Heuer Bundeswehr

Following the partition of Germany in 1961, tensions were uneasy between East and West. In response to the partition (which took place under cover of darkness just days after East German Chancellor Walter Ulbricht declared, “Nobody has any intention of building a wall”), NATO military leaders launched “Exercise Checkmate.” In this show of military might, the air forces of Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and West Germany participated in a mass training exercise. During this exercise, fighter pilots from the West German 32nd Flight Bomber Wing unknowingly strayed into East German airspace due to an equipments malfunction and were pursued by a squadron of Soviet fighters. As soon as the West German pilots safely landed back in West Berlin, the West German Defense Minister issued an apology to Soviet representatives in Bonn, the capital of West Germany. In response to this incident (which goes down in history as the F-84 Thunderstreak incident), the Soviets referred to it as “provocation” and threatened to shoot down any aircraft that strayed into East German airspace. It wouldn’t have been the first time the Soviets shot down Western airplanes. On May Day of 1960 (the year before the Berlin Wall was erected), a Lockheed U-2 spy plane piloted by American Francis Gary Powers took off from the U.S. air base in Peshawar, Pakistan and sparked an international incident. The purpose of the mission—with the code word GRAND SLAM—was, according to Powers, to “fly all the way across the Soviet Union… deeper into Russia than we had ever gone, while traversing important targets never before photographed.” The U-2—with its ability to fly at high altitudes, above 60,000 feet—was thought to be unreachable by Soviet fighter planes and surface-to-air-missiles. However, when Powers took off from Peshawar on that May morning, Soviet Air Defense Forces in Central Asia were already on high alert, with orders to “attack the violator by all alert flights located in the area of [the] foreign plane’s course, and to ram if necessary.” Powers managed to evade several Soviet MiG-19 fighter jets that had been deployed to intercept him, but was finally brought down by a barrage of S-75 Dvina surface-to-air-missiles. Due to Powers’s inability to activate the plane’s self-destruct mechanism (and his unwillingness to use the suicide device the CIA had provided him), the Soviets learned of his mission. He was taken immediately to Lubyanka Prison in Moscow and, after being interrogated by the KGB, he was forced to issue a public apology. Powers was tried for espionage before the Supreme Court of the USSR, found guilty, and imprisoned for nearly two years. His exchange for Soviet KGB Colonel Vilyam Fisher at the Glienicke Bridge in Berlin on February 10, 1962, was depicted in the recent film Bridge of Spies. Though Powers was found by American authorities to have “lived up to the terms of his… mission and in his obligations as an American,” feelings were frosty between the Soviets and the Western powers, which was only compounded by the Thunderstreak Incident in 1961. Three years later, on January 28, 1964, the Soviets once more made good on their word to shoot down any planes—armed or otherwise—that strayed too far into Soviet airspace. That day, an unarmed training aircraft—a USAF T-39A-1-NO Sabreliner—took off from Wiesbaden, West Germany on a routine training exercise. On the flight were two student pilots, Lt. Col. Gerald K. Hanford and Captain Donald G. Millard, who were being trained by their instructor, Captain John F. Lorraine, to qualify for the T-39. 47 minutes after takeoff, U.S. air defense stations in West Germany detected the Sabreliner shooting toward East Germany at 500 miles per hour. Despite frantic warnings from the dispatchers at the defense stations, the T-39 continued on its course. Five minutes after the T-39 crossed into East German airspace, U.S. radar showed that two planes—undeniably Soviet—intercepted the unarmed Americ