Customer Reviews

Spy Flights of the Cold War

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The author recaps early spy flights, with emphasis on British participation. There is much that is new and interesting. Unfortunately, the author's political views creep into the story as he attempts to prove that USAF leaders wanted to start WWIII. His conclusion that Western spy flights were just too provocative ignores Soviet aggression in areas other than the air war. The thought that the brutal, totalitarian Soviet system maybe deserved to be fought and eventually defeated doesn't seem to have occured to the author.

Great introduction to the 1950s Cold War spy flights. This volume was I believe based on the same research used for a BBC TV "Time Watch" documentary.

The author shows how risky and provocative this USAF - RAF joint venture was and shows the genuine courage of the airmen who flew these missions. He makes the case that senior SAC personnel may have been using these flights as a means to provoke WW3 without Presidential approval. This serious claim deserves attention but unfortunately it is not really proved or disproved here.

Perhaps the book would have been better had some more consideration been given to the positive aspects of aerial reconnaisance of this type. Eisenhower found both the later U-2 and Corona spy satellite programs essential. If those programs had not existed Eisenhower might not have been in a position to defuse the "bomber gap" and "missile gap" scares being generated at the time. His recon efforts may have done more to prevent WW3 than any of the proposed disarmament talks at the time.

Of course Eisenhower made efforts to take control of recon away from SAC mainly due to his belief that the intelligence it generated was being used in a partisan way by the USAF in budget battles with other services. Eisenhower was also motivated to take control of the spy flights due to the risks involved in their control by SAC.

These issues do not however mean that 'spy flights' or even their initial SAC control was wrong. Aerial recon proved it's peace keeping value during the decades of the Cold War and it's origin as a SAC activity was a natural outgrowth of WW2 aerial recon activity.

The author provides detailed information pertaining to a number of over-flights into the Soviet Union during the cold war. There are many personal interviews with members of the crew. Great reading on a subject that has not been fully disclosed.

A good starting point for someone interested in the beginning to middle stages of the recon missions\overflights conducted at that time(1945-1960). Also very informative about military personnel involved in the decisions to conduct the overflights.

Paul Lashmar's "Spy Flights of the Cold War" describes the aerial reconnaissance programs run by the United States and Great Britain against the Soviet Union, beginning in the 1940s, that continued into the 1970s. Lashmar finds the origins of the program in U.S.-UK cooperation against the Axis in the Second World War, a cooperation that was accelerated flying against North Korea in the 1950-1954 Korean Conflict. The dangers of the program are highlighted by some simple statistics: Forty U.S. aircraft were shot down between 1947 and 1977, carrying over 350 crewmen. Of this total, 187 men survived, another 34 bodies were recovered, and approximately 135 men remain unaccounted for. The Royal Air Forces lost smaller numbers but similar percentages.

The conduct of the program was fairly provocative: many of the early flights were over Soviet airspace, and many later flights were uncomfortably close to Soviet borders. The U.S. and UK found these flights essential to have some idea of the military capabilities of a belligerent, even aggressive Soviet Union following the end of the Second World War. The intelligence gained from these flights, and the follow-on satellite programs that Lashmar devotes a chapter to, provided the basis for sounder decision-making by Western leaders. A chapter on the Cuban missile crisis illustrates the intimate connection between intelligence and decision-making.

Lashmar flirts with the idea that General Curtis Lemay and other U.S. Air Force leaders were trying to provoke the Soviet Union into World War III, but this sounds like an idea taken out of context. The rivalry between the Soviet Union and the West was much more cutthroat on both sides in the 1940s and 1950s that it might have seemed from the safe perspective of 1996, when Lashmar published this book.

This book is recommended to those seeking insights on the early reconnaissance programs and the risks undergone by the flight crews. The scope of the book is limited to what was available in open source in the mid-1990s, which the reader may reasonably assume was less than the full story.