The 120-Mile Error

One of the trickiest games of the cold war is a sort of airborne electronic "chicken," in which a high-speed aircraft without warning dashes headlong for the enemy's border, turning away just in time. The game is played both by East and West, and not just for fun. From such phony forays has come a wealth of crucial information about one another's defense capabilities.

Occasionally, daring pilots venture across the frontiers into enemy territory --intentionally or by navigational accident. One Soviet technique has been to send a MIG jet screaming down the bristling line of Western air-defense radars and fighter strips along the border of East and West Germany, remaining just inside Communist territory. Then the MIG darts suddenly across the dead line. As Western units scramble, delicate Soviet receivers across the border carefully note how long it takes the planes to get in the air, detect changes in frequencies of allied radars and radio circuits, check the order of battle, even learn to recognize individual flyers' voices and tactical commands.

Then the intruding MIG scoots back to safety.

Making for the Mosel. In the past two years, according to one unofficial source, Soviet jets have poked their noses into Western airspace 95 times--mostly on just such sniffing missions. But when a Western plane goes into Communist territory, innocently or not, the Russians do not hesitate to shoot. Since 1950, 108 U.S. airmen have died or disappeared within Communist airspace, the last three only seven weeks ago when an unarmed--and demonstrably innocent--T-39 jet trainer was blasted from the leaden skies over Vogelsberg (TIME, Feb. 7).

Last week a U.S. Air Force RB-66B reconnaissance bomber bellowed off the runway at Toul-Rosieres airbase in

France, then sloped east by northeast on a routine, 2 1/2hour "navigational training mission." The flight plan called for the 700-m.p.h., twin-jet bomber to swing over Germany's beautiful Mosel Valley to Hahn airbase, then bank north to Bremerhaven before returning with zigzags and altitude changes to Hahn and home. The flight plan should have brought the plane and its three-man crew no closer to the border than 70 miles. But somewhere between Hahn and Bremerhaven somebody slipped. According to one U.S. Air Force official last week: "They were about 120 miles off course--a tremendous error."

Potted Chicken? As radarmen called fruitlessly for a course change, the big swept-wing Douglas jet crossed into Communist East Germany in the vicinity of the central Berlin air corridor. Moments later, two swift blips rose on the radar screens--Soviet MIGs in deadly pursuit. The slower-moving blip that marked the RB-66 leaped suddenly into wrenching, zigzag evasive maneuvers, four minutes later disappeared from the screen well within East German terri tory. On the ground, a German schoolboy watched the last moments of the fight: "The fighter closed on the bomber from behind and fired on it. The American plane burst into flames. I saw a fireball on one wing. The crew of three came out by parachute. The first two came out together. The third one came a bit later."

The Russians, of course, claimed they had potted a chicken, cried loudly that the plane had been reconnoitering military installations. The U.S., for its part, stuck to the story of a navigational error, demanded immediate release of both men and wreckage. Whatever the nature of the RB-66's mission, the Russians had all the ingredients for a fat, propaganda-loaded "show trial" like that of U-2 Pilot Francis Gary Powers. It remained to be seen if they would use them.

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