Posted on 01/31/2019 3:45:29 AM PST by vannrox
It cost $79.25.
That the Soviet-made R-3S air-to-air missile — better known in the West by its NATO-designation AA-2 Atoll — is a copy of the AIM-9B Sidewinder, originally developed and manufactured in the USA, is relatively well-known.
How it came to be … isn’t so well-known. It involved the mail.
The story began back in summer of 1958. The communist People’s Republic of China was preparing to invade the U.S.-backed Republic of China, a.k.a. Taiwan.
In the course of related operations, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force received the order to establish air superiority over several islands close to mainland China still held by Taiwan’s Nationalists, specifically Quemoy and Matsu.
When the People’s Liberation Army began shelling Quemoy and Matsu, in August 1958, the United States helped re-equip several squadrons of the Republic of China Air Force with North American F-86F Saber fighter jets.
When the PLAAF took the skies, the Nationalist scrambled their own interceptors. Fierce clashes resulted.
Although outnumbered, the Taiwanese pilots achieved a positive kill-to-loss ratio. However, they found no solution for reaching the PLAAF’s MiG-15s when these operated at their maximum ceiling, several thousand feet higher than that of the Sabers.
Correspondingly, the Pentagon decided to equip some of the ROCAF’s F-86 with its then brand-new and still super-secret weapon, the infrared-homing air to-air missile with the designation AIM-9B Sidewinder.
The Americans took 40 Sidewinders and 40 launching rails directly from U.S. Marine Corps stocks and sent them – together with a party of five experienced technicians from Marine Fighter Squadron 323 – to Hsinchu air base in Taiwan.
Once there, the VMF-323 team jury-rigged 20 Taiwanese Sabers with the launch rails they brought with them. While an improvisation in every sense of that word, this installation worked — and at least four of Sidewinder-armed Taiwanese Sabers soon saw combat.
On Sept. 24, 1958, 48 of the ROCAF’s F-86Fs clashed with up to 126 MiG-15s and MiG-17s over Shantou. Deploying their Sidewinders from – for those times – the very long range of 3,000 yards and from positions well below the MiGs, the Taiwanese achieved major surprise. They claimed a total of nine confirmed and two probable kills for no loss of their own, six of these by Sidewinders.
One of MiG-17s hit by Sidewinders actually survived the clash – and returned to its base with the missile still embedded in its fuselage. The Chinese carefully dismantled the weapon — which had failed to detonate — and quickly forwarded it to the USSR for further analysis.
Once in the USSR, the captured Sidewinder was shown to the government design team led by Ivan Toropov. In the words of one of the Russian engineers, it represented “a university of missile design” for them. Impressed by the simplicity and effectiveness of the U.S.-made weapon, the Soviets decided to reverse engineer it, and launch their own production in 1960.
Fewer than 10 years later, the R-3S was in service with around 20 air forces around the world. However, air wars in the Middle East and in Southeast Asia proved that the weapon was rapidly becoming obsolescent. Thus, the Soviets were most delighted to receive the next AIM-9 variant – this time by post, and directly to Moscow.
Exploiting thick fog and careless guards, Manfred Ramminger – a KGB-agent in West Germany – entered Neuburg air base during the evening of Oct. 22, 1967. Together with his Polish driver Josef Linowski and German F-104 Starfighter pilot Wolf-Diethard Knoppe, he stole an operational AIM-9 from the local ammunition depot and transported it down the entire runway on a wheelbarrow to his Mercedes sedan, parked outside the base.
The 2.9-meter-long missile proved unwieldy. Ramminger broke the rear window and covered the protruding part with a carpet. In order not to attract attention of the police, he then marked the protrusion with a piece of red cloth, as required by law.
Reaching his home in Krefeld without any disturbance, Ramminger then patiently dismantled the Sidewinder. He kept the fuse for himself and personally handed it over to his KGB contact.
Finally, he packed all the pieces into a box and then brought it to the nearest post office, from where he shipped it – by air mail – directly to Moscow. In order to avoid any problems with the German or Soviet customs, Ramminger declared the content of the parcel as being for “low-grade export.”
Due to the weight of the parcel, the post charged him $79.25.
Air transportation services were making mistakes back then at least as often as they make them nowadays, and thus Ramminger’s parcel first traveled from Frankfurt via Paris to Copenhagen, then back to Düsseldorf, before finally reaching Moscow – 10 days late.
Ramminger and his aides were all arrested in late 1968 and jailed for four years. But by then the Soviets had already begun copying the next-generation Sidewinder.
A few years later, they launched a new variant, the R-13M. It boasted much-improved performance, including a limited front-aspect capability
This first appeared in WarIsBoring
cool story, thanks.
Back in the early 1950’s when I was about 7 years old, my dad took me to his engineering lab one evening. There was a ‘rocket’ resting horizontally on two pipe stands.
It looked about 12 feet long and 6 or 8 inches in diameter. It had a big goldfish bowl lens on the nose. Dad lit a cigarette then told me to go the back of the missle and watch the tail fins. As he waved his cigarette, the fins followed his motion!
Honest! I never told the Russians anything!
(:-)
I read this: "...Exploiting thick fog and careless guards, Manfred Ramminger – a KGB-agent in West Germany – entered Neuburg air base during the evening of Oct. 22, 1967. Together with his Polish driver Josef Linowski and German F-104 Starfighter pilot Wolf-Diethard Knoppe, he stole an operational AIM-9 from the local ammunition depot and transported it down the entire runway on a wheelbarrow to his Mercedes sedan, parked outside the base. The 2.9-meter-long missile proved unwieldy. Ramminger broke the rear window and covered the protruding part with a carpet. In order not to attract attention of the police, he then marked the protrusion with a piece of red cloth, as required by law..."
and thought "The Soviets were evil, but they definitely get points for brazen chutzpah..."
I was curious and looked this up, and found this NYT article about it:
Wow. Really? Lesser sentences because the missile was not closely enough guarded???? Sounds like the 9th Circuit Court to me.
Since it wasn’t well guarded they didn’t steal-steal </Whoopie Goldburg> it, and there was no criminal intent, no reasonable prosecutor would would bring such a case </James Comey>
My father once explained to me why the military was so hard on soldiers and sailors (expecially sailors in a shipboard environment) who failed to secure their belongings and gear...it was that it provided temptation to weak men, and therefore contributed to crime.
That made sense to me, and I heard the same thing when I joined the Navy myself.
But letting the people who stole off simply because something wasn’t secured correctly? Hell no!
</sarchasm>
LOL, I know...I got that!
Delete the “h” in my previous...
If they’d just gotten the Ruskies to make a donation to the DNC they could have gotten the technology much easier.
It is also possible for someone to allow another to steal something. Say you are a store clerk, your buddy could go to a complete stranger’s store and shoplift facing the risk of getting caught, arrested, and jailed or you could shoplift a your buddy’s store with no risk so long as he agrees.
I beleive this is what the Clinton’s did with the Chicoms.
Saw exactly this same demo on a Sidewinder hanging on an F-4D in a hanger at MCAS Beaufort back in the early 70’s.
Neat!
They wouldn’t let us smoke on the flight line. :(
That is cool! I had an aunt and uncle who worked in the Pentagon for the DoD and visited them for a week the summer I graduated high school.
The first day they took me to work with them and introduced me around in their office where there were walls of filing cabinets marked Top Secret and each one had a combo lock like a safe. What caught my attention was that about 1/3 of the cabinets were open with the file tabs readily visible. “Alpha XXy 4433 project”, ABC Nutmeg Stank project, etc. etc. (not the real file names but similar)
The judge should have been investigated to see which side he was working for. And the pilot should have been tried by a court martial and executed.
On an F8U-2N Crusader, same venue...
Glad I'm old...
Lots of classic espionage stories out of Germany during the Cold War. I remember reading about an effort to track Russian Military Liaison Mission (MLM) teams, which were allowed to travel around West Germany and “observe” NATO facilities and exercises. Under the treaty that established Russian teams in the west (and US/British/French teams out of West Berlin, into the GDR), there were supposed to be limits on travel and what the “observers” could monitor. Naturally, the Russians ignored most of the rules, so tracking them was a matter of importance.
As I recall, the CIA learned that Russia planned to buy 3-4 Opel sedans for use by MLM personnel. We identified the vehicles intended for delivery to the Russians. Over a weekend, with the cars still on the assembly line, operatives broke into the plant and inserted tracking devices into the vehicles.
The devices were well concealed, so the Russians did not find them after taking delivery of the Opels. For months, they were frustrated because their MLM teams were never able to shake their western “tails,” and when one monitoring team dropped off, another was usually in place to maintain surveillance. The Russians eventually found one of the devices and promptly replaced all of the vehicles.
Boy, I didn’t think of that but right you are.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.