Issue Date: March 11, 1964
Issue Date: March 11, 1964
East-West Relations:
Communists Down U.S. Jet
Russian air defense forces attacked and shot down an unarmed U.S. Air Force RB-66 jet reconnaissance bomber March 10 after it had crossed into East German space while on a flight originating at the Toul-Rosieres air base in northern France. The plane's 3 crewmen--Captain David I. Holland, 35, Captain Melvin J. Kessler, 30, and Lieutenant Harold W. Welch, 24--were reported to have parachuted safely. It was reported that the plane had been shot down by a Soviet fighter.
This was the 2d time in 6 weeks that a U.S. plane had been shot down by the Russians in East Germany. [See 1964 Berlin and Germany: Communists Down U.S. Jet]
A Soviet protest delivered to the U.S. embassy in Moscow March 11 and made public the next day said that the RB-66 had been engaged by the "Soviet armed forces" after it penetrated East German air space on a military reconnaissance mission. The craft was shot down and, according to the note, fell near the village of Gardelegen, 16 miles from the border between East and West Germany. The protest said that examination of the plane's wreckage showed that it had been equipped with special cameras and electronic monitoring apparatus. The note warned that Soviet defense forces had been ordered to shoot down all NATO aircraft that penetrated East German airspace and refused to land.
U.S. embassy officials were reported to have rejected the note's allegations and to have protested against the USSR's "precipitous" action in shooting down the jet. According to Moscow dispatches March 12, the U.S. officials repeated earlier Air Force contentions that the RB-66 had been on a "practice mission" over West Germany when it inadvertently strayed over the East German border.
(The New York Times reported March 10 that U.S. and Nationalist Chinese pilots had been flying aerial reconnaissance missions over Communist China in high-altitude RB-57 jets for several years. The Times insisted the report was authentic despite Defense Department denials that such flights had taken place. The magazine Aviation Week and Space Technology, in its issue circulated March 8, reported that the 2,300-mph. A-11 interceptor had flown long-range reconnaissance missions over Communist territories for at least 2 years before the plane's existence was disclosed officially by President Johnson February 29. Other current reports on the A-11 said that it had been designed to operate at altitudes of up to 120,000 feet, far higher than the RB-57 or the U-2 shot down over Russia in 1960.) [See 1964 Johnson Administration: 2,000-Mph. Jet Disclosed]
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