacts between the two nations. Lobbying the heads of industry and leading congressmen, Gvishiani also met with the combined LockheedRolls-Royce sales team. At the meeting he pointed to Kremlin’s concerns that East-West relations ‘might be re-entering a period of Cold War’ friction again. Gvishiani further said that as ‘an act of good faith and as a political gesture the USSR was prepared to consider a massive purchase of American aircraft’ and asked Lockheed promptly to prepare a proposal for immediate delivery of two planes with a letter of intent for an additional 30 and an option to purchase another 30 aircraft in the more distant future.41 The following month, upon Gvishiani’s invitation, Boeing’s president and vice-president, Malcolm T. Stamper and Robert E. Bateman, respectively, visited the Soviet capital and offered the deputy chairman between five and ten Boeing 747 jumbo jets for immediate delivery in addition to a set of technologies for aircraft construction, e.g. techniques for aircraft painting and cabin construction, the honeycombing process, etc. Also, if the Soviet authorities eventually decided to purchase more aircraft in the mid-term perspective, Boeing would then provide them with another 40 NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 26 June 1974 and DoS to Moscow Embassy, 27 June 1974. See also TNA, BT 359/12, Aircraft Factory Sale to Russia Banned by US, 22 July 1974. 41 TNA, BT 359/12, Rolls Royce: RB211, 17 October 1974.

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package of military non-sensitive technologies. Recounting the meeting to the American Ambassador in Moscow, both men found the ‘Soviet interest in purchases extremely strong.’42 Five months later, in March 1975, another high-ranking Boeing team described yet another round of talks as being characterised by ‘inching ahead’ with only psychological obstacles preventing the Soviets from purchasing the American jumbo jets.43 However, by late April, American diplomats reported from Moscow that both the Ministry of Aviation Industry and Aeroflot had been instructed to leave the idea of aircraft purchases dormant. As they were informally told by several middle and high-ranking officials, there were two reasons for this. The first was decreased hard-currency earnings on the part of the Soviet airline. This was caused by substantially increased costs of fuel outside the USSR as well as by the politically motivated introduction of several new overseas lines which were, however, economically unprofitable. The second was the unwillingness of the US government to license the joint plant construction in the Soviet Union. Unless such cooperation could eventually be approved in Washington, Vladimir Samorukov, deputy foreign relations director at Aeroflot, disclosed to one diplomat, that Moscow would not purchase the planes either.44 With the Lockheed and Boeing talks stalling interminably, Rolls-Royce decided to act in its own capacity. At the end of March 1975, the company sent a team to Moscow where the talks with Ministry of Aviation Industry officials were held. During these, the ministry representatives informed their interlocutors that the Il-86 aircraft would be outfitted with Soviet engines, but showed a burning interest in acquiring know-how and technology for this purpose. The British countered that no technology would be provided unless the engine purchases were involved. The team left Moscow disappointed, but a few months later, in September, the idea was again revived when Peter Shore, the British Secretary of State for Trade, paid a visit to the Soviet Union. At that time Shore stated that Rolls-Royce and the respective British and Soviet ministries and import organisations were negotiating for a deal concerning a small number of RB211 turbofan engines to be tested on Il-86 airframes. If the

42 NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 15 November 1974. 43 NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 20 March 1975. 44 NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 30 April 1975.

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engines proved suitable, the initial order would be followed by another contract involving a larger amount of engines.45 Three months later, the prospective deal was formalised by the Protocol for the Supply of 10– 12 RB211-524 Engines which the British and Soviets initialled on 10 December 1975 on occasion of the visit to the UK by the Soviet foreign trade minister Patolichev.46 Somewhat later, on 18 February 1976, the Deputy Minister for the Aviation Industry, N. A. Dondukov, signed with Rolls-Royce a supplementary technical protocol binding the latter to prepare the final commercial proposal by 11 May. Despite the fact that the offer had been worked out and was ready to be handed over to Dondukov when he returned to the UK, Rolls-Royce provided him with no documentation in accordance with the instruction from Sir Kenneth Keith, the company’s chairman. The reason was, as Keith told Edmund Dell who replaced Shore as trade secretary in April, that the company was, ever since the initial talks in autumn 1973, interested only in a large-scale deal involving approximately 150 engines. A bargain which would have involved the sale of a small amount of test engines and significant amount of technology was out of the question as potentially threatening the company’s relations with the US airframe manufacturers and engine parts suppliers: it would just not be worthwhile the political fallout. Whitehall officials were sensitive to these arguments, too. Nonetheless, they found Keith’s decision ‘ill-judged’ and contrary to delaying tactics in dealing with Soviet requests as had been agreed in the meeting between the representatives of the company and intra-departmental committee on 24 March.47 Dondukov, for himself, was extremely offended and threatened that if the Soviets were unable to agree with Rolls-Royce, they would attempt to come on terms with GE and purchase the CF6 engines instead.48 Upon his return to Moscow, the deputy minister furthermore told the chargé d’affaires

45 NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 18 April 1975 and ‘British Trade Secretary Peter Shore’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 29 September 1975, 20. 46 NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 28 October 1975 and TNA,

BT 359/13, Ministry of Defence to Department of Industry: Appendix—Protocol, 25 February 1976. 47 TNA, BT 359/13, Summary Record of a Meeting with Rolls-Royce (1971) at the FCO, 24 March 1976; USSR-Rolls-Royce: Meeting with Sir Kenneth Keith, May 1976 and Note of the Secretary of State’s Meeting with Sir Kenneth Keith, 19 May 1976. 48 TNA, BT 359/13, Keith to Dell, 8 July 1976.

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and commercial counsellor of the British Embassy that, in the absence of consummation of the commercial proposal, he would not invite Keith for any further negotiations.49 Nonetheless, at the Queen’s birthday reception in Moscow on 12 June, Dondukov told the British Ambassador that Rolls-Royce was still not out of game albeit GE had provided the Soviet aviation ministry with more information than the British firm had done so far. Yet, the American company, with whom the ministry had formally negotiated since February 1976, quoted a unit price for the CF6 engine of only $1 million, which was extremely cheap as compared to approximately $2.7 million a unit in the case of the RB211. The Soviets were therefore strongly suspicious of the GE offer, but the deputy minister pointed out that the ball was now in Rolls-Royce’s court if the British producer desired to win the contest.50 In early July, Kenneth Keith travelled to Washington where he met with General Brent Scowcroft, Gerald Ford’s National Security Advisor and other high-ranking American officials. Since none of them raised any overriding objections to the sale of completed engines for a civilian airframe, Keith subsequently gave the green light to further talks with the Soviets. Particularly important in his decision was the news that Rolls-Royce was now competing with GE for sales.51 In September 1976, the company from Derby proposed to the Soviets delivery of 150 RB211 engines to be tested and, subsequently, eventually mounted on the Il-86D aircraft, a version with a prolonged range of 8500–9000 kms. However, when Don J. Pepper, the Rolls-Royce executive director, arrived with the firm’s sales team in Moscow in early October, the Deputy Minister Dondukov rebuffed the offer and insisted on a batch of 10–12 engines for proving tests. The ongoing negotiations over RB211 turbofans were also discussed during the meetings which Michael Meacher, the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Industry, held on 6 October with the Deputy Minister for Foreign Trade N. D. Komarov and Gvishiani of the State Committee for Science and 49 TNA, BT 359/13, USSR-Rolls-Royce: Meeting with Sir Kenneth Keith, May 1976. 50 TNA, FCO 69/577, Moscow Embassy to FCO, 14 June 1976 and COCOM: Memo

by Trade Relations and Exports Department, 2 September 1976 as well as NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 13 July 1976. 51 Cf. TNA, BT 359/13, Keith to Dell, 8 July 1976 and TNA, FCO 69/577, Keith to Butler (FCO), 20 September 1976. But see also TNA, FCO 69/576, Washington Embassy to FCO, 7 June 1976.

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Technology. Meacher travelled to the Soviet capital separately from the Rolls-Royce team to promote the sales of British industrial products in the USSR in connection with the annual Britnauchpribor Exhibition.52 During the first conversation with Komarov, the Soviet deputy minister told Meacher that the Soviets had always desired to acquire only 10– 12 engines for testing an experimental aircraft while having no desire to produce a large, high-bypass power plant by themselves. Furthermore, he added, that Rolls-Royce insistence on high volume sales was only blocking progress in the talks since the Soviet aviation industry was not in a position to purchase and absorb the 150 engines. Two hours later, Gvishiani drew a somewhat different picture, however, emphasising that Moscow would still be interested in the joint production of engines on a large scale. Since the Soviet engines ‘were adequate but not as good as those produced by R[olls]R[oyce],’ he and his colleagues from the State Committee convinced the Soviet aviation circles to pursue the talks with the British company. He further pointed out that the Soviets knew that Rolls-Royce sales in the US were now increasing but it was still P&W who had 70 per cent of the world engine market. However, if the British and Soviets could stick together with the former having a controlling majority of 51 per cent and the latter subcontracting 49 per cent of engine parts, the common enterprise could dominate the large Soviet market as well as profiting from sales in third countries. Gvishiani further added that he had already talked to Boeing and they were examining possible cooperation. Being pushed onto a defensive footing, Meacher tried to direct the discussions towards other trade issues and repeatedly emphasised that a decision rested exclusively upon commercial judgement of Rolls-Royce despite the company being state-owned.53 In mid-November, Pepper travelled with his team to Moscow again. Knowing that the Soviets desired to build only 25 long-range Il-86 aircraft, Rolls-Royce revised its position and offered 32 engines of which 12 would be delivered for a prototype test programme and the remaining 20 for the first five production aircraft. Komarov dismissed the updated offer yet again emphasising that the ‘Soviet side had always thought in 52 Cf. TNA, FCO 69/577, Rolls Royce (Aerospace) Visit to Moscow: 4–7 October, 13 October 1976 and minute by Johnson (FCO), 18 October 1976. 53 Cf. TNA, FCO 69/577, Call on Mr Komarov by Mr. Meacher at 2.30 PM, 6 October 1976; Summary Record of a Call by Mr Meacher on Dr Gvishiani at 16.30, 6 October 1976.

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terms of 12 engines,’ but ‘they might be able to take another 12 engines though they were not sure what they would do with them.’54 On 11 February 1977, upon invitation from the Soviet Prime Minister Kosygin, Kenneth Keith stopped over in Moscow while returning from a business trip in Tokyo. At the meeting, after going through the recent £100 million order for modified Avon jet engines to pump oil and gas on the Siberia-Chelyabinsk pipeline, Keith restated his earlier position and told Kosygin that an initial purchase of 32 engines was conditional on a following order for a larger batch of 150 power plants in total. On 8 April, the Soviets expressed through the Avtopromimport agency an interest in ordering thirty-two engines to which, after being urged several times, Rolls-Royce on 18 May 1977 replied that both parties had likely come ‘near to the end of the road in [their] exchanges.’55 With Anglo-Soviet talks on hold, but not terminated, the Soviet officials raised the engine issue with GE’s vice chairman J. S. Parker who, in late June 1977, visited Leningrad and Moscow to attend an electro-technical congress as one of twenty guests of honour. Both the new Minister of the Aircraft Industry, Vasily A. Kazakov, and Gvishiani declared a desire immediately to procure 10–12 CF6 engines for proving with the long-range version of the Il-86 aircraft and, subsequently, to commence licensed production to equip some 20 transports. While Parker told the US Ambassador to Moscow that the latter was out of question since it would have paid off only if the Soviets would produce some 1500 engines, one and half months later, GE eventually asked the Department of Commerce to authorise the sale of twelve CF6-50C turbofans for installation in Il-86D prototype airliners.56 Rolls-Royce swiftly reacted and, on 8 September, dispatched to the Soviets an updated contract for 32

54 Cf. TNA, FCO 69/577, Moscow Embassy to FCO, 24 November 1976; Moscow Embassy to Department of Trade, 30 November 1976. For summary of talks, see TNA, FCO 69/578, Band (Moscow Commercial Secretary) to Johnson (Department of Trade), 23 November 1976. 55 Cf. TNA, FCO 28/3146, Letter from Pepper to Butko, 18 May 1977; Summary Record of Sir J Russell’s call on Mr Burrows, 18 May 1977. See also TNA, BT 359/13, Newspaper excerpts from 12 February 1977. 56 NARA, AAD, RG59, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 27 June 1977 as well as ‘CF6-50 for Ilyuishin Il-86?’, Flight International, 13 August 1977, 466 and ‘CF6 Export to USSR’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 15 August 1977, 32.

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RB211-524B-34 propulsion systems, dropping completely the previous insistence on the follow-up sales.57 Facing an outcry about the proposed CF6 deal on Capitol Hill while being, at the same time, urged by Whitehall to take an ‘advisory opinion’ on granting export clearance to US made components in RB211 power plants, the position of the Carter Administration became clear on 22 December 1977. That day both the British Embassy in Washington and GE were briefed that neither the sale of individual components nor completed engines would eventually be sanctioned.58 In making this decision, the following factors were deemed to be of major importance. The concerned US departments believed that the acquisition of Western turbofan engines would have significantly aided the Soviets in producing a comparable power plant of their own by getting access to some most sensitive technologies. These, in particular, included the ‘high temperature combustor and other “hot core” related technologies, fuel system components, materials coatings and turbine blade cooling techniques and design.’ Furthermore, they were afraid that the information gathered from examination of engines and their design parameters could have been ‘applied to Soviet military engine program[me]s’ as well as possibly improving ‘the notoriously poor fuel efficiency of Soviet engines’ thus enhancing ‘the range and capacity of Soviet aircraft.’ Finally, US officialdom was convinced that Moscow’s key objective was to ‘develop simultaneously a wide-bodied aircraft and an advanced jet engine’ for its own inner objectives since the prospects of follow-on sales were not significant.59 In the light of the strong opposition from the administration, GE released a statement on 10 February 1978 that it withdrew its ‘request for an export license and plan no further action’ in this regard. Rolls-Royce, afraid of losing B-747 contracts in favour of GE and P&W because of selling the RB211-524 power plant to the Soviets, shelved the idea, too. Nonetheless, the company indicated that it may wish to reconsider

57 TNA, BT 359/14, Sales and Purchase Agreement between Rolls-Royce Limited and Avtopromimport, 8 September 1977. 58 NARA, AAD, RG59, DoS to London Embassy, 23 December 1977 and ‘Soviet CF650 Sale Protested in Congress’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 21 November 1977, 13. 59 TNA, BT 359/14, Washington Embassy to FCO, 22 December 1977.

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the issue again if serious proposals from Moscow would be received.60 More importantly, in view of American objections, the British Ministry of Defence changed tack and, in January 1978, began to question the wisdom of the proposed engine sales as well. This was a major shift in policy because it was the first time since the autumn 1973 that the British military expressed any concerns about exporting the RB211s to the Soviet Union.61 A full evaluation of the issue at hand was provided by a paper pertinently entitled Detailed Ministry of Defence Assessment of Effects of the Sale of RB211-524B to the Soviet Union which was placed for consideration within the Sub-Committee on Strategic Exports by the Cabinet Defence and Overseas Policy Committee in late April 1978.62 Taking into account the latest intelligence data and defectors’ evidence, the document regarded the supposed long-range variant of the Il-86 a ‘fictitious project’ to circumvent the CoCom restrictions and hide that the engines were in reality destined for the Antonov An-400 programme. The An-400 was an in-house designation for the later An-124 Ruslan freighter of which a first mock-up had been made at the time. Such supposition was further reinforced by the technical analysis performed by the military which revealed that the RB211-524B turbofans were sixty per cent more powerful than necessary for the size of the Il-86 and, indeed, they would not even fit under its wings. In fact, ‘any attempt to install four -524B engines in the [Il-86] would necessitate so much structural modification to the airframe that it would be easier to build a new aircraft altogether.’63 60 TNA, BT 359/14, Washington Embassy to FCO, 13 February 1978 and FCO to Washington Embassy, 7 March 1978. 61 TNA, BT 359/14, RB211 for Russia, 10 February 1978 and RB2-11 for the Soviet Union, 15 February 1978. 62 TNA, BT 359/14, Minute by Maynard (DoI), 27 April 1978 and Detailed Ministry of Defence Assessment of Effects of the Sale of RB211-524B to the Soviet Union, undated. 63 Cf. TNA, BT 359/14, Detailed Ministry of Defence Assessment, undated. Based likely on leaked information from the Rolls-Royce, the Flight International published already in November 1975 that the new long-haul jet was, in fact, developed by Antonov design bureau while using ‘some components of the Ilyushin Il-86 short-haul wide-body, but it [was] probable that the new aircraft [would] be larger and heavier.’ The Ministry of Defence pointed to the possible diversion from Il-86 to An-400 first in early October 1976, but neither the Foreign and Commonwealth Office nor the Department of Industry seemed to be ‘over concerned with a particular aircraft designation’ at the time. Another year later, on 23 November 1977, the interdepartmental meeting concluded that, if the engines were to be used for military transport aircraft like projected An-400, it would

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Furthermore, if it were only several transport aircraft powered directly by exported RB211 engines, this would have a relatively ‘little effect on the Soviet strategic lift capability except to permit earlier flights of the new airframe than would otherwise [have been] possible,’ the paper emphasised. However, if the An-400 were ‘to be the recipient of the -524B engines, and all the COCK [An-22] aircraft [were to be] replaced by [An-400s] in the 1980s,’ the situation would be entirely different. In addition, the military worried that the acquisition of engines would eventually enable the Soviets to gain a ‘significant lead’ over the West in the category of short take-off and landing (STOL) aircraft. With the US government funding for the Boeing YC14 and McDonnell Douglas YC15 prototype transports recently withdrawn, the An-72 COALER provided a suitable platform for developing a cutting edge, heavy lift, engine-over-wing freighter.64 From a timely perspective, the Ministry of Defence expected that the Soviets would only need five years to launch a production model which would incorporate the critical features of the RB211s (combustion chamber, the high pressure and high temperature turbine and the large fan blades), while Rolls-Royce needed more than a decade to develop the power plant. This would have effectively reduced the Western lead in turbofan technology from between five to seven years to between three to five years. A chance to inspect the RB211 technology would thus enable the Soviets to improve the extremely high specific fuel consumption and mediocre servicing times of their aero engines since these needed to be overhauled twice as frequently as the Western ones. Both factors seemed to become more and more important for Moscow because of the decreased oil supplies and increased production and maintenance costs of turbofan engines in comparison with pure turbojets.65 In the long run, be up to James Callaghan’s cabinet to decide whether the sale of engines for four to six aircraft would present a ‘significant strategic threat’ or not. Cf. ‘Antonov Designing New Long-Haul Jet’, Flight International, 20 November 1975, 741 as well as TNA, FCO 69/577, Letter from Hill (MoD) to Butler (FCO) with reply from Mellon (FCO), 8 and 18 October 1976, respectively, and TNA, BT 359/14, RB211 Engines for the USSR: Note of a Meeting, 23 November 1977. 64 TNA, BT 359/14, Detailed Ministry of Defence Assessment, undated. 65 Relaying on unquoted intelligence assessments, the report stated that ‘by 1990 Soviet

oil supplies will be barely sufficient to meet internal requirements given current rates of assumption’ and for that reason the Soviets recently launched a major fuel conservation

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the military concluded, the acquisition of the state-of-the-art turbofans ‘would clearly improve still further the range/payload of Soviet transport aircraft’ while substantially reducing costs associated with their servicing and logistics. For these reasons, any sale of RB211-524 technology either in the form of aero engines, second-hand wide-bodied planes, or industrial gas pumps should be prevented by the UK and US governments from at least a short-term perspective.66 In the light of these arguments, the Cabinet Defence and Overseas Policy Committee decided on 16 May 1978 that the ministers should fully consider the proposed engine deal after the meeting of the British-Soviet Joint Commission took place later that month. Until that point in time, all concerned should respond to Soviet queries in a ‘non-committal way.’ That was how Eric Varley, the Secretary of State for Industry, briefed the Prime Minister Callaghan and other cabinet members in a minute of 19 May. However, to much surprise at Whitehall, the Soviet delegation did not raise the subject at all during the meetings of the Joint Commission while, at the same time, Rolls-Royce was informally told that Moscow’s interest in obtaining the engines had radically diminished. In view of ‘the apparent decline in Soviet interest in acquiring the Rolls-Royce 211 engine,’ at Varley’s suggestion, James Callaghan on 19 June determined that ‘the possibility of selling the engines to the Soviet Union should be allowed to remain dormant’ for the time being.67 In the end, Moscow gained access to the latest Western turbofan technology in September 1980, when, as local sources reported, Soviet technicians and military officers thoroughly inspected a GE CF6-50C2 turbofan stored at Kabul international airport for Ariana Afghan Airlines. The engine was a spare power plant for a DC-10 aircraft which the company acquired from McDonnell Douglas a mere eleven months previously, in October 1979. This prompted suspicions that the Soviets would again turn to reverse-engineering as they did back in the late 1940s and early 1950s to bridge the yawning gap in high-performance, high-bypass

programme ‘with particular emphasis on the utilization of high grade fuels such as aviation keros[i]ne.’ Cf. Ibid. For likely source of this information and further discussion of this issue, see last chapter. 66 TNA, BT 359/14, Detailed Ministry of Defence Assessment, undated. 67 Cf. TNA, FCO 69/597, Minute from Varley to Callaghan, 19 May 1978; FCO to

Moscow Embassy, 9 June 1978; Minute by M. J. Llewellyn Smith (FCO), 10 June 1978 and Prospects for Sale of RB211 Aircraft Engines to the Soviet Union, 19 June 1978.

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technology.68 However, these fears evaporated by the middle of the decade when more details on the Antonov An-124 airlifter and its Lotarev D-18T engines began to emerge. Described as ‘a competent piece of engineering’ by an unnamed American engine expert for Flight International at the 1985 Paris air show, the ‘Ruslan’s muscle’ achieved the high-bypass ratio of 5.7. Nonetheless, its three-spool design and performance parameters were closer to an earlier RB211-22B power plant which was certified in 1973 than to the more potent -524 version certified two years later. In addition, as former RAF pilot and prominent aviation author Bill Gunston reported from Lotarev’s design bureau at Zaporizhia in January 1984, the D-18T ‘was certainly running before 1979’ and, hence, the abovementioned inspection of CF6 power plant at Kabul airport played no or, if any, only marginal role in its development. The apparent inability or unwillingness of the Soviets to copy the Western turbofan engines at the time further confirms that Moscow, in 1985, forced Ariana to sell its DC-10 to the British Caledonian airlines rather than dismantling and reverse-engineering the plane and engine in the USSR.69 But, as the next chapter shows, Soviet problems with developing a long-range, wide-bodied civilian airliner powered by state-of-the-art turbofan propulsion shifted swiftly from the ‘purely technical and military level’ to the ‘more economic and political sphere’ of various bilateral relations between Aeroflot and American and British aerospace companies and between the Soviet and Western governments.

68 Cf. ‘Air Transport: Ariana Afghan Airlines’, Flight International, 20 October 1979, 1262 and ‘Soviet Engines’, Flight International, 17 January 1981, 165–6 as well as ‘Soviets Gain Access to US Engine’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 22 September 1980, 24 and ‘Soviets Display Lotarev Turbofan Powerplant for An-124 Transport’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1 July, 1985, 62. 69 Cf. ‘Soviet Turbofan Revealed’, Flight International, 14 January 1984, 70–1; ‘USSR Forced Ariana DC-10 Sale’, Flight International, 27 April 1985, 5; ‘Big Man from Antonov’, Flight International, 8 June 1985, 3–41 and ‘Lotarev Turbofan Detailed’, Flight International, 15 June 1985, 21.

CHAPTER 7

Relations Cool Down and KAL 007 Incident

Détente: Testing the Limits On 23 June 1973, the Secretary of Transportation, Claude S. Brinegar, and the Soviet Minister of Civil Aviation, Boris Bugayev, signed a protocol amending the original 1966 US-USSR air transport agreement. With a desire to foster ‘the increasing traffic between the two countries’ even further, the protocol provided for extension of services by expanding the number of weekly flights from two to three for each airline and granted Pan Am rights to operate between New York and Leningrad whereas Aeroflot received the rights for the Moscow–Washington route. In addition, point seven of the Annex introduced a ‘change of gauge’ formula allowing the designated carriers to shift passengers from one plane to another at an intermediate point. In practical terms, this enabled Pan Am to allocate travellers to a wide-body jet between New York and Frankfurt where they switched to a narrow-bodied airliner for the remaining segment of the route.1 The signature of the protocol was the result of long and protracted talks, initiated by a note from the Soviet Embassy in Washington dated 18 February 1970. In late March, the Embassy furnished the State Department with a more elaborated and detailed aide-memoire. This envisioned 1 NSA, UUCA, Protocol between the USA and the USSR on Question Relating to the

Expansion of Air Services and DoS to Moscow Embassy, both 23 June 1973.

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a large-scale deal involving the extension of Aeroflot’s landing rights to include New York, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco via a Pacific route as well as onward rights for flights across the US to the third countries. In exchange, the Soviets offered Pan Am the rights for a transSiberian route to Japan and a trans-Caucasian route to East Asia. Albeit a ‘shortcut’ to Asia through Tashkent promised ‘substantial mileage reduction from the present Middle East routing,’ the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) still found the proposal economically questionable and, therefore, premature. Instead, the Board suggested an increase in the number of intermediate points at which Pan Am and Aeroflot could pick up fifth freedom traffic on the Moscow–New York route while adding Washington and Leningrad as supplementary terminals to the former two.2 In July 1970, during talks held in the US capital, an ad referendum agreement was eventually reached with the Soviet team accepting an American proposal for ‘a limited expansion of services’ along the lines drawn by the CAB. The agreement provided for both frequency increases and the addition of Washington and Leningrad as co-terminals.3 At Pan Am’s request, however, the State Department determined to hold off the ratification of the document until Aeroflot was willing to undertake steps to improve the operating conditions of the American carrier in Moscow. This was motivated by generally worsening financial figures at Pan Am, but there were other worrying matters as well. Of particular concern to the airline was diversion of passengers and freight by Aeroflot refusing to issue Pan Am tickets even to American citizens if not paid in dollars or a journey involving a stop at an intermediate point in Europe. Further problems included both delayed payment of bills and provision of suitable housing for Pan Am employees. Despite the situation being ameliorated in certain regards and Pan Am admitting in September 1972 that relations between two carriers were ‘probably as adequate as can reasonably be achieved,’ the mood in Washington remained cool.4 2 Cf. NSA, UUCA, US-USSR Civil Air Agreement: Our Response to Soviet Proposal, 27 February 1970; Letter from Browne (CAB Chairman) to Trezise (DoS), undated and DoS Notice for President’s Evening Reading, 10 July 1970. 3 A co-terminal means that a point C is serviced as a prolongation of an already existing connection between A and B. In this case, Aeroflot should have flown from Moscow to Washington via New York while Pan Am to Leningrad via Moscow or vice versa. 4 NSA, UUCA, Memorandum for Kissinger, 17 September 1972. But see also Memoranda for Kissinger dated 28 September 1971 and 2 March 1972, respectively, with former containing the documents (Memorandum of Consultations and Proposed Note of

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The situation only changed in mid-April 1973. President Nixon then requested the Department of State to work out proposals for amending the existing bilateral air transport agreement (along with that on cultural exchanges) in order to increase the number of frequencies and points served.5 Next month, upon invitation from the US Government, the American and Soviet representatives met in Washington but the talks recessed without agreement being reached. The former resisted any attempts at frequency increase as well as the introduction of Washington and Leningrad as co-terminals to New York and Moscow, respectively, as the CAB had proposed three years ago and which both parties had then accepted. The latter yet ‘categorically’ opposed the use of wide-bodied aircraft over Soviet territory. With ‘no further flexibility’ on these issues, the aviation diplomats and officials were heading for impasse.6 Yet, the political will was to prevail. Because of the strong pressures from top-level leadership on both sides, the teams gathered once again in June and eventually ironed out the main points of contention by taking a middle road. They agreed to a limited increase of flight frequencies, an exchange of rights for separate routes between Moscow and Washington and New York and Leningrad, respectively, albeit Pan Am showed little interest in opening the latter connection and, finally, the introduction of a ‘change of gauge’ formula. An important part in the overall deal also agreed to facilitate charter flights between the two countries.7 Avoiding a stalemate at the last moment, the Protocol on Expansion of Air Services thus became the last document which was, along with ten others, initialled on the sidelines of the Washington summit between US

Exchange) pertaining to July 1970 talks. All memoranda for Kissinger quoted here and below were eventually authored by the State Department’s Executive Secretary, Theodore L. Eliot. 5 NSA, UUCA, Memorandum for the Secretary of State, 16 April 1973. 6 NSA, UUCA, DoS Minutes, 8 May and 12 June 1973, respectively, as well as Letter

from Timm (CAB Chairman) to Rogers (Secretary of State), 26 May 1973 and Memorandum for the Secretary of State, 30 May 1973. See also FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XV, National Security Decision Memorandum 215, 3 May 1973, 332. 7 NSA, UUCA, Memorandum for Kissinger (including Fact Sheet and Joint Communiqué), 22 June 1973. But see also FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XV, Memoranda of Conversation, 18 June and 23 June 1973 respectively, 505 and 527, respectively, as well as ‘Soviets to Press for U.S. Routes Despite Resistance by State Dept.’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 August 1973, 27–8.

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President Richard Nixon and the General Secretary of the Communist Party Leonid Brezhnev.8 With frequencies increased from the 1974 summer season and services to Washington inaugurated in April of that year, the aviation détente seemed to reach its peak. However, under the surface, relations were marked by ‘internal coldness’ as the First Deputy Minister of Civil Aviation, A. N. Katrich, told the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation and Telecommunications, Raymond J. Waldmann on occasion of Aeroflot’s inaugural flight to the US capital. In order to develop ‘closer cooperation under mutually beneficial conditions,’ Katrich and his companion, V. D. Khrabrov, deputy chief of the foreign relations section of the aviation ministry, proposed to hold ‘at least preliminary talks in May or June’ to clarify the situation with regard to ‘charters, expansion of the level of service, and the addition of new traffic points.’9 Nonetheless, in July 1974, the State Department authorised the American diplomats to take ‘a very stiff approach to the Soviets’ because of ‘a number of clear violations’ of US-USSR air transport and Pan Am-Aeroflot interline agreements by the Soviet Union and Aeroflot, respectively. This included the continuous practice of refusing to issue Pan Am tickets to those travellers who desired to travel between Moscow and New York via an intermediate point as well as forcing passengers and cargo senders to pay for the use of Pan Am flights in dollars instead of roubles as above-mentioned agreements stipulated.10 Because of the continuous employment of unfair practices, a briefing memorandum was prepared for Secretary of State Kissinger one and half years later stating that ‘Aeroflot [was by mid-November 1975] outcarrying Pan American on scheduled flights between the US and the USSR by approximately three to one, even though the great majority of the passengers [were] Americans.’ At the same time, a consensus was emerging within the various government departments that ‘only a revenue sharing (pooling) arrangement between the airlines [could] resolve the fundamental problem of imbalance.’ For this reason, the CAB also disapproved a new interline agreement which Pan Am and Aeroflot signed on 8 FRUS, 1969–1976, vol. XV, Editorial Note, 523–4. 9 NSA, UUCA, DoS Memorandum of Conversation: US-USSR Civil Aviation Relations,

13 May 1974. 10 NSA, UUCA, DoS Memorandum on Pan Am-Aeroflot Problems, 10 July 1974 and DoS to Moscow Embassy, 13 July 1974.

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27 June 1975.11 At the minor expense of allowing Pan Am to utilise jumbo jets for the flights to and over Soviet Union by the summer 1977, the agreement would have allowed Aeroflot to gradually increase its number of weekly flights during peak summer seasons (six in 1976, seven in 1977 and eight in 1978) while Pan Am was to serve only half of this capacity in return. In addition, all but one of Aeroflot’s frequencies should have been through intermediate points in Western Europe at which the Soviet carrier could have gained additional passengers and cargo, thus affecting not only Pan Am but other US carriers as well. On top of that, in September 1975, Moscow and Washington began to quarrel about the charter flights, too. With the aim to lever pressure on the State Department and the CAB to sign the new Pan Am-Aeroflot interline agreement and re-negotiate a bilateral charter agreement which was otherwise to lapse on 31 March 1976, the Soviet Ministry of Civil Aviation first refused to approve a 20-flight charter package by US World Airways for the summer 1976. To this the CAB retaliated by refusing to issue permits for 10 charter flights which Aeroflot desired to carry out until the end of 1975.12 Despite six rounds of talks being held between November 1975 and 1977, no solution to the above-mentioned issues was reached and USSoviet civil aviation relations became stalemated. In particular, this was because the Soviets refused all US proposals to straighten out the relationship between Pan Am and Aeroflot either by allowing the former carrier to fly more frequencies than the latter airline or by adopting some kind of revenue pooling arrangement. Therefore, after an existing frequency agreement expired in November 1976, the schedules were reduced to two flights per week for each airline. The charter flights continued on an ad hoc basis but Moscow, by placing administrative obstacles, precluded US carriers other than Pan Am from exercising their rights under the 1973 Charter Agreement. Nonetheless, Gromyko raised the issue of expanding civil aviation links during the talks with Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State Cyrus Vance at their meeting in Moscow on 31 March 1977 and then, later in October of that year, Moscow threatened to halt the negotiations 11 NSA, UUCA, DoS Briefing Memorandum on US-USSR Civil Aviation Negotiations, 14 November 1975. 12 NSA, UUCA, DoS to Embassy Moscow, 30 August 1975; Embassy Moscow to DoS, 19 September 1975; DoS Memorandum for Armitage (EUR) by Edgar (EUR/SOV), 3 October 1975 and Embassy Moscow to DoS, 9 October 1975.

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on tourism and other agreements unless the number of weekly flights could be increased. This pressure resulted in a new arrangement on scheduled and charter flights, agreed on 3 March 1978. This allowed Aeroflot to carry out up to four weekly flights during the summer and up to three flights during the winter season 1978/1979.13 In response, as of April 1978, Aeroflot doubled its connections to the US with three flights a week to New York and one flight to Washington while Pan Am added one more flight from Washington to Moscow via New York and Frankfurt. Nonetheless, in early September 1978, financial exigencies forced the management of the American carrier to stop all services by the end of October to Moscow and 11 other European destinations including Amsterdam, Paris, Vienna, Lisbon, Ankara, Belgrade, Budapest, Bucharest and Prague. Vladimir Samorukov, who became Aeroflot’s director for North America in May 1977, immediately offered to fill the gap left by Pan Am with his company and signalled that the Soviet carrier was ready to fly between Moscow and New York on a daily basis. The State Department eventually refused this but offered to maintain the status quo, i.e. four weekly flights by Aeroflot, if all US carriers would be allowed to fly charters to the USSR on a nondiscriminatory basis. However, since Moscow did not respond to this offer, by April 1979 connections were again reduced to one weekly flight between Moscow and New York and Moscow and Washington, respectively.14 Tense relations further deteriorated in January 1980 when unionised Pan Am workers refused to provide ground handling to Aeroflot aircraft in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan the month before. Albeit Aeroflot was informed in advance that the handling would be refused as of 25 January, the carrier despatched its scheduled flights on both 27 January and 3 February. While the first was, at State Department’s request, handled under emergency procedures, the second left

13 NSA, UUCA, DoS Memorandum: US-Soviet Civil Aviation Stalemate, 30 November 1977; DoS to CAB, 21 December 1977 and DoS to Embassy Moscow, 6 March 1979. But see also FRUS, 1977–1980, vol. VI, Memorandum of Conversation, 30 March 1977, 110. 14 NSA, UUCA, DoS to Embassy Moscow, 4 November 1978 and 6 March 1979, respectively. See also ‘Pan Am Cutback Geared to Profits, Regulation’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 18 September 1978, 34–5 and ‘Airline Observer: Aeroflot Is Eager’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 October 1978, 41.

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Kennedy Airport with a 24-hour delay. The Soviet Embassy in Washington immediately filed a complaint and the Soviet press agency TASS called the incident ‘gross provocation.’ However, this was to no avail and a delayed service on 4 February thus became the last direct flight which flew between Moscow and New York for six years. Despite Pan Am’s union strike also spreading to Dulles airport, the services to Washington were maintained for the time being since Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), unlike the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, allowed Aeroflot to handle the planes with its own personnel.15 With bilateral US-USSR relations dramatically deteriorating, Moscow decided to cede the initiative in seeking the extension of existing overflight and landing rights to its satellites. In this regard, Cubana was the most active among them. In the eyes of American officials, Cuba’s geographic proximity to the US and the unyielding loyalty of the Castro regime to Kremlin were the two main factors why the Soviets picked Cubana to act as a ‘surrogate’ for Aeroflot. Replicating the earlier attempts by the Soviet airline mentioned above, in November 1979, the Cuban carrier unsuccessfully applied for a route across the US to Los Angeles. In 1980, Cubana sought landing rights at Dulles Washington airport and pushed the issue ‘vigorously’ ahead for three months but to no avail. At the same time, the airline was continuously sending out informal feelers trying to gain access to New York and Chicago as well as Key West, Ft. Lauderdale and Tampa in Florida, St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands and nearby Porto Rico. One year later, in 1981, Cubana attempted to obtain a refuelling stop at Kindley Naval Air Station at Bermuda for a route to northern Europe while, in reality, the airfield was much better suited for flights to various African ‘hotspots’ where significant numbers of Cuban troopers were deployed at the time. That same year, in both January and December, the airline placed a formal request to the FAA for switching the corridor on its Montreal-Havana service from over the ocean to an overland route, but this attempt failed, too.16

15 Cf. ‘Direct Moscow-New York Service Suspended’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 11 February 1980 and ‘Aeroflot Services’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 10 November 1980, 32. 16 NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS Memorandum by Williams (IO/UNP): Annex 10 (Communist civil air activity in US Airspace—Trends), 2 September 1983 and ‘Soviets Focus on Control of Oil Flow from Region’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 14 December 1981, 20 August 1973, 48–54.

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In May 1981, Cubana, which by far surpassed all other bloc carriers in flying into the US on charter operations, also appealed a CAB order which modified the existing procedures for clearing such flights. Responding to a 24-month-long pressure from the Pentagon and other concerned departments, the CAB now required all communist airlines to fill in their requests for permission at least 14 days in advance as compared to 11 days previously. After Cubana officials were told that full details of the decision could not be revealed to them as some documents were classified, the airline responded by placing a request under the 1967 Freedom of Information Act to extract from the CAB the background paperwork pertaining to the recent order. Yet, the message was, in all likelihood, vividly readable to everyone concerned: the US army and intelligence services desired to provide more time to military and intelligence personnel at installations along the possible flight paths to conceal anything which should have stayed hidden from prying eyes of hungry bloc intelligence.17 Despite Cubana appearing the ‘most aggressive,’ other bloc carriers did not fall much behind with East Germans, Czechoslovaks and Poles regularly seeking overflight rights for the US East Coast for a final leg between Montreal and Havana on their scheduled services to the Cuban capital. Nonetheless, the Department of State vehemently opposed such re-routing as affording the possibility of aerial reconnaissance over the US Navy base at Norfolk, the Fort Bragg complex and other military installations along the route. In addition, in 1981, Balkan Bulgarian Airlines sought approval for a route between Toronto/Montreal and Havana via New York and Mexico City. That same year, CSA also placed requests for both a frequency increase on its Prague-New York service and an ‘unlimited’ number of charter flights to the US. Furthermore, during 1980 and 1981, Polish LOT continually endeavoured to replace its charter flights to Chicago (some 50–60 a year) with a regular scheduled service and, at the same time, solicited from the State Department landing rights on Guam for its intended service to New Zealand. Nonetheless, all these applications were refused because of strong diplomatic and military objections. The only exceptions to this negative record were the bilateral agreements with Czechoslovakia and Romania which were both renewed in 1981 but provided for no new routes or frequency increases on existing 17 NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS Memorandum by Williams (IO/UNP): Annex 10, 2 September 1983. For Soviet intelligence, see below.

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services between Prague and New York and Bucharest and New York, respectively.18 On a daily operational basis, the flights by bloc airlines were, from an American point of view, far from ideal, too, with a long list of deliberate route violations and flight incidents. For example, on 20 July 1979, interceptors were scrambled from Langley Air Force Base to make contact with an unidentified Cuban Il-62 which penetrated the US Air Defence Identification Zone in Norfolk area flying 80 miles (130 km) west off course between Halifax in Canada and Havana.19 Another interesting and, at the same time, highly suspicious example involved CSA. Rather than applying directly through the State Department, in early April 1981, the airline requested via Pan Am clearance for a special charter flight between Montreal and Havana. Pan Am handed down the request to the FAA from where it travelled to the State Department which eventually authorised it. With call sign OK 1628, the flight took place on 9 April passing over Cape Canaveral only a day before the scheduled first launch of the new space shuttle Columbia. On the day of the launch, 10 April, two CSA planes—one using four different call signs (OK 1628, OK 1629, OK 2051 and OK 2052) and the other reporting itself as OK 1521—attempted to fly through the launch site again. After the Miami flight control centre vectored them around the area, both planes returned to Cuba. On 12 April, one of the planes eventually repeated the same procedure, unsuccessfully trying to overfly the Canaveral station before Columbia lifted off the ground at the second attempt.20 Nonetheless, the most problematic were operations by Polish LOT and Soviet Aeroflot. The former continuously sought to enter the US via unauthorised access points while the Boston air traffic controllers repeatedly reported the issues with aircraft identification. Some ‘specific LOT Il-62s’ eventually suffered frequent ‘transponder malfunction problems’ which the company was not able to mitigate despite being notified of the issue at hand by the FAA on several occasions. The incidents with the latter airline were indeed even more extreme. Not only did Aeroflot pilots often use unauthorised routings and entry/exit points like their 18 Cf. supra. 19 NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS Memorandum by Williams (IO/UNP): Annex 5

(Cubana Airlines flight incidents in US airspace, 1978–1982), 2 September 1983. 20 NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS Memorandum by Williams (IO/UNP): Annex 5 (CSA [Czechoslovak] Airlines flight incidents in US airspace, 1979–1982), 2 September 1983.

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Polish comrades, but several times also refused to climb or descend to required flight altitudes. On one particularly striking occasion, an Il-62 departing from Montreal to Havana on 30 July 1981 took an unauthorised ‘shortcut’ over northern Maine. Flying through US airspace, the crew deliberately switched off the transponder and only re-engaged the device upon leaving it. Incidents like this were indeed so common that, in March 1981, the New York OCEANIC Control centre urged FAA to foster a ‘communication link with Aeroflot’ to terminate all ‘“antics” [by company’s crews] on flights passing off the East Coast.’21 Such antics by Aeroflot pilots were not something which the Soviet authorities would have allowed foreign crews to perform upon entering the airspace of the USSR, however. On 29 November 1974, for example, a Pan Am charter flight carrying a group of State Department and United States Information Agency employees for a tour was turned back to Copenhagen after attempting to enter Soviet airspace via Alytus (now Lithuania) on the Moscow-Warsaw corridor and not via Ventspils (now Latvia) as permitted. After the plane was refuelled in the Danish capital, it entered the USSR through the cleared access point, but the arrival of the group was eventually delayed for three and half hours. As the inquiry into the incident later revealed, the fault was due to incorrect information which the captain of the aircraft received from the Pan Am flight control centre in London.22 An even more dramatic incident occurred three and half years later, on 20 April 1978. Using a polar route, a Korean Air Lines Boeing 707 departed from Paris Orly airport to Seoul with Anchorage as the refuelling stop. Several hours into the flight, the aircraft lost contact with long-range radio navigation stations on the ground while its on-board directional gyrocompass malfunctioned. Finding itself over the Nares Strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, Canada, in close proximity to the North Geomagnetic Pole, the crew gradually turned the transport south-east into the sunset and thickening darkness instead of heading it south-west following the sunlight. After passing over the Svalbard and Barents Sea,

21 NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS Memorandum by Williams (IO/UNP): Annex 4 (Aeroflot airlines flight incidents in US airspace, 1979–1982) and Annex 7 (Polish LOT Airlines flight incidents in US airspace, 1979–1982), both 2 September 1983. 22 NARA, RG 59, SCSF, Box 13, folder AV 1-General Policy, Plans, Coordination, 1974–1976, Moscow Embassy to DoS, 4 December 1974.

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the plane strayed into Soviet airspace near Murmansk where a submarine base and headquarters of the northern fleet were located. Since the crew failed to communicate with the ground stations, two Sukhoi Su-15 fighters were sent to intercept the jetliner, one of them eventually opening fire, hitting the left wing and fuselage with fragments killing two passengers and seriously wounding several others. Experiencing decompression, the pilot rapidly descended and, after two more hours and four unsuccessful landing attempts, he finally touched down on a frozen lake some 300 km south of Murmansk. Two days later, on 22 April, all passengers and crew were released and flown from Murmansk to Helsinki by Pan Am except for the captain and navigator. After intense interrogation, both men were expelled from the USSR on 29 April upon admitting that ‘they had understood but not obeyed the signals from the pilot of the Su-15, and had failed to follow international procedures.’ Since the Korean government acknowledged that the incident was caused by ‘crew negligence,’ the downing received only limited diplomatic and political attention.23 A similar but more deadly incident occurred on 18 July 1981, when an Argentinian Canadair CL-44 cargo plane involved in clandestine arms shipments from Israel to Iran via Cyprus perished with four aboard near the Soviet-Turkish border. En route from Tehran to Larnaca, the aircraft erroneously entered airspace over Soviet Azerbaijan and collided in midair with an intercepting Su-15 fighter. The pilot of the latter was the only

23 Shortly after the incident, Finnish authorities unveiled that the air traffic controllers

at Rovaniemi taped calls by the KAL 902 crew which, in vain, attempted to contact the fighter pilots on international emergency frequency of 121.5 MHz. At the same time, Zbigniew Brzezinski noted to a group of journalists that Washington knew an intercepting aircraft shot at the Korean airliner causing ‘a flurry of concern’ in the intelligence community since the chief security adviser to President Carter ‘unwittingly revealed US capability of monitoring such an incident.’ How the Americans with the help of their allies likely monitored the whole incident in real time was disclosed in 1986 by the Pulitzer prizewinning journalist, Seymour M. Hersh, in his book The Target Is Destroyed. Cf. ‘Korean Pilot, Navigator Held by Soviets’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 1 May 1978, 34; ‘Korean Air Lines Captain Used Emergency Frequencies’, Flight International, 13 May 1978, 1435 and Seymour M. Hersh, The Target Is Destroyed. What Really Happened to Flight 007 and What America Knew About It (New York: Random House, 1986), 3–15. But see also ‘Russians Down Korean 707 After Navigation Error’, Flight International, 29 April 1978, 1242; ‘Korean 707 Navigation Error Still a Mystery’, Flight International, 6 May 1978, 1354 and ‘Crew Blamed for KAL 707 Incident’, Flight International, 3 June 1978.

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survivor.24 Likely motivated by these incidents as well as by the roundthe-clock flights of American RC-135 spy-planes along USSR airspace in order to collect intelligence and to probe the readiness of the country’s air force, the Supreme Soviet adopted a new law which applied to state borders on 24 November 1982. Its 36th article authorised ‘border troops and air defen[c]e forces [to use] weapons and combat hardware to rebuff an armed attack or incursion on to USSR territory… when the violation cannot be stopped or the violators detained by other means.’ The law applied broadly to all ‘violators of the USSR state border on land or water or in the air’ including unarmed civilian airliners or vessels as a group of Greenpeace activists aboard of the boat Rainbow Warrior found out in July 1983. Attempting to distribute anti-whaling leaflets at a fish plant on Chukchi Peninsula which according to the Soviets did not exist, the activists were chased by border patrols with some of them spending several days in custody prior to being released and repatriated.25 Half a year earlier, American officials lost their patience. When on Sunday, the 8th of November 1981, an Aeroflot aircraft flew over a Strategic Air Command’s base at Pease, New Hampshire, and the Naval Submarine Base at Groton, Connecticut, on both inbound and outbound flights between Moscow and Washington, all flights by the Soviet carrier to the US were suspended for a week between 21st and 28th November 1981. Once renewed, the twice-weekly service did not continue for long, however. In late December, in response to the imposition of martial law in Poland, President Reagan suspended indefinitely all flights by both Aeroflot and Polish LOT into the US. In addition to this, he also postponed and suspended negotiations over several agreements including a long-term grain contract, a bilateral US-USSR maritime treaty and mutual exchange agreements on energy, science and technology. Reagan further ordered the closure of the Soviet purchasing mission in New York and 24 NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS Memorandum by Williams (IO/UNP): Annex 3 (Chronology of known shoot-down/force downs of civilian aircraft because of violation of national airspace, 1968–1982), 2 September 1983. But see also two books by prominent American aviation and Israeli intelligence journalists, James E. Oberg and Ronen Bergman, respectively, for further details: James E. Oberg, Uncovering Soviet Disasters. Exploring the Limits of Glasnost (New York: Random House, 1988), 32–8 and Ronen Bergman, The Secret War with Iran. The 30-Year Clandestine Struggle Against the World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Power (New York: Free Press, 2008), 41–7. 25 NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, Embassy Moscow to DoS, 6 September 1983 and Oberg, Uncovering Soviet Disasters, 47–8.

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tightened up restrictions on the export of high-tech electronic equipment and materials as well as embargoing the export of gas pipe-laying equipment and machines.26 With the cessation of Aeroflot and LOT services on 5 January 1982, US-Soviet bloc aviation relations reached their lowest ebb since 1968. But, worse was yet to come.

The Shooting Down of KAL 007 Departing from New York at 04:05 UTC (00:05 local time),27 some 35 minutes behind schedule, on 31 August 1983, a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747 aircraft set off for Seoul’s Kimpo airport with an en route refuelling stop at Anchorage. The plane arrived at Alaska’s major airport at 11:30 with all of its three inertial navigation and weather radar systems operating normally. After refuelling and change of flight and cabin crews, the jet became airborne again at 13:00. At 13:02, the Anchorage radar approach control cleared the crew to proceed directly towards Bethel airport, an entry point (BETHEL) to Route 20, one of five transpacific routes that connected Alaska and Japan and, one that eventually ran close to Soviet airspace. At this point, the pilots switched the heading from 220 to 245 degrees magnetic, a course which the aircraft maintained for the remainder of its flight. With minor allowances, this course also corresponded to the shortest path (great circle) between Anchorage and Seoul and was, beyond any doubt, maintained by the autopilot.28

26 NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS Memorandum by Williams (IO/UNP): Annex 2 (Aeroflot route violations in 1981 and 1982 [US measures]), 2 September and ‘Reagan Poland Reaction Curbs Aeroflot, Exports’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 4 January 1982, 20. 27 Unless indicated otherwise, all times are henceforth given in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) with dates relative to London. 28 It will likely never be resolved why the autopilot followed a constant magnetic heading instead of the path inserted into the inertial navigation system of the aircraft. One option is that the crew forgot to switch the autopilot from heading mode to the inertial navigation mode, the other that the inertial navigation mode had been initiated (armed) but did not engage and the autopilot continued to fly the shortest route (magnetic heading) between departure and terminal point. This could have occurred because, at the time when the inertial navigation system was initiated (some 3 minutes after take-off), the distance between the aircraft and the desired route was greater than 7.5 nautical miles (13.9 km) and/or the aircraft was not flying toward the R20. In either case, since the crew had enough time (exactly 5 hours and 22 minutes) to realise their mistake, the Russian Federation in its statement to the ICAO 1993 Final Report on the

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Yet, this meant that, over time, the flight deviated to the west with progressively increasing lateral separation between the planned and actual route: whereas the lateral displacement at BETHEL, some 50 minutes after take-off, was 12 nautical miles (approximately 22 km), at the next waypoint NABIE it was already 60 nautical miles (approximately 111 km). At the following reporting point NEEVA, the deviation had already increased to 200 nautical miles (approximately 370 km) while at NIPPI (division between American and Japanese control areas) it was an additional 30 nautical miles (approximately 426 km) of course. Thus, when the crew reported passing the waypoint NIPPI at 17:09 to the Tokyo controllers, the KAL 007 flight was in reality re-entering international airspace over the Sea of Okhotsk after cruising over Kamchatka in a north-south direction for the past half an hour.29 Despite the fact that Soviet radar operators first spotted the Korean jumbo at 15:51 and tracked it thereafter as unidentified target 6065, the local air defence was not quick enough to intercept it. This was because the officials initially considered the B-747 either a refuelling airplane (KC135) or a replacement for a US RC-135 spy plane (target 6064) which circled round the Kamchatka coast monitoring the expected test of a new SS-X-24 solid fuel medium-size missile. Passing each other at a distance of 75 nautical miles (139 km), the incoming target, however, did not perform an expected sharp U-Turn as it approached Soviet territory but went straight ahead and violated the border at 16:36. The astonished commanders immediately scrambled several fighter planes which began to chase the intruder at 16:40. At 16:37, however, the jumbo jet disappeared from the radar screen. The operators incorrectly expected that the intruder would swerve back to the sea somewhere over the Kronotsky incident maintained that ‘a probable explanation for the situation which developed [could have been] the intentional following of the route which was actually taken.’ Putting aside crew error by fatigue and/or inattentiveness (most likely reason) as well as all conspiracy theories, there might be another possible explanation along the lines of the Germanwings Flight 9525 of 24 March 2015. Nonetheless, such a hypothesis is rather weak and to prove its likeliness falls within the scope of one social science and one medical science discipline rather than history. Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat (Secretary General) to the Council, 16 July 1993: Annex B (Report on the completion of the fact-finding investigation [henceforth Final Report]), passim and Annex D (Analysis and conclusions submitted by the Russian Federation [henceforth Statement by RF]), 11. See also Asaf Degani, Taming HAL: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 49–65. 29 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex B (Final Report) and Annex D (Statement by RF), both passim.

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Nature Reserve and vectored the interceptors in that direction. However, when the radar contact was re-established at 16:46, it became clear that the target was maintaining its south-westerly course, flying in the direction of Tarya Bay naval base and Yelizovo airfield—the peninsula’s most sensitive military installations located in the general area of PetropavlovskKamchatskiy. Despite the fighter pilots being immediately re-vectored, they were unable to make contact with the jumbo jet since it had climbed from 8000 to 9000 meters in the meantime. Flying at 800 km per hour, the KAL 007 flight thus re-approached ‘safe waters’ at 17:08 two minutes after the fighters terminated the interception.30 Some 20 minutes later, the commanding general of the 40th Fighter Aviation Division of the Soviet Air Defence Forces,31 Anatoly Kornukov,32 was abruptly woken up and told that a RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft had passed Kamchatka minutes ago and was now heading towards the largest Soviet island Sakhalin.33 At 17:29, the local air traffic control confirmed no Soviet civilian aircraft in the vicinity. At 17:36, a full operational readiness was initiated while two Su-15s and one MiG-23

30 Ibid. See also Jeffrey T. Richelson, A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 381–3 as well as ‘Soviets Held Test of New Missile Three Days After Jed Downed’, Washington Post, 16 September 1983, A28. Except for Aviation Week & Space Technology, all media coverage quoted in this subchapter comes from NSA, IJC, Box 6. 31 The Air Defense Forces was a branch of the Soviet Army separate from the Air Force. At the time of the KAL 007 shoot-down, its commander-in-chief was Marshal of the Aviation, Alexander I. Koldunov, while chief of staff was Colonel General Semyon Romanov. For their possible involvement in issuing a shoot-down order, see below. 32 At the time of incident, Kornukov was in charge of a large unit of Air Defence Forces over the highly sensitive areas of Tatar Strait, Sakhalin and Kurile Islands. The 1993 Final Report identified him incorrectly as a ‘commanding general in the Sakhalin area’ while the name list provided by the Russian Federation with the transcript of communications between Soviet command centres omitted him completely. For his handling of the incident, Kornukov was eventually promoted. After appointments in East Germany and Moscow, in 1989, he returned to the Far East as a deputy commander and later commander of the Air Defence Forces in the whole district. Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex B (Final Report), 2.15.1 and Annex C (Background Information Related to the Report of the Fact-Finding Investigation), Transcript of Communications USSR Air Defence Command Centres on Sakhalin Island. 33 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex B (Final Report), 2.15.1 and Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 3, 17:27.

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were scrambled from the bases at Sokol-Dolinsk and Smirnykh, respectively, within 20 min. At 17:53, the command to destroy the airliner originated: ‘orders have been given to destroy [the target].’34 Albeit released transcripts did not identify its proper originator, the order likely came from an official at the command post of the Far East Military District of the Air Defence Forces at Khabarovsk (call sign Chaika) and was received by General Kornukov at his command post at the Sokol-Dolinsk Air Base. Kornukov immediately forwarded the instruction to his subordinates: Attention. To command post personnel. Target 6065, 21.53 [local time in Moscow], upon violation of State borders destroy the target. Assign the task to Sokol and Smirnykh.

The originator, who stayed on the line, told Kornukov that the order should be carried out immediately to which the latter replied: ‘Right away. Well, how will we identify the target? [It’s] night, night.’ He then asked the interlocutor to connect him with General Valeri Kamensky, the Commander of the Air Defence Forces of the Far East Military District. However, Kamensky was not at the command post at that time; hence Kornukov continued to talk with the person on the other end while self-questioning: Simply destroy [the target], even if it is over neutral waters? Are the orders to destroy it over neutral waters? Oh, well.

Yet, he eventually obeyed the order telling the other official that ‘we’ll guide [the fighters] in.’35 Afterwards Kornukov called an operator who eventually connected him with Kamensky at 17:54. He briefed his superior that the ‘target 6065 [was] in the air’ and was ‘provisionally [identified as] an RC-135.’ Amazed Kamensky responded ‘do you see it or what?’ to which Kornukov replied ‘we see it and we are providing guidance.’ After a minute during which both men discussed the course of action, the connection broke. At 17:55, Kornukov therefore called Chaika again and asked whether 34 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 10, 17:53. 35 Ibid., 17:53.

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Kamensky had finally arrived at the command post at Khabarovsk. He received the brief answer ‘no’ in response.36 Five minutes later, at 18:00, one of two Su-15s scrambled from Sokol-Dolinsk established a contact with KAL 007 and shadowed it from astern at a distance of 4.5–5 km, both aircraft flying in international airspace over the Gulf of Patience. Unable to identify the intercepted plane positively, at 18:09 the pilot nevertheless received the order to destroy the target, but then he was immediately asked to postpone its execution until the intruder trespassed over the USSR state border. One minute later, the Su-15 pilot reported to the command post that the aircraft ‘[was] flying with flashing lights.’ At 18:12, he interrogated the suspect plane by friend or foe identification system but received no response in return.37 At 18:13, Kornukov asked his subordinates to ‘put Kamensk[y] on the line’ again. Both men reconnected at 18:14 with the former reporting that the ‘target 60-65 [was] over Terpenie Bay tracking 240, 30 km from the State border’ while ‘the [Su-15] fighter from Sokol [was] 6 km away.’ The pilot ‘locked on’ and the ‘orders were given to arm weapons’ since ‘the target [was] not responding’ but ‘he [could not] identify it visually’ because of the dark. Listening to his subordinate, Kamensky became bemused and answered ‘we must find out, maybe it is some civilian craft or God knows who.’ In reply, Kornukov disputed his superior and spitted out: What civilian, [it] has flown over Kamchatka. It [came] from the ocean without identification. I am giving the order to attack if it crosses the State border.

Disconcerted Kamenski then gave way to Kornukov saying ‘go ahead now, I order…?’ with the latter consenting ‘yes, sir; yes sir.’38 A minute later, at 18:15, a baffled fighter controller, Captain Titovnin, who was in the same room as Kornukov, called Colonel Maistrenko, operations duty officer at combat control centre at Khabarovsk—a man who had overseen the early operations and sent up the fighters to intercept

36 Ibid., 17:54–17:55. 37 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex B (Final Report), 2.15.3–4. 38 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded

on Track 10, 18:14.

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KAL 007.39 While strongly hesitating because the intruder could still have been a passenger aircraft and therefore ‘all necessary steps [were to] be taken to identify it,’ Maistrenko eventually confirmed that ‘if there [were] no lights, it [could not have been] a passenger [aircraft]’ and, therefore ‘the task [was] correct.’40 At 18:16, Kornukov asked his acting commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gerasimenko, to check with the Su15 pilot whether the intruder was flying with navigation lights but the desperate man did not at all understand what his superior was asking for. At 18:17, upon KAL 007 flight trespassing over the border, Kornukov gave the order to destroy the target which Gerasimenko immediately passed on to the pilot. Nonetheless, the General still wanted to know positively whether the navigation lights were on.41 Amid erupting uproar with Kornukov spitting at Gerasimenko to ‘cut the horseplay at the command post,’ the Lieutenant Colonel got in touch with the Su-15 pilot who, at 18:18, confirmed that the target was flying with a strobe beacon and navigation lights blinking. In response, following the rules of military interception, the General ordered the pilot to flash his navigation lights and interrogate the target with friend or foe identification system again. At 18:19, Kornukov further commanded the pilot to approach the intruder, rock wings at it and, eventually, fire a canon burst in order to force the plane to land at Sokol-Dolinsk base. At 18:19 and 18:20, respectively, the pilot executed these orders while likely using non-fluorescent armour-piercing ammunition.42 Shooting from below, the KAL 007 crew thus had no chance to see the warning fire in the early morning dark. The Su-15 pilot did not attempt to contact the

39 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded

on Track 2, 17:36–17:38, 17:43–17:47 and 17:50–17:52. 40 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 1, 18:15. 41 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 2, 18:16–18:17. 42 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded on Real Number 1, 6.18–6.21 and Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 10, 18:18–18:20. While the intercepting pilot stated that his fighter was not equipped with the tracers, the representatives of the Russian Ministry of Defence in 1993 claimed that the fighter aircraft were in 1983 ‘routinely loaded with a mixture of rounds so that every fourth or fifth was a tracer’. Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex B (Final Report), 1.16.1.3 and 1.16.1.8.

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jumbo jet at an emergency radio frequency of 121.5 MHz either because he would have then lost contact with ground control.43 At 18:21, the pilot closed the distance to two kilometres and again reported that the target strobe light was blinking. Yet, one minute earlier, the KAL 007 was cleared to climb to higher altitude by Japanese controllers. In response, the big jet decreased its speed to about 400 km per hour and turned slightly south-west at the same time to adjust to its constant vector 245 degrees magnetic. Because of this manoeuvre, the fast-flying Su-15 forged instantly ahead, now having the target above and abeam which both Kornukov and the pilot evaluated as an evasive action and, independently of each other, determined to destroy the intruder by air-to-air missiles.44 With the KAL 007 flight soon about to re-enter international airspace over the Sea of Japan, south of Sakhalin, the atmosphere at the command post at Sokol-Dolinsk was further thickening. At 18:24, Kornukov instructed the observing MiG-23 pilot to close in to guarantee the destruction while the Su-15 pilot rushed to re-take the attack position using afterburners. After the Sukhoi regained a suitable position with the target some 5 km ahead, at 18:25.30 the pilot launched two R-98 Anab heat-seeking missiles. After 30 seconds, at least one of these homed in on the Korean B-747. One and half minute later, the KAL crew connected with the Japanese controllers and reported rapid decompression and that they were descending while using oxygen masks.45 Since the airliner did not explode in the air, both Kornukov and his superior Kamensky ordered a back-up MiG-23 and another Su-15 pilot who was observing the whole action to locate the target and ‘finish him off,’ while the Su-15 which had launched the missiles was ordered to return to base. Nonetheless, Kamensky urged a careful approach 43 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex B (Final Report), 1.16.1.3 and Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded on Real Number 1, 6.18–6.21. Yet, the statement by the Russian Federation cited another reason: the pilot did not tune into distress frequency because the Soviet regulations did not require him to do so. Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex D (Statement by RF), 9. 44 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex B (Final Report), 1.16.1.4 and Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded on Real Number 1, 6.21–6.23 and Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 10, 18:21. 45 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex B (Final Report), 1.1.10 and 1.14.3.10.11 as well as Annex C, Radio Communications Recorded in Tokyo, Channel 3, 18:27; Transcript of Communications Recorded on Real Number 1, 6.24–6.26 and Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 10, 18:24–18:27.

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since the KAL 007 flight was descending north of Moneron Island on the boundary between Soviet and international airspace. At 18:54, the Deputy Commander of the Far East Military District, General Strogov, called Sokol-Dolinsk command post where Captain Titovnin picked up the phone. After upbraiding the subordinate for not answering the call immediately—‘you s[on of …], I’ll lock you up in the guardhouse… you have nothing there to be busy with’—Strogov asked to be reconnected with Kornukov who briefed him about the course of events some ten minutes earlier. As Kornukov was already talking on another line with Kamensky, Strogov ordered Titovnin to call the border guards and instruct them immediately to send civilian ships to Moneron Island to locate debris of the downed aircraft.46 Eleven minutes earlier, at 18:43, a duty officer at the command post at Sokol-Dolinsk, Captain Solodkov, received a call from someone with the highest authority so far involved in the whole episode. On the other end of the line was Anatoly Petrovich Arkharov, the Commander of the Fighter Aviation Division of the Air Defence Forces. Providing him with a situation report, Solodkov informed his superior in Moscow that the ‘weapons were used’ on orders from Ivan Moiseevich Tretyak, the Commander of the Far East Military District.47,48 46 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 1, 18:44–18:46 and 18:54–18:55; Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 3, 18:31–18:34 and Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 10, 18:28–18:42. 47 Cf. ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex C, Transcript of Communications Recorded on Track 3, 18:43–18:45. 48 Albeit the call from Arkharov supports the claims that the Air Defence officials in Moscow were kept informed about the developing situation in real time, it was improbable that the downing would have been carried out upon their orders as the US intelligence sources believed at the time. If the order gave Tretyak as the transcripts stated, it would have confronted the logic of military subordination for him to seek an approval from generals below his rank—a three-star Colonel General Romanov and a three and half-star Marshal of the Aviation Koldunov, respectively—and from a different army branch. Being a four-star general of the ground forces and a commander of one of the most sensitive military districts, had he sought any authorisation he would have likely approached directly or through aides the highest echelon: five-star Marshals of the Soviet Union Akhromeyev, deputy chief of staff, Ogarkov, chief of staff, or Ustinov, minister of defence. This hypothesis coincides with the information which Akhromeyev and Georgy Korniyenko, the first deputy foreign minister, later gave to another ranking American journalist, Don Oberdorfer. Both men told him that the decision was made within the Ministry of Defence and that Politburo was not initially informed about the matter. Equally unfounded were

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At 22:30 on 31 August 1983, one and half hours after scheduled arrival, worries about the whereabouts of the flight, its crews and passengers began to mount. Having no diplomatic relations with the USSR, the South Korean government approached the Japanese to intermediate between Seoul and Moscow as they had done in KAL 902’s case five years ago. With Tokyo’s aid, the Koreans hoped to establish whether the rumours that the Soviets forced the airliner to land at the Kurile Islands or Sakhalin were correct or not.49 One hour later, at 23:30, the Japanese Defence Agency contacted the Japan Maritime Safety Agency to see if it could clarify matters. The latter agency was responsible for carrying out search and rescue operations and had earlier dispatched several vessels and aircraft to the area around the reporting point NOKKA where contact with KAL 007 was allegedly interrupted. The military intelligence informed the coast guard that its radar at Wakkanai had lost contact at 18.29 with an unidentified plane flying in a south-westerly direction about 100 nautical miles (185.2 km) northeast of Hokkaido. This was hundreds of miles away from the KAL 007’s assigned route (350 NM/650 km). The Maritime Safety Agency immediately dispatched two patrol vessels to the area west of Sakhalin, while placing two aircraft on alert at the Wakkanai airport.50

Political Ramifications of the Downing Halfway across the world on the US East Coast, the news of the missing airliner with a US Senator, Larry McDonald, on board appeared also rumours about alleged ‘witch hunt’ in the Air Defence Forces in the aftermath of the event. No Soviet general involved in the incident was ‘demoted’ as National Security Agency sources stated back then while Tretyak eventually became a commander-in-chief of the Air Defence Forces in June 1987. Rather unusual for an army general, he replaced Koldunov who was dismissed after a German teenager, Mathias Rust, sneaked through the air defence and landed with a rented Cessna at Red Square on 28 May 1987 while flying from Helsinki. Cf. e.g. ‘Moscow Announces Chief of Air Defen[c]e Killed While on Duty’, Washington Post, 23 May 1984, A22; Hersh, The Target Is Destroyed, 230–47 passim and Don Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1983–1991, Updated Ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998), 54. 49 Cf. ‘Japan Discloses Soviet Dialogue on Downed Jet’, Washington Post, 16 September 1983, C13 and Hersh, The Target Is Destroyed, 142–3. 50 ICAO, Letter from Rochat: Annex B (Final Report), 1.11.1–5 and Annex D (Statement by RF), 9.

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in the evening television broadcast. Meanwhile the first assessment by American intelligence officers stationed at Misawa Air Base reached the National Security Agency’s headquarters at Fort Mead at 23:10. Based on taped communications of Soviet pilots, further analyses by the US Air Force’s 6920th Electronic Security Group arrived at key intelligence agencies across the Washington area over the next couple of hours. These confirmed the assumption that the Soviets had used weapons against an unidentified aircraft which, in fact, may have been the missing Korean airliner.51 At 03:40, 20 minutes before midnight of 31 August 1983 in Washington, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Canadian Affairs, Richard Burt, attempted to reach the Soviet Embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission, Oleg Sokolov, over the phone to ‘ask for information on flight path and fate of the KAL plane.’ At that late hour, Sokolov was not immediately available but called Burt at 04:10 with the latter repeating his questions and emphasising the urgency of the matter. At about the same time but in Moscow, the US chargé Warren Zimmermann contacted Alexander Bessmertnykh, the chief of the American department of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs, offering to aid with search and rescue operations. Bessmertnykh told Zimmermann that he had no information about the issue at hand but promised to look into the matter. At 06:30, Bessmertnykh called back and asked Zimmermann for more details regarding the KAL flight. He did so and also offered information on the search and rescue mission which the US Pacific Fleet had initiated outside Soviet territorial waters. Two hours later, at 08:30, both men reconnected with Bessmertnykh informing Zimmermann that the ‘the 51 Both Japanese and American top-secret listening stations at Wakanai taped the communication of pilots with the ground controllers and between themselves for about 30 minutes before the shoot-down and 20 minutes afterwards. Yet, neither the most sophisticated eavesdropping devices of the time employed on these posts were able to record the communication from Sokol-Dolisnk airbase to the pilots because the surface obstacles prevented the interception of signals transmitted from the ground. Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 2, Memos by the DoS Bureau of Political-Military Affairs: Analysis of Transcripts and Questions and Answers about the Tape, undated. Most details on US and Japanese intelligence gathering and rather disputable use of obtained intelligence by Reagan Administration are offered by Hersh, The Target Is Destroyed, 35–178 but see also ‘Electronic Spy Network Provided Detailed Account’, Washington Post, 2 September 1983, A15; ‘How the US Listened In’, Newsweek, 12 September 1983, 25 and ‘The Last Flight of KAL 007: How the US Watches the Soviets in the Far East’, Washington Post Magazine, 8 January 1984, 4–8.

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plane [had] not been located on Soviet territory’ and that ‘Soviet organs are taking necessary measures to search for it outside Soviet territory.’ In any case, this statement did not shed any more light on the matter than an initial announcement by TASS, which was released at 06:05 and briefly noted that a South Korean airliner ‘disappeared without a trace’ en route from New York to Seoul.52 By the evening of 1 September local time, the Japanese Foreign Minister Shintaro Abe also put an end to all speculations about alleged landing of the airliner in the USSR. At 11:15, during a press conference in Tokyo, he officially announced that the KAL 007 flight crashed and the plane may have actually been shot down. Quarter of an hour later, Soviet Ambassador to Japan, Viktor Pavlov, was summoned to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs to provide an explanation while the Japanese Embassy in Moscow intervened in the matter with the Soviet Foreign Ministry at 12:30. However, neither Pavlov nor the ministry provided the Japanese with any information whatsoever.53 At 13:30, in Washington, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Lawrence Eagleburger, called Soviet Deputy Chief Sokolov to the Department of State and demanded ‘a rapid and complete response’ after vehemently protesting against the apparent attack. Sokolov agreed to convey the US démarche to the Soviet Foreign Ministry, but said that he had received no reply from Moscow to his earlier inquiry.54 With lack of Soviet response, tension rose. At 14:45, the US Secretary of State George Shultz delivered a televised statement in which he expressed ‘grave concern over the shooting down of an unarmed plane’ while seeing ‘no excuse whatsoever for this appalling act.’ Shultz also deliberately revealed that the US intelligence agencies had monitored the whole incident in real time and went even so far as eventually to disclose that ‘the aircraft that shot the plane down was close enough for visual inspection’ of the Korean jumbo-jet.55 Some one and a half hours later, 52 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS to all diplomatic posts: Shooting down of Korean airliner—Briefing foreign governments, 7 September 1983. The telegram includes ‘Chronology of events surrounding the incident’ and ‘Chronology of US-Soviet diplomatic exchanges and public statements’ between 31 August and 6 September 1983. 53 Cf. ‘Japan Discloses’, Washington Post, 16 September 1983, C13. 54 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS to all diplomatic posts, 7 September 1983. 55 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS to all diplomatic posts, 7 September 1983 and

KAL Flight #007: Compilation of Statements and Documents, September 1–16, 1983

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at 16:17, TASS published a second report of the incident stating that ‘an unidentified plane’ intruded into the Soviet airspace over Kamchatka and Sakhalin. The notice then falsely claimed, as all following statements by the agency and Soviet officials, that the aircraft flew without navigation lights towards the Sea of Japan. Switching back to reality, it concluded that the plane responded neither to the queries from the ground nor to the fighters which were sent aloft to intercept and direct the intruder to the nearest airfield. At 18:25 and 18:40, Sokolov in Washington and Pavlov in Tokyo conveyed essentially the same statement to the American and Japanese foreign ministries, respectively as an official message by the Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko.56 However, neither Washington nor Tokyo regarded either Gromyko’s response or the TASS report as satisfactory. Quite to the contrary, Sokolov was eventually told that the US Government found the Soviet account ‘totally inadequate.’ Subsequently, in the late afternoon, US President Ronald Reagan released a communiqué in which he significantly sharpened the rhetoric. Speaking for ‘all Americans and for the people everywhere who cherish civili[s]ed values,’ he condemned ‘the Soviet attack on an unarmed civilian passenger plane’ as a ‘horrifying act of violence.’ Since the Soviets for the time being ‘totally failed to explain how or why this tragedy [had] occurred,’ the US and ‘other members of the international community [would demand] full explanation for this appalling and wanton misdeed.’ However, ‘the whole incident,’ Reagan emphasised again ‘appear[ed] to be inexplicable to civili[s]ed people everywhere.’ Thereafter, at 02:00, one hour before midday in Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Masaharu Gotoda told a press conference that the KAL 007 was downed by a Soviet air-to-air missile.57 Facing allegations by American and Japanese officials and intense negative Western media coverage, Politburo members met in Moscow at the request of General Secretary Yuri Andropov sometime in the morning or afternoon of 2 September 1983. The ailing General Secretary, however,

(Washington: US Department of State, 1983), Secretary’s News Briefing, 1 September 1983, 1–2. 56 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS to all diplomatic posts, 7 September 1983; KAL Flight #007 , Department Statement, 1 September 1983, 2–3 and ‘Japan Discloses’, Washington Post, 16 September 1983, C13. 57 Cf. KAL Flight #007 , President’s Statement, 1 September 1983, 2; ‘Japan Discloses’, Washington Post, 16 September 1983, C13 and Hersh, The Target Is Destroyed, 128–9.

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did not attend the meeting as he was currently hospitalised with several medical conditions including kidney disease, hypertension and diabetes.58 In his absence, the gathering was opened by the Second Secretary of the Communist Party, Konstantin Chernenko. He informed the meeting that the news announcement, discussed by Politburo members on 1 September, had already been published.59 Nonetheless, because of the ‘wild’ anti-Soviet propaganda which the Americans unleashed, the Politburo should ‘define the Soviet position clearly’ and devise steps to handle the situation. In any case, Chernenko emphasised, no foreign aircraft could be allowed to fly freely over the Soviet territory since this was something which ‘no state which holds itself in esteem could allow.’60 The next speaker was Foreign Minister Gromyko who pointed out that the US Administration would certainly exploit the incident to ‘increase the international tensions and anti-Soviet hysteria.’ Albeit the plane was civilian, Moscow should ‘resolutely protest against Reagan’s insinuations’ and emphasise that the downing was legal and according to all international conventions. The foreign minister concluded ‘we should say that the shots were fired’ since the Japanese had announced that they held taped communications between Soviet pilots and their ground control. Somewhat later in the course of meeting, Georgy Korniyenko, the first deputy foreign minister, re-stressed the wisdom of this last point again. Despite the belief that there was enough evidence to indicate that the incident had been orchestrated by the CIA, it was not possible to hide the fact that Soviet pilots had used missiles to bring the plane down. If they did not concede this, then ‘imperialist propaganda’ would make even more of the incident and go so far as to ‘air the records of our pilots in the radio broadcast.’61

58 Cf. NSA, REEADD 1982–1984, Box 25, Zasedaniye Politbyuro UK KPSS [Meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union], 2 September 1983 and NSA, The Soviet ‘War Scare’, 15 February 1990, 66. 59 From the transcripts, it is not entirely clear whether this was a statement which

TASS published at 06:05 or the other one which was released at 16:17. Yet, since the first announcement came at 09:05 and the second at 19:17 local time in Moscow, more likely it was the longer, second announcement. Cf. NSA, REEADD 1982–1984, Box 25, Zasedaniye Politbyuro UK KPSS, 2 September 1983. 60 Cf. Ibid. 61 As shown above, this information was obviously in blatant contrast with reality.

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In general, however, the meeting was dominated by the representatives of the military and secret services whose statements provided the ground framework for the evolution of the Politburo’s position. The Minister of Defence, Dmitry Ustinov, reassured his fellow members that the Korean airliner flew without navigation lights and was 500 km deep into Soviet territory.62 Since there was no light in the windows and the airliner did not follow the repeated instructions to land at the nearest airfield, Ustinov went on, the pilot determined that the intruder was a military plane which needed to be shot down. In any case, the defence minister stressed that: We must show firmness and cool-headedness in this situation… We cannot step an inch back. Stepping back means providing anybody with a license to fly over our territory. I want to tell that there was 12 cases of border violation like this one in the Pacific area recently. And, as it is known, in 1978, we also had to force down another South Korean plane near Murmansk.

This position was seconded by the KGB Chief, Viktor Chebrikov, and the Chief of Staff, Nikolai Ogarkov. According to the Chebrikov, ‘it [drew] attention to itself’ that the US ‘were very well informed about the flight path of the South Korean aircraft and tracked it.’ Also, ‘already the first data published by Japanese were based on one source – the information from the CIA and National Security Administration.’ ‘Therefore, the question arises,’ KGB chief continued ‘why the Americans paid such an attention to the South Korean airliner?’ An answer was provided by Ogarkov a few minutes later. The Chief of Staff stressed that the incident was a ‘deliberate provocation since the American intelligence services have always sought to find out where our air defence forces [were] stationed and how they respond.’63 With all Politburo members agreeing that the incident was masterminded by ‘imperialist forces’ to distract ‘the attention of the world public from the peace initiatives put forward by the Soviet Union,’ it was decided to publish a full account of the event in TASS and, along similar lines, prepare instructions for Soviet representatives abroad. Furthermore, a three-man commission headed by Ogarkov, Korniyenko and the deputy 62 Cf. NSA, REEADD 1982–1984, Box 25, Zasedaniye Politbyuro UK KPSS, 2 September 1983. 63 Cf. Ibid.

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chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, was set up to analyse and adopt operative solutions in response to the evolving situation.64 At 17:00, already evening in Moscow, TASS eventually published an updated statement which reiterated the earlier information that the Soviet fighters shot down an unidentified intruder which did not respond to warning signals and flew without navigation lights. The agency further noted that the Soviet leadership regretted the loss of human life but put the whole blame on the shoulders of CIA which crafted this ‘provocation… to cast aspersions on the Soviet peace-loving policy.’ At 21:45, the Secretary of State Shultz rebuffed the new statement and accused Moscow of ‘continuing efforts to cover up the facts of the inhuman Soviet attack on an unarmed civilian airliner.’ He refused any ‘US intelligence connection’ in the incident as well as that the respective services could have warned the Korean airliner of its deviation in real time. In addition, Shultz also denied that the Soviets fired any warning shots.65 Some four hours earlier, at 18:00, in his second public statement on the incident, President Reagan called the KAL 007 shoot-down a ‘barbaric act’ beyond any ‘standards of civilized behavio[u]r.’ At about the same time, Charles Lichenstein, the Acting Permanent Representative of the US to the United Nations, virulently attacked the Soviet Union at the meeting of the UN Security Council.66 This was to help prompt formal consideration of the downing by the Security Council President, a Guyanese diplomat Noel Sinclair, requested by the US, South Korea, Canada, Japan and Australia. The Soviet representative Richard Ovinnikov repudiated Lichenstein’s attack while blaming Washington for conceiving the whole affair: ‘the US Administration wished to obtain yet another pretext to justify its irresponsible policy of preparation for nuclear war. The basis for the calumny against the Soviet Union dragged out by the

64 Cf. Ibid. 65 While it was unlikely that the Korean pilots could have seen the warning burst from

the canon as mentioned above, it is evident that Reagan Administration used gained intelligence in a highly questionable way, too, which indeed some intelligence officers criticised and journalists noted at the time. Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS to all diplomatic posts, 7 September 1983; KAL Flight #007 , Secretary’s Statement, 2 September 1983, 5 and Hersh, The Target Is Destroyed, 103–4 and 151–63. 66 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS to all diplomatic posts, 7 September 1983 and KAL Flight #007 , President’s Remarks and Secretary’s Statement, both 2 September 1983, 3 and 5, respectively.

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United States was the attempt to justify a policy of thermo-nuclear world war.’67 Amid the merciless fight for world public opinion, the US Ambassador to the UN, Jeane Kirkpatrick played the taped transmissions of Soviet pilots at the follow-up meeting of the Security Council on 6 September 1983. This resulted in a spontaneous boycott of popular Soviet consumer goods such as Stolichnaya vodka and violent anti-Soviet protests in the US, South Korea, Japan and elsewhere.68 Three days later, Moscow responded with a press conference held by Ogarkov who was backed up by deputy foreign minister Korniyenko and Leonid Zamyatin, head of the International Information Department of the Politburo. Responding to questions by Soviet and foreign reporters, Ogarkov said that the RC-135 spy plane and Korean Boeing 747 ‘acted concertedly’ with the ‘aim to test the capabilities of the Soviet air defen[c]e system.’ Should such a situation repeat in the future, Ogarkov warned that the Soviet armed forces would react in the same way again. As expected, he concluded the press conference by stating that the incident was orchestrated by the US to ‘artificially’ whip up a hostile atmosphere and create an opportune pretence for ‘deploying Eurostrategic [Pershing II] missiles’ in December.69 Yet, Washington soon realised that winning both the public opinion across the world and the diplomatic battle at the UN Security Council would require something more than mere outraged exchanges with Moscow. In close cooperation with London, the American officials therefore endeavoured to recruit as many votes for a Security Council Resolution on the KAL 007 incident as possible. A resolution was drafted by the representatives of seven countries including Australia, Canada, France, South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States and was tabled by the Dutch Permanent Representative, Max van der Stoel, on 8 September 1983. It condemned the shoot-down, demanded a full investigation of the incident by the UN Secretary General and urged

67 Cf. TNA, PREM 19/365, UKMIS New York to FCO, 3 September 1983. 68 Cf. KAL Flight #007 , Ambassador Kirkpatrick’s Statement, UN Security Council, 6

September 1983, 8–10 and Hersh, The Target Is Destroyed, 167–8. Six days later, Aviation Week & Space Technology published a verbatim transcript of the tape which Kirkpatrick played at the UN in the 12th September issue of the magazine, cf. ‘US Intercepts Soviet Fighter Transmissions’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 12 September 1983, 22–3. 69 Cf. ‘Soviet Cautions West Its Fighters Will Shoot Again’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 19 September 1983, 22–3.

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all states to comply with the ‘aims and objectives’ of the 1944 Chicago Convention.70 In an ideal case, Washington and London hoped to attract the maximum possible support, i.e. 12–13 positive votes. However, by 10 September, it was clear enough that there were only seven guaranteed votes for the proposed text (France, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Togo, UK, US and Zaire) with two more needed to pass it through the Council and thus force the Soviets to cast a veto.71 With Jordan, Zimbabwe and Guyana seen as most likely to furnish the additional two votes which were needed, US President Reagan personally lobbied King Hussein and Prime Minister Robert Mugabe while the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, approached President Forbes Burnham of Guyana.72 Speaking over the telephone, Burnham initially mentioned two reasons why Georgetown was hesitating to vote for the KAL 007 resolution. Since Guyana was regularly overflown by Venezuelan aircraft, Burnham regretted the lack of any reference to the issues of territorial integrity and use of civilian planes for espionage in the proposed text. However, deeper into the conversation, Burnham pointed to an incident which occurred on 6 October 1976. A group of anti-Castro Cuban émigrés had blown up the Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 from Georgetown to Havana in which 73 people perished and of those 11 were students from Guyana. Even though the man who orchestrated the attack had ‘self-confessed’ to being ‘trained in the United States as a member of the terrorist group Condor,’73 Burnham bitterly commented, he was not ‘brought to justice [and] nobody seemed to care.’ Also, despite Guyana momentarily presiding over the Security Council, the sponsors of the proposed Resolution did not ‘even consider it necessary to consult [us] on the text’ and ‘we [had] been completely ignored.’ Therefore, Burnham 70 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, Security Council Resolution on KAL Incident, 8 September 1983. 71 Cf. TNA, PREM 19/365, FCO to UKMIS New York, 7 September 1983 and UKMIS New York to FCO, 10 September 1983. 72 Cf. TNA, PREM 19/365, FCO to 10 Downing St and Transcript of a telephone conversation between the Prime Minister and President Burnham of Guyana, both 11 September 1983. 73 The name of the person in question was left out in the transcript but Burnham was most likely referring here either to Luis Posada Carriles or to Orlando Bosch Ávila. Cuban exiles and CIA operatives, both men stood behind many covert operations in Latin America during the Cold War with the former also allegedly responsible for the 1997 Havana bombings. TNA, PREM 19/365, Transcript of a telephone conversation.

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delivered his final point, the whole affair was ‘a contre-temps between large powers,’ and ‘the USSR [and] the USA [would] have their fun.’74 Yet, while Jordan and Malta eventually saved the West from an embarrassing diplomatic blow by delivering much-needed votes in favour of their Resolution,75 the picture was indeed even more complex than the Thatcher-Burnham call revealed. On 7 September 1983, President Reagan sent a letter to the CAB Chairman Dan McKinnon asking him to implement a set of measures against Aeroflot which he had briefly announced in his televised Address to the Nation two days earlier. In addition to freezing out the renewal of any transport agreement until the USSR ceased to ‘threaten the security of civil aviation,’ the prohibitions included the sale of Aeroflot tickets in the United States by the Soviet carrier, US airlines or travel agencies. US airlines were further prohibited from carrying traffic to, from or within the US where an Aeroflot flight would be on the ticket or the ticket had been issued by the latter carrier. And, finally, US airlines were required to suspend any existing interline arrangements with Aeroflot too. On the same day, the Department of State transmitted to dozens of diplomatic posts a letter by the US Secretary of Transportation, Elizabeth H. Dole. This instructed American representatives to approach civil aviation authorities in the countries to which they were accredited to consider similar actions against Aeroflot by their own national carriers. Particularly suitable in this regard would be a suspension of all services by Soviet carriers for a certain period of time, Dole suggested.76 While initially the State Department considered a ban lasting 60– 90 days, this soon proved unrealistic as other allies hesitated to adopt similar measures. Only Canada, which lost 8 citizens in the crash, forbade Aeroflot from using Montreal airport for scheduled and charter flights for

74 Ibid. 75 This was eventually adopted with nine votes for (France, Jordan, Malta, Netherlands, Pakistan, Togo, UK, US and Zaire), four abstentions (China, Guyana, Nicaragua and Zimbabwe) and two against (Poland and USSR) with the Soviets subsequently exerting their veto rights as being permanent member of the Security Council. Cf. KAL Flight #007 , ft. 20, 21. 76 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS Memorandum for William P. Clark and KAL Incident: Letter from Secretary Dole, both 7 September 1983 and KAL Flight #007 , President’s Address to the Nation, 5 September 1983, 6–8.

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60 days.77 Because of reluctance on part of European NATO allies to act robustly, Secretary of State Shultz proposed a two-week moratorium on ‘all air traffic between, through and over’ alliance member states and the Soviet Union. This proposal came on the sidelines of a follow-up meeting of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in Madrid which on 8 September witnessed a fierce head-on-head confrontation on the KAL incident between Shultz and Gromyko. But even this rather modest proposal struggled to make headway. The next day at the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Brussels, the representatives of France, Greece, Turkey and Spain refused to adopt any punitive measures whatsoever while some other countries such as Denmark, Norway and West Germany stressed legal implications which needed to be cleared first.78 In the end, except for France, Greece, Turkey and Spain, all other European NATO nations and Switzerland suspended all airline connections and overflight rights between themselves and Soviet Union for two weeks between 15 and 28 September. This action was supported by many pilot groups and ground workers’ associations. Yet, for example, Austrian Airlines continued to fly to Moscow because of the country’s neutrality status despite indignation on part of its pilots. Likewise, the Swedish government forbade the air traffic controllers from not-providing guidance to Aeroflot planes while Air France bypassed the strike of the French airline pilot union, Syndicat National des Pilotes de Ligne, by using nonunion crew members to maintain its flights to Moscow. As September came to a close, Portugal and Ireland were the only countries, besides the Unites States and Canada, which still maintained some counter-measures against Aeroflot. While Porto suspended the flights by the Soviet carrier for 30 days, Dublin denied it fifth freedom rights between Shannon and Moscow for 60 days.79

77 TNA, PREM 19/365, Washington Embassy to FCO, 3 September 1983 and FCO to Ottawa Embassy, 7 September 1983. 78 TNA, PREM 19/365, UKDEL NATO to FCO, 9 September 1983 and NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, DoS to all diplomatic posts, 10 September 1983. For Shultz-Gromyko exchange, see, e.g., Oberdorfer, From the Cold War to a New Era, 57–61. 79 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 2, DoS Memorandum for William P. Clark, 30 September 1983 as well as ‘11 Nations Halt Moscow Air Service to Protest Downing US Intercepts Soviet Fighter Transmissions’ and ‘Ireland Withdraws Soviet Fifth Freedom Rights’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 19 September 1983, 26–7 and 27, respectively.

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All inflammatory rhetoric notwithstanding, the Reagan Administration in fact did not want to push the Soviets over the edge. As Assistant Secretary Burt briefed the representatives of NATO and other Western countries in Washington on 3 September, the ‘episode would not lead to any fundamental change in US policy towards the Soviet Union’ and the ‘efforts to reach agreement with the Russians on security-related issues… would not be abandoned.’ This in particular included the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) and Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), Burt said. With public opinion in favour of strong antiSoviet measures, however, a group of right-wingers around Senators Jesse Helms, Steve Symms and William L. Armstrong began to castigate the Administration for a weak response and demanded strong retaliatory measures. They desired to limit diplomatic relations with Moscow to a minimum, halt the arms control negotiations as well as cut off all trade between the US and USSR while further toughening up existing sanctions.80 Echoing these widely shared sentiments in the US, hundreds of letters from local, state and federal politicians flooded the White House and State Department in late September and early October requesting it to revoke the new five-year grain agreement which the US and USSR signed in Moscow on 26 August 1983 and stop the purchase of ferrosilicon of which 5000 tons had been recently imported from the Soviet Union. A State Department’s response to a letter from an Oklahoma House Representative pointedly summarised why the Administration considered breaking off diplomatic and trade relations ill-advised. As far as mutual trade was concerned, the Department argued that relations could ‘go forward as long as [they were] mutually beneficial, [did not] subsidi[s]e the Soviet economy, and [did not] contribute to the Soviet strategic or military capability.’ Furthermore, bilateral trade was ‘heavily weighted in favo[u]r of the US’ with American exports to the Soviet Union totalling approximately $2.6 billion in 1982 while the imports reached only $229 million. ‘Most of this trade [was] US grain, for which the Soviets [paid] in hard currency’ and ‘these sales [did not] involve government credits or subsidies of any kind.’ In connection to the possibility of interrupting diplomatic links with Moscow, the State Department maintained that such a step would ‘hurt the United States much more than the Soviet Union.’ 80 TNA, PREM 19/365, Embassy Washington to FCO, 3 and 14 September 1983, respectively.

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While the US was ‘an open society’ and ‘all one really’ had to do to ‘find out [what was] happening in this country’ was to ‘pick up a copy of The New York Times, The Washington Post, or Aviation Week,’ the same could not be said of Pravda and Izvestia. Since the Soviet Union was ‘a closed society,’ the US therefore needed to retain ‘substantive personnel’ in Moscow to keep ‘windows on [it].’81 Despite all accusations, moral condemnations and harsh statements flying from one side of the Iron Curtain to the other, the KAL 007 downing, as many other such catastrophes, was soon overshadowed by successive events, namely the US invasion of Grenada in October, the Able Archer NATO exercise in November and deployment of Pershing missiles in December 1983. Yet, beyond the surface of the galloping pace of everyday politics, the tragic event had one particularly profound and long-term impact. In order to secure that such an ‘awful tragedy’ would not be repeated in the future, on 15 September 1983, President Reagan decided to ‘make available to civilian aircraft the facilities of [the US] Global Positioning System when it [would become] operational in 1988.’ Developed since the early 1970s by the US Department of Defence, the release of the system for civilian use utterly transformed the way how people understood and navigated in geographical space albeit still a long route had to be travelled until GPS functionalities embraced cars and cell phones.82 In response to the downing, on 10 May 1984, the ICAO also adopted an addition to the original Article 3 of the 1944 Chicago Convention—Article 3 bis. This required the contracting states to refrain from using weapons against civilian aircraft, but the article came into effect only in October 1998 when a sufficient number of countries (102) ratified it.83 Nonetheless, as the downing of an Iranian airliner in 1988 by the USS Vincennes over the Strait of Hormuz as well as more recent shoot-downs of Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 by pro-Russian rebels over the Donetsk area and Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 near Teheran by an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps abundantly proves, 81 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, Letter from Congressman Clarence E. Miller to the

President, 30 September 1983 and Letter from DoS to Steve Sill, Oklahoma House of Representatives, 7 October 1983. See also, Hersh, The Target Is Destroyed, 94 and 131. 82 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, Draft Presidential Statement on the Global Position System (GPS) 15 September 1983. For details on the system and its evolution, see, e.g., Rankin, After the Map, 253–93. 83 For further details, see MacKenzie, ICAO: A History, 301–27.

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the article remains rather ineffective and on paper and, in the tense political and military circumstances, incidents like the KAL 007 downing can occur even nowadays.

CHAPTER 8

Bloc Aviation Under Late Socialism

Systemic Pressures On 1 January 1984, the American Embassy in Rome dispatched a short two-paragraph telegram to the State Department informing that it had learned about ‘a confidential briefing on international problems [for] high level cadre members’ which took place in Budapest in early December previous year. At the gathering, according to the Embassy source, the Socialist Workers’ Party secretary for international affairs, Mátyás Sz˝ urös, commented that ‘the victims of the Korean airline crash had numbered not 269 but 270 – the 270th being Andropov.’ While the source was not entirely sure what the former Hungarian Ambassador in Moscow ‘had in mind in making this comment,’ he ‘had not [a] doubt that the Hungarian leadership viewed this situation as permitting them greater autonomy.’ For certain, it was still a long and winding path to 23 October 1989 when Sz˝ urös, now Speaker of the National Assembly and Provisional President, proclaimed a free and democratic Hungarian Republic speaking from one of the balconies of the Budapest Parliament to the massive crowd which gathered at Kossuth Square. Also, this path was by no means pre-determined as ‘a broadside of blasts against the United States over

© The Author(s) 2020 P. Svik, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1_8

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the KAL incident’ published in the Bulgarian and Czechoslovak media confirmed.1 Yet, a closer look at the bloc’s civil aviation in late 1970s and early 1980s provides further evidence on the key problems with which not only this particular sector but the socialist economies as a whole were confronted with at that time. And it was the inability of Communist regimes to solve these issues which ultimately contributed to their demise. The focus here is on the problems that bloc countries experienced in civil aviation and the Soviet Union’s inability to service them with state-of-the-art planes and equipment. On 6 December 1983, the Secretariat of the Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party approved the Report on fulfillment of politico-economic goals in the Czechoslovak Airlines. Among other things, the report stated that ‘the air traffic to the non-socialists countries [was] heavily affected by ever-increasing competition and strong protectionist measures against the airlines of the Comecon member states.’ In the case of Czechoslovakia, such measures included the closure of CSA’s ticketing office in Chicago by decision of US authorities in September 1982, a yearly renewal of the US–Czechoslovak agreement instead of the standard three-year period and financial compensation to the countries whose airlines stopped serving Prague but to which capitals CSA continued to fly under respective bilateral agreements. In addition to the US, this group of countries also involved Canada, India, Italy and Kuwait. Albeit Report further stated that the KAL 007 incident led to the worsening of relations between the USSR and ‘some capitalist countries,’ the event eventually had a positive impact on CSA. This was because the company, in close cooperation with Aeroflot, operated dozens of extra flights in order to ‘secure the transportation needs of the USSR.’ As a result, by the end of September 1983, CSA had more than tripled its hard currency earnings compared to December the previous year: whereas by the close of 1982 the revenues in convertible currencies reached 49 million Czechoslovak crowns, nine months later it was already approximately 169 million.2 1 Cf. NSA, KAL 007, Box 1, Embassy Sofia to DoS, 7 September 1983; Embassy Prague to DoS, 17 September 1983 and Embassy Rome to DoS, 1 January 1984. 2 Cf. NACR, KSC-UV-02/4, folder 53, item 99/1, Zpráva o plnˇení politicko-

ˇ hospodáˇrských úkolu˚ v Ceskoslovenských aeroliniích [Report on Fulfilment of PoliticoEconomic Goals in the CSA], 28 November 1983.

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However, this provided only a minor remedy to the difficult situation in which the airline found itself. Being only second to Aeroflot in terms of the volume of international traffic carried among bloc airlines in 1965, CSA completely lost momentum over the next ten years. In 1978, the company was already third from the bottom: only Cubana and Hungarian Malev conveyed fewer passengers on international routes than CSA. The Czechoslovak carrier decided to try to mitigate the situation by initiating route and revenue sharing arrangements with other bloc carriers. A pattern in this regard started to emerge with pooling agreements on services to Cyprus and West African destinations which the CSA and East German airline Interflug initiated in October 1976. Under these agreements, Interflug operated a once-weekly flight from Berlin to Larnaca via Prague and a bi-weekly service to Freetown, Sierra Leone via Algiers and Conakry whereas the CSA flew every other week between Prague and Conakry via Rabat, Dakar and Freetown. On all flights, the parties guaranteed each other a specific number of seats while the revenue was shared on a 50-50 basis. The costs, on the other hand, were paid separately by each airline. Despite the number of significant problems of technical, commercial and an accounting nature, the airlines evaluated their cooperation as a successful example of ‘closer socialist integration in the segment of long-haul routes.’ In practical terms, the joint flights helped to improve the financial position and brought CSA’s and Interflug’s West African services from the red to break-even. Nonetheless, when CSA made similar offers concerning its Prague-New York and Prague-SingaporeJakarta routes to Bulgarian, Polish and Hungarian carriers, respectively, none of them showed any interest in entering a pooling arrangement. Fast-growing Balkan and LOT pointed to the unprofitability of these connections while Malev delayed the talks interminably.3 In this context, the Czechoslovaks were particularly upset by the attitude of the Poles who they had helped in the past. For example, CSA provided LOT with ‘complex consultative aid’ in 1971/1972 when the latter airline was expanding its services to the United States. Even so,

3 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 353, Spoleˇcný integrovaný provoz dálkových linek leteckých

podniku˚ socialistických zemí do tˇretích zemí [A Joint Service of Long-Haul Routes by the Airlines of Socialist Nations to the Third Countries], 16 December 1977 and Box 379, Vývoj pˇrepravných výkonu˚ v mezin. let. depravˇe cˇ l. státu˚ RVHP, 1960–78 [Transportation Volumes in the Segment of International Traffic for COMECON Member States, 1960–78], July 1980.

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the Polish carrier at several occasions refused the idea of joint transatlantic routes and focused instead on monopolising and capitalising on the wide ‘ethnic-generated’ market in North America and elsewhere. Albeit the ‘protectionism’ became commonplace within the industry in the West ever since the 1973 oil crisis, in the last two, three years, the policy of ‘economic nationalism’ spread beyond the Iron Curtain, too. The only country which was not protecting its domestic market was Czechoslovakia, as CSA’s analysis for the Federal Ministry of Transportation critically remarked in July 1980. Further detriment to CSA, the document went on, was caused by various pooling arrangements on charter flights since Cubana and some other bloc carriers were notorious for late or completely missing payments.4 These developments obviously severely hurt the CSA’s financial bottom line. While in 1971 the company recorded a profit of 55.5 million crowns, in 1974 it ran a loss of 119 million which in 1979, 1980, and 1981 rose to 300 million each year.5 To staunch its haemorrhaging finances, the company opted for an aggressive sales policy which was not ‘conducted within the standard lines’ and in conformity with the IATA rules, or respective national regulations and official agreements. The aim of the policy was ‘to effectively face competition, gain maximum commercial advantage for the national economy and company and augment official sales.’ Nonetheless, ‘the special sales’ strategy should not be abused and was only to be employed ‘to acquire new sources of income for the CSA or, eventually, prohibit a revenue outflow to its competitors.’ For directing new passengers and cargo to the airline, the ticketing agencies as well as other corporate and individual subjects were provided either with special financial commissions or free flights, substantial discounts and other advantages when using CSA services. According to internal instructions, all documentation regarding ‘the special sales’ 4 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 353, Spoleˇcný integrovaný provoz dálkových linek [A Joint Service of Long-Haul Routes] and Box 379, Námˇety podniku pro jednání s FMD o sestavbˇe plánu na 7. pˇetiletku [CSA’s Suggestions for Federal Ministry of Transportation Regarding the Elaboration of the 7th Five-Year Programme], 28 July 1980. 5 Cf. NACR, KSC-UV-02/1, folder 154, item 158/5, Návrh rozvoje cˇ eskoslovenské

civiliní letecké dopravy do roku 1980: Pˇríloha 6 [Proposal for the Development of Czechoslovak Civil Air Transport Until 1980: Appendix 6], 24 April 1975 and NACR, KSC-UV-02/1, folder 26, item 31/3, Zpráva o postavení a dalším rozvoji cˇ s. civilní letecké dopravy v období do roku 1985 [Resolution on the Situation and Further Development of the Czechoslovak Civil Aviation Until 1985], 28 January 1982.

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should have been kept separate from standard bookkeeping and be only accessible to the officers in charge of CSA’s bureaus abroad. Should the IATA inspection or national authorities learn about the programme and launch an inquiry into it, the concerned representatives were required to maintain secrecy and keep ‘the incriminating materials [away from] unauthorised persons.’6 Albeit the policy of aggressive sales improved the balance sheet to a certain extent, more radical measures were eventually required to revitalise the heavily stagnant enterprise. On 1 February 1982, the Czechoslovak Communist Party leadership approved the Resolution on the situation and further development of the Czechoslovak civil aviation until 1985 which the government had endorsed the previous month.7 The attached statement by the Politburo’s Committee for Party Work in Industry, Transportation, Construction Works and Service Sector emphasised that government action was necessitated by the need to ‘secure the development of the Czechoslovak civil aviation’ in a situation when the limits for consumption of aviation fuel were significantly tightened. In 1981, the CSA thus used 14 per cent less kerosene than in 1979 while an additional reduction of 14 per cent was planned for 1982. And the trend of contracting consumption was set provisionally to continue until 1985. The party statement further pointed out that the Resolution was approved in connection with rationalisation measures adopted in 1980. These included the reduction of services by 30–50 per cent on the main domestic lines and termination of unprofitable connections to smaller cities. In consequence, six regional airports were completely closed down with the associated loss of 470 workplaces.8 Regarding international flights, a route to Freetown was terminated along with two minor connections to Berlin from Bratislava

6 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 387, Smˇernice o zvláštní obchodní cˇ innosti [Directive on Special Sales Programme], 24 September 1982. 7 Cf. NACR, KSC-UV-02/1, folder 26, item 31/3, Zpráva o postavení a dalším rozvoji cˇ s. civilní letecké dopravy v období do roku 1985: Pˇríloha II [Report on the Situation and Further Development of the Czechoslovak Civil Aviation Until 1985: Annex II], 28 January 1982. 8 Reduction of working positions was extremely unusual for lay-offs should only have been inherent to the capitalist system and not to the self-proclaimed advanced socialist economy and society which marched towards communism as per Constitution of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic of 11 July 1960.

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and Poprad, respectively. In addition, flight frequencies on services to Brussels, Vienna, Havana and Singapore were restricted, too.9 Nonetheless, a background paper to the Resolution prepared by the Federal Ministry of Transportation warned that making further reductions could be extremely challenging. With the fares on remaining domestic routes substantially increased as of 1 November 1980 and the new Tu154Ms significantly thirstier than the Tu-134s they were replacing, it was advised to economise on usage of high-grade aviation fuel by the Federal Ministry of Interior and other ministries as well as of the Czechoslovak Railways which used some 3000 tonne of kerosene for technological purposes.10 Also, planes of foreign carriers were to be refilled on a strictly reciprocal basis. The only other way to reduce the kerosene consumption, the paper argued, was to restrict international connections even further which would, however, have an adverse effect on the inflow of the much-needed hard-currencies.11 Yet, as the Report on fulfillment of politico-economic goals in the Czechoslovak Airlines stated in November 1983, the 1981–1982 cuts went even deeper with consumption decreased by 67 per cent as opposed to ‘only’ 14 per cent originally envisaged. In other bloc countries, the report pointed out, the situation was no better with domestic services heavily reduced as in Czechoslovakia or, indeed, completely interrupted as in East Germany and Hungary. The sole airline unaffected by these negative developments, the Report maintained, was Aeroflot.12 However, this was a far cry from reality. Already four years earlier, on 3 September 1979, Aviation Week & Space Technology pointed to an article by Yuri G. Mamsurov, deputy minister of civil aviation, which appeared in an unspecified ‘Soviet air transport newspaper.’ In his comment, Mamsurov admitted that the fuel shortage was 9 Cf. NACR, KSC-UV-02/1, folder 26, item 31/3, Report on the situation: Annex II and IV, 28 January 1982. 10 Albeit the document did not specify exactly for which purposes the railways used the fuel, as explained below, the kerosene, pure or blended, may have been burned in diesel locomotives. These were mainly used for transport of freight in these years. The paper urged to stop this uneconomic practice and recommended that the railways should only utilise the fuels which did not meet the aviation standards. Cf. NACR, KSC-UV-02/1, folder 26, item 31/3, Report on the situation: Annex III, 28 January 1982. 11 Cf. Ibid. 12 Cf. NACR, KSC-UV-02/1, folder 53, item 99/1, Report on fulfillment: Annex III,

28 November 1983.

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threatening ‘the regularity and security’ of Aeroflot’s operations and that the Politburo and government had deployed a fuel conservation programme which required ‘a creative search of all possibilities for economi[s]ing on fuel resources’ by all concerned industries. With particular regard to the civil aviation sector, the deputy minister emphasised that this meant the need to design more fuel-efficient aircraft, further increase the utilisation of existing transports and reduction of long queuing times at airports with the associated uneconomic burning of fuel on the ground. Reporting on Mamsurov’s views, Aviation Week referred to a 1977 CIA memorandum entitled The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis which had been released in August 1979. Because of decreased production, this concluded that, by the early or mid-1980s, the USSR would not be able to meet the demands from the bloc countries while simultaneously exporting to the non-communist countries at the then present rate. In the worst-case scenario, the USSR could itself become a net oil importer.13 Albeit the Defense Information Agency considered such forecasts entirely unfounded and questioned the ‘validity of [the CIA’s] analysis,’ US diplomats learned in December 1979 at the latest that the situation within the Soviet aviation industry was really serious.14 On the 14th of that month, the deputy minister of civil aviation for international affairs, Sergei Pavlov, visited the US Embassy in Moscow where he met with the economic counsellor and another American diplomat. Accompanied with Aeroflot’s North American director Samorukov, Pavlov first blamed the CAB and Pan Am for blocking the progress in US-Soviet aviation matters and then touched on the issue of charter flights for the forthcoming Summer Olympic Games in Moscow. He noted that the programme was facing serious difficulties mainly because of shortage of crews and limited ‘availability of aviation fuel.’ The deputy minister then ‘indicated that lack or high price of fuel’ forced the Soviet carrier to cancel ‘eight of fifteen charters to the Los Angeles area’ in 1979. ‘Given the high cost of aviation fuel,’ Pavlov concluded that ‘Aeroflot [did not] plan to fly charters

13 ‘Soviets Facing Aircraft Fuel Shortage’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 3 September 1979, 34 and CIA, The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis, March 1977, https:// www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0000498607.pdf. Accessed 1 April 2020. 14 Cf. NSA, UUCA, Embassy Moscow to DoS, 17 December 1979 and CIA, CIA Comments on DIA Critique of Soviet Oil Prospects, 7 November 1977, https://www.cia. gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80M00165A001900030008-4.pdf. Accessed 1 April 2020.

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to the United States except during the Olympics’ but the company did not expect ‘to make any money on [such] transport’ at all.15 The boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics by the US and 64 other nations in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan eventually saved Aeroflot from ‘straining [its] capabilities’ about which Pavlov was concerned. However, neither this nor the opening of new fields in West Siberia helped to solve the aviation fuel issue since the main source of Soviet problems laid somewhere else.16 From the mid-1950s, the largest bulk of Soviet and then Russian oil exports consisted of low-quality heavy fuel oil (mazut). Other options were only mean because of the underdeveloped petrochemical sector. The industry was dominated by primary refining, i.e. the distillation process, and, by 2000, only 56 per cent of extracted crude oil was processed by visbreaking (thermal cracking) or even more advanced techniques such as fluid catalytic cracking or hydrocracking. While this figure was still behind the standard of worldclass refineries (85–95 per cent), it presented a significant improvement compared to the Soviet era. Yet, aviation fuel is mostly produced by hydrocracking while the fluid catalytic cracking delivers light lubricating oils which are added to it. In addition, the fuel is then blended with other additives to suit the demand of specific customers. Common additives are anti-freeze and anti-static chemicals as well as anti-corrosive and anti-bacterial agents but military jet fuel also contains additives to reduce the visibility of smoke and contrails. Also, since aviation fuel is similar to diesel, any fuel which is not pure enough can be used for heating or in road and rail transport, but the military typically uses it for powering tanks and trucks.17 And, at the end of 1970s and in early 1980s, the Soviet

15 Cf. NSA, UUCA, Embassy Moscow to DoS, 17 December 1979. 16 Ibid. For development of the Soviet energy sector, see, e.g., Jeronim Perovi´c and

Dunja Krempin, ‘“The Key Is in Our Hand:” Soviet Energy Strategy During Détente and the Global Oil Crises of the 1970s’, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 39, no. 4 (2014): 113–44 and Jeronim Perovi´c, ‘The Soviet Union’s Rise as an International Energy Power: A Short History’, in Jeronim Perovi´c (ed.), Cold War Energy: A Transnational History of Soviet Oil and Gas (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 1–43. 17 A kerosene or paraffin-based aviation fuel (or jet fuel or aviation turbine fuel [Jet A-1]) must not be confused with aviation gasoline (AvGas) which is used in piston engine planes and was the most common spirit to power the aircraft before the advent of jet engines. Much higher in octane rating than automotive petrol (100/130 vs. 87/97 octane respectively), the main disadvantages of aviation gasoline compared to aviation fuel

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Union needed precious aviation fuel in large quantities for the possible eventuality of a thermo-nuclear war with the United States.18,19 Only in 1977, according to a report by the US Arms and Control Disarmament Agency, did Soviet military spending top that of the US by $39 billion. In 1980, Arden L. Bement, the Deputy Undersecretary of Defence for Research and Advanced Technology, remarked at one Pentagon meeting that ‘research and development funding in the Soviet Union surpassed that of the US by $70 billion in the last decade, and overall Soviet investment in defen[c]e exceeded that of the US in the same period by $240 billion.’ Such a ‘high spending level,’ the chairman of the National Intelligence Council and CIA deputy director Robert Gates testified before a closed session of the Congress’ Joint Economic Committee in early 1985, enabled the Soviets ‘to moderni[s]e and improve their forces substantially.’ Between 1977 and 1983, the CIA estimated, Gates said, that the Soviet armed forces acquired ‘1,100 intercontinental ballistic missiles; 700 submarine-launched ballistic missiles; 300 bombers, including Tu-22M/Tu-26 Backfires; 5000 fighters, including

(app. 15 octane) are its higher cost due to more refined processing (the hydrocarbon chain needs to be shortened by technique known as catalytic reforming) and low flashpoint. This means that the AvGas catches the fire more easily than higher flash aviation fuel giving the latter significant advantage in combat situations or when stored at aircraft carriers. Military fuels such as JP-4/8 for ground-based aircraft or JP-5 used by aircraft carriers are a blend of gasoline and kerosene with flashpoints reflecting their operational requirements. 18 These years also witnessed an increased Soviet activity in North Africa and Middle East which aimed at gaining access and control of the oil flow in these critical regions. Cf. ‘Soviets Focus on Control of Oil Flow from Region’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 14 December 1981, 48–54. 19 Depending on the quality of source and processing, a barrel of crude oil (159 litres) typically yields 13–15 litres of aviation fuel. In Soviet conditions, however, this ratio was likely (much) lower because of the backward refinery sector and lower quality input: in general, the West Siberian crude oil contains more sulphur and is also more dense (heavy) than Brent Crude or West Texas Intermediate which serve as industry benchmarks. It was for these reasons that the Soviet and then Russian exports of aviation fuel were only negligible, cf. Vitaly Yermakov, James Henderson and Bassam Fattouh, ‘Russia’s Heavy Fuel Oil Exports: Challenges and Changing Rules Abroad and at Home’, The Oxford Institute for Energy Studies Paper: WPM 80, April 2019, https://doi.org/10.26889/978 1784671358. Accessed 1 April 2020.

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MiG-23/27 Floggers; 15,500 tanks, including T-72s [and] substantial numbers of naval surface combatants and submarines.’20 However, this extreme military build-up could not leave other industry sectors unaffected. The situation in the energy sector still remained a problem as Robert Gates informed the Congress’ economic committee. Albeit ‘oil production show[ed] scant growth,’ the diesel-powered rail, highway and river traffic faced decline and the ‘transportation system [seemed] unable to meet demands placed on it.’ He also observed that other industries such as machinery manufacture and metallurgy were heavily affected, too, with up to 25 per cent of all production going for defence.21 And civil aviation suffered a similar fate. Based on the most sensitive and classified intelligence, a post-Cold War assessment of the ‘1983 War Scare’ composed for George H. W. Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in February 1990 stated that in 1983: Moscow increased procurement of military equipment… by 5 to 10 [per cent], apparently by reducing production of civilian goods. Commercial aircraft production, for example, was reduced by about 14 [per cent] in favo[u]r of military transports. To overcome this particular shortfall, the Soviets reportedly bought back airframes from East European airlines.22

This reshuffle in production seemed substantiated by the need to foster the Soviet airlift potential for critical hot-spot areas. In the past, the Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, Herman Fredrik ZeinerGundersen, during his visit to Washington in early May 1980, observed that the Soviets were able, with the help of Aeroflot, to launch and 20 Cf. ‘Soviet Military Spending Found to Top US’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 29 October 1979, 67; ‘Soviets to Push Qualitative Advances’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 10 November 1980, 53–4 and ‘CIA, Defense Intelligence Diverge on Soviet Arms Spending Growth’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 18 March 1985, 101–4. 21 In early 1980s, the Soviet energy sector underwent a major transformation from mazut to abundant natural gas of which transport by pipelines was rising at ‘doubledigit rates’ according to Gates. However, the refineries continued to lag behind with the most of the higher-end fuel production going to military and other sensitive industries. This pattern only changed in the 1990s when ‘individual and commercial car and truck ownership grew quickly’ and the ‘demand for high-octane gasoline and low-sulphur diesel’ substantially increased. Cf. ‘CIA, Defense Intelligence’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 18 March 1985, 103 and Yermakov et al., Russia’s Heavy Fuel Oil Exports, 5. 22 Cf. NSA, The Soviet ‘War Scare’, 15 February 1990, 65, https://nsarchive2. gwu.edu/nukevault/ebb533-The-Able-Archer-War-Scare-Declassified-PFIAB-Report-Rel eased/2012-0238-MR.pdf. Accessed 1 February 2020.

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maintain ‘highly effective and sophisticated airlift operations into Syria, Angola, Ethiopia and most recently Afghanistan.’ Yet, Zeiner-Gundersen also stressed that the Soviet military air transport was the only army branch which did not profit from ongoing improvements. In fact, compared to the early 1970s when the Soviet Air Force had at its disposal 760 medium and heavy transport aircraft, a decade later it was down to 670 transports.23 The dramatically increased pressures on achieving sufficient ‘strategic retaliatory capabilities’ in case of a ‘US “Bolt from the Blue”’ nuclear attack thus widened the gap in the development and production of Soviet military and civilian aircraft even further.24 This caused recurrent delays in the arrival of a new generation of Soviet passengers transports, namely the Tu-204 medium-range and Il-96-300 long-range airliners on which design works had already commenced in the mid-to-late 1970s.25 In 1985, the Soviet Ministry of Aviation Industry endeavoured to solve the desperate conditions by facilitating aircraft development and production

23 Cf. ‘NATO Warned of Threat of New Soviet Forays’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 19 May 1980, 18–9. 24 The paranoia on the part of Andropov, Ustinov and Ogarkov as well as other Soviet leaders about a surprise US nuclear attack was, in part, intensified by negative forecasts of the RYAN (acronym for Raketno-Yadernoe Napadenie [nuclear missile attack]) computer model. Put online in 1979 and updated regularly on the basis of classified intelligence, military and economic data, the model ‘assigned a fixed value of 100 to the combined economic-military-political power of the United States.’ It was believed that the USSR ‘would be safe against a US first strike’ at 60–70 per cent of overall US power. However, in 1984, the programme estimated that the Soviet power sank to 45 per cent of that of the USA whereas the 40 per cent was seen as a critical threshold when the USSR would become ‘dangerously inferior’ to its rival. Yet, the impact of the operation RYAN on the Soviet military spending remains unclear. While the quote above from the 1990 post-mortem paper suggests positive causation, the CIA estimated at the time that the military expenditures remained relatively constant over time: some 13–14 per cent of GDP per year since the mid-1960s according to the Agency estimates. This implies that there was most likely no, or only limited, correlation between RYAN and a heightened military built up. Also, as Chapter 6 showed, the Soviet fears of US-USSR relations entering a new period of confrontation began to rise already by mid-1974, i.e. five years before the RYAN programme was launched. Even more important, however, neither these incredibly high figures seemed to correspond with reality since, according to Mikhail Gorbachev, military expenditures comprised some 40 per cent of annual state budgets. Cf. ‘CIA, Defense Intelligence’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 18 March 1985, 103 and NSA, The Soviet ‘War Scare’, 37–94 and 43–6 in particular. Gorbachev as quoted in Chris Miller, The Struggle to Save the Soviet Economy: Mikhail Gorbachev and the Collapse of the USSR (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 59–60. 25 Cf. Gordon and Rigmant, OKB Tupolev, 267–76 and Gordon et al., OKB Ilyushin, 337–42.

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within the Comecon framework with an ultimate goal of overcoming the bloc’s technological dependence on capitalist countries by the start of the next millennium.26 Still, this agreement was nothing but the latest addition to another seven framework accords which the Comecon countries concluded in the late 1970s. Their ultimate purpose was to revitalise the civil aviation sector by measures such a bloc-wide automated reservation system. As one agreement envisaged, this should have come into being by linking all countries to the Soviet ‘Aurora’ system which Aeroflot in 1974 purchased from Air France and which ran on Sperry UNIVAC 1100 series computers.27 Another agreement called the airlines to cooperate in providing joint services to the long-haul destinations with an ultimate objective to create a single Comecon airline. Further agreements yet bound the countries to collaborate in designing and manufacturing the signal and navigational equipment for international airports as well as to create a unified system of air traffic management. Finally, the member countries should also work closely together in the domain of aircraft and engine repairs while constructing a common maintenance facility in the Soviet Union.28 Nonetheless, these long-term plans obviously provided no immediate relief whatsoever to the airlines since they needed modern aircraft and airports with up-to-date equipment immediately not in 10–15 years’ time as these agreements promised to deliver. The relative antiquity of Soviet bloc aviation was immediately revealed when East-West and Soviet-West relations in particular began to intensify from the mid-1980s on. Nine months after Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, in November 1985, the US and Soviet negotiators during talks held in Moscow eventually reached an agreement which enabled Pan Am and Aeroflot to resume air services between the two 26 Cf. NACR, KSC-UV-02/1, folder 148, item 139/3, Sjednání mnohostranné mezinárodní dohody o základních smˇerech spolupráce v rozvoji civilné letecké techniky [Conclusion of a Multilateral Agreement on Basic Directions in Development of the Civilian Air Transports], 28 November 1983. 27 Cf. NACR, KSC-UV-02/1, folder 111, item 111/11, Sjednání Rámcove dohody o vytvoˇrení propojeného komplexu automatizovaných sysému˚ rezervace míst a prodeje letenek: Pˇríloha III [Conclusion of a Framework Agreement on Creation and Implementation of Unified Automated System of Seat Reservation and Ticket Selling: Annex III], 19 June 1979. 28 An overview of all agreements can be found in NACR, KSC-UV-02/1, folder 26, item 31/3, Report on the situation: Annex III, 28 January 1982.

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countries. A part of the deal was a pooling arrangement which envisaged sharing of revenue units after either carrier hit a 12,450 passenger ceiling. The inaugural flights touched down in Washington and Moscow, respectively, on 29 April 1986. While Aeroflot used Gander in Canada as a technical stop for refuelling its Il-62Ms, Pan Am channelled the traffic from New York, Washington and the West Coast to Frankfurt from where it flew to Moscow with B727 Trijet transports. Albeit both airlines were allowed to fly between Moscow and New York four times a week with Washington and Leningrad as co-terminals on two frequencies, only Pan Am used the full capacity. Flying once a week to Washington and once to New York, Aeroflot dropped to half of the assigned frequencies.29 Despite gaining two new impressive aircraft and the largest around with the Antonov An-124 Ruslan in 1986 and the even more gigantic Antonov An-225 Mriya in 1988, Aeroflot still lacked suitable airplanes to exploit improved prospects for East-West travel. This became even more manifest in May 1988 when direct flights on New York–Moscow route were launched. A by-product of the talks on the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which Reagan and Gorbachev signed in Washington on 8 December 1987 was a joint Pan American-Aeroflot service operated by jumbo-jets of the US carrier three times a week in each direction. While half of the capacity, 208 seats, belonged to Aeroflot, the flight crew and 15 cabin attendants were Americans. The remaining three were employees of the Soviet airline.30 Similarly, in late March 1987, London and Moscow agreed to modify a bilateral aviation agreement so as to permit both British Airways and British Caledonian airways to operate thrice weekly between London and Tokyo over Siberia. Each carrier was permitted to provide two flights

29 As a part of the agreement, Pan Am also received the Soviet and Afghan overflight

rights on its services from points in Europe to India and Pakistan. Because of the more direct routing, the company expected to save $2000–4000 per flight or about one million annually. Cf. ‘US, Soviets Reach Airline Service Accord’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 December 1985, 33; ‘US, Soviets Resume Commercial Air Service’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 5 May 1986, 32 and ‘Airline Observer: Pan American World Airways’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 12 May 1986, 35. 30 Cf. SOA, CSA, Box 405, Informace o zámˇerech leteckých spoleˇcností socialistických státu˚ pˇri obnovˇe a doplnˇ ovaní letadlového parku dopravních letadel [Information on Intentions of Airlines of the Socialist Countries as Regards the Revitalisation and Re-equipment of Their Aircraft Fleets], undated (but likely created in early 1989) and ‘Washington Roundup: Space Summit’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 14 December 1987, 17.

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directly and one flight via Moscow a week. In exchange, Aeroflot was allowed to increase weekly frequency from two to four indirect flights between London and Tokyo via Moscow. At the same time, the carrier could replace the Il-62s with larger Il-86s on up to three flights per week on its daily services between Moscow and London. More important, however, the inaugural flight to Tokyo by British Caledonian revealed how backward the Soviet Union’s air traffic control system was. Donald E. Fink, the editor of the Aviation Week & Space Technology who boarded the flight in London on 31 May 1987, reported some weeks later that the crew had to provide the aircraft’s position to controllers ‘at about 33 different reporting points, some as close as 1 min. flying time apart,’ despite the fact that the entire route should have been monitored by secondary surveillance radars displaying the identity and altitude of an aircraft in addition to its heading and distance. The crew was also unable to update its B-747-200 inertial navigation system during the entire flight over Soviet territory (something over eight hours duration) because the navigation aids on the ground were unavailable. In general, Fink wrote, ‘the flight demonstrated that the Soviet civil air system still lack[ed] many of the navigational and operational facilities found in the rest of the world.’31

Managing Decay Reading through the records of the annual meetings of the general and technical directors of the Comecon airlines reveals in fact, that the situation was indeed far worse than antiquated airplanes, airports and navigational aids indicated. The carriers, as early as April 1985, complained about shortage and long delays in deliveries of spare parts for aircraft and ground equipment as well as corrosion of their transports due to unsatisfactory surface finishing. Further problems included an extensive use of asbestos in Soviet machines, long aircraft and engine service times, frequent failures on part of Soviet aviation industry to meet contractual obligations regarding agreed quantity and quality of materials and planes

31 Cf. ‘Soviets Grant British Carries Right to Overfly Siberia’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 6 April 1987 and ‘Transsiberian Flights Conducted Routinely’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 8 June 1987, 32.

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as well as incomplete documentation or completely missing certificates of airworthiness.32 The situation deteriorated further after a Polish LOT Il-86M airliner crashed on 9 May 1987 killing all 183 on board. Departing on a charter flight for New York, the transport climbed to about 8200 meters when a high-pressure turbine crankshaft in the left inside engine began to rotate eccentrically because of a faulty roller bearing. This caused disintegration of the power plant with debris of the fan shredding the nearby outboard engine and perforating the fuselage which resulted in decompression and damage to aircraft control systems. The flames from the exploded engines immediately caught hold on the tail of the aircraft and sections of the baggage compartment. The crew, however, were unaware of the fire due to severed electrical cables, and they decided to return to Warsaw despite receiving a clearance for emergency landing at Modlin airport which was some 40 kilometres closer. Yet, as the blaze evolved and eventually spread into the passenger cabin, the plane became uncontrollable and hit the ground at high speed some six kilometres from the runway at Okecie airport.33 Immediately after the Polish investigation team headed by the Deputy Premier Zbigniew Szałajda announced the above findings, LOT grounded five of its remaining six Il-62M aircraft for ‘maintenance’ purposes. Subsequently, the company leased a ‘hushkitted’ DC-8 from Florida-based Arrow Air airline. The airliner serviced the routes to New York and Chicago with Arrow providing the flight crew and one attendant while the rest of the cabin personnel were Polish.34 32 SOA, CSA, Box 408, Protokol 20-go soveshchaniya generlnykh direktorov aviatransportnykh predpriyatiy – uchastnikov Berlinskogo soglasheniya [Protocol of the 20th Meeting of General Directors of the Air Transport Enterprises of the Berlin Agreement] and Protokol 20-go soveshchaniya tekhnicheskikh direktorov aviatransportnykh predpriyatiy – uchastnikov Berlinskogo soglasheniya [Protocol of the 20th Meeting of Technical Directors of Air Transport Enterprises of the Berlin Agreement], April 1985. 33 ‘183 Killed in LOT Crash’, Flight International, 16 May 1987, 3 as well as ‘Poland Probes Cause of LOT Il-62M Crash’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 18 May 1987, 29 and ‘Investigators Cite Engine Failure in Polish Ilyushin Il-62 M Crash’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 3 August 1987, 57. 34 SOA, CSA, Box 405, Informace o zámˇerech leteckých spoleˇcností socialistických státu ˚

pˇri obnovˇe a doplnˇ ovaní letadlového parku dopravních letadel [Information on Intentions of Airlines of the Socialist Countries as Regards the Revitalisation and Re-equipment of Their Aircraft Fleets], undated (but likely created in early 1989) as well as ‘LOT Grounds Ilyushin Il-62Ms’, Flight International, 22 August 1987, 6 and ‘News Scan: Arrow Air’, Flight International, 26 March 1988, 6.

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For their part, neither Ilyushin nor Soloviev design bureaus, the aircraft and engine producers, respectively, accepted any responsibility for the disaster while Soviet authorities placed the whole blame for the event on the shoulders of the Polish pilots. At the next meeting of the technical directors of the bloc airlines at Brasov, Romania, in April 1988, this ‘buck-passing attitude’ on part of Moscow was strongly objected to by the Interflug representative. The deputy technical director of the East German airline insisted that the Soviet authorities should fully cooperate with Interflug and other member carriers in providing satisfactory answers into the causes of LOT Il-62M disaster. A full exchange of information between the airlines on the one hand and the aircraft and engine producers on the other in case of emergency incidents and accidents was not only required by the ICAO regulations but was also necessary for mitigating the ever-increasing fears and concerns on the part of passengers. Albeit containing important information, Interflug’s deputy technical director concluded that the brief statement which the Soviet authorities ‘telexed’ to member airlines on 1 September 1987 was by no means appropriate for dealing with circumstances like this.35 Notwithstanding Soviet lack of candour and forthrightness about the accident, the accompanying discussions were interesting for what they revealed generally. They not only provided deeper insight into the general context in which the accident of the LOT airliner occurred, but also provided vocal testimony to the stark and bitter economic realities of the decaying communist regimes. During the meeting, the majority of airline representatives repeatedly complained about unsatisfactory order fulfilment for spare parts and engines which only reached about 50 per cent. Recently, however, the deliveries were curtailed even further with Interflug reporting that it received only 300–400 items out of 5000 which the company had ordered. Also, the carriers usually only received 40 per cent of spare part requirements in the last quarter of the year, which led to a long period of shortages forcing companies to exchange the spares among one another wherever possible. Scheduled maintenance times were not adhered to either. While minor repairs took 41 days on average, it was fairly common that Soviet technicians did not arrive for 35 SOA, CSA, Box 399, Protokol 23-go soveshchaniya tekhnicheskikh direktorov aviatransportnykh predpriyatiy – uchastnikov Berlinskogo soglasheniya [Protocol of the 23rd Meeting of General Directors of the Air Transport Enterprises of the Berlin Agreement], April 1988.

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major inspections at all. Eventually, when showing up, they often came without the necessary tools and instruments or at a time operationally extremely inconvenient for the carriers. Documentation for aircraft was far from satisfactory, too, with recent modifications not recorded even two years after the design bureaus had carried them out. Likewise, certificates did not at all correspond with reality. On top of all this, the overhauls of Kuznetsov NK-8 class and Soloviev D-30 class engines took two years instead of six months as agreed between the airlines and engine design bureaus.36 One year later, the situation was no better. At their meeting in Prague in May 1989, the general directors reported that the number of in-flight avionics and engine failures had further increased and the overall situation had become unacceptable. Particularly troublesome was the Soloviev D-30KU turbofan. Some airlines even decided to sue the manufacturer hoping to compel the bureau to eliminate the long-known problem issues with the power plant. The deficiencies in aircraft repairs and maintenance were skyrocketing with additional damage on aircraft often inflicted by the careless approach of ground technicians and airport crews. In general, the meeting concluded that the amount of problems which had accumulated over recent years was seriously hindering the development of air transportation in the Comecon area. Of particular importance in this regard was the low technical quality of airplanes. The ageing Tu-134, Tu-154 and Il-62 transports were simply unable to match the latest state-of-theart Western aircraft in any of the key performance parameters. The only competitive Soviet-built plane, the Il-86, was produced in small numbers and was exclusively operated by Aeroflot. In the light of all this, bloc airlines were compelled to seek assistance from Western countries.37 But this was rather restating what was obvious for some time. In the previous year, in November 1988, Polish LOT had ordered three widebody, extended-range B-767 airliners from Boeing, which were on a lease backed by the American Citicorp and another 16 finance houses. While the first two B-767-200s arrived shortly before the 1989 May meeting of the general directors of Comecon airlines in Prague, in April and early 36 Ibid. 37 SOA, CSA, Box 399, Protokol 24-ogo soveshchaniya generlnykh direktorov aviatransportnykh predpriyatiy – uchastnikov Berlinskogo soglasheniya [Protocol of the 24th Meeting of General Directors of the Air Transport Enterprises of the Berlin Agreement], May 1989.

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May 1989, a larger 767-300 machine was slotted for delivery in June 1990. After receiving its first two transports, LOT immediately placed them on the routes to New York, Chicago and Montreal to saturate capacity for travel between the main centres of Polish emigration and Poland, thus securing the continuing influx of hard currency earnings.38 A half year later, the carrier’s chairman Jerzy Słowinski ´ praised the quality of the US-made machines in the Aviation Week & Space Technology saying that the 767-200s were more fuel efficient than the company had even hoped for. Their utilisation reached slightly over 15 hours per day as compared to only four and half hours for the airline’s Il-62s.39 The race was clearly on for Western sourced planes and the Hungarian airline Malev secured Boeing aircraft even before LOT did. In December 1988, the company received three short- to medium-range, narrow-body B-737-200s airliners which were dry-leased from the Irish GPA Group and were previously owned by the British charter airline Orion Airways. Contributing $45 million net to the state budget in 1987, the carrier’s efforts to acquire non-Soviet transports were in part impeded by the unwillingness of the government to release the hard currency for outright purchases. The Kádár administration preferred to have a joint venture with a Western company which would lease the aircraft for Malev while simultaneously securing their maintenance and crew training. In September 1988, Malev opted for the Shannon-based GPA Group with a contract enabling it to replace currently leased aircraft with new ones in 1991. A month later, on 21 October, Malev and five other Hungarian companies formed a joint enterprise with the Australian-owned transport group TNT. Under the aegis of TNT-Malev Express Cargo, Malev operated one British Aerospace BAe 146QT high-wing jetliner between Budapest and TNT’s hub at Cologne overnight while using the plane on its own freight network during the day.40 38 Cf. Joanna Filipczyk, ‘LOT: Connecting East and West in Poland’, in Hans-Liudger Dienel and Peter Lyth (eds.), Flying the Flag: European Commercial Air Transport Since 1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 202–3, but see also: ‘LOT Orders Boeing 767s’, Flight International, 19 November 1988, 17 and ‘UNblocING THE EAST’, Flight International, 29 July 1989, 41. 39 Cf. See also ‘Eastern Bloc Nations Seek Western-Built Transport to Meet Growing Demand’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 November 1989, 104. 40 SOA, CSA, Box 405, Informace o zámˇerech [Information on Intentions], undated. See also ‘Malev Considers Fleet Replacement’, Flight International, 18 July 1987, 8; ‘West’s East European Market Hopes Fade’, Flight International, 6 February 1988, 8;

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Yet, whereas in Poland Boeing won over Airbus and McDonnell Douglas because its 767 twinjet offered a better combination of size, range and payload capacity than the competing A310-300, MD-80 and MD-11, respectively,41 in East Germany and Czechoslovakia, for political reasons, the situation turned in favour of the West European producer. When the East German party leader and State Council chairman, Erich Honecker, visited the Federal Republic in September 1987, the West German Minister of Economy, Martin Bangemann initiated an offer from Airbus to Interflug. The East Germans took on it and, in February 1988, the government approved the purchase of three medium- to long-range, wide-body A310-300 transports. The twinjets were to replace Interflug’s Il-62Ms on the routes to Beijing, Havana and Singapore, and they provided far superior capacity and economy. Whereas the Ilyushins carried 174 passengers and 0.6 tons of freight at the maximum range of 6800 km while burning 7.4 tonnes of fuel per hour, the A310-300 carried 218 travellers and 14 tonnes of cargo with a range up to 9300 kilometres consuming 4.2 tonnes of kerosene per hour. Each of the three planes cost $69 million with the funding provided by a consortium of West German banks led by the Frankfurt-based Dresdner Bank. Interflug’s director, Klaus Henkes, signed the purchase contract in June 1988 immediately after the sale was cleared through CoCom. Delivered on schedule, the first two A310-300 arrived at Schönefeld airport in late June 1989 and one of them set a record for ‘the longest revenue flight made by Airbus aircraft’ with a non-stop Berlin-Havana service (8370 km) immediately afterwards.42

‘TNT Launches Hungarian Venture’, Flight International, 5 November 1988, 3; ‘West Goes East’, Flight International, 10 December 1988, 15 and ‘UNblocING THE EAST’, Flight International, 29 July 1989, 40–1 as well as ‘Malev Takes Delivery of Western Transports, Reviews Fleet Needs’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 2 January 1989, 111 and 115. 41 Cf. ‘Airframe Manufacturers Seek Sales Opportunities in Eastern Bloc’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 15 February 1988, 112–3 and ‘Range, Payload Capabilities Prompted Poland to Order Three 767ER Aircraft’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 14 November 1988. 42 SOA, CSA, Box 405, Informace o zámˇerech [Information on Intentions], undated. See also ‘Interflug May Fly Airbuses’, Flight International, 26 September 1987, 5; ‘Cocom Approves Airbus Sale’, Flight International, 25 June 1988; ‘East Goes West’, Flight International, 18 February 1989, 39–41 and ‘A320 Performance Improves’, Flight International, 26 August 1989, 9.

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Albeit the 1980–1982 cuts and rationalisation measures eventually helped to return CSA to profit, a report prepared by the CSA management still lamented in October 1989 that ‘the pace of development [was still] lagging significantly both behind the non-socialist and Comecon countries.’43 As a temporary antidote until the next generation of Soviet jetliners became available in the early 1990s, the Czechoslovak government authorised the acquisition of two wide-body Western aircraft on 11 May 1989. While both Airbus A310 and Boeing B-767 were initially considered, in the end the former was selected since it offered swifter delivery terms and there was a context of much better trade relations between Czechoslovakia and West European countries than with the US.44 The purchase contract was finalised in early August 1989 along with a 12-year leasing arrangement. According to this, the owner of the transports became an offshore company incorporated in the Cayman Islands with credits from a banking consortium consisting of the Crédit Commerciale de France and Sociéte Générale of Paris, Barclays Bank of London and the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau of Frankfurt. The end-user, the CSA, then subleased the planes without crews through a chain involving an unnamed lessor in Japan and the state trading agency, Omnipol. This intricate scheme was devised in order to minimise the effects on overall indebtedness of a country in foreign currencies and to facilitate CoCom clearance. The first A310-300 was slotted for delivery in December 1990 and the second in January 1991.45

43 SOA, CSA, Box 405, Koncepce rozvoje CSA ˇ v období 9.5LP [CSA’s Development Programme for the Period of the 9th Five Year Plan], October 1989. 44 At the time, Czechoslovakia was still denied the ‘most favoured nation’ treatment

by the US which radically diminished Boeing’s chances for security (export clearance from concerned departments in Washington) and economic (Prague desired to achieve a balance of payments in mutual trade which was hardly forthcoming) reasons. Cf. NACR, ˇ UV CSR/CR-RZP, Usnesení vlády CSSR cˇ . 154/11.5.185 + podklady [Decision of the Government of the CSSR no. 154/11.5.185 Including Background Papers], various dates. But see also ‘Changes at Czechoslovak Airlines to Increase Responsibility, Freedom’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 February 1989, 121–3 and ‘Crossing the Wall’, Flight International, 20 December 1989–2 January 1990, 32–3. 45 A background paper prepared for the above-mentioned meeting of the Czechoslovak government by the Federal Ministry of Transportation and Communications stated that an offshore company to own the aircraft would be settled ad hoc by the banking consortium. Hence, in all likeliness, it was the banks which, in fact, were the end owners of the transports. Cf. NACR, UV CSR/CR-RZP, Usnesení vlády [Decision of the Government]:

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Despite the obvious differences, there were two aspects which all these four cases involving bloc airline purchases had in common. The first related to the transfer of state-of-the-art Western technology. Of particular concern in this regard were the latest ring laser gyroscopes, carbon fibre components as well as turbine blade materials in the hot section of the power plant and their manufacture. Surprisingly, all aircraft were cleared without major technology restrictions including the P&W JT8D high-bypass turbofans fitted to the Malev’s B-737 airliners and even more advanced GE CF6-80C2 engines employed on both B-767 and A310 transports acquired by LOT, Interflug and CSA respectively. However, all major checks on airplanes to include avionics, power plant and aircraft interior were to be performed in the West for which all four airlines contracted with the Lufthansa. The conditions for holding the spare parts were stringent, too. The spares had to be either stored directly with the West German carrier or, if locally, in burglar-proof rooms with preferably no windows and the keys in the hands of the Westerners.46 The second aspect concerned attempts on the part of Moscow and by some local ‘hard-liners’ who attempted either to hamper the acquisition of Western aircraft by pinpointing their high price or, at least, offer substitutes with corresponding orders for Soviet machines. These efforts were not without success with CSA, Interflug, LOT and Malev signing letters of intent for the Tu-334 short-range airliner, whose development began in 1988,47 as well as for Tu-204 medium and Il-96-300 long-haul transports. Designed to be operated via fly-by-wire systems, all aircraft should have met the tightened international requirements for the accuracy of navigation systems as well as noise and emission restrictions.48 However, already in November 1988, Flight International disclosed that the Soviet authorities had approached Rolls-Royce to discuss the possible fitting of Pˇríloha II [Annex II], undated, and NACR, FMDS, Box 27, folder 13.820/89-220, Zpráva o jednání [Record of the Negotiations], 31 August 1989. 46 Cf. ‘Lufthansa Will Maintain Interflug Airbuses’, Flight International, 20 August

1988, 34; ‘UNblocING THE EAST’, Flight International, 29 July 1989, 41 and ‘Crossing the Wall’, Flight International, 20 December 1989–2 January 1990, 33. 47 Cf. Gordon and Rigmant, OKB Tupolev, 284–90. 48 Cf. NACR, UV CSR/CR-RZP, Usnesení vlády [Decision of the Government]: Infor-

ˇ mace k návrhu usnesení vlády CSSR [Information (financial evaluation) relating to the proposal for decision of the Government], 6 May 1989, but see also ‘Market Place: Interflug’, Flight International, 12 September 1987, 6 or ‘West’s East European Market Hopes Fade’, Flight International, 6 February 1988, 8.

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RB211-535E4 engines on the Il-96-300 airliner. In the same article, the British weekly pointed to an earlier report which appeared in the Soviet newspaper Pravda which stated that the Tu-204 was unable to perform its maiden flight because the new Soloviev high-bypass turbofan engines (PS-90A) as well as some other equipment ‘were late.’ Short of planes because of their delayed development, the deputy minister of civil aviation A. F. Aksenov admitted to Aviation Week & Space Technology in early June 1989 that Aeroflot could opt to lease Western aircraft in ‘the last resort’ to satisfy burgeoning demand for air travel in the country. Several months later, in early November, Leonid S. Silverstov, international relations director at Aeroflot, criticised the Soviet aircraft industry for being ‘very slow’ in delivering required transports which forced the carrier to miss out on 15 million passengers in 1988 with some 20 million expected in 1989. Arriving for the 45th annual general meeting of IATA to which Aeroflot at last accessed in July 1989, Silverstov further confirmed that for all these reasons the airlines signed a letter of intent for five Airbus A310-300 transports with an option for additional five in the last week of October.49 All the dramatic developments in late 1989 and early 1990 notwithstanding, Alexander Pavlov of Aviaexport remained optimistic. In May 1990, the deputy general director of the Soviet aircraft exporting agency told Flight International that Comecon countries as well as Iran, Syria and Yugoslavia showed an interest in the next generation of Soviet airliners while the agency was actively approaching the emerging South-East Asian market.50 However, this was nothing but wishful thinking. Next month, at the 25th meeting of the technical directors of the Comecon airlines in Havana, Aviaexport and the Soviet Ministry of Aviation Industry were once again blamed for their sluggish performance with CSA and all other carriers reporting the order fulfilment rate slightly above 50 per cent. During the talks, the Interflug representatives went even so far as to offer

49 Cf. ‘Rolls-Powered Ilyshin Mooted’, Flight International, 19 November 1988, 17 as well as ‘Perestroika Spurs Aeroflot to Begin Major Changes in Business Operations’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 5 June 1989, 84–7 and ‘Aeroflot Sings Letter of Intent to Purchase Five Airbus A310-300’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 6 November 1989, 18. See also Jones, ‘The Rise and Fall of Aeroflot’, in Higham, Greenwood and Hardesty (eds.), Russian Aviation and Air Power, 266. 50 Cf. ‘Soviets in Expanded Leasing Talks’, Flight International, 9–15 May 1990, 66.

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for sale or lease all Soviet equipment the carrier owned but no airline showed any immediate interest in acquiring it.51 The 1990 Havana meeting was thus a swan song, a farewell to the bloc aviation system. In 1990, amid tremendous political and socio-economic changes, the former satellite airlines embarked on a completely new course looking for foreign partners and privatisation or heading into liquidation as in the case of Interflug. Throughout the year, the situation dramatically worsened for Aeroflot, too. Lacking not only planes and engines but also fuel due to frequent delivery outages, the airline grounded most of its fleet, closed roughly half of the airports in the country and cancelled or heavily restricted the flights to the capitals of the former satellites and African destinations. And it took half a decade until the carrier got on a more stable footing.52

51 SOA, CSA, Box 399, Protokol 25-ogo soveshchaniya tekhnicheskikh direktorov aviatransportnykh predpriyatiy – uchastnikov Berlinskogo soglasheniya [Protocol of the 25th Meeting of Technical Directors of Air Transport Enterprises of the Berlin Agreement], June 1990. 52 Cf. ‘Aeroflot Admits “Severe Problems”’, Flight International, 3–9 October 1990, 9 and Jones, ‘The Rise and Fall of Aeroflot’, in Higham, Greenwood and Hardesty (eds.), Russian Aviation and Air Power, 266–8.

CHAPTER 9

Conclusion

It is already three decades since David Harvey, a renowned geographer and anthropologist, wrote his seminal work The Condition of Postmodernity and coined the concept of time-space compression. According to Harvey, at the heart of contemporary, post-modern societies lies the technologies that ‘annihilate[d] space through time’ and have ‘shrunk the world’ to a fraction of its former size. What the famous geographer and anthropologist had in mind was two technologies which forced humans to cope with the ‘overwhelming sense of compression [emphasis in original] of our spatial and temporal worlds.’ With IBM Simon and Nokia 9000 arriving in the market in mid-1990s, Harvey could only foresee the advent of the Internet Age and smartphones. However, by the late 1980s, it was already clear enough that the jet passenger aircraft had fundamentally revolutionised and transformed how a person understands its Dasein, i.e. among other things its presence and perception of timespace relations. Therefore, he regarded the jet revolution of the 1960s as one of the thresholds dividing the post-modern society from its premodern and modern predecessors. Whereas ‘horse-drawn coaches and sailing ships’ dominated the pre-modern era, ‘steam locomotives… and steam ships’ the early modern and the ‘propeller aircraft’ the late modern, the speed of jet planes captured the imagination and formed spatial being

© The Author(s) 2020 P. Svik, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1_9

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in the condition of postmodernity.1 Yet, except for a simple figure 3.1 on page 241, Harvey did not provide any details on how these revolutions in transportation emerged and what caused them.2 With its prevailing focus on the period of the Cold War, this book targeted the last of these major transitions associated with slow, longue durée transformations at supra-systemic level. In doing so, it regarded the moyenne durée, East-West confrontation at systemic level as a primary and the most important stimuli in the transition from propeller to the Jet Age. Yet, albeit recalling the flamboyant jet-set era, the term is rather a catchphrase which reduces the complexity and makes the historical development a little less blurred than it really was. In fact, in the 1950s and 1960s, first military and then civil aviation underwent a transition from piston engines to turbofans. In this regard, turboprops and jet engines presented only an intermediary stage. Of the latter two, turboprops were much more successful despite being generally disregarded by many contemporaries as a mere stepping stone to jet propellants. Contrary to many younger practitioners, Louis Charles Breguet, a pioneer of French aviation, did not share this ‘jet enthusiasm.’ Arriving in Washington for the International Air Pioneers dinner in October 1953, Breguet told Aviation Week that albeit the ‘turboprop engines [would not] reach their optimum “for many, many years” [they would] eventually power all transport aircraft’ in the future. Elaborating his idea further, he said that turbojets would ‘certainly’ have their place in ‘military war planes.’ But in terms of civil aviation, in terms of ‘aviation for peace,’ the future rested with the turboprops which would ‘enclose the 1 The power of these transportation means was so strong that they eventually transpired from the sphere of technik (technology) to techne (art) and even further beyond. Thus, the ship of state entered, with Plato’s Republic, philosophy and with Leonard Cohen’s song Democracy popular culture. The trains are a subject of numerous folk tunes including, perhaps most famously, a traditional Southern gospel This Train (Is Bound for Glory). Also, inspired by the sound of the steam locomotive, the orchestral work Pacific 231 eventually won Arthur Honegger notoriety and was used in short films by Mikhail Tsekhanovsky (1931) and Jean Mitry (1949). In a somewhat nostalgic mood, Steve Goodman depicted a transition from trains to jets in a long-distance travel in his City of New Orleans. Yet, a transition from turboprops to jets left a visible mark in popular music, too. While a booklet on Frank Sinatra’s 1958 Come Fly with Me album still came out with the Trans World Airlines’ Super Connies in the background, seven years later, Astrud Gilberto already sung of a silver jet that would bring her Non-Stop to Brazil. 2 David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge and London: Blackwell, 1990), 240–2.

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propeller inside the engine.’ Thus, what Breguet foresaw was a geared turbofan engine which effectively performs as a ducted turboprop.3 Already into his 70s, Breguet may have seemed, depending on one’s perspective, either a foolish old man or a prophet much ahead of his time. But he was neither. The French manufacturer Turbomeca, now Safran Helicopter Engines, constructed and successfully tested one such turbofan engine in 1951.4 Designed by the company’s founder and director, Joseph Sydlowski, with the sponsorship of the French Air Ministry, in April 1952, the Aspin I eventually became the first turbofan engine to power an aircraft ever (the Fuga Gemeaux IV). Half a year earlier, when reporting on Continental Motors acquiring the US manufacturing rights for this and other eight Turbomeca engines, Aviation Week described a ducted fan as being somewhere ‘between… a turboprop and turbojet’ in its performance characteristics. ‘For a given fuel flow,’ the weekly went on ‘thrust [was] substantially higher under static conditions than a turbojet, but lower than a turboprop. At high flight speed, the condition [was]

3 In essence, the higher the bypass ratio, the more a turbofan engine resembles, performance and operation-wise, a ducted turboprop than a turbojet. This is because the kinetic energy (thrust) is in a turbofan delivered both by turbine and fan. Since the early turbofans were developed from turbojets, they produced thrust mostly through the hot section and were rather considered a variant of a turbojet with forward low-pressure compressor (fan). See below ft. 5 and for original reference, cf. ‘Turboprops Top Jets For Liners: Breguet’, Aviation Week, 2 November 1953, 22 and 24. 4 Unlike most turbofans over next five decades, the Aspin I came with a gearbox which optimised the revolutions-per-minute rate of the fan. Since jet engines used no gearbox, either, the mechanism surely reminded Breguet of the geared propeller engines which prevailed on the aircraft of 1930–1940s. This, most likely, induced him to speak of a propeller rather than of a fan. In early 1950s, the General Electric experimented with the idea of gearing the fan, too, but its D-2 test engine proved underpowered until reaching the optimum revolutions-per-minute ratio to which it was designed. Albeit smaller turbofans that employed the gearbox, Garrett TFE731 and Lycoming ALF502/LF507, became common on private jets in 1970–1980s, the large turbofans dropped this feature and producers opted for a clean two- or three-spool layout. The first large geared turbofan engine (Pratt&Whitney 1000G) was certified by the Federal Aviation Administration only in 2014 and can now be found on the latest generation of the narrow-bodied short-tomedium range airliners by Airbus (A220/A320neo family) and Embraer (E-Jet E2 family). This engine was also selected for the Russian Irkut MC-21 twinjet which was developed by Yakovlev Design Bureau and is undergoing certification at the moment. A geared turbofan by Rolls-Royce, Trent UltraFan, should be ready for service by the mid-2020s. Cf. George E. Smith and David A. Mindell, ‘The Emergence of the Turbofan Engine’, in Peter Galison and Alex Roland (eds.), Atmospheric Flight in the Twentieth Century (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 126–7.

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reversed, the ducted fan developing more thrust than the turboprop but somewhat less than the pure jet.’ In general, wrote the same magazine in October 1952, ‘the by-pass, or dilution, jet [was] first and foremost a design for fuel economy’ that ‘look[ed] good for transport types’ as offering ‘low-cost high thrust for climb [and] cruise.’5 Nonetheless, by the mid-1950s, the turbofan propulsion was still in its infancy. The choice of airlines in the West therefore seemed to be between the turbojet or turboprop power plants with a supercharged Wright R-3350 Duplex Cyclone turbo-compound engine fitted to DC-7s and Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellations continuing to hold the last stand for propeller propulsion in large airliners. Yet, with the Rolls-Royce Conway, Pratt&Whitney JT3D and General Electric CJ805-23 turbofans starting to roll out of production lines in large number by the turn of 1950–1960s, airlines hastily shifted to these more economic and efficient alternatives ordering either new planes or upgrading their recently acquired B-707/720s and DC-8s from turbojets to turbofans.6 However, it was the desire to retain strategic nuclear superiority but by more powerful and, at the same time, fuel-efficient engines which prompted the development of turbofan engines. And, given the tremendous costs of initial defence programmes, the commercial airlines in non-communist countries adapted the new technology at relatively low price.7 The same pattern of military-civilian cross-fertilisation worked on

5 Cf. ‘Test Resumed on French Aspin I’, Aviation Week, 2 April 1951, 30–1; ‘French

Turbines Enter US Field’, Aviation Week, 15 October 1951, 32–6; ‘Gemeaux IV Flies with Aspin I Ducted Fan’, Aviation Week, 28 April 1952, 35 and ‘By-Pass Engine Promises Fuel Economy’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 24 November 1952, 23–6. 6 Cf. e.g. ‘TWA Dilemma: Turboprops or Jets’, Aviation Week, 27 December 1954, 17; ‘AA Nears Decision on Turboprop Order’, Aviation Week, 16 May 1955, 13–4; ‘American orders Area-Ruled Jetliners’, Aviation Week, 4 August 1958, 38–9; ‘American Schedules Turbofan Retrofits’, Aviation Week, 11 April 1960, 50 and ‘TWA Orders 30 Turbofan Transports’, Aviation Week, 4 August 1958, 39. 7 While Conway was developed from Rolls-Royce Avon turbojet engine and intended for the Vickers V-1000 airlifter, it eventually found its home in an updated version of the Handley Page Victor strategic bomber and Vickers VC10s transport and refuelling aircraft, the Pratt&Whitney JT3D and General Electric CJ805-23 turbofans emerged from J57, respectively, J79 military turbojets and powered a variety of military aircraft. Whereas the J57s were among others fitted to B-52 Stratofortress, C-135 Stratolifter and KC-135 Stratotanker produced by Boeing or Lockheed U-2 spy plane, the J79s powered several interceptor and fighter-bomber aircraft including the F-4 Phantom II, F-104 Starfighter, North American A-5 Vigilante and some versions of the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Cf. Smith

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the other side of the Iron Curtain as well, but there was one essential difference in the Soviet approach stemming from the success of a particular aircraft design. This was the Tu-95 Bear strategic long-range bomber, one of the most iconic airplanes of the Cold War era, and it led the Soviets to place their faith in turboprops for the future. Indeed, it was a safe bet. As a response to the B-52 Stratofortress, the Tu-95 was almost as fast as its jet-powered competitor while having about the same range. With the plane good enough to keep it in the air for at least the next few decades from now,8 the Soviet military and designers lacked any particular incentives to boost up the performance of Tu-16 Badger and Myasishchev M-4 Bison strategic bombers, particularly when even the former Secretary of the Air Force, Stuart Symington, came to believe that ‘the United States, along with the rest of the free world, may have lost control of the air’ albeit the West still had the ‘advantages in base location and training.’9 While the Red Army’s ‘spin doctors’ played their cards well and tricked Washington into reckoning that the USSR was quickly catching up with the US in strategic bombing capacity,10 the Soviet leader Khrushchev became dissatisfied by the fact that the range of the latter bomber was only 9000–9500 kilometres (5600–5900 miles) instead of desired 12,000–16,000 kilometres (7500–9940 miles). The bomber was thus unable to reach the US, drop its load and return safely to the USSR without in-flight refuelling, which was what in 1949 its chief designer, Vladimir Myasishchev, had promised Generalissimo Stalin to deliver. This displeased Khrushchev, and in 1960, he ordered the Myasishchev design bureau to merge with the OKB-52. Founded by Vladimir Chelomey in 1944, this design bureau focused on development and production of

and Mindell, ‘The Emergence of the Turbofan Engine’, 118–9 in particular. For the history of turbojets, see, e.g., Philip Scranton, ‘Mastering Failure: Technological and Organizational Challenges in British and American Military Jet Propulsion, 1943–57’, Business History 53, no. 4 (2011): 479–504 and Id., ‘Turbulence and Redesign: Dynamic Innovation and the Dilemmas of US Military Jet Propulsion Development’, European Management Journal 25, no. 3 (2007): 235–48. 8 The Tu-95s should be flying at least until 2040. The same also applies to B-52s which should be in service until the 2050s after the last upgrade. 9 Cf. ‘Symington Shocked’, Aviation Week, 23 May 1955, 12. 10 Cf. ‘Russian Jet Airpower Gains Fast on US’ and ‘Double Shock for Americans’,

Aviation Week, 23 May 1955, 12–5 and 122, respectively.

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tactical missiles, which, as Khrushchev correctly believed, would make strategic bombers obsolete.11 Soviet civil aviation, consequently, entered the 1960s with great confidence in turboprop technology, but with only one turbofan engine, Soloviev D-20P, on which to build for the future. A non-afterburning derivate of an engine intended for the ‘113’ (Tu-113) air-to-surface missile which Tupolev was developing for the Tu-95 bombers, the power plant first appeared with the Tu-118 short-haul airliner in March 1960 delivering a maximum thrust of 5400 kgp (53KN/11,900 lbf). Yet, this was not enough for larger medium- to long-haul planes which Khrushchev desired as a Soviet response to the immensely successful B-707 and DC-8 jetliners. Impressed in 1960 by the smoothness and quietness of his flight in a Sud-Aviation Caravelle, which came with aftmounted engines, Khrushchev requested Ilyushin and Tupolev to design similar transports while insisting on the same structural layout. Simultaneously, the Kuznetsov and Soloviev bureaus were solicited to furnish the turbofan engines suitable for supporting such planes. The jetliners should also be developed and produced at a relatively quickly pace since a Soviet-Czechoslovak framework agreement envisaged the delivery of the first aircraft to the CSA in 1964.12 Yet, by December 1966, neither the long-range Il-62 nor the mediumrange Tu-134 transport had met airworthiness criteria. According to a report for the Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party, both planes were underpowered while the airframes were prone to fatigue and were not up to international standards. For these reasons, the delivery of both aircraft to CSA was rescheduled to 1969. Despite Aeroflot eventually launching services with both airliners in 1967, this did not change the fact that the Soviet aircraft industry could only deliver its alternatives to turbofan-powered versions of the B-707 and DC-8 some 7–8 years

11 John T. Greenwood, ‘The Designers: Their Design Bureaux and Aircraft’, in Robin Higham, John T. Greenwood, and Von Hardesty (eds.), Russian Aviation and Air Power in the Twentieth Century (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998), 188–9. 12 NACR, KSC-UV-AN I, folder 171, Karlík (Director CSA) to Novotný (Chairman of the KSC), 2 December 1966. See also Gordon and Rigmant, OKB Tupolev, 233–6 and 239.

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later.13 As Chapter 6 demonstrated, however, by the late 1960s, Western industries began to re-tool for a transition from narrow-bodied airliners powered by low-bypass engines to wide-body transports fitted with highbypass turbofans. While in the US these developments were once again driven by Air Force requirements, a decision to form Airbus was a sort of last resort option for West European civil aviation producers in order to survive in a market dominated by American manufacturers. The Soviet aviation industry responded to these Western developments with the Il86 wide-body airliner but rather than cutting the turbofan gap, this, in fact, grew to 10 years and even that figure did not reflect the true gap behind its Western competitors. Despite the arrival of the monstrously big Antonov An-124 and An225 Mriya airlifters in the 1980s, the Soviet aviation industry eventually failed to deliver a single modern civilian airliner with low positioned wings with high-bypass turbofans mounted underneath them. Effectively, the Tupolev and Yakovlev designs remained frozen in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the French Caravelle as their initial inspiration while Ilyushin’s Il-86 was an uneconomic mismatch of a heavy wide-body airframe and fully tweaked low-bypass turbofans, which resulted in extremely high fuel consumption.14 But excessive usage of oil was something which neither Soviet civil aviation nor economy could afford, particularly in a situation when the US seemed to orchestrate a surprise ‘bolt from the blue’ nuclear strike. The indefatigable desire on part of Politburo members to secure against such eventualities by conserving the scarce fuel resources for strategic reasons along with their putting the whole economy on a warlike footing brought the civil aviation industry in the socialist camp to the verge of collapse because of lack of resources. Since the production of civilian and military aircraft was and still remains richly interdependent and mutually beneficial, a radical turn to concentrate on the production of military designs alone made the long-lasting and unending issues with low-quality and short service life of Soviet civil equipment even more pronounced. Consequently, in a ‘brain dead’ situation, the bloc’s 13 While the Rolls-Royce Conway powered B-707-420 and DC-8-40 series entered service in 1960, the 707-320B/C and 8-50/55 series with the JT3D turbofans by Pratt & Whitney began flying in 1961. 14 An ultimate propellant of the aircraft, the NK-86 engines, presented a final evolution of the NK-8 family of low-bypass turbofans which Kuznetsov design bureau began to develop upon Khrushchev’s order for Il-62 quadjet in 1960.

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civil aviation flew on autopilot until the whole system was, like the bloc regimes themselves, shattered by spontaneous pressure from bellow in 1989 and 1990. Thus, it was that East-West competition triggered all essential technological advances in aviation during the Cold War. Rapidly spreading from military to civil aviation at relatively low costs, these innovations then provided the ‘critical infrastructures’ for a transition of air travel from a post-World War II experience of privilege and delight for a selected few, to global mass air transportation. Or, as the Flight International already predicted in April 1966, the Boeing B-747 and other planes which were yet to emerge from the US Air Force CX-HLS programme ‘[would] continue the vulgarisation [emphasis in original] of worldwide travel beyond the possibilities of existing aircraft’ while bringing the opportunities of air transport ‘to [yet] unprecedented proportion of the world’s population.’15 In this transition, the civil aviation of the Moscow led bloc remained stranded somewhere in the middle. From a systemic perspective, this was because of two factors. The first was Kremlin’s excessive reliance on turboprop technology which was responsible for an initial gap of 7– 8 years vis-à-vis the West in turbofan propulsion. The second and equally important element here was restrictions which the Western countries, either individually or within the Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom), imposed on trade with the communist countries. The unwillingness of Washington to provide the Soviets with know-how about production of large-bodied airliners and high-bypass turbofan engines in combination with British fears of repeating the same mistake as they had made in 1947 with the sale of Nene and Derwent turbojet engines, meant that Moscow was deprived of the possibility to reproduce well-proven Western designs. The failed acquisition of turbofan engines by the USSR from the US and the UK thus provided vocal testimony that the sanctions and trade restrictions could work particularly in a situation when the desired goods or technologies could not be obtained by other means such as industrial espionage or illicit purchases.16 15 Cf. ‘Boeing 747 Ordered’, Flight International, 21 April 1966, 655. 16 It is of course completely different matter whether, to what extent and how the

sanctions could be effectively applied today when states like Iran and North Korea may share the P-2 centrifuges and other technologies which could allow the former to build new larger nuclear missiles (Nodong type) or, eventually, such technologies and arms

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Yet, from a systemic perspective, this study of civil aviation sector provided further evidence on how to understand the Cold War policymaking at national as well as at intra- and cross-bloc levels. Let me start here with the United States, by far the mightiest aviation nation of the Cold War era. Despite the above mentioned, it would be misleading to regard Washington’s attitude towards trade with the East as something overly rigid. Because of its close ties to the military, civil aviation provided a very good case to understand the evolution of American policy in this regard. After abandoning a zero contacts policy prevalent in the late 1940s and early 1950s,17 US actions became more targeted, informed by the desire of preventing the USSR and other socialist countries from acquiring the latest state-of-the-art equipment which would eventually enhance their military potential. This policy did not entail foreclosure on trade as such. In fact, in four years between 1960 and 1964, the US alone exported to the bloc countries wheat worth of $15.5 million in addition to other goods worth about $1 million. At the same time, bloc exports to the US reached $420,000. While these figures were relatively negligible for overall US export-import balance,18 as Chapter 7 showed, even such a ‘bellicose hawk’ as Ronald Reagan refused to cut all trade with the Soviet bloc in the aftermath of the 1983 KAL 007 shoot-down considering such a step entirely counterproductive. The sale of the latest hi-tech equipment was a completely different matter, however. In this regard, besides the turbofan engines, another good example involves the case of the Swedish firm, Datasaab Contracting. In 1975, this company concluded a contract with the Soviets to build a new Terminal and En Route Control Automated System

could be obtained from multiple-sources including non-state actors. Cf. e.g. ‘A North Korean in Iran’, Foreign Policy, 23 July 2014, https://foreignpolicy.com/2014/07/23/ a-north-korean-in-iran. Accessed 1 April 2020. 17 This indeed impacted on CSA so hardly that the airline was able to keep their DC3s operating only by borrowing the wheels and other equipment from the Dutch KLM and Belgian Sabena, cf. NACR, KSC-UV-60, folder 27, item 371, Zpráva o situaci v zajišˇtování náhradních dílu pro civilní letectví [Situation report on acquisition of spare parts for civil aviation], undated but most likely 1954. 18 In 1964, the trade with the Soviet bloc countries, Mongolia and China represented 1.3 per cent of all US exports and 0.5 per cent of imports in given year. Cf. NARA, RG 237, CRR, Box 1, folder Problems with USSR and Satellites #3, North&South America 1963, Trade of the United States with the Sino-Soviet Bloc, 1962–64, June 1965.

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(TERCAS) and applied to the US Department of Commerce for clearance for American made components. At a second attempt, in 1977, the request was approved provided that the system would contain no secondary radars19 and that certain limitations on hardware and software equipment would be met. After acquiring the company in 1981, LM Ericsson notified the US authorities that, contrary to undertakings given, Datasaab’s shipments included both primary and secondary radars, which were installed at seven monitoring sites including the airports at Kiev and Mineralnye Vody and supplied computerised data to the main control centre at Moscow Vnukovo airport for semi-automatic area tracking. For this ‘treacherous conduct… accomplished in a… deceitful manner,’ as the Judge Gerhard A. Gesell of the federal district court for Washington, DC, stated during the case, the Datasaab was in April 1984 fined $3.1 million. This was equivalent in value to all the US components in the $75 million contract. To the verdict, Ericsson ‘pleaded no contest.’20 The cautious attitude as towards trading relations with the bloc encompassed the activities of the bloc airlines too. According to its policy of aerial containment, at cross-bloc level, the US strove to limit the bloc’s air services within their own orbit. Despite the initial reluctance on the part of France and the UK, in the first half of 1950s, this policy affected CSA in particular since the carrier was the only communist airline that maintained a large number of routes beyond the Iron Curtain: Prague was a main gateway for East-West air travel. In response to the general relaxation of mutual relations after Stalin’s death, the once interrupted air routes began to re-emerge. While restricted to Europe, the US supported their growth as the pressure on the British not to hinder the opening of the Paris-Prague-Moscow route demonstrated. But once the ambitions of Aeroflot and CSA turned to the Near East, Africa, East Asia and Latin America, in the late 1950s, the US responded with a policy of global aerial containment.

19 Communicating with an aircraft’s transponder, the secondary surveillance radars display the targets’ bearing, position, altitude and speed in addition to their identity: military/civilian and friend/unknown. The primary radars only display the bearing and position since relying on reflection of emitted radio signals (Doppler effect). 20 Cf. ICAO, Annual Report of the Council for 1981, 1982, 48 as well as ‘Datasaab Fined $3.1 Million’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 7 May 1984, 20 and ‘Moscow Airport Uses Datasaab Air Traffic Control Facility’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 25 March 1985, 107.

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Relying on aid from its NATO partners and local allies, US efforts only had limited success, however. Being prevented from flying to Cuba via Africa and Latin America, Aeroflot turned to an alternative: it opened a Moscow–Havana route with great pomp via Murmansk pushing the Tu114 turboprops to their technical limits. Similarly, with the Portuguese blocking CSA flights to Cuba via Azores in violation of the 1944 Transit Agreement, the Czechoslovaks launched a Prague–Havana route via Denmark, UK, Ireland and Canada since none of those countries desired to infringe their obligations under international law. By the late 1960s, using CSA initially as a proxy because of its ICAO membership, Aeroflot thus established a foothold wherever the airline or the Kremlin wanted and in doing so sought to build two alternative round-the-world routes. A northern one was either to be an extension of Moscow–Montreal route to Tokyo via the US East Cost or an extension of Moscow–New York route to Khabarovsk via Anchorage. The alternative southern great circle route was to be an extension of the carrier’s Cuban or West African services to Latin America, and from thence across the Southern Pacific Ocean to Sydney, Australia, and from there to Jakarta where it would connect with an already existing service to the Indonesian capital.21 Yet, as their American rivals, the Soviets achieved only mixed results: in September 1971, a Soviet-Colombian air services agreement providing for an extension of the Havana route to Bogota was signed and by the mid-1970s, Aeroflot was also flying to Lima in Peru. The main factor limiting Soviet carrier’s ambitions was the obstruction on the part of Americans and Australians. The former did not wish to see Aeroflot scheduled services expanding beyond the US East Coast as Chapter 7 detailed, and the latter wished to keep the Soviet carrier out of the world’s smallest continent for good.22 At bilateral level, in 1974, after a period of ‘internal

21 Cf. ‘Aeroflot to Seek Alternate Global Routes’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 October 1969, 112–5 and ‘Aeroflot Expansion’, Flight International, 18 January 1971, 227. 22 Cf. ‘Aeroflot to Australia?’, Flight International, 27 January 1970, 109 and ‘Aeroflot to Bogota’, Flight International, 30 September 1971, 499. See also Johannes L. Kneifel, Fluggesellschaften und Luftverkehrssysteme der sozialistichen Staaten (Nördlingen: Verlag F. Steinmeier, 1980), 137 and 140 respectively and David R. Jones, ‘The Rise and Fall of Aeroflot: Civil Aviation in the Soviet Union, 1920–91’, in Robin Higham, John T. Greenwood, and Von Hardesty (eds.), Russian Aviation and Air Power in the Twentieth Century (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1998), 261.

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coldness’ following the long-delayed signature of the air services agreement in 1966 and introduction of flights between Moscow and New York two years later, aviation détente was over and relations between the two superpowers quickly began to deteriorate again. Aeroflot taking the lion’s share of the traffic between the two countries, Pan Am was forced to terminate its own services to Moscow in 1978. Despite the growing tension over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which resulted in the cessation of Aeroflot services to New York in January 1980, the Soviet airline continued to monopolise the market until January 1982. At that point, the Reagan Administration barred all scheduled flights between the US and USSR in response to the proclamation of martial law in Poland the previous month. The downing of the Korean Airlines 007 flight en route from New York to Seoul near Sakhalin in September 1981 precluded any hopes for an early resumption of the bilateral air services. Nonetheless, once these had been re-established in late April 1986, Aeroflot was only able to serve half of its assigned capacity. The extent of the bloc’s technological gap fully surfaced in 1988, when the Soviet carrier was forced to share capacity on Pan Am’s Super Jumbos as it had no wide-bodied planes capable of flying Moscow–New York non-stop. Emerging out of the day-to-day decision-making, there was one particular moment that clearly distinguished Washington’s aviation policy towards the bloc from those of its allies. While most West European countries and Canada tended to regard civil aviation more in terms of commerce, Washington’s focus was through a politico-military perspective. Reflecting their own World War II experience when its commercial airlines flew on military business for the US Air Transport Command, the Americans were convinced that the primary motivation of bloc airlines was to ‘export’ the idea of communism, create diversion opportunities, increase Soviet airlift potential to critical hot-spot areas and gather intelligence. Such views were not entirely unfounded either. For example, shortly before the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, two Aeroflot Antonov transports carrying KGB assault teams landed at Prague Ruzynˇe airport at 8 and 11 p.m. on 20 August. With a number of KGB operatives wearing the airline’s uniforms, the first team swiftly secured the Party headquarters while the second later arrested on-duty airport employees. A group of Soviet air traffic controllers then began to clear an airlift operation with military An-12s landing in one-minute intervals ‘throughout the early morning, bringing in several thousand troops and

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light armo[u]red vehicles.’ In the same way, the KGB operatives seized the airports in Brno and Bratislava with the Prague deployed assault teams allegedly leaving Czechoslovakia three days later.23 Yet, despite all the indignation which the invasion of Czechoslovakia and similar Soviet actions aroused in the West, few outside the US were convinced that aviation was a kind of ‘super-vehicle’ for subversive activities and export of communism or one which eventually drove these processes. As the British Minister of Aviation, Julian Amery, tried to explain to Najeeb E. Halaby, the Federal Aviation Administrator, and Alan S. Boyd, Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board during their meeting on 8 February 1963, the ‘aviation penetration by the Soviets [used to occur] only after political understanding [was] reached, and Soviet aviation activities per se affect[ed] very little a… decision’ by individual African countries to build the ties with the Eastern bloc. ‘Although the matter [Soviet air penetration of Africa] had been treated heretofore as a political matter, i.e. through the Foreign Office,’ Amery and his subordinates at the Ministry of Aviation believed that ‘in reality it was an economic problem and [therefore could] more satisfactorily be handled on that level.’24 With such a business-like approach prevailing in connection to Africa and the Third World in general, not surprisingly the British, the second mightiest aviation nation in the West, adopted similar position with regards to their bilateral relations with the Soviet Union and other communist nations. This forward-looking attitude entailed two dimensions. The first was the sale of technical equipment. This included mainly avionics and ground-based electronic hardware which the British producers as mentioned in Chapter 5 furnished to bloc countries in order to enable Eastern carriers to fly to the West and Western carriers vice versa. Yet, with the sole exception of six new and two refurbished BAC OneEleven short-haul aircraft which Rumania purchased in 1968 and 1972,

23 In all their haste, however, the KGB operatives forgot to switch off the airport Telex centre, so the European airline reservation network eventually became one of the first channels through which the words of the invasion spread to Western Europe. Cf. ‘Prague Invasion Vanguard Used Aeroflot’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 20 October 1969, 16–8. 24 Cf. NARA, RG 59, SF, Box 3, folder Civil Air: U.S. Policies International, Halaby (FAA) and Boyd (CAB) to Johnson (Ass. Sec. for Economic Aff., DoS), 8 February 1963.

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respectively, these sales did not involve any ‘big or very advanced projects’ as the British weekly Flight International realistically noted in June 1974. Five years later, however, in June 1979, such advanced projects seemed to emerge as a possibility with a £250 million UK-Romanian contract for a joint production of One-Elevens in Bucharest. Nonetheless, out of the envisaged 82 airplanes for prospective markets in China and the Soviet bloc countries, only nine were ever completed with seven going to the Romanian national carrier TAROM.25 Similarly, ambiguous results for the British applied with regard to the second dimension, namely, the mutual exchange of routes. Uniquely positioned for facilitating Aeroflot’s operations across the North Atlantic in exchange for trans-Siberian rights for the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), London eventually held the line with Washington. This precluded the Soviet carrier from flying to Cuba more economically with a stop in Britain or Ireland until 1967 when agreement with three Scandinavian countries was reached. This shows that, despite bold statements, the British route policy, and country’s bloc aviation policy as such, desired to avoid any moves which would be overly counterproductive vis-à-vis relations with the Americans. On the other hand, London refused to bend to Washington’s wishes if that meant protracted violations of international aviation law as the episode regarding CSA flights to Havana clearly demonstrated. Finally, turning to the other side of the Curtain, it was evident that Moscow used CSA throughout the late 1950s and the early 1960s as a master key to open the door for Aeroflot around the world albeit, most likely, there were no formal or informal agreements about this. Indeed, no such agreements were necessary. As one of many reports which passed through the Politburo of the Czechoslovak Communist Party in the latter half of the 1950s critically stated: From an international perspective, the outstanding pace of development of our civil aviation [would not] allow us to compete successfully with the capitalists countries. While, for example, in the production of

25 Cf. TNA, FV 14/160, Call by Mr. Bujor, Romanian Chargé d’affaires, on Mr. Butler (FO): Background note on BAC 1–11s, 31 July 1979. See also ‘Selling to Eastern Europe’, Flight International, 13 June 1974, 771–6 and ‘Rombac’, Flight International, 4–10 September 1991, 70–1.

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steel, coal mining, machine building and other industries Czechoslovakia [held] leading positions in the world, in civil aviation it [belonged] to the economically underdeveloped countries such as Turkey, Peru, Burma or Ethiopia and [lagged] significantly behind even countries like Spain, Ireland, the Philippines or Finland. The most urgent task therefore [was] to devise a plan which would, in the shortest possible time, enable Czechoslovak aviation to overcome the existing gap and allow the Czechoslovak Republic to assume the corresponding place in world ranking by the volume of air traffic carried by individual countries.26

The local communists in Prague thus evidently did not lack ambitions of their own. Since these coincided with those of Moscow, unlike in 1968, the Kremlin did not preclude them from sending CSA to countries in the Middle East, East Asia and Africa and in fact often readily followed the path.27 While the expansion of bloc air carriers into developing countries was significantly motivated by ideology and also encompassed elements of prestige and military considerations, for CSA and Aeroflot their undertakings soon turned into a reckless run for hard currency income. Already in June 1959, less than a year after CSA launched its service to Cairo, an area manager at Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) complained to an official of the US Embassy in Prague that the Czechoslovaks evidently concluded ‘secret interline agreements [with] local carriers in the Middle East.’ These enabled the airline passengers ‘to travel free between Damascus and Cairo in order to avail themselves of CSA services rather than SAS services which include[d] Damascus,’ too. Albeit the flights by the Czechoslovak carrier ‘had a passenger load factor of only about 10 to 15 [per cent] and [were] obviously uneconomical,’ this was enough to oust the SAS out of the market and monopolise the routes from Prague to the Middle East for CSA.28 Over the years, as several chapters of this book demonstrated,

26 Cf. e.g. NA, KSC-UV-60, folder 27, item 361, Podrobná zpráva o rozvoji letecké dopravy a jeho zajištˇení [Detailed Report on Development of Civil Aviation and Steps How to Achieve It], 18 November 1958. 27 An American historian, Philip Muehlenbeck, recently presented a similar argument in his monograph Czechoslovakia in Africa, 1945–1968 (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 28 NARA, RG 197, RRIAAN, Box 26, folder Czechoslovakia–US Negotiations: October 1948–August 1959, Embassy Prague to DoS, 24 June 1959.

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the same scenario repeated itself continuously with only one minor difference: the more debts in foreign currencies bloc countries accumulated, the more aggressive these practices became, even within the bloc.29 Albeit the bloc airlines and bloc aviation sector ultimately lost this battle and remained ‘trapped’ somewhere between the modern and the post-modern world, it was the East-West confrontation which brought the engines, planes and route structure essential for rapid growth of globalisation in the 1990s. Now, however, the crucial question seems to be how long the post-Cold War system can survive and what might follow it. One thing is indeed for sure: aviation will again play an important part in this story.30

29 Cf. ‘Soviets Pushing Exports to Cut Deficits’, Aviation Week & Space Technology, 6 June 1977 and Stephen Kotkin, ‘The Kiss of Debt: The East Bloc Goes Borrowing’, in Niall Ferguson, Charles S. Maier, Erez Manela, and Daniel J. Sargen (eds.), The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective (London and Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2010), 80–93. 30 Cf. e.g. Richard N. Haass, ‘The Pandemic Will Accelerate History Rather Than Reshape: Not Every Crisis Is a Turning Point’, Foreign Affairs, 7 April 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2020-04-07/pandemic-willaccelerate-history-rather-reshape-it; ‘“From Russia with Love”: Putin Sends Aid to Italy to Fright Virus’, Euractiv, 23 March 2020, https://www.euractiv.com/section/ global-europe/news/from-russia-with-love-putin-sends-aid-to-italy-to-fight-virus and ‘Chinese Virus Aid to Europe Raises Long-Term Concerns’, Voice of America, 23 March 2020, https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/chinese-virus-aideurope-raises-long-term-concerns. All Accessed 8 April 2020.

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Index

A Abe, Shintaro, 169 Able Archer, 179 Adams, Russell, 85 aerial containment, 10, 72, 73, 77, 78, 80, 214 Afghanistan, 11, 152, 188, 191, 216 Africa Central, 75 East, 58, 59, 63, 72, 75, 98, 214, 217, 219 North, 74, 189 Sub-Saharan, 74 West, 10, 60, 67, 74, 76, 183, 215 Air Age, 14 airbus, 10, 12, 119, 120, 123–127, 129, 130, 199, 201, 202, 207, 211 aircraft Aero Ae-145, 66, 67 Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde, 119 Airbus A-220, 207

Airbus A-300, 126, 127, 199, 200, 202 Airbus A-310, 199–202 Airbus A-320neo, 207 Airbus A-380, 2 Airspeed AS.6 Envoy, 29 Antonov An-2, 66 Antonov An-10, 89 Antonov An-12, 216 Antonov An-15, 64 Antonov An-22, 123, 124, 129, 143 Antonov An-24, 68, 69, 129 Antonov An-72, 143 Antonov An-124, 142, 145, 193, 211 Antonov An-225, 193, 211 Avia-14, 67 Avia BH-25, 29 Boeing 377 Stratocruiser, 64 Boeing B-29, 19 Boeing B-52, 208, 209

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 P. Svik, Civil Aviation and the Globalization of the Cold War, Security, Conflict and Cooperation in the Contemporary World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-51603-1

233

234

INDEX

Boeing B-707, 57, 64, 68, 88, 114, 156, 208, 210 Boeing B-720, 68, 208 Boeing B-727, 67, 69, 193 Boeing B-737, 67–69, 198, 201 Boeing B-747, 2, 124, 127, 135, 141, 159, 160, 165, 174, 194, 212 Boeing B-767, 197–201 Boeing C-135, 208 Boeing KC-135, 160, 208 Boeing RB-47, 87, 88 Boeing RC-135, 158, 160–162, 174 Boeing YC14 (projected), 143 Bristol Britannia, 64, 97 British Aerospace BAe 146QT, 198 British Aircraft Corporation BAC One-Eleven, 217 British Aircraft Corporation BAC Three-Eleven (projected), 127 Canadair CL-44, 157 Cessna, 167 de Havilland Comet, 45 de Havilland Heron, 64 de Havilland Vampire, 25 Douglas C-54, 34 Douglas C-124, 120 Douglas DC-2, 29, 82 Douglas DC-3, 18, 19, 29, 31, 32, 34, 64, 66, 82, 213 Douglas DC-6, 18, 34, 35 Douglas DC-7, 56, 95, 208 Douglas DC-8, 65, 114, 195, 208, 210, 211 Douglas YC15 (projected), 143 Embraer E-Jet E2, 207 Fokker F28, 65 Fokker F.IXD, 29 Fokker F.VIIb, 29 Fuga Gemeaux IV, 207, 208 General Dynamics F-16, 208

Gloster Meteor, 25 Handley Page Victor, 208 Ilyushin Il-12, 20 Ilyushin Il-14, 54, 56, 63, 66, 67 Ilyushin Il-18, 2, 20, 64–68, 89, 107 Ilyushin Il-22, 131 Ilyushin Il-28, 63 Ilyushin Il-62, 69, 93, 108, 114, 128–130, 156, 194, 195, 197, 198, 210, 211 Ilyushin Il-76, 129, 130 Ilyushin Il-86, 10, 129, 131, 136, 139, 140, 142, 194, 197, 211 Ilyushin Il-96, 191, 201 Irkut MC-21, 207 Junkers Ju-52, 18 Lisunov Li-2, 19, 82 Lockheed C-30, 121 Lockheed C-5A, 121–124 Lockheed Constellation, 18–20, 34, 35 Lockheed Electra, 82, 124 Lockheed F-104, 208 Lockheed L-188 Electra, 124 Lockheed L-1011, 125, 127, 133, 134 Lockheed SR-71, 115 Lockheed Super-Constellation, 19, 56, 62, 208 Lockheed U-2, 87, 115, 208 McDonnell Douglas DC-10, 124, 125, 127, 144, 145 McDonnell Douglas DC-11, 199 McDonnell Douglas DC-80, 199 McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II, 208 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-15, 26, 63 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-23, 161, 165, 190 Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-27, 190 Myasishchev M-4, 209

INDEX

North American A-5 Vigilante, 208 Potez IX, 27 Savoia-Marchetti SM.73, 29 Sud-Aviation SE 210 Caravelle, 19, 56, 126, 210, 211 Sukhoi Su-15, 157, 161, 163–165 Supermarine Spitfire, 24 Tupolev ANT-20, 82 Tupolev ANT-25, 83 Tupolev Tu-4, 19 Tupolev Tu-16, 55, 209 Tupolev Tu-22M, 189 Tupolev Tu-26, 189 Tupolev Tu-70, 19, 20 Tupolev Tu-104, 2, 55–57, 62, 63, 72, 73, 96 Tupolev Tu-114, 1, 2, 20, 88, 90, 93, 97, 104, 107–110, 114, 123, 215 Tupolev Tu-118, 210 Tupolev Tu-134, 128, 186, 197, 210 Tupolev Tu-144, 119, 120 Tupolev Tu-154, 69, 128, 129, 186, 197 Tupolev Tu-204, 191, 201, 202 Tupolev Tu-334, 201 Vickers V-1000 (projected), 208 Vickers VC-10, 64, 65 Vickers Viscount, 54, 63, 65 Yakovlev Yak-11, 63 Yakovlev Yak-40, 128, 132, 133 airline companies A. B. Aerotransport, 81, 83 Aeroflot, 2, 9–11, 19, 20, 33, 45–47, 49–53, 55–62, 67–69, 74–76, 78, 81–86, 88, 90, 92–94, 96, 97, 99, 100, 104–117, 119, 123, 128–131, 136, 145, 147, 148, 150–153, 155, 156, 158, 159, 176, 177, 182, 183, 186–188, 190,

235

192–194, 197, 202, 203, 210, 214–216, 218, 219 Air France, 27, 41, 43, 45, 47, 51, 52, 114, 127, 177, 192 Air Guinée, 67, 68 Air India, 58, 61, 62 Air Mali, 66, 67 Alaska Airlines, 68 Alitalia, 40 Ariana Afghan Airlines, 3, 144, 145 Arrow Air, 195 Austrian Airlines, 49, 51, 177 Balkan Bulgarian Airlines, 154 British Airways, 193 British Caledonian, 145, 193, 194 British European Airways (BEA), 40, 43–45, 51–57, 116 British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC), 23, 64, 97–99, 106, 110, 114, 218 ˇ Ceskoslovenská letecká spoleˇcnost (Czechoslovak Air Transport Company), 28 ˇ Ceskoslovenské státní aerolinie (Czechoslovak State Airlines), 27 Compagnie franco-roumaine de navigation aérienne, 27 Compagnie international de navigation aérienne (CIDNA), 27 Court Line Aviation, 134 Cubana de Aviación, 102, 175 Czechoslovak Airlines (CSA), 9, 10, 12, 28, 30, 32–41, 43–46, 51, 52, 54, 58–62, 67, 72–76, 81, 98, 101–106, 115, 116, 154, 155, 182–186, 193, 195–203, 210, 213–215, 218, 219 Deruluft, 81 Deutsche Luft Hansa, 28–30 EgyptAir, 69

236

INDEX

Finnair, 50, 51 Ghana Airways, 64, 65 Greek Olympic Airways, 68 Interflug, 12, 183, 196, 199, 201–203 Japan Air Lines, 97, 114, 117 Jugoslovenski Aerotransport (JAT Yugoslav Air Transport), 3 Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij (KLM), Royal Dutch Airlines, 29, 43, 51, 58, 111, 117, 213 LOT Polish Airlines, 11, 43, 52, 54, 154–156, 158, 159, 183, 184, 195–198, 201 Lufthansa, 117, 201 Malev Hungarian Airlines, 183, 198, 199, 201 Maszovlet (Hungarian-Soviet Civil Air Transport Company), 22 Misrair, 63, 64, 68 Orion Airways, 198 Österreichische Luftverkehrs, 28 Pan American World Airlines (Pan Am), 11, 17, 31, 33, 39, 43, 67, 68, 83–88, 92, 94, 124, 147–153, 155–157, 187, 192, 193, 216 Sabena, 43, 51, 58, 213 Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS), 46, 47, 51, 58, 95, 96, 111–115, 219 Swissair, 29, 43, 47, 61 Syrian Airways, 63 TABSO (Bulgarian-Soviet Transport Aviation Corporation), 22 TARS (Romanian-Soviet Air Transport), 22, 23 TNT-Malev Express Cargo, 198 Trans World Airlines, 23, 206 United Arab Airlines, 63, 68, 69 US World Airways, 151 Akhromeyev, Sergey F., 166 Aksenov, A.F., 202

Alaska, 83, 95, 159 Albania, 23, 73 Al Khalifa, Salman bin Hamad, 73 Allen, William M., 124 Allied High Commission for Germany, 40, 41, 44, 46 Allison Engine Company, 121 Al Saud, Faisal bin Abdulaziz, 74 Al Saud, Saud bin Abdulaziz, 74 Amery, Julian, 217 Andropov, Yuri V., 170, 181, 191 Angola, 191 Antonov, Oleg K., 123 Argentina, 25, 35 Arkharov, Anatoly P., 166 Armstrong, William L., 178 Asia, 5, 9, 72, 74, 77, 97, 98, 114, 115, 148 Far East, 10, 98 South, 60, 63, 96 Southeast, 10, 59, 60, 63, 95, 98, 113, 202 Atlantic Ocean mid-Atlantic, 105 North Atlantic, 102, 105, 108, 218 trans-Atlantic route, 98, 99, 184 Attlee, Clement R., 24, 25, 39 Australia, 10, 98, 100, 125, 129, 173, 174, 215 Austria, 33, 40, 48–50 Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy, 26 Austrian State Treaty, 50 Ávila, Orlando Bosch, 175 Azerbaijan (Soviet), 157 Azores, 101, 102, 215

B Bahamas, 105 Bahrain, 73, 74 Balafrej, Ahmed, 106 Bandung Conference, 62 Bangemann, Martin, 199

INDEX

Barclays Bank, 200 Barents Sea, 83, 156 Barnes, E.J.W., 53 Bashkirov, V., 99, 100 Bateman Robert E., 135 Batista, Fulgencio, 100 Baydukov, Georgy F., 82 Beletzky, Eugene M., 59 Belgium, 35, 41, 43 Belyakov, Alexander V., 82 Bement, Arden L., 189 Benn, Anthony N.W., 127 Bering Strait, 82 Berle, Adolf A., 17, 21, 22, 31 Bermuda, 47, 86, 101, 102, 153 Bermuda agreement, 17 UK-US aviation treaty, 17 Bessmertnykh, Alexander, 168 Bevin, Ernest, 24 Boeing CH-47 Chinook, 121 Boeing Company, 64, 68, 120, 123, 124, 126, 131–136, 139, 197–200, 208 Bohlen, Charles E., 89 Boyd, Alan S., 78, 90, 217 Brazil, 76 Breguet, Louis Charles, 206, 207 Brezhnev, Leonid I., 91, 131, 150 Brinegar, Claude S., 147 Brzezinski, Zbigniew K., 157 Bugayev, Boris P., 147 Bulganin, Nikolai A., 55 Bulgaria, 22, 116, 182, 183 Burma, 219 Burnham, Forbes, 175, 176 Burt, Richard, 168, 178 Bush, George H.W., 190 Butler National, 116 Byrnes, James F., 24 C California, 82

237

Callaghan, L. James, 143, 144 Cambodia, 60 Canada, 93, 95, 101, 103, 116, 155, 156, 173, 174, 176, 177, 182, 193, 215, 216 Caribbean, 99, 102 Carriles, Luis Posada, 175 Carter, Jimmy, 141, 151, 157 Cary, Charles O., 132 Castro, Fidel, 10, 100, 153 Cayman Islands, 200 Central America, 99 Chad, 76 Chebrikov, Viktor M., 172 Che Guevara, Ernesto, 109 Chelomey, Vladimir, 209 Chernenko, Konstantin U., 171 Chicago Conference Chicago Convention (Convention on International Civil Aviation), 16 International Air Services Transit Agreement, 16, 72 International Air Transport Agreement, 16 Soviet participation at, 20 China, 3, 25, 62, 98, 100, 176, 213, 218 Chkalov, Valery P., 82, 83 Chukchi Peninsula, 158 Citicorp, 197 Clinton, Bill, 3 Cohen, Leonard, 206 Columbia, 155, 215 Columbia space shuttle, 155 Condor (terrorist group), 175 Congo crisis, 74, 75 Connecticut (US), 158 Continental Motors, 207 Coordinating Committee for the Multilateral Export Control

238

INDEX

(CoCom), 9, 12, 25, 26, 138, 142, 199, 200, 212 Cot, Pierre, 81 Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), 26, 63, 182, 183, 192, 194, 197, 200, 202 Crédit Commerciale de France, 200 Cuba, 10, 100–112, 153–155, 215, 218 Custance, M.M.V., 98, 99 Cyprus, 73, 157, 183 Czechoslovakia, 9, 24, 26, 29–33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 54, 58, 59, 63–68, 73, 75, 76, 107, 116, 154, 182, 184, 186, 199, 200, 216, 217, 219 Czechoslovak Republic, 26, 39, 219 D Danilin, Sergei A., 82 Datasaab Contracting, 213 De Gasperi, Alcide A.F., 23 d’Erlanger, Gerald J.R., 98 Dell, Edmund E., 137 Denmark Strait, 107 Détente, 26, 63, 147, 150, 188, 216 Deutsche Airbus, 126 developing nations/countries, 9, 62, 77, 219 Diallo, Saifoulaye, 109 Dole, Elizabeth H., 176 Dondukov, N.A., 137, 138 Douglas Aircraft Company, 123 Douglas Jr., Donald, 123 Douglas of Kirtleside, W.S., 56 Dresdner Bank, 199 Dulles, John F., 47, 85, 86, 153 E Eagleburger, Lawrence S., 169

Eden, Anthony, 2 Egypt, 9, 22, 36, 37, 63, 68, 69, 73 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 2, 59, 60 Eliot, Theodore L., 149 Ellesmere Island (Canada), 156 Ethiopia, 191, 219 Eurasia, 8, 117 Europe, 6, 9, 10, 14, 18, 26, 27, 30, 35, 47, 58, 61, 62, 72, 82, 95, 96, 113, 114, 125, 135, 148, 153, 177, 193, 214 Eastern, 33, 190, 218 Western, 8, 33, 38, 44, 56, 72, 81, 123, 125, 127, 151, 199, 200, 211, 216, 217 F Faure, Edgar, 2 Figl, Leopold, 49, 50 Fink, Donald E., 194 Florida Straits, 107 Florida (US), 153, 195 Ford, Gerald R., 138 France, 29, 37, 43, 101, 125, 127, 128, 174–177, 214 Frobisher Bay, 96 G Garvey, Terence W., 111 Gates, Robert, 189, 190 General Electric (GE), 11, 121, 122, 127, 132, 137, 138, 140, 141, 144, 207, 208 Geneva Summit, 2, 9, 47 Gerasimenko, Lieutenant Colonel, 164 Germany, 14, 30, 32, 39, 44, 45, 81, 128 East (German Democratic Republic), 43, 53, 161, 186, 199

INDEX

West (Federal Republic of Germany), 39, 41, 44, 46, 55, 101, 103, 177, 199 Gesell, Gerhard A., 214 Ghana, 9, 61, 64, 65, 67, 76 Gilberto, Astrud, 206 Glasnost, 12 Global Positioning System (GPS), 179 Global South, 5, 8, 10, 11, 58, 60, 62, 69, 72. See also Third World, developing nations/countries, non-aligned countries Goodman, Steve, 206 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 12, 192, 193 Gotoda, Masaharu, 170 GPA Group, 198 Great Britain. See United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Greece, 36, 37, 72, 73, 177 Greenland, 95, 156 Greenland Sea, 107 Greenpeace, 158 Grenada, 179 Gromov, Mikhail M., 82, 83 Gromyko, Andrei A., 20–22, 90, 92, 151, 170, 171, 177 Guam, 154 Guinea, 9, 60, 67, 103, 104, 108–110 Gulf of Patience (Terpenie Bay), 163 Gunston, Bill, 20, 145 Guyana, 175, 176 Gvishiani, Dzhermen M., 135, 138–140

H Halaby, Najeeb E., 78, 80, 90–92, 217 Hamilton, Fowler, 78, 104 Hansen, Kenneth R., 78 Harriman, Averell W., 80, 110

239

Harris, Oren, 84 Hartman, Arthur A., 135 Harvey, David, 205, 206 Hassan II, King, 106 Hawker Siddeley, 126, 127 Hay, John, 99, 100 Helms, Jesse, 178 Henkes, Klaus, 199 Hersh, Seymour M., 157, 167, 168, 170, 173, 174, 179 Herter, Christian A., 87, 88 Heydrich, Reinhard, 30 Honecker, Erich, 199 Honegger, Arthur, 206 Honk Kong, 98, 100 Hotz, Robert, 1, 115, 118, 129 Hughes, Howard, 23 Hungarian crises, 54 Hungary, 22, 30, 33, 186 Hungarian Republic, 181 Hussein, bin Talal, King, 175 Hymans, Max, 45

I IBM Simon, 205 Ilyichev, Ivan I., 49 India, 36, 38, 60, 62, 95, 182, 193 Indonesia, 59, 60, 215 International Air Services Transit Agreement, 16, 72 International Air Transport Agreement, 16 International Air Transport Association (IATA), 17, 47, 61, 85, 184, 185, 202 International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), 4, 16, 21, 31, 32, 44, 47, 55, 61, 73, 77, 100, 103–105, 110, 113, 115–117, 131, 159–167, 179, 196, 214, 215

240

INDEX

Iran, 157, 202, 212, 213 Iraq, 36, 38 Ireland, 101, 177, 215, 218, 219 Israel, 32, 37, 38, 157, 158 Italy, 28, 36–38, 73, 182, 220 Ivory Coast, 67 J Jackson, Henry M., 134 Jamaica, 105 Janoušek, Karel, 30, 31 Japan, 10, 19, 95, 96, 100, 112–114, 148, 159, 167, 169, 170, 173, 174, 200 Jechumtál, Jaroslav, 61 Johnson, Lyndon B., 10, 91, 92, 139, 140, 217 Jordan, 63, 175, 176 K Kádár, János, 198 KAL 007, 11, 153–156, 158–161, 163–170, 173–177, 179, 180, 182, 213 KAL 902, 157, 167 Kamchatka, 160, 161, 163, 170 Kamensky, Valeri, 162, 163, 165, 166 Katrich, A.N., 150 Kazakov, Vasily A., 140 Keïta, Fodéba, 109 Keïta, Modibo, 66, 67 Keith, Kenneth A., 137, 138, 140 Kennedy, John Fitzgerald, 10, 78–80, 88, 89, 105, 109 Kerr, Archibald Clark, later Baron Inverchapel, 21 Khrabrov, V.D., 150 Khrushchev, Nikita S., 1, 2, 48, 55, 56, 60, 86, 89, 91, 108, 129, 209–211 Kirkpatrick, Jeane D., 174

Kissinger, Henry A., 148–150 Kohler, Foy D., 87–92 Kola Peninsula, 87 Koldunov, Alexander I., 161, 166, 167 Komarov, N.D., 138, 139 Korean War, 26, 39 Korniyenko, Georgy M., 166, 171, 172, 174 Kornukov, Anatoly M., 161–166 Kosygin, Alexei N., 111, 140 Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau, 200 Kryuchkov, Vladimir, 173 Kurile Islands, 161, 167 Kuwait, 182 Kuznetsov, Vasili V., 87 L Lacy, William S.B., 86 Lagos, 76 Latin America, 5, 10, 33, 58, 75, 77, 91, 112, 129, 175, 214, 215 Latvia, 156 Lay, James S., 41, 45, 47 Lemass, Seán F., 104 Levanevsky, Sigizmund A., 83 Liberman, Evsei G., 129 Lichenstein, Charles M., 173 Lithuania, 156 LM Ericsson, 214 Lockheed, 19, 35, 120, 124–126, 132–136 Loginov, Yevgeny, 90–92, 104, 111, 112 Lotarev design bureau, 145 Lowenfeld, Andreas F., 3, 90 Lumumba, Patrice, 74, 75 Lunik II (Luna 2), 2 M M-48/60 Patton, 121

INDEX

Macmillan, Harold M., 100, 106 Maine (US), 156 Maistrenko, Colonel, 163, 164 Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, 117, 179 Mali, 9, 66, 67 Maloy, Raymond B., 91, 93 Malta, 176 Mamsurov, Yuri G., 186, 187 Mann, Thomas C., 86, 91 MAN-Turbomotoren, 126 Marconi Company, 116 Marshall, George C., 24, 36 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, 26 McCloy, John J., 39, 40 McDonald, Larry, 167 McDonnell Douglas, 125, 132, 133, 143, 144, 199 McGhee, George C., 75, 77, 78, 80, 90 McKinnon, Dan, 176 McNamara, Robert S., 91, 122 Meacher, Michael H., 138, 139 Middle East, 36, 60, 72, 95, 98, 148, 189, 219 Mitry, Jean, 206 Molotov, Vyacheslav M., 23, 48 Moneron Island, 166 Mongolia, 62, 213 Morocco, 60, 101, 106 Moscow Olympics, 188 Moscow Summit, 131 Mugabe, Robert, 175 Munich Agreement, 30 Munro, Alison, 100, 101 Museum of Modern Art, New York, 13 Myanmar, 60 Myasishchev, Vladimir, 209

N Nares Strait, 156

241

Nasser, Gamal, 68 National Security Council (NSC), 24, 37, 39, 41, 45, 47, 71, 75, 78 NSC 15/1 Directive, 24, 37, 38 NSC 15/3 Directive, 38, 71 NSC 5726/1 Directive, 71, 72, 75, 115 Near East, 32–38, 60, 63, 74, 214 Netherlands, 35, 37, 41, 175, 176 New Hampshire (US), 158 New Zealand, 154 Nicaragua, 176 Nigeria, 76 Nixon, Richard M., 131, 135, 149, 150 Nkrumah, Kwame, 64 Nodong missile, 212 Nokia 9000, 205 non-aligned countries, 62, 71, 80, 132 North America, 98, 99, 104–108, 111–113, 152, 184, 187, 213 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 10, 75, 102, 103, 105–107, 111–113, 177–179, 190, 191, 215 North Geomagnetic Pole, 156 North Korea, 62, 212 North Pole, 83 Norwegian Sea, 107 Novozhilov, Genrikh V., 129, 131

O Oatis, William N., 9, 40, 44 Oberdorfer, Don, 166, 167, 177 Ogarkov, Nikolai V., 166, 172, 174, 191 Oil crisis (1973), 133, 134, 184 Ovinnikov, Richard, 173

242

INDEX

P P-2 centrifuge, 212 Pacific Ocean, 215 Pakistan, 36, 38, 61, 175, 176, 193 Paris Peace Conference, 23 Parker, J.S., 140 Patolichev, Nikolai S., 133, 137 Pavlov, Alexander, 202 Pavlov, Sergei, 187 Pavlov, Viktor, 169 Pepper, Don J., 138–140 Perestroika, 12, 202 Pershing II missiles, 174, 179 Peru, 215, 219 Philippines, 219 Piston engines, 188, 206 Pratt &Whitney R-1830, 19 Shvetsov ASh-73, 19 Wright R-3350 Duplex-Cyclone, 208 Plato, 206 Pogue, L. Welch, 16, 17 Poland, 11, 33, 43, 158, 159, 176, 195, 198, 199, 216 Porto Rico, 153 Portugal, 20, 101, 177 Powers, Francis G., 87 Pratt &Whitney (P&W), 121, 122, 127, 132, 139, 141 Prill, George C., 134 Protectorate Bohemia and Moravia, 30 Pryor, Samuel, 85 R Raab, Julius, 50 Raketno-Yadernoe Napadanie (RYAN), 191 Raytheon, 116 Reagan, Ronald W., 11, 158, 168, 170, 171, 173, 175, 176, 178, 179, 193, 213, 216

Rizley, Ross, 84, 85 Robey, D.J.B., 53 Rolls-Royce, 11, 24, 25, 122, 125–127, 133, 135–144, 201, 207, 208 Romania, 22, 27, 154, 196, 218 Romanov, Semyon, 161, 166 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 14, 15 Rosaviatsiya: Federal Air Transport Agency, 117 Rostow, Walt W., 91, 92 Rusk, Dean D., 80, 88–93 Russia, 21, 51, 54, 81, 83, 98, 117, 125, 135, 142 Russian Federation, 159–161, 165 Rust, Mathias, 167

S Sakhalin, 161, 165, 167, 170, 216 Samorukov, Vladimir D., 136, 152, 187 Samos satellite, 115 Sargent, Orme G., 21 Saudi Arabia, 14, 74 Scandinavian countries, 23, 112, 113, 218 Denmark, 46, 112, 113 Finland, 219 Norway, 46, 111–113, 177 Sweden, 37, 46, 111–113 Scowcroft, Brent, 138 Sea of Japan, 114, 165, 170 Sea of Okhotsk, 160 Senegal, 60, 106 Senghor, Léopold S., 106, 109 Shannon, John T., 85, 86 Shchetchikov, G.S., 92 Shore, Peter D., 136, 137 Shultz, George P., 132, 133, 169, 173, 177

INDEX

Siberia, 8, 10, 95, 97, 98, 100, 111–115, 117, 129, 188, 189, 193, 194 trans-Siberian, 10, 96, 97, 99, 100, 110, 111, 116, 118, 148, 218 Sierra Leone, 183 Silverstov, Leonid S., 202 Simpson, K.J., 98, 99 Sinatra, Frank, 206 Sinclair, Noel, 173 Skagerrak, 113 Slovak state, 30 Słowinski, ´ Jerzy, 198 Snecma, 126 Sociéte Générale, 200 Sokolov, Oleg, 168–170 Solodkov, Captain, 166 South America, 99, 104–108, 213 Southern Avionics, 116 South Korea, 167, 169, 172–174 Soviet (Russian) territory, 22, 23, 33, 47, 51, 85, 149, 160, 169, 171, 172, 194 Spain, 7, 20, 104, 177, 219 Sperry UNIVAC 1100, 192 SS-X-24 missile, 160 Stalin, Joseph V., 47, 62, 209, 214 Stamper, Malcolm T., 135 Standard Telephones and Cables, 116 Stanovský, Vilém, 34, 35 State of Washington, 82 Steinhardt, Laurance A., 34, 35 Stettinius, Edward R., 17, 21 Stewart, Michael N.F., 111 Stoˇces, František, 30 Stoel, Max van der, 174 Stonehouse, John T., 111, 125 Strait of Hormuz, 179 Strogov, General, 166 Sudan, 76 Sud-Aviation, 126, 210 Suez crisis, 63

243

Svalbard, 156 Swann, Robert S., 58, 98, 99 Switzerland, 20, 36, 37, 177 Sydlowski, Joseph, 207 Symington, Stuart, 209 Symms, Steve, 178 Syria, 63, 191, 202 Syrovátka, Evžen, 30 Szałajda, Zbigniew, 195 Sz˝ urös, Mátyás, 181

T Tatar Strait, 161 Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (Telegrafnoye agentstvo Sovetskogo Soyuza, TASS), 2, 153, 169–173 Thatcher, Margaret H., 175, 176 Third World, 5, 59, 61, 217 Thomas, Miles W., 97, 98 Thompson, Llewellyn E., 86, 88–90, 92 Timberlake Clare H., 78 Tito, Josip B., 3 Titovnin, Captain, 163, 166 Togo, 175, 176 Touré, Ismaël, 109 Touré, Sékou, 67, 108–110 transpolar flight/route, 95 Tretyak, Ivan Moiseevich, 166, 167 Trinidad and Tobago, 107 Trippe, Juan T., 17, 84, 85, 124 Tropic of Capricorn, 105 Tsekhanovsky, Mikhail, 206 Tu-113 missile, 210 Tunisia, 76 Tupolev, Andrei N., 81 Turbofan engine, 121, 122, 207, 209 Aspin I, 207 Garrett TFE731, 207

244

INDEX

General Electric CF6, 127, 132, 137, 138, 140, 141, 144, 145, 201 General Electric CJ805-23, 122, 208 General Electric D-2, 207 General Electric GE 1/6 (TF39), 121, 122 Kuznetsov NK-8, 11, 197, 211 Kuznetsov NK-86, 211 Lotarev D-18T, 145 Lycoming ALF502/LF507, 207 Pratt &Whitney 1000G, 207 Pratt &Whitney JT3D, 122, 208, 211 Pratt &Whitney JT8D, 201 Pratt &Whitney JT9D, 127 Pratt &Whitney JTF14E, 121, 122 Pratt &Whitney STF-200/C, 122 Rolls-Royce Conway, 122, 208, 211 Rolls-Royce RB207, 127 Rolls-Royce RB211, 125, 127, 132, 133, 137, 142–144, 202 Rolls-Royce RB.80, 122 Rolls-Royce Trent UltraFan, 207 Soloviev D-20, 210 Soloviev D-30, 197 Soloviev PS-90, 202 Turbojet engine General Electric J79, 208 Pratt &Whitney J57, 208 Rolls-Royce Avon, 140, 208 Rolls-Royce RB.37 Derwent, 24–26, 212 Rolls-Royce RB.41 Nene, 24–26, 212 Turbomeca (Safran Helicopter Engines), 207 Turboprop engine Ivchenko AI-20, 89 Junkers Jumo 022, 123

Kuznetsov NK-12, 123 Turkey, 37, 73, 74, 177, 219 Tyler, William R., 88, 89 U Ukraine, 117, 179 Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752, 179 Ulbricht, Walter, 53 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), 11, 19, 20, 24, 33, 36–39, 47–53, 55, 56, 61, 63–69, 72, 74, 75, 81–86, 88, 89, 92, 93, 97, 99, 100, 102, 104–110, 112–116, 128, 129, 131, 133, 135, 136, 139, 143, 145, 147, 150, 152, 156–158, 161, 163, 167, 169, 176, 178, 182, 187, 191, 209, 212, 213, 216 Soviet Union, 11, 24, 53, 62, 91, 133, 136, 150, 151, 178 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 15, 25, 35, 45, 56, 174, 218 United Nations, 105, 173 United States (US, USA), 1, 3, 8–11, 13–20, 24, 31–36, 38–40, 44, 45, 47, 48, 59, 65, 66, 71, 72, 74, 77–93, 99, 104, 107, 109, 111, 113, 115, 116, 118, 122, 124, 125, 128, 131–137, 139–141, 143, 144, 148–160, 166–179, 181–183, 187–193, 198, 200, 207–209, 211–217, 219 US Air Force, 26, 87, 102, 120, 121, 168, 211 CX-HLS programme, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127, 212 US Air Transport Command, 18, 31, 216

INDEX

Ustinov, Dmitry F., 166, 172, 191 US Virgin Islands, 153 V Vance, Cyrus R., 151 Varley, Eric G., 144 Vietnam, 92 Vnukovo airport, 2, 51, 56, 115, 214 W Waldmann, Raymond J., 150 Warsaw Convention, 93 Watkinson, Harold A., 57, 98 Western European Union, 125 Western hemisphere, 107 Willkie, Wendell L., 13, 14 Wilson, Harold J., 111, 125 World Trade Organisation, 117 World War II (WWII), 9, 13, 16, 17, 26, 33, 34, 81, 83, 84, 125, 212, 216

245

Y Yakovlev Design Bureau, 207 Yugoslavia, 28, 202 Yumashev, Andrei B., 82

Z Zaire, 175, 176 Zakharov, N.A., 52, 85 Zamyatin, Leonid, 174 Zaroubin, Georgi N., 86 Zeiner-Gundersen, Herman Fredrik, 190, 191 Zhavoronkov, Semyon F., 45–47, 49, 50, 55 Zhigarev, Pavel F., 55–58, 100 Zhukov, Yuri, 89 Ziegler, Henri, 126 Zimbabwe, 175, 176 Zimmermann, Warren, 168