Articles

Hang-Gliding American Spy’s In Soviet Arctic In 1962

 

In the summer of 1962, an American spy flew a first-generation hang glider to cross the Soviet-Finnish border and carry out a CIA mission to observe an important facility – the construction of the Verkhnetulomskaya hydroelectric power station, located in the western part of the Kola Peninsula. Having crashed after a flight of approximately 40 km, the hang glider spy was rescued by Finnish intelligence officers, posing as engineers from a Finnish construction company that was managing the construction of a road connecting Finland and the hydroelectric power station construction site. The CIA agent was subsequently taken to Finland, after which he was delivered to Norway.

First generation hang glider. Photo: fai.org

The Soviet Arctic, especially its western part, the adjacent waters of the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic and the airspace, from the late 1940s to the collapse of the USSR were the hottest theater of military operations of the Cold War: NATO aircraft patrolled the air on a permanent basis, US and British nuclear submarines were on duty off the coast of the Kola Peninsula, and military bases of the Alliance operated in Norway's Finnmark.

Soviet strategic aviation and the Northern Fleet were active in the North Atlantic and the Arctic, gradually turning into the most powerful ocean-going fleet of the state, whose tasks, among other things, were strategic nuclear deterrence and ensuring the trade and economic interests of the USSR in the Western Hemisphere.

The opposing sides conducted active intelligence activities against each other in this region of the world, while the primary objects of interest for Western intelligence agencies, primarily the CIA, were numerous military facilities on the Kola Peninsula, in the Arkhangelsk region and Karelia, as well as military-civil infrastructure, including new roads, hydroelectric power stations, industrial enterprises, etc.

CORONA C’s imaging capabilities were unprecedented in US history. Photo: cia.gov

Before the era of mass use of reconnaissance satellites (the first reconnaissance satellite under the American Corona program was launched into space in August 1960, the program operated until 1972), the main suppliers of intelligence information for the US special services were aviation and reconnaissance personnel who crossed the border mainly on foot.

From the first half of the 1950s, all these methods of penetrating the territory of the USSR gradually became problematic: military airfields were built in the Murmansk region and Karelia and fighter-interceptors were deployed.

The first cosmonaut in the world, Yuri Gagarin, began his military service in the 769th Fighter Aviation Regiment in Luostari.  In 1957–1959, Gagarin flew the MiG-15bis fighter jet. During his service in Luostari, he was awarded the rank of senior lieutenant and received the qualification of “Military pilot 1st class”, which allowed him to pass the selection for the cosmonaut corps.

The house-museum where Yuri Gagarin lived with his family. The former Soviet airbase Luostari. Photo: murmansk.kp.ru

The deployment of radar stations in the north and west of the Kola Peninsula, in the Arkhangelsk Region and Karelia further complicated the operations of NATO reconnaissance aircraft in northern latitudes from the mid-1950s, making it easier to detect air targets at long range.

Air battle over the USSR and Finland

When necessary, the US Air Force did not hesitate to use the airspace of "neutral" Sweden and Finland to conduct reconnaissance in the northwest of the USSR. Thus, on May 8, 1954, a US Boeing RB-47E Stratojet reconnaissance aircraft entered Soviet airspace from the Barents Sea to conduct reconnaissance in the western part of the Kola Peninsula and in the Arkhangelsk area.

As crew commander Harold Austin recalled, the crew's task was to conduct aerial photography of nine military airfields of the Soviet Air Force with the then new MiG-17 fighters.

According to the US Air Force command, the combination of a speed of 814 km/h and a flight altitude of 12 thousand meters guaranteed the safety of the enterprise. Soon, three crew members were able to verify the inaccuracy of the pre-flight information. During the flight, the aircraft was intercepted several times by groups of MiG-17s, and after successfully surveying airfields near Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, it was attacked several times by Soviet fighters.

Source: ng.toponavi.com

The final phase of the air battle took place in the skies over the Finnish village of Onkamo near Salla. Having received one hit in the wing and having flown through the airspace of Finland, Sweden and Norway, the reconnaissance aircraft, although not without problems, returned to the British base of departure Fairford. The last pilot from the Boeing crew, Harold Austin, died in 2018. For a description of the flight and battle compiled by Austin, see here

Boeing RB-47E Stratojet. Source: airwar.ru

The downing of the U-2 ended the era of aerial reconnaissance

After this bright and very risky flight, which only accidentally did not end with the death of the aircraft with the crew, American reconnaissance aircraft no longer flew deep into Soviet territory until the adoption of the high-altitude (practical ceiling of 21.3 km) reconnaissance aircraft U-2, whose triumph in the Soviet skies, which began in 1956, ended in the most regrettable way on May 1, 1960 in the skies near Sverdlovsk. Aerial photography of military facilities, in particular, the powerful Ural military-industrial hub of the Soviet military-industrial complex, was carried out along the Norway-Pakistan route with accompanying photography of military facilities in the North-West of the USSR.

Flight route of Gary Powers over the Soviet Union. Photo: Aerospaceweb.org

Finnish espionage against Russia has been going on non-stop since 1917

The lack of relevant intelligence information from the spring of 1960 until the effective use of spy satellites (the Corona program) forced the CIA to resort to traditional methods – the use of both its own intelligence agents and Finnish citizen agents, who were recruited with the consent of the authorities of the "sovereign" and "independent" Finland by CIA employees from among the residents of the predominantly northern part of the country. The agents' services were paid in dollars. (Erkkilä V., Iivari P. Kylmää sotaa Lapissa. Helsinki Otava, 2018).

Finnish espionage against its large eastern neighbor, however, had been going on since the formation of the state of Finland in December 1917. For some residents of Northern Finland, crossing the border for intelligence purposes has been a routine activity since early 1920s. The same was true for the pre-war Finnish intelligence services: the secret police (Etsivä/Valpo), the army, and the border service, which were engaged in espionage against the USSR, using both their own agents and representatives of numerous public organizations, which mainly included refugees from Soviet Karelia and Ingria, as well as so-called “activists”, members of nationalist organizations, political heirs of the Active Resistance Party (For more details, see: Elfvengren E., Laidinen E. P. Vakoilua itärajan takana. Yleisesikunnan tiedustelu Neuvosto-Karjalassa 1918―1939. Minerva Kustannus Oy, 2012).

Until 1939, residencies of almost all the Western neighboring countries of the USSR, as well as Great Britain and Japan, operated in Finland. The non-sovereign nature of Finland's statehood was confirmed by the Finnish authorities' permission to recruit agents from among the country's citizens for foreign intelligence services without disclosing the agents' identities and anonymously paying for their services.

Border posts – Russian red-green and Finnish white-blue. Photo: Border Directorate of the FSB of the Russian Federation. Source: MK.ru

Soon after World War II, despite the special friendly and neighborly relations with the USSR within the framework of the "Paasikivi-Kekkonen line", the Finnish authorities secretly resumed their own intelligence activities on Soviet territory and began cooperating with the intelligence services of NATO member states, primarily with the CIA (before the war, the main partner of the Finnish intelligence services was the British foreign intelligence service, SIS). For obvious reasons, the intelligence services of the Baltics and the Soviet bloc countries dropped out of the list of pre-war partners, but the Western Germany was added.

Control and track lane and barbed wire fence on the Soviet-Finnish border. The lanes were located several kilometers from the state border so that the border guards could catch the violator between the lane and the state border. Source: Fishki.net

By the early 1960s, border control in the Murmansk region and Karelia became more effective, and the introduction of agents into the territory of the USSR on foot became more difficult, which forced the CIA to show ingenuity and carry out the introduction of one of its agents from the area of ​​the Finnish settlement of Ivalo deep into Soviet territory on a hang glider to conduct ground reconnaissance of objects important to the CIA in the western part of the Kola Peninsula.

The flight of an American spy on a motorless hang glider in the Soviet Arctic zone back in 1962 was an absolutely unique phenomenon, which is clear to anyone at least superficially familiar with the history of hang gliding! The triangular wing patented in 1949 by the American Francis Rogallo, which became the prototype of the first generation of hang gliders capable of rising into the air with the efforts of one person, according to the history of hang gliding, was first used by Australian water skiers for towing by boats. It was only in 1971 that the first modern version of the hang glider appeared.

According to another version, it is believed that hang gliders appeared in the second half of the 1960s after the invention of the hang glider harness and trapeze, which radically improved the control of the aircraft. The aerodynamic quality of the first generation hang gliders did not exceed four units (for every kilometer of altitude loss, the device could fly horizontally four kilometers), and the rate of descent was up to 2.5 - 3 m / s.

Art based on a photo of Barry Palmer flying a polythene standard Rogallo in the summer of 1962. This is roughly what an American spy's hang glider might have looked like. Source: Hang Gliding History

Big Soviet projects attracted the CIA like honey attracts bees

Large-scale plans for industrial development on the Kola Peninsula required a reliable energy supply, which could be provided by new powerful hydroelectric power plants, the construction of which was planned even before the Great Patriotic War. A special place in these plans was given to the Verkhnetulomskaya hydroelectric power plant, the construction of which was entrusted to Finnish contractors. The water level in Lake Notozero   (Finnish: Nuorttijärvi), transformed into the Verkhnetulomskoye reservoir with an area of ​​745 sq km, was raised by 30 meters, and the height of the water fall was 58.5 meters.

One of the most powerful hydroelectric power plants in the European part of Russia was built using Finnish technology with the machine room located at a depth of 50 meters and reached a capacity of 268 MW. The station was built by Finnish workforce from 1961 to 1966. The contractor was the Finnish company Imatra-Voima. The project was prepared by the Lenhydroproject Institute. For information on the uniqueness of the Verkhnetulomskaya hydroelectric power station, see here

Verkhnetulomskaya hydroelectric power station. Source: Murmansk Travel

In connection with the construction of the Verkhnetulomskaya hydroelectric power station, the Finnish construction organization Pellonraivaus Oy and the engineering bureau Vesi-Pekka Oy was awarded the contract for the design and construction of a 5-meter wide road leading to the site of the future hydroelectric power station, 170 km long, with 40 bridges. The road began in the Finnish village of Raja-Jooseppi and led to the settlement of Verkhnetulomsky, skirting the future Verkhnetulomsky reservoir from the north (see map). Construction work under the supervision of engineer Anton Ortamo began in March 1961 and was completed by the end of the year. In July, 720 people and 80 trucks were employed in the construction.

The Regional Council of Lapland and the Murmansk Regional Road Administration signed a financing agreement for the reconstruction project of the road in 2018. The Russian government paid almost four million euros for the road repairs, and the EU provided approximately 100,000 euros. Source: Yle

The great Soviet construction projects inevitably aroused the keenest interest in the CIA from the very beginning of their implementation. The curiosity of the American knights of the cloak and dagger was diligently satisfied by the Finnish secret services, military intelligence, border guards and Supo, the security police, the descendant of the pre-war Valpo. But your own eyes are always better than someone else's.

The map shows the approximate location of the Finnish spy nest, the construction office, two route options and the approximate crash site of the American hang-gliding spy. The map design: author.

Behind the facade of the truly heroic work of the Finnish builders, who built a highway in an extremely short time on the most difficult terrain for work, which was also heavily mined during the war, and the unique hydroelectric power station project carried out by Finnish hydroelectric builders, there was a Finnish spy nest hidden, which was the road construction office, located approximately 30 km west of the village of Verkhnetulomsky and 140 km from the state border in the village of Tornimäki, where barracks were built for the workers, and an office building for construction management.

Reino Lehväslaiho at one of the memorial events. Photo: Otava Media

According to the testimony of the office employee Reino Lehväslaiho, who later became a famous writer of military fiction, “the office was more of a Finnish spy organization than a structure for managing road construction”: its entire staff consisted of full-time and part-time (Lehväslaiho called himself a “volunteer army intelligence officer”) military intelligence officers, veterans of the Second World War, who at that time were still at the most active age.

The head of the road office was a professional military intelligence officer, Captain Kangas-Korhonen (there is no information about him on the Internet, as is expected in such cases). One of the main tasks of the office staff, in addition to organizing road works and conducting their own espionage activities, was to help foreign intelligence agents who were sent to the USSR in various ways either from Finnish territory or in transit from Norway through Finnish territory. Lehväslaiho told the author of a book about the Cold War in Lapland about one of these episodes of his espionage work in an interview in March 2018 in Seinäjoki, a year before his death.

Senior Sergeant Lehväslaiho's task was to listen to the radio broadcast on a daily frequency for communication with foreign agents who might ask for help. The radio operator's workplace was located at the same table as the head of the office. In the summer of 1962, while doing this routine work, Lehväslaiho heard a prearranged signal, three clicks, which meant the need to send a rescue team to save an agent in trouble. For this case, Kangas-Korhonen had given the radio operator exhaustive secret instructions in advance.

The search team of three spy workers included Lehväslaiho himself, the head of the office, and the clerk, border sergeant Mäntytörmä. The group set out to find the agent who had sent the trouble signal. The agent was located far from the office, closer to the state border, and the search team, having determined his location by special signals, set out to search by car. The success of the expedition was facilitated by the absence of Soviet border guards in the area from which the injured agent had sent the signal.

After a short search, the immobilized and completely exhausted, but "polite" agent was found not far from the road. Lehväslaiho was amazed by his equipment: when he felt his outerwear, it turned out to be warm, since the fabric of the overalls was pierced with electric wires that gave off heat from batteries in the soles and heels of his boots.

At first, the rescuers decided that they were dealing with an American or Norwegian spy who had traveled to the USSR from Norway, but the stranger began to speak English and said that he was an American and had gone to the USSR from Finland on a hang glider, the wreckage of which he had managed to sink in a river near the crash site. The Finns assumed that the agent had taken off from the area of ​​the village of Nellim (on the map, not far from Inari).

The American said that he had flown about a hundred kilometers, after which he had crashed, losing control of the hang glider. Upon examination, it turned out that he had broken one leg and injured the other. He had called for help using a small signal transmitter, a double click of which meant "Attention!" and a triple click - "I need help!"

Photo: Automatic CIA agent radio set

The most likely equipment of the CIA agent was AS-3,  an American modular solid-state automatic clandestine radio station, also known as a spy radio set, developed around 1959 on behalf of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). From 1962 onwards, it replaced earlier valve-based radio sets like the RS-1 and RS-6. A typical AS-3 station consisted of an AT-3 transmitter, an RR/E-11 or RR/D-11 receiver, a battery pack or PSU, and a burst encoder with tape cartridges. According to an early version of the manual, it was possible to connect a printer that was suitable for HELL transmissions

The hang glider was immediately taken to Tornimäki, where he was examined by the chief construction doctor, Åke Hastrup, who concluded that without prompt surgical assistance the agent could soon die. The doctor advised that he be delivered to Finland as quickly as possible, "even if only in one's arms." This method of delivery was naturally ruled out, and a solution was suggested by technician Mikko Nikkola: the top of a standard 200-liter gasoline barrel was cut off, a small seat was welded on with a welding machine, and small breathing holes were made. Once these manipulations were completed, the barrel with the American spy was loaded into the back of a truck in the bottom row, with three more rows of empty barrels placed on top. The doctor injected the agent with strong tranquilizers, which rendered him unconscious for safe border crossing.

The truck was accompanied by a passenger car in which rescuers and a doctor were riding. The truck driver was not informed of the situation so that he would not be nervous when crossing the border. Transporting empty gasoline barrels was a routine activity for Finnish road builders, and the trucks carrying them were not inspected by either Soviet or Finnish border guards.

In Ivalo, the truck arrived at the site of a former sawmill, a Finnish intelligence post surrounded by a four-meter fence. After Hastrup's call to Norway, an ambulance "the size of an entire field hospital" arrived "pretty soon." The subsequent fate of the rescued agent Leiväslaiho is unknown. In his opinion, this incident showed that "the Soviet Iron Curtain was quite leaky in the north, too."

In an interview in 2018, he said that Finnish border guards were conducting intelligence on the Finnish side, while only well-established war veterans were operating on Soviet territory. From published CIA reports from the spring and summer of 1962, it is clear that the US intelligence service was monitoring the construction of the Tuloma hydroelectric power station. Lehväslaiho believed that the American agent's goal was to observe the construction of this hydroelectric power station.

A look at the Google Earth Pro map of the area casts doubt on both the Finns' designated takeoff point for the American spy hang glider (the outskirts of the village of Nellim) and the CIA agent's claim that it had flown hundreds of kilometers before the crash. The most likely takeoff point for the hang glider could have been a local natural landmark, located 6 km from the state border, Mount Tsarmintunturi, whose rocky peak reaches a height of 500 meters. The heights of all the other mountains in the vicinity, as a rule, do not exceed 200 meters.

The rocky summit of the Mount Tsarmintunturi. Photo: Metsähallitus

The hills to the east of the state border have approximately the same altitude, from 200 to 250 meters. There is no doubt that the American spy could not fly a hundred kilometers on a first-generation hang glider with its low aerodynamic quality (4 units) in the Arctic region, where thermals, rising air currents, are not as powerful as in warmer regions. Modern third-generation hang gliders have aerodynamic quality of 17 units, i.e., even without thermals on the route, the hang glider can fly 17 km with an initial altitude of one kilometer. It is also practically impossible to tow the hang glider with a light aircraft, which could raise it to a significant altitude before crossing the border: Soviet radars could easily detect such a target, especially flying at high altitude.

The most likely route and crash site of the American spy hang glider are shown on the map below. The aircraft most likely took off in the first half of a relatively warm day, which only happens at this latitude in July, and not every year, from the rocky summit of Mount Tsarmintunturi at a height of 500 meters and, catching an ascending air flow (thermal), was able to gain enough altitude to cross the state border, which for a first-generation hang glider should have been more than one kilometer. This altitude was enough to cross the state border, which was six kilometers away, after which the aircraft caught thermals from a chain of low hills located on Soviet territory. Most likely, the flight, which had started well, ended in a crash at the point marked on the map, or at least not far from it. In this case, the unknown American hang glider spy was able to cover approximately  40 kilometers and crash a short distance from the Raja-Jooseppi - Verkhnetulomsky village road, which was his only landmark and chance for survival.

Photo: author

This small episode of the great "cold war" clearly demonstrates the ingenuity of the CIA specialists, who managed to train a highly professional agent-hang glider at a time when hang gliding was still in its very early stages of development, and the first civilian hang glider-lovers could not even dream of covering tens of kilometers even in warmer climates on their imperfect flying machines. The authors of a future full history of hang gliding can be advised to contact the CIA, which could declassify the name of its fearless agent-record holder.

The North Observer

 
12.01.2025
 
 

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *