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RiaindeVoy
Geelong, Australia
Posts: 1217
 | | Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/9/2010 3:21:39 AM | The US and British conducted a lot of highly dangerous and provocative overflights of the Soviet Union in the 50s, some even simulating nuclear attack.
Did the Soviets do the same in return? I know they probed NATO air defences throughout the Cold War but did they do or try to do overflights of US or British territory?
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"Dante did not live to see the full development of political propaganda, commercial advertisement, and sensational journalism, but he has prepared a place for them" Dorothy L Sayers
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lennox
Victoria, BC, Canada
Posts: 325
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/9/2010 1:22:16 PM | What do think those Tu 95 Bears flying of the coasts of North America doing ?
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" Rule of war 1 do not march on Russia Rule of war 2 do not march on China Rule 3 do not violate rules 1 &2
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RiaindeVoy
Geelong, Australia
Posts: 1217
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/9/2010 1:50:17 PM | Not flying over land the way the US and British did.
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"Dante did not live to see the full development of political propaganda, commercial advertisement, and sensational journalism, but he has prepared a place for them" Dorothy L Sayers
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T. A. Gardner
Glendale, AZ, USA
Posts: 420
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/9/2010 3:04:46 PM | One reason the Soviets didn't do this sort of flight was they simply lacked, for the most part, aircraft suitable for making them. Of course, many of the Western ones (British and American almost totally) were made with aircraft less than totally suitable for this sort of work. The RB-50 (B-29D), RB-45 and P2B were examples of aircraft that made some of the early overflights. Some of these aircraft were shot at, a few were shot down but had managed to clear Soviet airspace before going down.
This was what prompted the development of the U-2 and A-12 / SR-71.
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George
Haliburton, ON, Canada
Posts: 1351
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/9/2010 4:13:43 PM | The Big Bear has been sending bomber flights out over the Arctic in recent years. Reminiscent of the cold war.
They are probing North American response times. I know that Canadian fighters, likely out Cold Lake, Alberta have responded just to give a wave.
I presume that the Russians have probed US air space in Alaska as well.
George
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Red Bailey
Dewey, AZ, USA
Posts: 840
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/9/2010 4:30:49 PM |
Quote:What do think those Tu 95 Bears flying of the coasts of North America doing ?
--lennox
Back in 76-86, it was common to see pics on TV, and in the Papers, of those Soviet bombers flying parallel to our East Coast. When I lived on Cape Cod during those years, fighters from nearby Otis AFB would escort those bombers along our part of the coast, and then hand off the duty to another airbase further south.
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'War is often the result of the failure to reason' - Anonymous
As usual,
Red
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dt509er
Santa Rosa, CA, USA
Posts: 1028
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/9/2010 11:02:36 PM |
Quote:Not flying over land the way the US and British did.
--RiaindeVoy
Ahhhhh, good old Communist capabilities!
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'Always remember, pillage before you burn.'
Unknown Barbarian
"American parachutists-devils in baggy pants..."
Diary f/German officer
“If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.” Lord Ernest Rutherford
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RiaindeVoy
Geelong, Australia
Posts: 1217
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/10/2010 12:41:12 AM | I would have thought that perhaps stripped down Bison, Badger and Bears could have done some risky overflights. Britain would be a hard target but Alaska and other forward US land bases could be potential targets for overflight.
What about MiG25s from Cuba, they'd be a hassle to stop if they occured.
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"Dante did not live to see the full development of political propaganda, commercial advertisement, and sensational journalism, but he has prepared a place for them" Dorothy L Sayers
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T. A. Gardner
Glendale, AZ, USA
Posts: 420
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/10/2010 9:17:25 AM | One reason the Soviets didn't do overflights is that they had far more access to Western nations and the ability to do surveillance from the ground via spys than the West had to do the same within the Soviet Union. I remember one case that was shown of this in an general intelligence briefing the military gave while I was in of a Soviet assistant underling at one of their satellite embassy sites in the US going on "vacation" in the Western US. He had a car towing a small travel trailer. The FBI did have a tail on him.
Anyway, his travels took him to virtually every major military installation in the Western US. When the FBI finally dropped the shoe on him they found his "travel trailer" was actually a mobile ESM station and he was collecting signals intelligence on US military installations.
One of the interesting ones the US and British did during the Berlin airlift was insert ESM spy planes into the air convoys from time to time. They didn't get alot of information as the Soviets guessed the West would do this so they didn't radiate much around the air routes. But, the airplanes that were doing the surveillance couldn't land in Berlin due to their appearance that would have tipped the Soviets off so, they would fly at night and on arriving at Berlin would claim some mechanical emergancy like their landing gear wouldn't work and be diverted back to their original base without landing.
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RiaindeVoy
Geelong, Australia
Posts: 1217
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/10/2010 2:01:03 PM | I've read that at the time published Soviet maps were deliberately wrong, things were miles away from their map positions and the US/Brit overflights found this and accurately plotted these for nuke targetting purposes.
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"Dante did not live to see the full development of political propaganda, commercial advertisement, and sensational journalism, but he has prepared a place for them" Dorothy L Sayers
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T. A. Gardner
Glendale, AZ, USA
Posts: 420
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/10/2010 7:34:01 PM | Accurate maps of the Soviet Union were considered state secrets and not allowed to be released. There were whole cities that didn't exist on published maps that satellite reconnissance found....
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RiaindeVoy
Geelong, Australia
Posts: 1217
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/11/2010 6:07:22 AM | Apparently Moscow was 20 miles away from its stated position, I think an RB50 plotted it. Thats how early this sort of thing started, back when a stripped down WW2 bomber had the performance to overfly the Soviet Union.
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"Dante did not live to see the full development of political propaganda, commercial advertisement, and sensational journalism, but he has prepared a place for them" Dorothy L Sayers
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T. A. Gardner
Glendale, AZ, USA
Posts: 420
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/11/2010 11:47:09 AM | Another "Oh my God!" thing for the Soviets was in the years immediately after the war they had nothing... ZERO... detection, reporting and, defense systems to prevent the West from overflying or even deep penetration of Soviet air space flying over the polar region. The US initially started doing such flights with just a few B-29 and RB-50 bombers converted for ELINT, radar mapping and, photo-recon missions. These bombers not only found no Soviet defenses whatsoever, they also for the first time were making accurate maps of the area. Several of these flights 'discovered' new and 'long lost' islands in the Artic Ocean. They flew fairly deep into Soviet territory on a number of occasions unopposed and found nothing to detect or stop them.
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Red Bailey
Dewey, AZ, USA
Posts: 840
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/11/2010 12:16:00 PM | I recall that our orbiting satellites eventually took over the task of monitoring Soviet mining/industrial output, and photo-mapping the vast landscape of Siberia.
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'War is often the result of the failure to reason' - Anonymous
As usual,
Red
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RiaindeVoy
Geelong, Australia
Posts: 1217
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/11/2010 1:52:14 PM |
Quote:Another "Oh my God!" thing for the Soviets was in the years immediately after the war they had nothing... ZERO... detection, reporting and, defense systems to prevent the West from overflying or even deep penetration of Soviet air space flying over the polar region. The US initially started doing such flights with just a few B-29 and RB-50 bombers converted for ELINT, radar mapping and, photo-recon missions. These bombers not only found no Soviet defenses whatsoever, they also for the first time were making accurate maps of the area. Several of these flights 'discovered' new and 'long lost' islands in the Artic Ocean. They flew fairly deep into Soviet territory on a number of occasions unopposed and found nothing to detect or stop them.
--T. A. Gardner
I sort of feel sorry for them, they had just fought off the Nazis and now the next rival was flying planes all over their territory with impunity.
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"Dante did not live to see the full development of political propaganda, commercial advertisement, and sensational journalism, but he has prepared a place for them" Dorothy L Sayers
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T. A. Gardner
Glendale, AZ, USA
Posts: 420
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/11/2010 2:02:27 PM |
Quote:
I sort of feel sorry for them, they had just fought off the Nazis and now the next rival was flying planes all over their territory with impunity.
--RiaindeVoy
It wasn't all one-sided fun and games for the crews of the submarines and aircraft the West were using to do these missions. While the Soviets were no threat at the time and, possibly were not even aware the US et. al. were conducting these flights, the sheer remoteness and often abyssimal weather were very real enemies.
A plane going down in the far reaches of the Artic, a sub having to surface for some mechanical or casuality problem in a gale with twenty or thrity foot waves in a near freezing sea was often a near certain death warrant for the crew involved.
But, what the US found at first (1946 - 1950 say) was a Soviet military heavily reliant on obsolete electronics and that had far too few of these systems to present a real threat. In fact, had the Western Allies during WW 2 not made their various radar and radio systems available to the Soviets it may have taken them even longer to even come close to catching up with the West in the field of electronics (among others).
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RiaindeVoy
Geelong, Australia
Posts: 1217
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/11/2010 11:53:44 PM | I don't doubt it was tough on crews, apparently in the RB47 the ecm guy had to lay prone in a freezing hidey-hole in the bomb bay for hours on end. However as a country the US didn't have to contend with Soviet planes overflying their territory working out targets for nuclear war with little to no chance of stopping them, very humilitating for the Sovs in the years after beating the Nazis.
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"Dante did not live to see the full development of political propaganda, commercial advertisement, and sensational journalism, but he has prepared a place for them" Dorothy L Sayers
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Wayne Wachsmuth
Shippensburg, PA, USA
Posts: 269
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/18/2010 8:31:05 PM | The Ravens in the RB-47 sat upright in downward ejection seats in a pressurized compartment. Wasn't comfortable and when the one was shot down none of the Ravens survived.
Wayne Wachsmuth B-47 310th BW 1960-1965
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T. A. Gardner
Glendale, AZ, USA
Posts: 420
| | Re: Soviet recon overflights. | | Posted on: 3/18/2010 8:44:47 PM | The RB-50 ELINT planes weren't much better. The forward bomb bay was converted for the EW operators with 4 guys in it. They had no windows, and the exit was a single hatch to the forward pressurized compartment. There were already 5 crew in that area. All nine had one escape hatch and there were no ejection seats etc. This meant that in an emergancy the EW guys had to crowd one at a time through a small hatch and then likely follow the forward compartment crew out the escape hatch to bail out.
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