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I have never known this until today. I don't know if many people know about it but during the years of cold war, a total of 38 US planes were shot down spying over Russian air space. We, well me atleast, only knew about the DragonFly shot in the 60's but I thought that was the only incidents. Guess I was wrong. Also, around 120 personell were also taken POW's. Some to date are still MIA's. I found that out today when an American Ambessador with the Russian Embassy came as a Guest speaker to our Russian Language class. He was also an Ex Navy Captain (SWO). Did his Doctorate in Foreign languages and could speak Russian, French, Farsi and Italian. He was the Ambassador in charge of US side to get info on the missing US servicemen shot down over USSR.
Another interesting thing that we found out that 80% of all the North Korean pilots during the Korean conflict were not Korean but Russian.
Also, USSR was never able to figure out where the spy planes were coming from which now we know is a city called PESHAWER in Pakistan.
Many US Aerial spy missions were taken out by U-2's. It's true that in one incident, around four Soviet interceptors were dispatched to intercept the U-2 and they actually had a friendly fire incident and shot down one of their own. Bet it must have been hard to get their MiG-15s, 17's up to that altitude to intercept.
By the way, the Ambessador's name is Connel, don't recall the first name but I can find out.
I have never known this until today. I don't know if many people know about it but during the years of cold war, a total of 38 US planes were shot down spying over Russian air space. We, well me atleast, only knew about the DragonFly shot in the 60's but I thought that was the only incidents. Guess I was wrong. Also, around 120 personell were also taken POW's. Some to date are still MIA's. I found that out today when an American Ambessador with the Russian Embassy came as a Guest speaker to our Russian Language class. He was also an Ex Navy Captain (SWO). Did his Doctorate in Foreign languages and could speak Russian, French, Farsi and Italian. He was the Ambassador in charge of US side to get info on the missing US servicemen shot down over USSR.
Another interesting thing that we found out that 80% of all the North Korean pilots during the Korean conflict were not Korean but Russian.
Also, USSR was never able to figure out where the spy planes were coming from which now we know is a city called PESHAWER in Pakistan.
Many US Aerial spy missions were taken out by U-2's. It's true that in one incident, around four Soviet interceptors were dispatched to intercept the U-2 and they actually had a friendly fire incident and shot down one of their own. Bet it must have been hard to get their MiG-15s, 17's up to that altitude to intercept.
By the way, the Ambessador's name is Connel, don't recall the first name but I can find out.