Murder by MIG

High above the Iron Curtain--the twisting, 1,000-mile "dead zone" that cuts Europe in twain--Soviet fighter pilots mocked the name of Cold War with cannon and machine-gun fire. Twice in three days, Communist MIG fighters hurtled out of the East to shoot down allied planes.

Thunderjet Down. The first attack came one morning last week in the U.S. zone of Germany. Two U.S. F-84 Thunderjets, sent to investigate unidentified "blips" flew straight and level at 13,000 ft., ten miles west of the Communist Czech border. "The weather was good," said 1st Lieut. Warren G. Brown, a 100-mission veteran of the Korean war. "I sighted an aircraft at 1 o'clock [position]. I made three wide circles to throw him off; I was a little confused about what his intentions were."

First Lieut. Donald C. Smith, leader of the flight, saw two MIG fighters closing Brown's tail. "They opened fire," he said. "They hit Brown in the right stabilizer. He turned round, went on down and lost a wing tank . . ."

"Bailing out," shouted the American into his interplane radio. He pulled his seat-ejection lever, shot out of the spinning wreck, and snatched at the rip cord. Brown landed unhurt in a tree near Falkenstein, 23 miles inside the U.S. zone.

High above the crash, Lieut. Smith circled until his buddy was safely down. Then he streaked for home: Fuerstenfeldbruck Air Base, near Munich.

U.S. High Commissioner for Germany James B. Conant, former Harvard president, denounced the attack as "an outrage." Secretary of State Dulles ordered U.S. Ambassador to Prague George Wadsworth to protest in the strongest possible terms, demanding 1) an apology, 2) compensation, 3) punishment of the Czech pilots. The Communists' reply: the U.S. planes had "violated Czechoslovak air space," an assertion which the U.S.A.F. said could easily be disproved.

Above the Elbe. Two days later, above the River Elbe, which separates the British zone from Soviet-occupied Germany, a four-engine Lincoln bomber of the R.A.F. Flying Training Command was flying from east to west on the third leg of a practice flight from its base in Yorkshire. As it droned into Western Germany from the international air corridor connecting Hamburg with Berlin, two MIGs closed in and opened fire.

The World War II Lincoln, lumbering and prop-driven, banked hard to the right, then burst into flames. The wreckage fell on both sides of the Elbe, most of it in the Soviet zone. Four British bodies were found in the smoking fuselage; three others who bailed out died later of wounds.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill did not try to be diplomatic in Britain's note to the Russians: "Deliberate, brutal act of aggression . . . cold-blooded murder." But Soviet-Zone Commander Vassily I. Chuikov had already added insult to injury. Though the Lincoln carried no ammunition and the breechblocks of its guns had been removed, Chuikov accused the British of "invading" the People's Republic and of firing first at the MIGs.

Directed Pattern. There was more to come. Soviet MIGs swept deep into West Germany to make "menacing passes" at a second British bomber near the city of Kassel. A British European Airways Viking, on course for Berlin, was buzzed by Communist fighters when it strayed beyond the "edge" of the Berlin air corridor.

At first sight the Communist attacks appeared to form a pattern that argued top-level direction, perhaps from Moscow itself. They could also--though not so easily--be explained as isolated incidents, reflecting "nervousness" on the part of individual Communist pilots. Whatever the truth, the West took them seriously, promised to shoot back in the future.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.